Bennett H. Young (signature)
Commander-in-Chief U. C. V.

Confederate Wizards
of the Saddle

Being Reminiscences and
Observations of One Who Rode
With Morgan
By

BENNETT H. YOUNG

Commander-in-Chief of the
United Confederate Veterans Association

BOSTON
Chapple Publishing Company, Ltd.
1914

Copyright, 1914, by Bennett H. Young

Dedicated
to the
Women of the South

IN THE DAYS OF PEACE
The Creators of Chivalry and Gallantry
IN THE DAYS OF BATTLE
The Inspiration of Faith and Courage
IN THE DAYS OF BLOOD
The Angels of Comfort and Mercy
IN THE DAYS OF DEFEAT
The Spirits of Hope and Help

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

Forty-eight years and a half have passed, since the last drum-beat of the Confederate States was heard and the furling of their flag forever closed the most wondrous military tragedy of the ages. Numbers and character considered, the tribute the South paid to War has no equal in human records.

Fifteen hundred years ago on the Catalaunian Plain, where Attila, King of the Huns, styled “The Scourge of God,” joined battle with the Romans under Oetius, and the Visigoths led by Thorismund, tradition has it that hundreds of thousands of dead were left on the field. The men who followed the cruel and remorseless Attila were a vast horde, organized for war, with plunder as the highest aim of a soldier’s life, and the Romans and Visigoths were men who followed war solely for the opportunity it afforded to enslave, rob and despoil those they conquered. On both sides the men who filled the ranks had neither intelligence nor patriotism, and with each, war was a profession or pastime, devoid in most cases of any exalted purpose, even the dream of a conviction, or the faintest gleam of a principle.

If the dead on that fatal field were numbered by the hundreds of thousands, their demise was a mere incident in the conflicts which were carried on for no truth, and in their loss the world suffered but little more than if as many beasts of burden had been sacrificed on some heathen altar to appease the God of War.

The American war, in the middle of the nineteenth century, dealt on both sides with far different materials. Christianity, liberty, education, culture and refinement had reached a very high limit on the human scale. When the North and South faced each other, moved by patriotism and principle, the legions drawn from the very best materials that the race could offer, with inherited courage, quickened by personal and social pride, and with memories and traditions of great military achievements, and ennobled by ancestral escutcheons of exceeding splendor, there met for battle such men as the world had never before seen, aligned for conflict.

Half a century gives time to gather data, to measure losses, to calculate sacrifices, to weigh difficulties, to figure results, and to look calmly and justly at the history and the conduct of what must ever be classed as one of the great wars of the ages.

The very fact that the South lost lends pathos and sentiment to the story of what her sons accomplished. As time, aided by the scrutinizing finger of Truth, points out with impartial fairness what each did in this gigantic grapple between two Anglo-Saxon armies, we are enabled, even now, while thousands of participants remain, to judge, recount and chronicle with accuracy the most important events that marked this mighty struggle.

Cavalry played a most important part in the Civil War. In fact, without this arm of the service, the Confederacy could not have so long maintained the unequal contest; nor the Federal Army have prevailed as quickly as was done. The story of the campaigns of Stuart, Wheeler, Morgan, the Lees, Forrest, Hampton, Ashby, Mosby, Green, Van Dorn, Shelby and Marmaduke, and their associates, gave war a new glamour, opened to chivalry a wider field for operation, painted to adventurous genius more entrancing visions, and made the service of men who rode to battle a transcendent power of which warriors had hitherto not even dreamed.

So far as has been historically made known, there is no similar service performed by the cavalry of any period. General Morgan, with his command, made two distinct marches of one thousand miles each into a hostile country. Shelby is reported to have ridden fifteen hundred miles when he raided into Missouri in September, 1863. There were times, probably, when Stuart and Hampton and their associates had fiercer conflict, but the strain was never so long drawn out and the calls on nerve and muscle and brain were never so severely concentrated as in these marches of Morgan and Shelby.

General Wheeler, in his raid around Rosecrans, was twenty-five days in the rear of the enemy, menaced on every side, and his men fought with a courage that was simply transcendent. His marches were characterized by fierce fighting and covered a more limited territory, but his captures and his destruction of property have few counterparts.

No fair man, reading the story of General Dick Taylor’s exploits, in the spring of ’64, can come to any other conclusion than that he and his men were heroic, of abundant patience and exhibited almost unlimited physical endurance.

The same can be said of Forrest. He did not ride so far as Morgan, Marmaduke or Shelby on a single expedition, but what he lacked in distance he made in overcoming difficulties and in the extent and constancy of conflict, and in the tremendous losses inflicted upon his enemy’s property and troops.

Shelby’s Raid into Missouri in September, 1863, which lasted thirty-six days and involved marching fifteen hundred miles, an average of thirty miles per day, is a story of extraordinary skill and endurance.

Stuart’s Chickahominy raid around McClellan’s army, his march to Chambersburg and return, and the Battle of Fleetwood Hill will ever command the admiration of cavalry students.

Hampton’s Trevilian campaign, his cattle raid, and the management of General Lee’s cavalry before Petersburg point to him as a leader of wondrous enterprise, a soldier of unbounded daring and a strategist of great ability.

The cavalry generals who have been chosen as the chief subjects of this book all possessed, in a remarkable degree, the power of winning the confidence of their followers and their loyal support under all circumstances. With Hampton, men followed wherever he led, they never reasoned why they should go, they only asked that they be informed as to the will of their leader. And so it was true of Morgan, Stuart, Forrest, Shelby and Wheeler. They all had the absolute trust of their followers. No man beneath them in command ever questioned their wisdom or their judgment in battle or march. But when it came to inspiring men with the spirit of absolute indifference to death and relentlessness in the pursuit of the enemy, few would deny that Nathan Bedford Forrest did this more effectively than any leader who was engaged in the struggle. Generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnson, Joseph E. Johnston always commanded the respect, devotion, love and admiration of their soldiers to such an extent that at any time they would have marched into the very jaws of death, under their leadership; but those who study the life and the extent of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s achievements will generally agree that in inspiring his soldiers to fierce, persistent battle and absolute indifference in conflict, few, if any, equalled him, none surpassed him. The conduct of his soldiers at Bryce’s Cross-roads, where he fought first cavalry and then infantry, sometimes mounted, most generally on foot, would show that he could exact from men as superb service as any soldier who ever led his followers into battle.

This suggestion as to Forrest does not detract from the glory of any other Confederate leader. We meet this almost hypnotic influence in many phases of life other than military. Those who study the actions and characteristics of General Forrest and who looked upon the faces of the men following him could but realize that by his bearing, example and dash he got the best and bravest that it was possible for human nature in war to give.

Romance, patriotism and love of adventure inspired the cavalry of the Confederacy to follow their renowned leaders. No man who has calmly read the stories of the conflicts and marches of the Army of Northern Virginia, or the Army of Tennessee, or of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department can fail to be filled with wonder at the duties the soldiers of these armies so cheerfully and so willingly performed. Without pay, illy clad and poorly fed, yet they were always brave. Though hungry in battle they were always courageous; and in conflict they had only one aim, and that was to defend their country and destroy its enemies.

There was much in the narratives of the South’s past to inspire cavalrymen with Lighthorse Harry Lee valor. Their fathers and grandfathers had ridden with Marion and Sumpter, had fought with Shelby, Preston, Sevier and Campbell at King’s Mountain, or had gone with Isaac Shelby and General Harrison into Canada to fight the Battle of the Thames, or composed the dragoons who had gone with Scott and Taylor to Mexico. The boys and young men of the South had read and reread the accounts of what these horsemen of the long ago had accomplished, of the dangers they had faced and the laurels they had won, and these records of a splendid past filled their hearts with deepest love of their country, and fired their souls to make achievements the equal of those of their renowned ancestry. The most romantic and chivalrous side of both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 had their happenings with horsemen, and the most of those were either on the Southern soil or came from the states which sympathized with the South.

It was this antecedent history that gave such impetus to the Confederate youth to find, if possible, a place in the cavalry. The men of the South were not only familiar with the use of firearms, but a majority of them were skilled horsemen, and these two things combined brought to the Confederate cavalry volunteers, active, adventurous, daring, reckless, vigilant, chivalrous soldiers that were bound to perform the highest type of military work.

In the American war, cavalry was to change its arms, the sabre was to be almost entirely eliminated. In its place was to come the revolver and the repeating rifle, the magazine gun and the short Enfield. The holsters were to be abandoned. Instead, the belt with the six shooters and the sixty rounds of ammunition. These new cavalrymen were not only to serve as scouts, but to act as infantry, to cover military movements, to destroy the lines of communication, to burn stores, to tear up lines of railway, to gather supplies, to fight gunboats, capture transports; all these without any equipment of any kind, except their horses, their arms and some horse artillery of limited range. In a large part, they were to feed in the enemy’s country, rely upon their foes for arms and ammunition. They were to have no tents; no wagons, except for ammunition; no cooking utensils, other than a wrought iron skillet. These, with canteens and food found on the march, were to prove their only means of subsistence. They were to be trained to ride incessantly, charge stockades, capture forts, take their place alongside of the infantry on the battle line, and to build or defend hastily constructed fortifications. No cavalry before had performed these services and none will ever perform them again. The newer conditions of warfare will change altogether the work that will be required of cavalry. The improvement in firearms, particularly in the artillery, would render the oldtime cavalry superfluous and its use, under the past methods, a simple slaughter without benefit.

These men, carried by horses with great celerity from place to place, were to perform a distinct and different service in war; sometimes in a single night they would march fifty miles. Sometimes in a day they would march seventy-five to ninety miles. They would destroy stores of supplies, wreck railroads, burn water stations, demolish trestles, attack and burn wagon trains. Their best living was to be obtained by victory and the popular application to the fortunes of war the maxim—“That they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.”

To fit them for such service, a new system of drill was instituted; half cavalry and half infantry, fighting on foot, in open rank; the charge on infantry on horseback was to become practically obsolete. They were, if occasion demanded, to be dismounted, fight in entrenchments alongside infantry, and charge batteries and abattis, the same as the infantry. With boundless energy, unlimited enthusiasm and a measureless love of adventure, the horseman was to meet these new requirements and frequently do all that infantry could do and, in addition, do what cavalry had never done before. In the West, this combined and new call for cavalry obtained its birth and hold and received its first and most successful development. It is urged that to General John H. Morgan and his followers ought to be accredited the application and successful demonstration of these new methods, which were to add such immense value to cavalry work. No commander ever before undertook to commit such tasks to horsemen. But the Southern soldier, who first developed all these qualities and performed these varying tasks, was to open for the Southern cavalry service an unlimited field for harassing, delaying, starving and even destroying opposing armies.

The marvelous endurance of the men who followed Forrest and Stuart and Morgan and Wheeler and Hampton and Shelby and Green and McCullough and Price has never been equalled. Storms and floods had no terror for these. No enemy was safe from their avenging hand and no vigilance could defy their enterprise. There were no alarms in any work for these brave and tireless riders. Single riders and even small troops of cavalry had made marches of a hundred miles in a day, but it remained for generals like Wheeler and Morgan and Forrest and Stuart and Hampton and Shelby and Marmaduke and Green to demonstrate the potency and tremendous value of cavalry in war, and lengthen the possibility of a day’s march.

For the first two years of the conflict, the Confederate cavalry were practically supreme. Their enemies were slow to absorb these new methods and to apprehend the advantages of this new system. Stuart’s Chickahominy raid, his march from Chambersburg; Morgan’s two marches of a thousand miles each; Forrest’s pursuit of Streight and his raid into Kentucky and Tennessee, under the most adverse physical difficulties, in midwinter or early spring, and his ride into Memphis, read more like fairy stories than the performance of men composed of flesh and blood. Wheeler’s raid in Rosecrans’ rear, his expedition into East Tennessee and the endurance of his men are almost incredible. These do not read like the performance of real soldiers, but more like the make-up of a military dreamer. One may call over the names of the great battles of the war, either east or west of the Mississippi River, and while the account of these engagements lose none of their brilliancy in comparison with those of any war, yet they cannot surpass, nor in some respects equal, the work performed by the cavalry. Fleetwood Hill (Brandy Station), Trevilian Station, Hanging Fork, Chambersburg, Hartsville, Cynthiana, Shiloh, Mt. Sterling, Bryce’s Cross-roads, Parker’s Cross Roads and Dug Creek Gap. Marmaduke’s and Shelby’s Missouri raids and the pursuit of Stoneman, Garrard and McCook, during the Atlanta siege, are stories of valor, endurance and sacrifice that lose nothing in comparison with the deeds of any other organization of the armies of the Confederate States. In exposure, in daring, in physical privations, in patience, in cheerfulness under defeat, in willingness to do and dare, the horsemen of the Confederacy must always command the admiration of those who study military records.

An unusual proportion of the Confederate cavalry came from eight states,—Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. When we call the cavalry roll, its names awaken memories of some of the most heroic deeds known among men. Every Confederate state furnished a full quota of horsemen, and none of them failed to make good when the crucial test came.

Alabama sent into this branch of service Generals William Wirt Allen, James Hogan, Moses W. Hannon, John Herbert Kelley, Evander M. Law, John T. Morgan and P. D. Roddy.

Kentucky furnished Generals Abram Buford, George B. Cosby, Basil W. Duke, Charles W. Field, James N. Hawes, Ben Hardin Helm, George B. Hodge, Joseph H. Lewis, Hylan B. Lyon, John H. Morgan, John S. Williams, W. C. P. Breckenridge and R. M. Gano.

Missouri brought as part of her offering Generals John S. Marmaduke, Joseph O. Shelby and John G. Walker.

Tennessee gave Frank C. Armstrong, Tyree H. Bell, Alexander W. Campbell, Henry B. Davidson, George G. Dibrell, Benjamin J. Hill, W. Y. C. Humes, W. H. Jackson, John C. Vaughn, Lucius M. Walker and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Mississippi sent Generals Wirt Adams, James H. Chalmers, Samuel G. Gohlson, W. T. Martin, Peter B. Stark and Earl Van Dorn.

Georgia, Generals Robert H. Anderson, Charles C. Crews, Alfred Iverson, P. M. B. Young.

Florida, General G. M. Davis and Colonel J. J. Dickinson.

South Carolina, M. C. Butler, Thomas F. Drayton, John Dunnovant, Samuel W. Ferguson, Martin W. Geary, Thomas M. Logan, Wade Hampton.

North Carolina gave Lawrence S. Baker, Rufus Barriger, James B. Gordon, Robert Ransom, William Paul Roberts.

Maryland, Bradley T. Johnson and Joseph Lancaster Brent (the latter only an acting brigadier).

West Virginia, William L. Jackson, Albert Gallatin Jenkins, John McCausland.

Virginia, Turner Ashby, Richard L. T. Beale, John Randolph Chambliss, James Dearing, John D. Imboden, William E. Jones, Fitz Hugh Lee, W. H. F. Lee, Lumsford L. Lomax, Thomas Taylor Munfod, William Henry Fitzhugh Payne, Beverly H. Robertson, Thomas L. Rosser, J. E. B. Stuart, William C. Wickham.

Louisiana, Daniel W. Adams, Franklin Gardner, Thomas M. Scott.

Arkansas, William N. R. Beall, William L. Cabell, James F. Fagan, James McQueen McIntosh.

The Indian Territory, Stand Watie.

Texas, Arthur Pendleton Bagby, Hamilton P. Bee, Xavier Blanchard De Bray, Thomas Green, W. P. Hardemen, Thomas Hamson, Ben McCulloch, James P. Major, Samuel-Bell Maxey, Horace Randal, Felix H. Robertson, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, W. R. Scurry, William Steele, Richard Waterhouse, John A. Wharton, John W. Whitfield.

This one book must, in the very nature of things, be limited to a few hundred pages.

It does not and cannot undertake to tell all that was glorious and courageous in the service of the men who led and composed the Confederate cavalry. There will doubtless be some who will ask why certain battles and experiences were omitted. The author may have selected, in some instances, what would appear to many critics and readers not the most notable events in the Confederate cavalry work.

He may have inadvertently left out names that ought to have been mentioned, campaigns that were of vast importance, and battles that were full of sublime sacrifice and marked by the superbest skill.

The book is written with the bias of a cavalry man. It is written by a man who knows, by personal experience only, some of the things that happened where Forrest, Wheeler and Morgan fought. He only knew personally three of the men whose leadership and skill are detailed in the book. He never saw Stuart but once, and Forrest a few times, but he loves the fame of all these splendid men and has endeavored to do each the fullest justice.

There were one hundred and four Confederate generals, from brigadier up, who at various times led the horsemen of the South. A volume could be written of the services of each. A majority of them were equally brave and valiant, but fate decreed some should pass under the fiercest light, and win from fame its most generous awards. It may be that hereafter other volumes will be written to tell, if not who, what the Confederate horsemen were. One of the chiefest aims of this volume is to give Confederate cavalry leaders and their followers their just place in the history of the great war. There is neither purpose nor desire to take aught from any other branch of the service. The Confederate infantry, artillery and navy have each a distinct place in the struggle of the South for its national life. Every Confederate loves every other Confederate and glories in all that he did to win the immortality of the Confederate armies. The cavalryman asks that his work may be recognized and that his proper place shall be assigned him in the phalanxes of the brave who stood for Southern independence. He covets none of the fame that justly belongs to his comrades in other lines. He only seeks that what he did may be honestly told, and his achievements be truly recorded. He feels that he did the best that he could and that he is entitled to a complete narrative of that which he did and endeavored to do for his country. He does not claim that he was braver or more patriotic than his comrades who fought in other departments. He only asks that the world may know the dangers he had faced, the difficulties he overcame, the sacrifices he made, the sufferings he endured and the results his work accomplished. A true account is his only demand, and all the world will feel that this is his right.

The writer may not always be literally accurate in the things he undertakes to recount in this book about Southern cavalry. He may here and there have made slight mistakes in the description of the marches and battles he has essayed to describe. Relying upon books and participants, he could not always get the things just as they occurred. Eye witnesses often differ in discussing the same occurrence. There are hundreds of dates and names recorded in these pages. Error must have crept in, but in the main the history is what really happened, and these happenings alone will give Confederate cavalry fame and renown in all ages and amongst all nations.

They make up a great history of great leaders and valiant soldiers, and they must surely add something to the store of human heroism.

There is no desire to depreciate what men on the other side did. In the later years of the war, the Federal cavalry apprehended the tactics and the methods of Confederate horsemen, and they became foemen worthy of any steel. The third year of the struggle, the mounts of the Southern cavalry became less efficient and the disparity in arms and supplies more and more depressing amongst the Confederates. The Federal generals undertook then to cut Confederate lines of communication, and to destroy their commissary depots and to disrupt railway transportation. In such work, in 1864 and 1865, they laid heaviest burdens on the Confederate cavalry; and in many instances the jaded and starving horses, the illy-fed men, their scanty supply of ammunition put them at great disadvantage, but they were, in face of all these difficulties, game, vigilant, aggressive, enterprising and defiant to the end; and from April, 1864, to April, 1865, there was nothing more brilliant nor historic than the work of the Confederate horsemen, performed under the most unfavorable conditions, to stay the tide of Federal advance and success and to maintain to the end their nation’s hope and their nation’s life.

If the sketches these pages contain shall add one leaf to the Confederate Laurel Wreath, or bring to Confederate fame fuller recognition, the author will be many times repaid for the labor, expense and time expended in their preparation.

Bennett H. Young.

Louisville, Kentucky.
1914.

Chapter I
FORREST AT BRYCE’S CROSS ROADS,
JUNE 10TH, 1864

The spring and summer of 1864 in Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and in the Trans-Mississippi Department proved one of the most sanguinary periods of the war.

During this time, Joseph E. Johnston made his superb retreat from Dalton to Atlanta, regarded by military historians as one of the ablest strategic movements of the campaigns from ’61 to ’65, and General Robert E. Lee, in his famous defensive campaign culminating in the decimation of Grant’s armies at Cold Harbor, had killed or wounded more than eighty thousand of General Grant’s followers, twenty thousand more effective men than Lee’s whole army numbered!

In the Trans-Mississippi, between April and August, ’64, General Dick Taylor at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill gained glorious victories in attempting to stay the advance of General Banks into the heart of Louisiana; and Kirby Smith, Price, Shelby and Marmaduke in Arkansas still maintained a courageous front to the foe. After three years of constant fighting, their soldiers were more thoroughly inured to the hardships of war, better trained to face its dangers, and men on both sides exhibited a recklessness in facing death which marked the highest tide of courage.

Early in the war the cavalry became one of the most effective arms of the agencies of the Confederates. With the vast territory in the West defended by the Confederacy, with a frontier line twenty-five hundred miles in extent, the marching speed of which mounted men are capable, the cavalry of the South, at this period, enabled them to do more, man for man, than any arm of the South’s defenders. They proved not only the best allies of the Confederate cause, but later developed some of the most renowned cavalry leaders of the world.

There were many cavalry battles during the fifteen hundred and twenty days of the war—Trevilian Station, Fleetwood Hill, sometimes called “Brandy Station,” Harrisburg, Hartsville, Okolona, Murfreesboro, Shiloh, Parkers Cross Roads, Reams Station, all of which gave resplendence to the fame of the Confederate horsemen. Over and above these cavalry battles, there was Bryce’s Cross Roads, designated by the Federals as the Battle of Tishomingo Creek. Measured by losses, it stands pre-eminent; along strategic lines it is amongst the first, and counted by results to the defeated foe, it has no counterpart in any engagement fought entirely on one side by cavalry.

On the Federal side, two thousand officers and men, including the wounded, were made prisoners, and more than twelve hundred dead were left on the battlefield or in close proximity thereto, if Forrest’s contemporary reports be correct. The Confederates lost a hundred and forty killed and three hundred wounded. General Forrest held the battlefield. His forces buried the dead, and his count was based upon the fullest knowledge of the tremendous mortality of this sanguinary engagement. There were differing statements concerning the casualties. The numbers here given are from men who saw the havoc on the field.

At Fleetwood Hill, the Confederates lost five hundred and twenty-three killed and wounded, and the Federals nine hundred and thirty-six killed and wounded. At Trevilian Station, a purely cavalry engagement, June 11th, 1864, Hampton carried into battle four thousand seven hundred men against nine thousand Federals. After the battle and in ten days’ subsequent fighting, his losses in killed, wounded and prisoners were less than seven hundred. He captured six hundred and ninety-five Federals, including one hundred and twenty-five wounded. Hampton’s killed numbered less than seventy-five. In the Trevilian campaign, continuing fifteen days, Hampton’s losses did not exceed seven hundred and fifty killed, wounded and missing, while the Federals report a loss of one thousand five hundred and twelve, more than twice that of the Confederates. At Hartsville, the Confederates lost a hundred and twenty-five killed and wounded, and the Federals four hundred and thirty, with eighteen hundred captured. At Harrisburg, Mississippi, one thousand two hundred and eighty-seven Confederates were killed and wounded. At Bull Run the Federals lost in killed and wounded one thousand four hundred and ninety-two, with one thousand four hundred and sixty missing. The Confederates lost one thousand eight hundred and seven. On both sides approximately fifty-six thousand men were engaged. At Shiloh, April 6th and 7th, 1862, the Federal death roll was seventeen hundred and that of the Confederates seventeen hundred and twenty-eight, and yet on both sides ninety thousand men were engaged in the struggle. At Wilson’s Creek, the Federal loss was one thousand three hundred and seventeen, the Confederate loss one thousand two hundred and eighteen. There the forces were nearly evenly matched, and there were about ten thousand in the struggle. Accepting General Forrest’s report to be true that more than twelve hundred men were killed and wounded in the six hours of fighting at Bryce’s Cross Roads, then more men were killed and captured on that day than in any two other purely cavalry engagements of the war.

By June, 1864, Forrest had reached the full tide of his fame. He had improved every opportunity to develop his genius, and he never failed to make use of all the fighting opportunities that came his way. He did not always get the best the quartermaster had, and he had been hampered by interference from headquarters. He had long since ceased to rely upon his government for his mounts, clothing, arms and food. He had months before learned from actual experience that the Federals had better supplies than it was possible for the Confederacy to distribute, and that capture from his enemies was a quicker and surer way of getting what he wanted than to risk the red tape and poverty of Confederate quartermaster regulations.

Beginning as a private, Forrest had reached most distinguished rank. Both friends and enemies awarded him a high place among the great commanders of the war, whether in infantry or cavalry. Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Nashville, Murfreesboro, his raid into West Tennessee, his capture of Streight, and conflicts at Brentwood, Harper’s Bridge, Chickamauga, his raid into middle Tennessee, West Point, Mississippi and the capture of Fort Pillow, had woven about him and his work a crown of romance and glory, and had justly, on his absolute merits, made him one of the most renowned leaders of the Confederacy.

His enemies feared and hated him as they did no other general of the South. War with Forrest was not only “hell,” but savagest hell. His idea of war was to fight and kill and destroy with fiercest energy. It has been said that he considered the raising of the black flag as the most economical and merciful way of ending the war. His methods were not calculated to impress his foes with admiration. The many reverses they had suffered at his hands, the wholesome fear of his presence, his desperate courage, boundless resources, rapidity of movement, rapidity of onslaught, recklessness in facing death, and insensibility to fatigue made failure practically unknown in his campaigns, and he became a terror to his foes and a tower of strength to his comrades.

There was no Federal commander that did not count Forrest as a power to be considered, or a potent factor against which it was wise to calculate. General Grant and other Federal commanders did not hesitate to declare that Forrest had the Federal forces in Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi hacked. They called him “scoundrel” and “devil,” and put a price on his head, but this did not drive fear out of their hearts, or prevent some degree of tremor when they knew of his presence in the places where they were going, or where they thought he might happen to come.

Prior to and shortly after the battle of Bryce’s Cross Roads, all the Federal generals were devising ways and means for the destruction of Forrest. On June 24th, 1864, General Sherman sent President Lincoln the following despatch:

“I have ordered General A. J. Smith and General Mower to pursue and kill Forrest, promising the latter, in case of success, my influence to promote him to Major General. He is one of the gamest men in our service. Should accident befall me, I ask you to favor him, if he succeeds in killing Forrest.” Signed, William T. Sherman, Major General.

This was the highest price put on any Confederate officer’s life during the war, and there is no other instance in American military history where one general found it necessary, in order to destroy an opposing major general, to offer a premium for his life and to openly declare that his death was the highest aim to be sought.

It will be observed that the offer was not for dispersing Forrest’s forces; it was not for his capture; but “to pursue and kill.” General Sherman did not want Forrest alive, else he would have framed his murderous suggestion in a different form. The idea of a possible surrender was ignored. Sherman seems to have proceeded upon the idea that dead men cease to fight or destroy communications. He told Mower to take no chances, but to “kill.” This is the only instance among the Confederate or Federal commanders where a superior incited a subordinate to murder. He said once before in speaking of Forrest, “That devil Forrest must be eliminated, if it costs ten thousand lives and breaks the treasury.” See despatch. Twice, in his telegram to President Lincoln, he lays stress upon the word “kill.” First he says, “if he pursues and kills I promised him a major generalship;” second, “if he succeeds in killing Forrest, and aught happens to me so that I cannot make good, I ask you to favor him and give him the promotion which is the price of Forrest’s death.”

How transcendent Forrest’s success must have been in his operations along the Federal lines to have produced this degree of fear in General Sherman’s mind! Sherman was a brave and skillful general, but he seemed to consider that General Forrest’s ability to injure the Federal armies was greater than that of any other living man, and with malignant hate, extreme fear, and almost barbarous cruelty, he offered a major generalship to an ambitious young brigadier general, if he would pursue and kill the Confederate leader. War amongst civilized nations is carried on against commands or organized bodies, not individuals. General Sherman reversed this well-recognized principle and declared war on an individual and offered a price for his destruction. He asserted that he had better sacrifice ten thousand of his countrymen and expend all its treasury contained than to let one man live to fight. The pressing exigencies invoked by Forrest’s campaigns silenced the traditions and usages of war, and made his destruction, in Sherman’s mind, justifiable by any means, foul or fair, and at any cost, however extravagant or hurtful, to rid his department of a brave and aggressive foe.

This proposition to reward General Mower was not to General Sherman’s credit. He declared “war was hell,” but at no period of the war’s history and by no other Federal general was the death of any one man made a patriotic duty, or recommended and encouraged in the service of the Federal army. The South never had any reason to love General Sherman. He and Sheridan never respected as did other Union generals the rights of non-combatants. His subsequent burning of Columbia created in Southern breasts the harshest memories, but the incitement to killing Forrest, as the surest means of promotion and success for his subordinate added much to the grounds of the South for the bitterest hate. With half a century to calm passion, to still prejudice and restore reason, it is difficult to realize what a frenzy of fear and hate Forrest had aroused in the hearts of his enemies.

After failures, not necessary to recount, one last effort was made to run Forrest down and to annihilate or cripple his command. Forrest had been transferred to the Mississippi and West Tennessee Department. It was known as Forrest’s Department. General C. C. Washburn, in command at Memphis, was ordered to send six thousand men in a final effort to rout General Forrest. Instead, he says he sent eight thousand, but he really sent ten thousand five hundred. Colonel George E. Waring, who commanded one of the Federal brigades, says, “We were a force of nine thousand infantry and artillery sent as a tub to the Forrest Whale.” Captain Tyler, who operated in Sturgis’ rear, captured the returns made out for the day. These showed ten thousand five hundred present for duty.

MAP OF BRYCE’S CROSS-ROADS

Other Federal generals had been tried out and found wanting, and in this last effort General Sherman called an experienced soldier, General Samuel Davis Sturgis, who had won great reputation in other departments. He had seen service under Lyon in Missouri, and after the death of that general, succeeded to command at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Assigned to the Army of the Tennessee, later he was ordered to the command of the Department of Kansas. In 1862 he was summoned to Washington and given charge of the defense around the city, and he commanded a part of the 9th Army Corps at the Battles of South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg. For nearly a year he was chief of the cavalry in the Department of Ohio, and there he did most effective work for his country’s cause. He was counted as “dead game,” a man of great force and energy and of extended experience. He was born in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, on the 11th of June, 1822, and was forty-two years old at the time of the Battle of Bryce’s Cross Roads. With him was assigned General B. H. Grierson, who was just thirty-seven years of age. As early as 1862 he had been placed in the command of a cavalry brigade, and had been conspicuous in skirmishes and raids in North Mississippi and West Tennessee. Under General Grant’s eye he had made what was considered a particularly fortunate raid from La Grange to Baton Rouge. In June, ’63, he was brevetted a brigadier general of Volunteers, and was regarded as a most stubborn fighter.

To these brigadier generals was added Colonel George E. Waring. At twenty-eight he became major of the 39th New York Volunteers. In August he was sent West as a major of cavalry, and shortly afterwards he became colonel of the 4th Missouri Cavalry. In 1863 he was in command of the cavalry brigade in South Missouri and North Arkansas. In 1863 he had command of sixty-five hundred men, mainly cavalry. He had gone with Smith and Grierson, and was now to go with Sturgis. His experience was wide and his courage of the very highest order. He was a gallant, good-natured and fierce fighter, and was not ashamed to admit the truth when he was fairly defeated. It was said by General Forrest of Colonel Waring, that his cavalry charge at Okolona, Mississippi, some time previous to this date, was the most brilliant cavalry exploit he had ever witnessed.

It was unfortunate for the Confederates that General S. A. Hurlburt was not added to this trio. In one of his reports, found in the Official Reports, Volume 31, Part 1, Page 697, after failing to capture General Forrest, he said, “I regret very much that I could not have the pleasure of bringing you his hair, but he is too great a coward to fight anything like an equal force, and we will have to be satisfied with driving him from the State.” General Hurlburt studied the results of Bryce’s Cross Roads and learned that, after all the abuse heaped upon him by his enemies, Forrest occasionally enjoyed a fight even though he was compelled to try out conclusions with his foes with an odds against him of more than two to one.

This boastful soldier, more bloodthirsty even than his associates, not only proposed to kill Forrest, but after death to scalp his fallen foe and lay at the feet of his superior a savage trophy like the Indians of old, in the pioneer days of Kentucky and Tennessee.

In addition to this array of distinguished and experienced officers, the most careful provision was made in arming of the troops that were to undertake the expedition. They were given Colt’s five-chambered, repeating rifles or breech-loading carbines, and were also supplied with six-shooters.

Two cavalry brigades and three brigades of infantry made up the force which was deemed capable of coping with Forrest under all conditions. Curiously enough, there was added a brigade of colored infantry. The events at Fort Pillow, on the 12th day of April, 1864, sixty days before, had been used to arouse the animosity and fiercest hate of the colored troops. It was claimed that General Forrest had refused to allow the colored forces quarter and had shot them down after they had surrendered. While this was amply disproved by overwhelming testimony, it served a good purpose to make the colored troops desperate in any fighting which should fall to their lot, and to make them unwilling to surrender to Forrest’s men under any possible circumstances.

Correspondence between General Washburn and General Forrest brought out mention of no quarter, and it was claimed that General Washburn, in dispatching these troops, had suggested to this colored contingent to refuse quarter to Forrest’s command. If not actually advising, he certainly acquiesced in their wearing some badges pinned upon their lapels, upon which had been printed these fateful words: “No quarter to Forrest’s men.” To a man of Forrest’s successes and with his wonderful record in the capture of Federal prisoners, this was a most unfortunate declaration for those who were to pursue him, considering the uncertainty that attended those who might engage him in battle.

The object of this expedition was to drive Forrest from Western Tennessee and fully restore communication from Memphis down the Mississippi River.

The Federal commander did not take into account the heat of a Mississippi summer nor the torrential rains that so frequently inundate that portion of the South in June and July. On the day of the battle, the thermometer rose to one hundred and seven degrees; not a ripple stirred the air; the leaves were as still as death itself; men panted for breath.

The thicket was so dense that no eye could penetrate its recesses for twenty feet, and vision was so circumscribed that foes were almost invisible. In its impenetrable and pathless precincts, black jack and small oak trees had grown up into a jungle, and the men entering this gloomy and perplexing battlefield were unable to even conjecture what a minute would bring forth. Every nerve was strained; every muscle tense. No one cared for a second to avert his gaze from the front. At any instant a foe might spring up and fire in the face of the man who was advancing. A single step might reveal a line of battle, and the flash of gun or crack of a rifle was momentarily expected. A movement of the branches and rustling of the leaves might draw fatal volleys from carbines, rifles or revolvers, and here and there the crash of shells and the roar of cannon added to the fearfulness of the situation. The dangers and dread of every step were accentuated by the harassing uncertainty of the surroundings.

The western Confederate cavalry at short range always found the revolver the most effective weapon. Enfield rifles were good enough up to three hundred feet, but closer than that Forrest’s and Morgan’s and Wheeler’s men relied upon their six-shooters. The men under Stuart and Hampton loved “the white arm,” the knightly sabre; they found that it helped at Fleetwood Hill and Trevilian Station. Mosby’s greatest reliance was on “Colt’s Navies,” and there were but few swords ever found with the cavalry of the Army of Tennessee. To the western Confederate horsemen, their heavy revolver was a great equalizer. The Federal soldier, when it came to short range, had no better weapon. At close quarters, with a firm grip on a six-shooter, a Confederate soldier felt he was the equal of any foe from any place, and thus armed when it came where he could see the color of the other soldier’s eyes, he considered the Navy revolver the choicest weapon man could make. It was a destructive weapon in the hands of brave, calm soldiers. The bayonet lost all terrors to those who possessed this effective pistol. No advancing antagonist could hope to safely reach a man of nerve with a pistol, amidst this black jack and heavy foliage. There, ears sharpened by battle’s dangers, and eyes made brighter by hidden foes, gave great zest to the game of war.

Leaving Memphis on the 1st of June, the approach of Sturgis and his command was slow and careful, surrounded with every possible precaution against surprise. The leaders knew the character of the enemy they must face, and they resolved to leave nothing undone which should prepare them for his furious onslaughts.

Bryce’s Cross Roads, or Guntown, was seventy-six miles from Memphis. Nine days were consumed in the march. On the night of the 9th, Sturgis and his forces encamped on the Stubbs farm, about six miles from Bryce’s Cross Roads. At this point was a blacksmith’s shop and a store, and two roads crossed each other, one running southeast and the other almost directly south. A mile and a half away was Tishomingo Creek, a slimy and almost currentless stream at this period, although it had been replenished by the rains two days before. The soil of the road was the friable bottom land of Mississippi, which churns quickly into slush and then soon dries out.

About the time that Sturgis left Memphis, Forrest had started on a raid in middle Tennessee to break up the railroad connection south of Nashville. At the same time General Sherman was trying to fight his way to Atlanta, and it was deemed important to destroy the railroads between Chattanooga and Nashville.

Forrest had only gone a short distance when he was notified by General Stephen D. Lee to give up his raid and return to face Sturgis and his command, which had left Memphis a few days before.

There has been a good deal of discussion as to whether General Lee was willing for Forrest to fight at Bryce’s Cross Roads. Certainly General Lee hoped that Sturgis would be permitted to march farther down into Mississippi before the contact should be forced. It seems, however, from what General Forrest told General Buford that he had made up his mind to bring on the engagement just where it occurred. And yet his troops were not in position to justify his engaging in a great battle.

Lyon, with his eight hundred men from Kentucky, Johnson, with a small brigade of Alabamians, were six miles away from the scene of battle at Baldwin; the artillery was at Booneville, eighteen miles away. It rained heavily on the 8th and 9th. General Forrest had said to General Buford, “They outnumber me, but I can whip them; the cavalry will be in advance, and we can defeat the cavalry before the infantry can march to their relief. It is going to be as hot as hell. The infantry will come on the run into the battle, and with the muddy roads and hot weather, they will be tired out, then we can ride over them. I will go ahead with Lyon and my escort and open up the fight.” The wily Confederate general knew that soldiers never do their best when they enter battle after great physical punishment.

Sturgis knew that Forrest was around, and he felt sure that if he did not find Forrest, Forrest would find him. The night before the battle, Sturgis had intuition of disaster. Caution warned him to go back, and the temptation was very strong, but he had promised General Washburn and General Sherman much before he had started. He had boasted what he could do, or would do, and the instinct of courage prevailed over his instinct of fear and bade him go on.

At break of day Forrest’s forces were all moving. They were converging to Bryce’s Cross Roads. Grierson, in command of the Federal column, had left Stubb’s farm to march toward Bryce’s Cross Roads. The Federal infantry cooked their breakfast in a leisurely way, and were not ready to march until seven-thirty. Experienced and faithful scouts were bringing to Lyon, who was in the Confederate front, the accurate information of the movements of General Waring, who led the Federal advance with his brigade.

On the road, a mile and a half away from Tishomingo Creek, General Lyon had placed a strong picket. Two videttes were at the bridge that spanned Tishomingo Creek. These were not particular upon the order of their going. They fled southward, pursued by Waring’s advance guard, which was followed by his entire command, and also by the other brigade of Federal cavalry. Lyon needed no commander to tell him what to do. To him belongs the credit of having opened the greatest of all cavalry battles, and to have done more than any one Confederate officer, other than Forrest, to win the crushing defeat of the Union forces on that historic field.

Forrest, with his men all counted, had only forty-seven hundred cavalry. This was the most he could rely on when more than half of them should gallop eighteen miles. Deducting horseholders, one in four, and the men who could not keep up in the mad pace necessary to get into position, Forrest could not have more than thirty-two hundred fighters in any period of the battle. Against these were Sturgis’ cavalry and infantry and twenty-six pieces of artillery—all told, over ten thousand effectives. At the opening of the engagement, Forrest had eight hundred men with Lyon, eighty-five men as escort, and fifty men in Gartrell’s company, making a total of nine hundred and thirty-five.

Forrest resolved to have what he called “a bulge” on the enemy. In his plain, untutored way he had said “bulging would beat tactics.” Forrest had with him leaders who knew their business, and who understood his methods. They had been apt scholars in his school of war, and they were now going to put their teaching into practical effect, and under his eye and leadership win applause and glory for centuries to come.

One of Forrest’s favorite maxims was, “Keep your men a-going.” With a fierce feint, he undertook to deceive General Grierson, the Federal cavalry leader, as to his real strength. He had two-thirds less men than Grierson, and he was afraid that Grierson would attack him and rush his line, which he could have done, and scattered his forces.

With his limited numbers, he made the greatest possible show. Lyon had entrenched his men behind brush heaps, rail fences and logs. This was very warm, but it was much safer than out in the open. Finally Forrest ordered his soldiers to cross the open ground, and doubling his skirmish line, boldly marched out. They were widely overlapped by Waring and Winslow with their brigades, and for an hour Lyon bravely and fiercely kept up his feint, and then retired behind his entrenchments. A great burden was on Lyon’s mind, but when it was most oppressive, the glad sound of the rebel yell fell upon his ears and then appeared horses flecked with foam, with their mouths open, breathing with stentorious sounds, panting as if ready to fall. Rucker and his tired troops, after a ride of fourteen miles, were on the ground, and quickly dismounting they went into line. Haste was the order of the hour. Lyon, to be saved, must be strengthened. Alone he had faced the thirty-two hundred Federal cavalry, and while he maintained his ground, no idea of running away had ever come into his mind. Three and one-half to one man had no terrors for Forrest with these Kentucky men. They were mostly mounted infantry, who had often heard the storm of battle.

Forrest patted Lyon on the back, and commended him for the splendid stand which he had made. Rucker, brave, gallant, chivalrous, had heard the roar of cannon, and although his tired horses were supposed to have reached their limit, he pleaded with his men to force them to still greater effort. He could hear through the cannon’s roars the voices of comrades calling. He knew they were outnumbered nearly four to one and were being hardly pressed, and that he was their only hope of rescue.

The scene changes! They are now only two to one, and Forrest again advances and presses his lines close up to the Federal position. Before, he was afraid his enemies might realize his inferior numbers and rush him; now, with Johnson and Rucker, he had one to two. Before, nine hundred men had constituted his fighting force; now, sixteen hundred were hurried to the front. The lines of anxiety disappeared from Forrest’s face; he never doubted when he could count one to two. At eleven, the fighting had been going on an hour and a quarter. Time was precious. The Federal infantry, struggling through the heavy mire and panting under that awful heat, were pressing on as fast as human strength and endurance would permit. General Bell was not yet in reach; he had to ride twenty-one miles to get on the ground and join in the fray. If Waring and Winslow could be swept out of the way, Forrest felt sure he could take care of the infantry when Bell came. Prudence might have dictated delay until Bell was on the scene, but the exigencies of the moment called for instant and decisive action. Morton, with his invincible artillery, was slashing his horses and with almost superhuman energy was urging his beasts to the highest tension to join in saving the day, but the longing eyes of Forrest, Lyon, Johnson and Rucker could not detect his coming, and no sign of Bell’s shouting riders came through the murky air to tell them that succor was nigh at hand.

The time for feinting was past. Forrest understood that the crisis was upon him, and he always grasped the crucial moment. Riding swiftly in front of his forces through the jungles, he told his men that the time had come to win, that when the bugle sounded every man must leave cover, cross the open space, where it was open, and charge through the thickets where they prevailed, and rush their enemies. He rode like a centaur, giving his orders along the line. The comforting, encouraging word, the hardly pressed soldiers speaking bravely together, was ended now. Action, sharp and decisive, was the watchword. The clear, sharp tones of the bugle cut the murky air; the sound waves drove its inspiring notes across the battle front and, like a crouching beast springing upon its prey, every Confederate bounded forward. The sharp rebel yell filled the surrounding space and fell ominously upon the expectant ears of their foes.

The men of Waring and Winston braced themselves for the coming assault. Their fire was reserved to the last moment, and then the repeating rifles with their unbroken volleys, increasing in volume every moment, created a din that was appalling. The Confederates had only one fire, and that they reserved to the end. Their enthusiasm was at fever heat, and rushing on to close with their foes, fear was cast aside. The enemy was in front; tiger-like, the men in gray sprang forward. The keen, sharp whistle of the carbine balls and the buzz of the bullets filled the air in their passage, and cut the leaves and branches from the trees so that they fell like showers of dew upon the rushing Confederates. The Federals hurled their deep-toned battle-cry across the narrow space. They had come so close that they could now see face to face, and each line shouted defiance at the other. The blue and gray rushed upon each other with the ferocity of uncaged lions. The single shots from the Confederate Enfields, so long held, were now by pre-arranged command fired, and then the Confederates were ordered to draw their six-shooters and rush upon their foes. And quick as thought, the sharper sound of the six-shooters filled the air.

The Confederates had momentarily recoiled before the first terrific fire so unexpectedly poured into their ranks, but the Federals, in the face of the six-shooters, began to waver. One or the other must yield. The Confederates were pushing the conflict. Waring ordered up two new regiments to halt the advancing tide. The contest was short, but it was vehement. At close range, nothing could equal the six-shooter. The sword and carbine could not stay its murderous effect in the hands of the brave and determined Confederates.

Hand to hand, the conflict went on, but flesh and blood could not withstand such an assault. The Federal line began to yield. Lyon, Rucker, Johnson and Forrest urged their brave men to supreme effort. The tide was still for an instant, but only an instant. The reinforcements of Waring were brushed away, his lines broken. The apparent yielding of the Union cavalry encouraged and emboldened the men of the South, and now they drove forward with increasing energy and ferocity to the death grapple. Ammunition failing, the men used the empty rifles and carbines as clubs. A hand to hand fight cannot last long. Decimation of numbers soon weakens its intensity, but the proximity of men, looking each other in the eye, shouting defiance into the very faces of their foes, proves a tremendous strain upon any soldiers, and such fearful tension weakens enthusiasm and one side or the other begins to consider yielding. Rucker, Lyon, Hall and Johnson of Alabama were terrific fighters; they had caught Forrest’s spirit and they advanced with such vehemence that it was almost impossible for any line to withstand them. The moment Waring’s men began to give way, victory deserted the Federal standards. The piercing of the Union lines, the loss of its initial position, gave the Confederates added impetuosity and intensity in their advance. Nature was adding renewed difficulties to the conflict. The fierce summer sun was almost scalding. Perspiration burst from every pore. Men, under the intense heat, panted for breath. Forrest’s men knew they must win at once or fail in the struggle. Not waiting even to be called, they pressed forward over the bodies of their fallen comrades and enemies. The Southern troopers seemed imbued with an insatiate thirst for the blood of their opponents. They remembered what Forrest had told them to do when the bugle blast brought them out from cover, and bade them press the fighting, and drive the Federals back. Thus, impelled by the necessity of immediate victory, answering the summons of their well-beloved commander, and thrilled by the memory of their past glorious achievements, they became almost a line of demons. They cared nothing for wounds or death; they were bent only on the defeat and destruction of their foes, and for the accomplishment of this were ready to win or fall, as fate should cast the die.

Forrest, within fifteen minutes of the time when the first shot was fired, had sent one of his most trusted staff officers to meet General Tyree H. Bell and bid him “move up fast and fetch all he’s got,” and to this he added a word to his beloved boy artillery man, Captain Morton, to stay not his coming but to bring up his horses at a gallop. Forrest’s keen eye was watching with deepest anxiety to catch some sight of the coming ones, his ears attuned to catch the echo of the cheers of Bell’s men or the rushing tramp of the tired steeds; but nothing was heard of his allies, needed so badly at this crucial moment.

He knew that Sturgis with his infantry would soon be on the ground, and that his tired and powder-grimed men could not withstand this new ordeal, when four thousand fresh infantry would change the alignments and render resistance of their impact impossible. A thousand conflicting emotions filled Forrest’s heart, but Forrest was not to be stayed. “Forward, forward!” he cried to his men. Slowly, then quickly, the Federal cavalry yielded, and then Forrest pressed them back in disorder.

The spirit of resistance was broken. Waring and Winston could not, with all their courage and skill, stay the work of Forrest’s battalions. They rushed from the front, giving to the men in gray complete possession of the coveted battlefield.

General Sturgis, in advance of his panting infantry, had arrived at the scene of the struggle. Message after message of emergency had come to him by swift-riding couriers. His infantry were forced all that nature would allow. These Federal soldiers were weighted down with their accoutrements, and suffering the almost resistless heat of the burning rays of a fierce summer sun and an atmosphere so sultry and humid that human lungs inhaling it were weakened rather than refreshed.

The Federal cavalry were glad to ride away, and, hurrying from such scenes of carnage and woe, disorganized and beaten, they tried to reform behind the upcoming infantry. It was with a profound sense of relief that they gave over the field to the footmen and let them face, in the bushes and jungle, the Confederate cavalrymen, who with such devilish fury had worsted them in the fighting of the past three hours and thinned their ranks by killing and wounding a large percentage of their number.

The Federal cavalry, in this brief struggle, had pushed their magazine guns and carbines to the highest pressure. Their ammunition was gone, and without bayonets they could not halt the Confederate assailants, who behind their six-shooters let no obstacle, even for an instant, stay their progress.

Forrest’s prediction that he would whip the Federal cavalry before the infantry could get up was verified, but unless Bell with his reserves and Morton with his artillery were quickly at hand, his success would avail nothing.

The Federal infantry was quickly put in line, and even Forrest felt for an instant a sense of doubt, as he surveyed his tired followers, and scanned their faces, worn and sharply drawn by the harrowing experiences of the past three hours.

However resourceful, he could not immediately reach a conclusion as to what was best. His soul abhorred yielding now that he had won glorious victory, and the thought of abandoning it all at last and leaving his dead and wounded followers on the field and the triumph of his hated foes, filled his soul with keenest anguish. For himself, he would rather die a thousand deaths than to do this hateful thing. At his command, by superhuman courage, his boys (as he called them) had discomfited and driven away their foe, and as he looked down into the pale faces of the dead, who lay amidst the bushes and debris of the torrid forest, as he heard the groans of his gallant wounded and dying, burning with thirst and fever, as they pleaded for water, he dared not forsake them. The whistle of the rifle balls, the screech of the shrapnel again beginning to play upon his position urged him to speediest decision.

GENERAL ABRAM BUFORD

CAPTAIN MORTON

GENERAL LYON

At this critical moment, while the firing on his side was spasmodic and occasional, he heard cheers and shouts. A moment later, from the woody recesses of the thicket, he caught sight of the face of Tyree H. Bell. The message he had sent two hours before had been heard. Bell had “moved fast and fetched all he’s got” and Morton had “brought on his artillery at a gallop.” True, many of the artillery horses had dropped dead by the wayside, overcome by the terrific punishment they had received in hastening to the scene of action, but as the dropping beast breathed his last, the harness was snatched from his dead body and flung upon another beast who had galloped or trotted behind the guns. These brutes had seen their fellows belabored with whips to increase their speed to the utmost, and if they reasoned at all they reluctantly assumed the burdens of their dead brothers and regretfully and sullenly took their places in front of the guns, made so heavy and so oppressive by the heat and by mud of the slushy roads.

When the supply of horses, in this mad rush of nineteen miles, gave out, cavalry men were dismounted and despite their protest, their horses were harnessed to the guns and caissons, which now at the highest possible speed were being dragged and hauled to the front, where Forrest was holding his foes at bay, or driving them in confusion from the field.

The first act of the grim drama had come out as Forrest had expected, and now the second was begun. He had vanquished the Federal cavalry and now he must destroy the Federal infantry. Bell had brought him two thousand men who, although wearied by a twenty mile ride during the past seven hours, had fired no guns and faced no foes. He had tried these newcomers in the past, and he did not fear to trust them in this supreme moment.

The Confederate chieftain did not long hesitate. He knew whatever was done must be done quickly. The Federal cavalry would soon be reorganized; the clash with the infantry (if they withstood the onslaught from the Confederates) would give the defeated horsemen new courage, and they would come back into the struggle far fiercer than before, for as brave men they would long to wipe out the memories and avenge their humiliating defeat with final victory.

The Federal infantry did not reach the battlefield until 1 p. m. They came under the most trying circumstances; the roads and the weather together were against them. The human body has its limitations. The Federal infantry did all men could have done; a majority of them were unaccustomed to the dreadful heat of the Mississippi thickets and swamps; they had been forced to the very highest efforts on the way; the sounds of battle were ringing in the ears of their leaders—the sultry air did not conduct the sound waves distinctly, but they heard enough to know that a desperate struggle was already on, and they were soon to participate in its dangers and its experiences. Aides came riding in hot haste from where the noise of strife was heard; the messages were delivered to the advance guard, but the hard-riding couriers were hastily escorted to the Federal leaders, and the solemnity of their faces and the seriousness of their visage unmistakably proclaimed that sternest business was being enacted at the place from which they had in such haste so furiously ridden.

The Federal cavalry, in squads and disorganized masses, was retreating from the front. No shout of victory or cheers had come from the horsemen to urge the infantry forward to the conflict, which had gone sorely against those who rode. Here and there an ambulance bearing wounded officers and privates told in unmistakable terms what losses were awaiting those who were pressing toward the conflict, and bandaged heads and bloody faces, and wounded arms and legs told the story of carnage where these sufferers had been.

Regimental and company officers were commanding more rapid marching. These men in blue had suffered, on the way, dreadful punishment from the sultry heat, still they were bidden with loud and vociferous orders to press forward. They were now beginning to catch sight of the wreckage, an overturned ambulance, a dead horse, streams of disabled men, broken wagons, fleeing teamsters, riding detached animals with the harness swinging about their legs, all made a depressing scene.

The Federal infantry were of good stuff. When within half a mile of the Confederate lines, they vigorously responded to the command “double quick march” and ran forward to meet a foe of which they could see but little. The buzz of the rifle balls they heard on every side, and the defiant yells, which came from the bushes and recesses of the thickets, into which the men in blue were being hurried to find somebody to fight, were no pleasant sounds.

As the Federal infantry swung into line, yells and cheers from the Confederate forces came across the short space between them. Something important was happening. Some relief and mitigation was at hand. The shouts were of gladness and not those of grief or even of battle. The Confederate artillery was swinging out to the front. The Confederate cavalry always had good artillerists, Pelham, Chew, Cobb, Rice, Morton, Thrall and Freeman were men whom any commander might covet and in whose services they might glory.

Forrest had two wonderful qualities. He made all his associates recklessly brave. They absorbed the touch of strange and ever-masterful courage that came oozing from his every pore. He was, besides, a wonderful judge of men; all his staff were men not only of intrepid spirit but of quick intelligence and infinite patriotism. They knew Forrest’s limitations, but they understood his marvelous greatness. That Forrest was sometimes harsh, even cruel and bitter in his judgment and in his words and acts, none knew better than the superb men on his staff; but his transcendent genius, his matchless courage and his immeasurable loyalty overshadowed his faults, so that the light which came from his greatness so magnified his presence and power as to dwarf and blot out that which in many men would have been hateful deformities.

The battle line was not an extended one. Well for the Confederates that this was so. With no reserves and outnumbered two to one, the shorter the range of action the better, for the smaller force.

Three thousand six hundred fresh infantry were now thrown into the whirlpool of battle. The Federal cavalry cowered behind their allies, who had walked and then ran in that dreadful summer heat to help them in their extremity. The heavy fire of the infantry, the constant peal and boom of the artillery notified Forrest that the best reliance of the Federal general was at hand. It looked gloomy for the Confederate commander, but while the character of men and the fire on the Federal side had changed, General Forrest also had a present help in this trouble. Brave, gallant Tyree H. Bell had come. True, his troopers with jaded steeds had trotted or galloped for nineteen miles under the blaze of the torrid sun, but the poor beasts who had carried the men could calmly rest while the fighting part of the outfit were now ready to take their place in the freshening fray.

Bell had a noble record. He had been from the first captain of the 12th Tennessee Infantry. He had acted as colonel at Belmont, and on the bloody field of Shiloh again commanded this splendid regiment. Made its colonel, he had won fresh laurels at Richmond, Kentucky, in the great victory there under Kirby Smith, and still later he had become commander of a cavalry regiment, and at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga had furiously hammered the Federal flanks. In January, 1864, Forrest, who knew good fighters by instinct, gave Bell a brigade with five regiments. The most of these on this glorious day at Bryce’s Cross Roads were to give another good account of themselves. At Fort Pillow, Bell with the rifle and revolver had assailed and won a very strong position, and now again in this conflict, and in many afterwards, he was to win his great commander’s admiration and trust.

The pace set by the Federal infantry was fierce, but Bell’s men made it fiercer. General Buford had come to join in the battle. Forrest trusted this Kentucky general as probably he trusted no other man under him. With an immense body, weighing three hundred pounds, he had a sharp, quick, active mind, a fearless soul and splendid military instincts. A West Point graduate, he won a brevet at Buena Vista and was in the Santa Fe expedition in 1848. He gave up a captaincy in the First United States Dragoons in 1854, and settled on a splendid blue-grass farm in Woodford County, Kentucky, the asparagus bed, as Tom Marshall called it, of the blue-grass. Made a brigadier in 1862, he led a few hundred Kentucky boys from the State with Bragg, and with General Joe Wheeler had thoroughly demonstrated his great ability as a cavalryman.

Those who kept pace with Wheeler and Forrest must not only be great fighters, but they must be great cavalrymen. He placed great store by three Kentucky regiments of infantry, whose longing to ride was at last gratified by the War Department at Richmond, and on mules and broken down artillery horses, they had come to fight with Forrest. These men with Buford had passed through the roughest military training as infantry, and when the romance and glamor of cavalry service came their way, with abounding gratitude for being allowed to become cavalrymen, they had the manliness and appreciation to show their government that they fully deserved the great favor that had been bestowed upon them.

The Federal men were sturdy Westerners. They were as brave as the bravest. They had trotted three miles, double-quicked another mile and marched four miles; and they had borne this severe punishment without a murmur. They longed for victory. To defeat Forrest would give them the approval of their government and the applause of their comrades; and they were very anxious to crown the conflict with one crushing blow at the hated Confederate chieftain who, with his followers, had not only evaded the Federal forces sent for his capture, but very often had dashed their hopes of victory and driven them discomfited from many fields of strife. These men in blue trusted that fate would now deliver him into their hands, and though they feared, they hoped, and this gave firmer tone to their onslaught.

There was no cleared space for maneuvering. Men who fought in this battle must go into thickets and through underbrush to find the foe they sought.

Forrest was too wary a general to allow the Federals to rest sufficiently long to recover from the depressing effects of their heated and wearying march. He well knew that in immediate and decisive attack lay his only hope of defeating his assailants, who so greatly outnumbered him. He had genius for finding the places where the fiercest fray would take place. Grierson’s cavalry had, like worsted gladiators, sought refuge behind the men whom they jocularly called “webfeet.” They had borne the brunt of the battle from ten to two, had been worsted, and were glad enough to let the walking men test the mettle of the foes they had failed to defeat.

Lyon, Johnson and Rucker had fought with the men under them, with vigor, against Waring and Winston, and they had longed for a breathing spell, but as Bell’s brigade, after their twenty-one mile ride, swung into line, tired though they were, they were yet indisposed to unload on the newcomers, and so gathering themselves together, they resolved not to be outdone by their comrades who had on that dreadful morning not felt battle’s grievous touch nor hunted through the heated thickets for those who sought their undoing.

Buford was ordered to slowly press the Federal right. Fronting Forrest and Bell the Federals were massing, and here Forrest realized must come the “tug of war.”

Cautiously, but quickly, Bell’s men sought the newly aligned Federal infantry under Colonel Hoge. As Bell’s men advanced, with acute vision, born of expected danger, they could not even see the men in blue as they stood with their guns cocked, waiting for a sight of those who so fearlessly were seeking them in the recesses of the jungle. They heard the silent, stealthy approach of the Confederates. The rustle of the leaves, the pushing aside of the bushes told them the Southern soldiers were coming. In an instant, without a single note of warning, the murderous, blazing fire of a thousand rifles flashed in their faces. Many brave men fell before this terrible discharge. The dead sank without noise to the earth and the unrepressed groans of the wounded for an instant terrorized the Confederate line. The instinct of safety, for a brief moment, led them to recoil from this gate of death, and a portion of Bell’s brave men gave way. The Federal officers quickly took advantage of the situation and made a strong and valiant rush upon the broken line. With a shout of victory upon their lips, they fixed their bayonets and rapidly pushed through the thicket to disorganize those who, under the dreadful shock of an unexpected fire, had momentarily yielded to fear. This was Forrest’s time to act. The expected had come. Tying his own horse to a tree, he bade his escort do likewise, and he and Bell, calling upon their men to follow, revolvers in hand, rushed upon the vanguard of the Federal line. Quick almost as thought itself, the Tennesseeans came back to the front. Wisdom, with two hundred and fifty of Newsom’s regiment, leaped also to the rescue, and those who for a brief space recoiled now turned with fury upon the line that had dealt them so sudden and so grievous a blow. Rucker, hard pressed, bade his men kneel, draw their trusty revolvers and stand firm. It was now brave infantry with bayonets against brave cavalry with revolvers. No charge could break such a line, and the men of the bayonet drew back from impact with this wall of revolver fire. Hesitating for a brief space, they recoiled before the charge of the gallant Confederates. Hoge’s men crumbled away in the face of the short range and effective aim of the Southern cavalry. A fierce dash of Forrest, Bell and Rucker completed their demoralization, and the men with the bayonets, vanquished, pulled away from further conflict with these revolver-firing cavalrymen.

At this moment, war’s sweetest music fell upon the ears of General Forrest. Away north he heard the sound of conflict. Miles away from the scene of battle, Forrest had ordered Barteau’s regiment to proceed west and strike the rear of the Federal forces. The Federal commanders deemed it wise to hold the colored brigade in reserve. They were about the wagon train. Forrest was again to astonish his enemies by a flank and rear attack. This was unexpected, but it was none the less decisive. No Federal cavalry could be spared to reach the front. Whipped in the morning, they were not even now, in the middle of the afternoon, ready for a second tussle with those who had vanquished them. Barteau had been well trained by his chieftain, for whom he had aforetime made daring assault under similar circumstances. The wagon train guard sought safety in flight, and the colored troopers began to tear from their breasts the badges printed with those fateful words, “Remember Fort Pillow. No quarter to Forrest’s men.” These boastful exhibits were good enough at Memphis on June 1st, but they became most unsatisfying declarations at Bryce’s Cross Roads on June 10th. It made a great difference where they were shown.

A stampede began among these black-skinned warriors. Vigorously they pulled the badges from their stricken breasts and trampled them in the dust, ere Barteau and his furious horsemen could reach their broken phalanxes. The Federal front was still stubborn and sullenly refused to yield further ground. To win it was necessary that this front be broken. With startling rapidity, Forrest again mounted his horse, rode the entire length of his line, declaring that the enemy was breaking, and that the hour of victory was at hand. Two hours of carnage and conflict had passed since Bell came. Finding his boy artillerist, Morton, he ordered him, at a signal, to hitch his horses to four guns, double shot the pieces with grape and canister, rush them down close to the enemy’s line, and deliver his fire. There were no reserves to protect the artillery, and Morton and Buford spoke a word of caution as to this extraordinary movement, but Forrest was firm in his resolve to test out the movement, if it cost him one-third of his artillery.

Tyler, with his two companies of the brave 12th Kentucky, Forrest’s escort and Gartrell’s company of Georgians, were to go west and charge around the Federal right, forcing their way to the Federal rear, on Tishomingo Creek, and engage with pistols any Federal force that might resist their progress.

Barteau, further east, was pounding the Federal rear, while Tyler, Jackson and Gartrell with great fury were hammering the Federal right. One-sixth of Forrest’s fighting men were now in the Federal rear. Morton, doubtful, but brave, drove his four guns into the very face of the enemy, advancing upon them amidst a storm of fire. His men, leaving their horses behind, as a small measure of safety, pushed the guns along the narrow, muddy road with their hands, firing as they moved. They seemed the very demons of war, courting death or capture in this grapple for mastery. The roar of the guns quickened the hopes of the Confederates, and all along the entire Confederate line a furious rush was made upon the Federal position. So close were the opposing forces to each other that they exchanged words of challenge, and at every point the Confederates forced the fighting and doubled up the Federal advance. The game was too fierce to last long. The brave and daring men in the rear, with Tyler and Barteau, were riding with a vengeance in every direction, and with their revolvers were doing deadly work upon the fleeing foes. This charge was aimed chiefly at the colored troops, who, with visions before their eyes and echoes in their ears of Fort Pillow, were ready to flee away, without standing upon the order of their going.

Of this eventful moment, General Sturgis said, “I now endeavored to get hold of the colored brigade which formed the guard of the wagon train. While traversing the short distance to where the head of the brigade should be formed, the main line gave away at various points, order soon gave way to confusion and confusion to panic. The army drifted toward the rear and was beyond control. The road became crowded and jammed with troops; wagons and artillery sank into the deep mud and became inextricable. No power could check the panic-stricken mass as it swept towards the rear. The demoralization was complete.” Even General Sturgis proposed to take the 19th Pennsylvania Cavalry as an escort, and through the cross roads of the country, to seek shelter in Memphis. The bridge across Tishomingo Creek became blocked by overturned wagons, the fleeing Federals found climbing over the wagons too slow, and waded or swam the Creek. Impeded in their flight, great numbers were shot down as they attempted to pass the stream. Morton’s artillery rushed to the bank, and hundreds of the Federals, still exposed to fire, were cut down at this point. Forrest was as relentless in pursuit as he had been furious in battle.

As the closing scenes of the battle were concluded, the sunset came on. Now was the hour of the greatest triumph. The foe was fleeing, and the horse-holders, mounted upon the rested beasts, were rushed forward to gather up the fruits of the splendid victory. There was to be no let up even in the coming darkness, and the Confederates who were able, cheerfully hurried to the front. The Federals formed line after line, only to see them crushed and broken, while weary fugitives, driven by increasing fear, pushed on with all their remaining strength, to find some place of safety and rest. The Federals dared not stop for an instant during the lengthening hours of the dark, dark night. With sad hearts they kept up their flight, and when the sun dawned they had reached Ripley, twenty-two miles from the dreadful scene which long haunted the memories of the vanquished men in blue.

At 3 a. m., Buford, a few miles from Ripley, came upon the remnant of the Federal wagon train and the last fourteen pieces of artillery. General Grierson, at earliest dawn had attempted to stay the pursuit until he could reorganize his beaten battalion, but Forrest and his escort, with the 7th Tennessee, closed in upon them, and they dispersed in the by-roads and through the plantations. All semblance of order was gone. No genius could evolve a complete organization that would for one moment resist the foe.

The Confederates seemed as demons, relentless and insatiable. All through the day and night of the 11th of June, the tired Confederates followed, and, with boundless energy, pursued the fleeing foes.

The retreat began at 4 p. m., June 10th. The next morning the Federals were at Ripley, twenty-five miles away, and the night of the same day, they reached Salem, forty-eight miles from Bryce’s Cross Roads. Nineteen pieces of their twenty-six cannon had been captured with twenty-one caissons, two thousand men, including the wounded and captured, and twelve hundred lay dead on the field of battle and along the ways by which the Federals had retreated. It took nine days to march from White Station near Memphis to Bryce’s Cross Roads. The fleeing Federals had traveled the same road in one day and two nights. No pursuit was ever more vigorous or effective. Forrest gave the fugitives no rest or peace. Changing his pursuing column from time to time, he made every moment count, the Federals scattered through the fields and forests and the Confederates scoured the country to take in those, who, forgetting the first principles of a deserting and defeated army to keep together, fled into the byways and through the wooded country, in their mad effort to hide from Forrest and his avenging huntsmen.

There was no reasonable explanation of the stupendous victory. General Sturgis tried to excuse it by saying the Confederates had twelve thousand men, including two brigades of infantry, but the only infantry there were, were Lyon’s troopers, who for more than a year had fought on foot in the campaigns of the Army of Tennessee.

General Sherman frankly said, “Forrest had only his cavalry, and I cannot understand how he could defeat Sturgis with eight thousand men.”

Later he said, “I will have the matter of Sturgis critically examined, and if he should be at fault, he shall have no mercy at my hands. I cannot but believe he had troops enough, and I know I would have been willing to attempt the same task with that force; but Forrest is the devil, and I think he has got some of our troops under cower. I have two officers at Memphis who will fight all the time, A. J. Smith and Mower. The latter is a young brigadier of fine promise, and I commend him to your notice. I will order them to make up a force and go out to follow Forrest to the death, if it costs ten thousand lives and breaks the treasury. There will never be peace in Tennessee until Forrest is dead.”

The Kentucky brigade opened the battle, bore its brunt for more than three hours, and this gave to five Kentuckians a prominent and important part in battle on that day. First came General Hylan B. Lyon. Born in Kentucky in 1836, he entered West Point in 1852 and graduated in 1856. He first saw service against the Seminole Indians in 1856 and 1857, and after frontier work in California was engaged in the Spokane Expedition and in the battle of September 5th-7th, 1858. On April 3rd, 1861, he resigned his commission in the United States Army and was appointed First Lieutenant of Artillery in the Confederate Army. He organized and became captain of Cobb’s Battery, but in ten months was made lieutenant colonel of the 8th Kentucky Infantry. He led this regiment at Fort Donelson, surrendered and was exchanged; and became colonel of the 8th Kentucky. At Coffeeville, Mississippi, he acquitted himself well. In 1864, he was promoted to be brigadier general and assigned to the corps of General Forrest, his brigade consisting of the 3rd, 7th, 8th and 12th Kentucky Regiments. They were brave, seasoned, fearless soldiers, and were prepared with their distinguished brigadier general on that day to give a good account of themselves.

Edward Crossland, Colonel of the 7th Kentucky Cavalry, did not go to the front in this great battle. Lawyer and legislator, he was one of the first men in Kentucky to organize a company for service in the Confederate Army, and for a year was in the Army of Northern Virginia. A lieutenant colonel for one year, he became colonel of the 1st Kentucky Infantry in May, 1862. He was at Vicksburg and Baton Rouge and Champion’s Hill with Breckinridge. He was with Forrest to the end. He had the unfortunate habit to stop the flight of a bullet in almost every conflict in which he was engaged. Wounded again and again, he survived it all, and was with Forrest at the surrender. Upon his return, he was made judge, then congressman, and then judge again.

He had been wounded at Paducah, and if he had been at Bryce’s Cross Roads, he would surely have drawn another wound. It always grieved him that he was not present at this greatest triumph of his idolized leader. This day found Colonel Crossland’s regiment under command of Henry S. Hale. In the blood-stained thickets, Major Hale won deserved distinction. On one occasion his men hesitated, but he seized the colors and ran forward, flaunting them in the face of the enemy. No soldier could run away after such an exhibition from his commander, and they returned with exceeding fierceness and cheerfully followed their valiant leader.

This and like intrepid conduct on this glorious day added another star to Major Hale’s rank, and he became lieutenant colonel of the 7th Kentucky Regiment, a just tribute to a gallant soldier. Kentucky sent none braver or truer to fight for the Southland.

FIGHTING AT BRYCE’S CROSS-ROADS

Among the officers who proved themselves heroes on that day, none deserved higher honor than Captain H. A. Tyler, of the 12th Kentucky Cavalry. His assault on the flanks and his charge on the rear of the enemy were noble and superb exhibitions of the highest courage. He played havoc with the colored reserves who were protecting the wagon train. His voice was heard above the din of firearms and at the head of his squadron; he descended upon the black soldiers with such furious war-cries as to chill their blood and set in motion the retreat, which soon developed into an uncontrollable rout.

Chapter II
GENERAL HAMPTON’S CATTLE RAID,
SEPTEMBER, 1864

General Wade Hampton, in the history of the Civil War, must ever be acknowledged to be one of the really great leaders. Of distinguished ancestry and high personal character, and endowed with sublime courage, he early entered the contest, and it was not long before his aptitude for cavalry service was so developed and amplified as to induce the War Department to confine his talents entirely to that branch. As the second of J. E. B. Stuart, he not only earned renown for himself, but was also one of the potent factors in helping his chief to carry out his cherished plans and to win the conspicuous place he occupied in the annals of the great war. To succeed so brilliant a leader and so thorough a cavalryman as General Stuart, imposed upon General Hampton most perplexing tasks and placed him in a position which would thoroughly try out the metal that was in him. It may justly and truly be said of General Hampton that he met all the conditions which surrounded him in the arduous work which his talents had won for him.

By the summer and fall of 1864, the obstacles which confronted the Confederate cavalryman had been largely augmented. Living upon the enemy had become practically impossible. Raids, in which wagon trains, provisions, army ammunition and clothing had hitherto been so successfully captured, were now seldom successful, and outpost duty and the punishment of the Federal cavalry, which undertook to destroy the transportation agencies south of Petersburg, engaged all the time and the energies and more completely developed the genius of the Confederate cavalry leaders of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Supplies of food had now become one of the most important, as well as the most difficult, of all the problems which faced with unrelenting grimness the armies of the Confederacy. The Federal raids west and north of Richmond, and frequent interruption of lines of communication about Petersburg and Lynchburg and up the Shenandoah Valley, had rendered the food supply uncertain. Three and a half years of war overwhelming the agricultural sections tributary to the Capital of the Confederacy, had greatly cut down the necessary quota of provisions.

For neither infantry nor cavalry was there much chance during that period to forage upon the enemy. The lines of investment and defence between Petersburg and Richmond kept the cavalry too far south to foray for supplies north of Richmond. The Atlantic Ocean—free to the Federals, but blockaded to the Confederates—formed a water route ever open and impossible of closure, giving the Federals perfect safety in moving food and supplies upon the currents of the mighty deep, where there could be no chance for the men of the gray to attack or appropriate them.

General Wade Hampton, always resourceful, had learned that on the James River, five miles east of City Point, the Federal army had corralled a large herd of cattle, kept upon such pastures as had been left by the environments and demands of war. Fortunate in the possession of most trustworthy scouts, who were entirely familiar with the topography adjacent to the James River and the Confederate and Federal lines at Petersburg, General Hampton knew with absolute exactness the place where these beeves were being fed and kept ready for Federal slaughter. He well understood that in any dangerous and hazardous undertaking, the men who followed him would never hesitate, but would cheerfully go where he led. These men were always well assured if he carried them into the midst of danger, he had genius to extricate them with masterful skill, and their cheers, when ordered to advance, were the best response which a commander could receive from the loyal hearts of his followers, and nerved his arm and quickened his brain for great exploits.

To succeed in this unique and difficult cattle raid, it was necessary to make an incursion to the rear of the Federal army within a very short distance of City Point, the headquarters of General Grant and his subordinate commanders. City Point had become the center of operations as well as the base of supplies of the Union forces, and even the most sagacious and cautious Federal soldier hardly deemed it possible that Confederate cavalry could march in the rear of the great army that then lay beside the James, or could, with impunity, pierce the lines covering Federal headquarters and drive off the large supply of beeves which had been gathered for army use.

On September 4th, 1864, General Hampton set out on this perilous undertaking. He took with him men who were tried and true, men who feared to take no risk, to brave no danger and who were capable of achievements deemed wellnigh impossible by those unaccustomed to the daring enterprises of war. He had with him General W. H. F. Lee’s division, Rosser’s and Dearing’s brigades, and a hundred men from General P. M. B. Young and General Dunnovant. W. H. F. Lee’s division was composed of three brigades: General Beale’s, General Barringer’s and General Dearing’s—the last named having only one regiment and one battalion! There could be little choice among those who composed the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. They were all and always to be depended upon. In this extraordinary expedition, those who were chosen were measured not so much by the individual courage they possessed above their fellows, as by the condition of the animals to be subjected to such extreme hardship as awaited the expedition.

The three thousand men mustering for this foray were told only that the service was both daring and important. These men did not deem it necessary to inquire where they were going and what the service was. They knew that Hampton planned, that Lee and Rosser, Beale, Young, Dunnovant, Barringer and Dearing aided their chivalrous commander, and they had sublime faith in the skill, as well as the courage, of these intrepid leaders. There is something in the cavalry march that exhilarates men, stirring and stimulating the spirit of adventure. Visions of glory give quickened powers to the men who ride to war. Those who composed the long line behind General Hampton were cheerful, patient and hopeful, and inspired by patriotism and courage, they rode out southeastwardly with the confidence born of chivalry and implicit belief in the ultimate success of their cause.

After a march of thirty miles southeastwardly, the little army bivouacked at what was known as Wilkinson’s Grove. Undiscovered, they had now traveled eastwardly far enough to steer clear of the extended lines of the Federal army which lay between them and the ocean. With the break of day, the march was resumed. The heads of the horses were now turned north, and before daylight had receded the adventurous command had reached the Black Water River. These movements had brought General Hampton entirely around the left flank of the Federals, and he had now come close to the place where he had intended to force the enemy’s lines. The bridges had long since been destroyed, and it was necessary to erect temporary structures. There was no rest for the engineers or their assistants. They had ridden all day, but now they must work all night. A torch here and there was occasionally lighted to help the men adjust a refractory timber, but in the velvety darkness of the still night, cheerfully and heroically, these brave men hurriedly erected a rude bridge across the stream, whose currents flowed between the narrow banks, as if to defy or delay these patriots in their efforts to provide food for their hungry comrades, who, in their beleaguered tents around Petersburg, were longing and watching for supplies which would give them strength to still withstand the vigorous assaults of an ever-watchful and aggressive foe.

Leaving only the pickets on watch, the command bivouacked upon the ground, and horses and men in mingled masses—side by side—slept until midnight. Cooked rations had been brought with them, and no camp fires were kindled which might reveal their presence. No trumpet or bugle sound was used to wake the soldiers, the low-spoken commands of the officers instantly aroused the slumbering troopers whose ears were quick to hear the low but stern orders of those who called them to renew their wearying march. Long before the darkest hours that precede the dawn, the men mounted, and before the sun had risen had ridden the nine miles which lay between the bridge and the largest detachment of the enemy’s cavalry, which guarded the pasturing cattle. The coveted beeves were feeding just two miles farther on.

North and south, there were several bodies of Federal horsemen, but General Hampton believed that if he could distance the larger force it would prevent the small detachments from having any base upon which to concentrate. To General Rosser, always spirited, gallant and aggressive, was assigned the duty of making an assault upon this force, and he was ordered immediately after the dispersal of the Federals to corral and drive the cattle away.

The march from the bivouac where the Confederate cavalry had rested and obtained a few hours’ sleep, consumed five hours, but before the sun had well risen, Rosser attacked with fiercest energy. To General Lee was assigned driving in the videttes. A cavalry regiment from the District of Columbia, as soon as attacked, entrenched itself behind barricades and gave notice that they proposed to dispute Rosser’s right of way and to resist him to the last. The coming of light had renewed the enthusiasm of the horsemen, and with the rising sun, their courage rose to the sublimest heights. This feeling of determination to win at all hazards permeated the entire Confederate commands, and when Rosser called for sharp, impetuous, decisive, gallant service, his men rode and rushed over all obstacles, and in a very few moments defeated the Federal command opposing them, all that were not killed or captured riding off in wild dismay.

General W. H. F. Lee and General Dearing were directed to disperse and ride down everything which wore a Federal uniform wherever met with. Pickets, troops, regiments, whatever opposed, and wherever opposing, they were to assault and drive away. Particularly were they to look after couriers, who might bear any messages to Federal commanders of the presence of these headlong and apparently reckless Confederates. In fact, a courier was captured and a dispatch taken from him, giving the exact location of the herd, which had been moved only the day before.

As soon as General Rosser had dispersed the detachments of Federals which he was ordered to destroy, he immediately dispatched a portion of his command to secure the cattle, which was done without either delay or difficulty. The guards, panic-stricken by the presence of enemies whom they thought were forty miles away, were overpowered and made prisoners before they realized that Confederates were in their midst. A few horses and all the beeves, numbering 2,486, were corralled. There was no time for parley, delay, congratulations or cheers. Safety required an immediate movement southward and away from the presence of the numerous Union forces, who would soon learn of this bold and aggressive raid and set about the punishment of the audacious aggressors. But the spirit of war and destruction could not be stilled. Dangers could not deter the cavalry from proceeding to burn camps, to destroy great quantities of supplies, and immense storehouses of clothing and provisions. There was many times more than enough to meet all the wants of the foraging troopers. They were quick to appropriate such of the enemy’s goods as met their needs, and then the torch did its destructive work and rendered useless the immense stores of food, clothing and munitions of war which Federal foresight had garnered and gathered for the use of the troops and camps south of the James River.

The campaign was so mapped out and planned that each man fully understood the duties he was to perform. The secret of the marvelous success which had so far attended the expedition was the result of perfect orders communicated to the men who had ridden fast and far on this splendid adventure. The Confederate troops were necessarily scattered, the cattle had been rounded up, couriers had been intercepted, videttes had been driven away. These movements covered a large territory, but it was all done so systematically and so thoroughly that it looked as if some machine had been adjusted and set for this task. There had been no mistake in the distribution of the orders, and no officer or man failed to carry them out. The troops were elated by their superb success. Their victory lifted them to the greatest heights of enthusiasm, and its glory seemed to fill the very air and yet, amid all the fascination of their splendid success, prudence told everybody that now was the hour of their extremest peril, and that the greatest task of all, that of driving away this splendid herd of cattle and delivering them to the Confederate commissary, was yet to be accomplished.

It was a trying work to which these soldiers were now subjected, but one which the experience and courage of these men had fully trained them to perform.

In the later months of the war, the sphere of action of the cavalry became very much broadened. Earlier, raiding and scouting had been their chief business, but now in emergencies they were used, not only as cavalry, but as infantry; and their lengthy military training fitted them to perform their part as soldiers in any enterprise and in any line of service. Extraordinary scenes were now witnessed, for the situation was weird in the extreme. The beeves, alarmed by the shouts of the soldiers and the firing, had become frightened and unmanageable, for their new masters were not only strangely garbed but acted in a way that they had never before witnessed. To quiet the beasts in this emergency, the Federal herders were called upon, whom the terrified animals recognized as their former masters and keepers, while they looked with fear and suspicion upon the noisy and dust-stained cavaliers who now claimed them as their property.

The Confederates soon found that if the cattle were driven in one herd, the difficulties of moving them would be much increased, their speed would be much lessened and the animals in great crowds might become panic stricken, and so with the help of the herders and captors, three or four hundred cattle were placed in one bunch or detachment; these were surrounded by the horsemen and forced forward as rapidly as the condition of the beasts would permit. Celerity of movement was one of the important elements in this splendid enterprise. No one understood this better than General Hampton and General Robert E. Lee, and even down to the youngest private this knowledge quickened the movements and steadied the arms and braced the hearts of every soldier who composed the command. Within three hours from the time General Rosser fired the first gun, General Hampton had accomplished all his purposes and was ready to withdraw. With the self-possession and calm of a great leader and without semblance of fear or apparent solicitude, he began the task of extricating himself from the dangerous and hazardous conditions into which the necessities of General Lee’s army and his energetic zeal had involved him.

No Federal general or soldier had dreamed that such a campaign could or would be undertaken. Even had it been thought of, the hazard and the danger of it would have convinced the most cautious Federal officers that nobody could or would essay to enter upon such a perilous and reckless expedition.

General Hampton, though, had friends who knew of this brilliant undertaking. General Lee counted the hours which intervened from the time Hampton formed his lines and marched away. He knew that only vastly disproportioned numbers could stay the men who rode behind his adventurous cavalry associate. He could not hear Hampton’s guns, but a soldier’s instinct, the telepathy of genius, had whispered to him that Hampton had done his work. He felt that failure was almost impossible; that Hampton might be annihilated by overwhelming forces, but General Lee knew the men who followed the man, and so when Hampton began his march southward the Confederate commander, behind his lines at Petersburg, began a demonstration upon the entire Federal front. With fierce assault, pickets were driven in, troops at double-quick were moved from position to position; the whole Confederate forces were under arms, and so far as military foresight could discern, everything indicated that General Lee was preparing to make a strenuous assault upon every vulnerable Federal position. The cavalry, left behind with General M. C. Butler, also began to skirmish with the enemy’s pickets and outlying posts, and between the movements of the cavalry and infantry, the Federal officers were firmly impressed that a crisis in the defense of the Capital of the Confederates was on and that General Lee was now going to force a battle which would decide the fate, not only of the Army of Northern Virginia, but of the Confederacy itself.

Fortunately for General Hampton and General Lee, General Grant was absent. He had gone to Harper’s Ferry to consult with General Sheridan about a movement down the Shenandoah Valley. Telegram after telegram began to pour in upon him; he had hardly time to read one before another was forced into his hands, and they all bore tidings which disquieted his calm. The Federal cavalry, which had been completely scattered, brought in with them marvelous stories of the overwhelming forces that had attacked and dispersed them. Their distorted imaginations had increased the numbers of Confederate troops until it appeared to them that every man in General Lee’s army had been mounted and was charging down upon the lines about City Point with a fierceness that indicated that the furies had been turned loose and that the unleashed dogs of war were ready to attack all that could oppose them. The communications which had passed between General Meade and General Grant and the Federal subordinates during this period are most amusing. The quick and unexpected onslaught had completely dismayed the Federal Army. Its officers believed that so much ado being made along the lines in front could not possibly have occurred, unless General Lee really intended some important and decisive movement. Along the wires were flashed the stories from the fleeing cavalry that the Confederate forces counted more than fourteen thousand men. Those who were sending these messages did not stop to figure that this was more cavalry than General Lee had in his army. Hour by hour quickened these fancies born of fear, and each fleeing horseman painted in more lurid terms the pursuing foes, which they declared were close behind. The gunboats were ordered to cover City Point for the defense of the immense supplies there stored. Reserved troops were quickly pushed forward, and a universal spirit of alarm and uncertainty prevailed throughout the Federal camps.

In a few hours, the results of General Hampton’s incursion dawned upon the Federal leaders. Chagrined and surprised at the success of the Confederates, and determined to punish and resent their temerity, vigorous measures were taken to release the cattle and disperse or annihilate their captors. They understood that the march and drive of the cattle would be difficult and slow, that the Confederates had the long line and their pursuers the short one.

The Federal cavalry, under Generals Kautz, Gregg, Davies, all ambitious and restive under the just criticism of their superiors for permitting such a coup, with fierce resolution and quickened energy, set their followers in motion and hunted their receding foes.

General Rosser had the cattle and could protect the narrow line along which he was passing. His brigade was a wall of fire in his immediate rear, but the converging pursuers from the north and west, quickened at every step by the appeals of their officers to avenge what they regarded as an affront, must be held back by Generals W. H. F. Lee and Dearing. Those who followed these officers always gave a good account of themselves, and General Lee, while active in his retreat (an activity strictly limited by General Rosser’s ability to move the cattle), while not seeking battle, stood with iron will between their hot pursuit and the coveted droves, which were forced to their utmost speed by the whips of the captive drovers and the shouts and belaboring of the bold horsemen whose every stride was haunted by the fear of the following Federal cavalry, now galloping to punish the audacity of the Confederate raid.

With eager eyes and ears, General Lee and General Dearing scanned every angle of the horizon, and every sound that passed southward, every cloud of dust that rose heavenward, every object that dimmed the perspective was scrutinized with earnest gaze. Eyes and glasses united in finding the position of every coming foe, and the quick ears of these trained horsemen were turned to catch each breeze, and to detect if possible the earliest tidings of those who were bent upon their destruction.

General Hampton rose to the call of the hour. Anxious well he might be, but despite the throbbings of a heart aroused to mightiest effort, he bore himself with the calmness of a skilled leader and fearless soldier. To him and those he led, the issues were momentous. Capture, imprisonment, the humiliation of defeat and the loss of prestige, were grievous burdens to carry, but behind him there was a splendid past and before him a future big with patriotic hope, and he waited the orderings of fate with sublimest confidence.

Along his lines he rode with words of encouragement and cheer, and none could discern in his demeanor the tumult of dread that disquieted his soul. No word or act of his was necessary to tell the men who with unquestioning loyalty were ready to do his bidding the grave dangers of the hour. Intelligent and watchful they shared with their leader the knowledge that the situation was fraught with utmost peril and that nothing short of the noblest courage, quickest perception and unfailing steadiness could avert threatening disaster.

Hampton, Lee, Rosser and Dearing were splendid leaders, they had with them great soldiers, and combined they wrested from fate a great victory. General Davies was the only Federal cavalryman that was able to force any sort of a battle, but General Lee was quick to resist his interference. Halting to feel General Lee’s line, Davies and Gregg sent a flanking detachment to strike the retreating columns five miles away, but when they came the Confederates were gone and this proved the last real attempt to stop the march of Hampton’s forces.

General Hampton, the master mind of this splendid movement, by the aid of his faithful scouts and ever alert guides, kept fully in touch with each part of the ever-changing field. Self-reliant, confident of his soldiers, and a believer in his ability and destiny, nothing escaped his oversight and care. If he feared, none knew it. If his brave heart ever trembled, there was no external sign of his apprehension, and his unruffled countenance was a constant inspiration to those who, if needs be, would follow to death at his call, and who had not even a momentary doubt of his ability to safely deliver them from the tremendous risks of the hour and the terrifying difficulties of their hazardous expedition.

GENERAL WADE HAMPTON

Uncertainty as to the number of men engaged in this movement dampened the ardor of the attacking Federal cavalry. They did not know really what to expect. They could hardly believe that a force so small would have dared strike their rear, and if it was as large as military science suggested, they had no real taste for grappling a foe equal in numbers to their own. Lee and Rosser were fighting the Federal cavalry and holding them at bay. The cattle, now divided, with soldiers and herdsmen pressing them forward, were traveling farther and farther south. The hours no doubt seemed long to the Confederate horsemen, but the excitement of the battle and the presence of the enemy had sustained them through all the experiences of the day. With such mental surroundings, minutes had greatly lengthened, and all the Confederates were glad when they saw a little ahead of them Nottoway River and recognized that Freeman’s Ford, where they were to pass that stream, was safe from the enemy’s grip. As the lowing beasts, the shouting drivers, the tired riders and the weary horses took the stream and passed safely over to the other side, to a point where they were safe from attack, generals, line officers and privates took renewed strength and all congratulated each other that a kindly providence had guided their feet and brought them safely under the protecting wing of the legions of infantry and artillery, for whose sustenance they had endured such tremendous suffering and faced such extraordinary dangers.

Hampton, with his matchless courage, felt that his full task had not been performed, and leaving the beasts to browse and later under lessened guards to pursue their journey leisurely towards General Lee’s fortified camp, he, himself, summoning such of his followers as were yet able to ride to still greater tasks, recrossed the stream and began, now tigerlike, to hunt his pursuers. He felt that these men, who had had the temerity to pursue him and his great commissary stores, should be punished for their audacity, and so, turning northward, he set out to search for the enemies who had attempted to take from him the rich prizes which his superb intrepidity and magnificent daring had won for the Confederate army.

The Federal cavalry, far from their infantry supports and with magnified ideas of the strength of the Confederate forces, were not impatient to try conclusions with the Confederate troopers who had so audaciously possessed themselves of their cattle, and so Hampton’s weary men, with more weary and tired horses, turned their faces in pursuit of the Federal cavalry. They found that those who had pursued were now ready to retreat, and the Federal cavalry was willing to leave them alone to enjoy the spoils of victory and the splendid meat supply which they had so courageously won.

General Hampton and his men had marched a hundred miles in three days, part of this time encumbered with twenty-five hundred beeves; he was far removed from the support or help of his friends, except so far as General Lee, by his movements in the face of the Federal lines, could intimidate the army which was opposing him and which was creeping hour by hour closer and closer to Petersburg and endeavoring day by day to find the vital and weakest points in the wasted Confederate lines. The infantry and artillery who were keeping at bay the besiegers who were pushing forward to throttle the Confederacy and wrest its Capital from its control and to drive Lee and his army from Virginia soil, upon which had flowed such torrents of the best blood of the South and on which had been won such laurels by the Army of Northern Virginia, heard strange rumors that day, as the first couriers brought the tidings of Hampton’s Raid.

Fatigued men and jaded beasts mutely appealed for rest and sleep, and so when General Hampton found that his foes, unwilling to hazard a battle, rode away northward as he appeared from the south, he gave the command to face about, and by easy stages he led his troopers across the river where they might, for a brief while, enjoy the rest they had so richly earned and receive the plaudits of their comrades, to whom they had brought such needed and healthful supplies in their extremity and hunger.

For a little while, it was impossible for the Confederate army to realize what General Hampton had done. The cavalry, always sufficiently boastful, were not slow to tell of the difficulties and dangers of the march, of the excitement and adventure which attended every hour from the advance until the retreat. They were real heroes, and there was no reason for them to be modest about their exploits, and to the amazed infantry they repeated, probably oftentimes with more or less exaggeration, the experiences and events of this strange, successful and wonderful expedition. Here and there the infantry had questioned the steadiness and courage of the trooper under fire, but as this famished army enjoyed, with gratitude and satisfaction, the delicious steaks which their cavalry friends had brought them from the Federal depot, they assigned this commissary achievement to a high place in war’s annals, and accorded to Hampton and his troopers in this raid unsparing and unmeasured praise. If General Hampton had done nothing else than inaugurate, organize and successfully promote this marvelous raid, he would be entitled to high rank among the cavalry leaders, not only of the Civil War, but of the ages.

Chapter III
KENTUCKY CAVALRY FIGHTING WITH
ROCKS, DUG CREEK GAP, MAY 8-9, 1864

General Joseph E. Johnston had one of the most varied and eventful careers of any general officer in the Confederate service. General Robert E. Lee was born January 19th, 1807; General Johnston was born February 3d, of the same year, making a difference in their ages of fifteen days. They were both Virginians, and graduated from West Point in the same class.

General Johnston held the highest rank of any officer in the United States army, who resigned to take service with the Confederate government. Of the really great leaders of the men who wore the gray, he was perhaps criticized more than any other. Whatever were the charges against General Johnston, he was always able to defend himself with forceful ability, and with extreme plausibility to present both his theories and the conduct of his campaigns in a strong and vigorous way. Oftentimes, a student of the history of military operations will question, in his own mind, whether General Johnston was really a great soldier, or an unfortunate victim of jealousy, or a brilliant leader, against whom fate had a bitter and lasting grudge. Whatever critics may say, he maintained to a wonderful degree the confidence and esteem of his men, and his Atlanta campaign will attract attention through all ages and demand admiration for the man who successfully planned and carried it out. It unquestionably takes high place among the great campaigns which were conducted from 1861 to 1865. The seventy-four days that Johnston passed in the immediate presence of the opposing army were days of incessant fighting, great mortality and immeasurable toil; and of such a character as to hold to the highest tension the nerves and hearts of his followers. Probably no officer who followed the stars and bars ever had a more difficult task assigned him than that which was given to General Johnston in northern Georgia, in the spring and summer of 1864. General Bragg’s failures, whether justly or unjustly, had called forth the sharpest criticism, and while a great soldier, he did not retain in defeat the love and faith of the men he led. In these matters, General Johnston never failed.

General Johnston was placed in command of the Army of the Tennessee, by the authorities at Richmond, with the distinct understanding and positive order that he must advance and stay the tide of invasion which was slowly but surely moving southward and sapping the sinews and the life of the Confederacy. All knew that if the Army of the Tennessee should be destroyed, and the Federals should take possession of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, with the Mississippi River as a base, it would not be very long until whatever may have been General Lee’s resources, he would be taken in flank and rear and his armies annihilated.

General Johnston, while confessedly a man of genius, was also extremely tenacious of his rights, and resented what he considered a slight; and he did not hesitate in the most emphatic way to criticize that which his knowledge as a general condemned.

The Confederate government, on two occasions, at least, was forced over the judgment of its executives, by popular clamor, to give to General Johnston most important commands. Twice removed, he was subsequently reassigned to the positions from which he had been retired. In each case, and whenever removed failure followed, he calmly and with the most abundant reasons was enabled to tell those who deposed him, “I told you so.”

It may be that General Johnston frequently asked of the War Department what it was helpless to give. He was wise and experienced enough to see the overwhelming needs of the armies. He was sagacious enough to fully estimate the power and strength of the enemy. He loved the cause of the South so thoroughly that he hesitated to stake its destiny on one battle, the outcome of which was extremely doubtful. He refused to risk the life of his country on a single throw “of the wild, grim dice of the iron game.” Those in authority charge that he was over-cautious and afraid to take the chances that the surrounding exigencies and dangers demanded, and that he put his own judgment over and above the orders of his superiors. He never realized that they fully appreciated and understood the needs of the situation, and he never fully recognized that those above him had the right to demand that he should subordinate his judgment to the authority from which he derived his power. He felt that he had closer and more complete view of the entire field; that he knew better than those five hundred miles away of the desperate chances they called upon him to assume, and he believed that the South could not afford to take such forlorn risks when by the caprices of fate the life of the Confederacy was hanging by a most delicate thread.

General Johnston had personal reasons which caused him to distrust the fairness and justness of the War Department in the treatment of himself. The order in which the generals were named, whereby he was made the fourth in rank, was extremely distasteful to him, and he did not hesitate to say that he felt he had been wronged.

His conduct of the Army of Northern Virginia had given him much reputation, but in the momentous struggle around Richmond, the cruel destiny, which appeared to overshadow him, brought him a wound on the 31st of May, 1862, when, humanly speaking, victory was within his grasp.

He was succeeded on that day by General Robert E. Lee, and from that time, General Johnston’s connection with the Army of Northern Virginia ended. During the term of his service, he was wounded ten times. He was brave to a fault, but never to such an extent as unnecessarily to imperil the life of a commander.

Many opportunities came, but the fair-minded student must admit that, with the exception of Bull Run and Seven Pines, he never had an equal chance.

The correspondence between General Johnston and the authorities at Richmond shows that the government had good reasons to feel that General Johnston was not a very obedient commander. And while he may have known better than those who gave the orders, they considered it was his business to obey rather than to question or complain.

From May, 1861, to June, 1862, General Johnston was in active and constant service. He was often charged with over-caution, but his admirers say this resulted from his great loyalty to the South and his eager desire to see it win its independence.

After his wound, on the 31st of May on the James River, he was forced to remain inactive until the summer of 1863, when Vicksburg was in peril—again his country called, and he responded cheerfully and promptly.

His campaigns in Mississippi and his failure to relieve Vicksburg have been widely and sharply discussed. That the operations in behalf of Vicksburg and for the defense of Mississippi failed, could not, by those unbiased, be attributed solely to any fault on the part of General Johnston. He protested that disobedience of his orders, by inferiors, marred his plans, and on December 18th, 1863, he was directed to turn over the army of Mississippi to General Leonidas Polk. He was naturally not sorry to be relieved from a situation that had been associated with so many embarrassments, and in which there were so many unfortunate misunderstandings.

The Confederate government again called him a second time to take command of the Army of the Tennessee; but he was relieved on the 22nd day of July, 1863; and on the 3d of December, 1863, he was again instructed to lead the forces which were attempting to stem the advance of the invaders towards Atlanta, and the further progress of which, into the heart of Georgia, was regarded as an impending death blow to Confederate hopes.

General Johnston, with his knowledge of equipment, realized how inferior were those of his men to the armies that wore the blue, and most earnestly and insistently pleaded for better equipments and more troops. It must be said that he knew better than any living man the condition of the forces, which he was called to command. The failures of his predecessors only quickened his desire and hope, out of the wreck, to win victory, and it may be that a patriotic spirit, united with ambition, also pointed out to him in an attractive form the fact that he was to save Atlanta from the grasp of the Federal forces, and become the leader in the West that General Lee was in the East.

There must have been a feeling of intense satisfaction to General Johnston in the resolution of the Confederate government to appoint him anew to the second and most important command in the Confederate armies.

Those who put themselves in General Johnston’s place are bound to admit that he had some ground of justification for his feeling towards the Confederate authorities. We can look at these conditions more clearly after a lapse of nearly fifty years, and even the friends of the men who composed the War Department, and the friends of General Johnston, are forced to the conclusion that there were two sides to the controversy.

When, on December 27th, 1863, he assumed command of the Army of the Tennessee, General Johnston undertook a Herculean task. From all the reports of those connected with the department, it is shown that General Johnston made the best of the situation when matters were turned over to him. General Johnston had assumed a burden which would press hard upon his shoulders. Persistently and even fiercely, he called for more troops, more horses, more guns, more feed, more men in the infantry. It was his desire to be able to stop the invasion. He was not satisfied with the meagre resources of the government at Richmond, but asked more. When called to the command of the defeated army, it was with the understanding that he should make an offensive campaign. The authorities felt that a Fabian policy was the forerunner of ruin, and that Napoleonic methods, with even desperate odds and chances, was the only plan which suggested or held out the least show of victory. He had a right to expect such resources as would give him some sort of chance in the desperate battle which his country had called upon him to wage. He was facing an army twice as large as his own, probably the best equipped army that ever marched on the American continent, commanded by a general who, as even those who disliked him admitted, was a great soldier, who had behind him practically unlimited resources, against which General Johnston was to go with comparatively few and badly provided men, and he constantly and with increasing emphasis made demands on his government for more troops. The people at Richmond felt the crucial moment was at hand and the chances of battle must be risked even though the chances were very largely against the Confederate troops. They said, in substance, to the leader of the Army of the Tennessee:

He either fears his fate too much

Or his desert is small,

Who does not put it to the touch

And win or lose it all.

So soon as the rains of the spring had ceased and the roads had dried, the Federal general set out with a force of eighty-five thousand men to force his way down through Georgia to Atlanta; he had already gone through Chattanooga, he was well on his way from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and between him and his destination only stood Johnston with as brave men as ever faced a foe; men who were ready and willing to die, if needs be, to save their country. The fierce campaigns of the winter which had been imposed upon the cavalry had weakened their force, many of them were dismounted, and many more of them were poorly mounted, and in that depleted condition were not equal to the tasks that this important march was now to lay upon them.

Forrest and Wheeler and their subordinates had done all that men could do. They had pushed their columns to the limits of endurance. Their presence now became necessary to protect the flanks of General Johnston’s army and stand off Federal raids. They were too busy at home to justify attacks upon the enemy’s rear.

In the first few days of May, General Sherman began to feel his way towards the Confederate position. The Army of the Tennessee had wintered at Dalton, a place that General Johnston could not see was of any strategic importance, but its surrender would mean another disappointment of the national hopes, and a further impairment of confidence in the Confederate forces to resist the apparently relentless destiny that was pursuing the decimated legions that had so long and fearlessly challenged a further advance into a state, the possession of which was vital to the nation’s life.

Among the forces composing the cavalry of General Johnston’s army was Grigsby’s Brigade, composed of the 9th Kentucky, led by Colonel W. C. P. Breckinridge, and Dortch’s and Kirkpatrick’s battalions. These soldiers were among the best that Kentucky furnished. They were largely young men from the Bluegrass, few of them exceeding twenty-five years in age. They had come out of Kentucky in July, 1862, and October, 1862; had now received more than a year’s seasoning, and were by their military experiences fitted for the hardest and fiercest conflicts. They had left Kentucky well mounted. Grigsby had been on the Ohio raid and escaped the catastrophe which met General Morgan’s command in July, 1863, at Buffington Island. A portion of his regiment and a part of the 10th Kentucky Cavalry alone came back from that fatal ride. The 9th Kentucky, under Colonel Breckinridge, had not gone upon the Ohio raid. Grigsby was one of the best of the Kentucky cavalry colonels. He was born in Virginia, September 11th, 1818. He was just forty-four years old when he entered the Confederate service; brave, determined, fearless, enterprising, he established a splendid reputation, and when the Army of the Tennessee was before Chattanooga, he was given command of a brigade by General Wheeler, including the 1st, 2nd and 9th Kentucky Cavalry and later Dortch’s and Kirkpatrick’s battalions. In the retreat from Missionary Ridge, General Bragg designated Grigsby and his Kentuckians to cover the rear, and they did it with preeminent valor and intrepidity.

Later on, General Wheeler became so much attached to General Grigsby that he made him chief of staff; and in Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas, during the darkest and closing scenes of the nation’s struggle, he won superb commendation and became one of General Wheeler’s most trusted and vigilant lieutenants.

The 9th Kentucky Cavalry was essentially a central Kentucky product. It was recruited partly during General Morgan’s raid of 1862, in Kentucky, and was completed during Bragg’s occupancy of the state, in the summer and fall of 1862. It was commanded by Colonel W. C. P. Breckinridge who, when a mere lad at college, won a reputation as one of the most eloquent of the young men Kentucky had ever known.

He had been practicing law four years when the war began. In July, 1862, he recruited a company that became part of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, under General John H. Morgan.

When the Confederates returned to Kentucky, under Bragg, Captain Breckinridge was enabled to recruit a battalion, and this was subsequently consolidated with Robert G. Stoner’s battalion and became the 9th Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, of which Breckinridge became colonel.

By December, 1862, he was in command of a brigade in General Morgan’s famous Kentucky raid, which covered the Christmas of 1862 and New Year of 1863. Saved from the wreck of the Ohio raid, his regiment was part of the brigade commanded by Colonel Grigsby in Kelly’s Division of Wheeler’s Cavalry Corps.

The Kentucky brigade was engaged in many brilliant operations in Tennessee and Georgia. Part of it rode with Wheeler in his raid through Tennessee, in Sherman’s rear. General Wheeler, in his reports, was generous in the praise of the distinguished young colonel, afterwards known as the “Silver-Tongued Orator of Kentucky,” and representative of the Henry Clay district for a number of years in the United States Congress.

Two of the services rendered by the Kentucky brigade are to be sketched in this book. First, the brilliant fight at Dug Creek Gap, at the opening of the Atlanta campaign, and, second, its work in capturing General Stoneman, some weeks later.

The Kentucky brigade, at the Dug Creek Gap, did much to give inspiration to the army under General Johnston, which, while generally retreating, was always cheerful and, even though constantly retiring, never lost its courage or its fortitude.

This brigade was not overly fond of discipline, against which there was always a silent protest; notwithstanding which they were always ready to grapple with any foe that fate brought across their path. They bore the hardships of every campaign without a murmur or complaint. In July, September, October, November and December, no raids, however trying, had been able to bring from these splendid cavalrymen a sigh of regret or a murmur at the arduous work that their country and general had assigned them. When General Johnston, with complete reliance upon their courage and fidelity in the face of the most imminent danger, designated them for a difficult and hazardous service, they accepted it with great joy, and marched out with defiant shouts and enthusiastic cheers to obey his commands and fulfill his expectations.

While General Johnston, through January, February and March of 1864, was appealing for more men, more guns and more equipments, Sherman had orders from General Grant to “move against Johnston’s army, break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as he could, inflicting all the damages possible on their war resources.” General Johnston had directions to strike the Federal army in the flank, attack it in detail, or do anything that, by a bold and aggressive forward movement, would inspire the people of the Confederacy with yet more patience and more willingness to make still further sacrifices for Southern independence.

As to how many men Johnston and Sherman each had at this particular time, there has been much calculation and superabundance of figuring. General Johnston said that on the 30th of April, up to which time no serious losses had been inflicted upon his forces, he had forty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-six men. Some Federal writers insist that the Confederates had eighty-four thousand.

By the 1st of May, 1864, the roads had dried sufficiently to warrant an earnest advance, and on the 5th of May, General Thomas, under direction of General Sherman, made a movement on Tunnel Hill. On May 7th, the Confederate forces were withdrawn, and then commenced the famous Dalton-Atlanta campaign.

Four miles southwest of Dalton, on the great road from Dalton to Lafayette, a little distance away from Mill Creek Gap and Snake Creek Gap, was Dug Creek Gap, a mere road cut out of the mountain side, and the steeps rising up beside the road provided splendid opportunities to resist those who might undertake to force a passage over the mountain by this narrow precipitous defile. It was not a place to deal much with artillery, but it was a spot where close range or hand-to-hand fighting alone was to settle the conflicts of the day. Oftentimes, the Confederate soldiers had marched through Dug Creek Gap, and in February, preceding Sherman’s advance in May, it had been seized by an Indiana regiment, which held it until the gallant Cleburne drove it away and repossessed it for the Confederacy.

Dug Creek Gap had not been fortified and when, on May 5th, General Sherman began his famous march, it was guarded by a small number of Arkansas troops under Colonel Williamson, numbering not more than two hundred and fifty. General Sherman was constantly and cautiously pushing his way southward. He had three armies, under three skillful and experienced generals: Thomas, with sixty thousand; McPherson, with twenty-four thousand five hundred; and Schofield, with fifteen thousand five hundred. These, like the waves of the sea, were slowly but surely spreading and reaching southward along the highway to Atlanta.

KENTUCKY CAVALRY FIGHTING WITH ROCKS

Starting at Bowling Green, not more than a year before, it had gradually advanced fifty miles into the heart of Georgia, all this while pushing the Confederates before its victorious marches and incessant attacks. It, as yet, had not reached its goal, and more than one hundred thousand men had, by wounds or death, paid the penalty of its fortitude and endurance. Composed largely of men from the West, who were made of stern stuff, the rebel yell had no terror for its legions. When the rebel yell was given, there was always a response, sharp, quick, defiant, which meant, “We are not afraid, and we are ready to grapple with you in deadliest combat.”

On the night of the 7th of May, Grigsby’s brigade, after having been driven through Mill Creek Gap, had gone into camp. The marching, fighting and riding of the day had wearied all its troopers, now so far removed from their Kentucky abodes. As they laid down upon the soil of Georgia, tired and weary, they had visions of their homes, and were reveling through dreamland, in joyous anticipations of some day joining those they loved in the far North. War’s sorrows, its deaths, its dangers, its sufferings were lost in the peace of sleep. These dreams were rudely awakened by the harsh, shrill tones of the bugle. Turning over on their hard beds on the ground, a number of them asleep on rails and brush, they essayed to believe that the call was only a fancy of weary brains and pulled their blankets more tightly about their heads. They tried to hope that the sound of the trumpet was only a delusion and not a real command to rise and ride. They rubbed their eyes and wondered why this untoward night summons.

War, relentless, cruel and pitiless, turned a deaf ear to nature’s pleadings for rest for her exhausted children. Hesitation was only for a moment. The worn animals were quickly saddled, the Kentucky troopers mounted, and out through the darkness of the night they trotted, not knowing whither they were bound. Their commanders had orders that they were to defend Dug Creek Gap, eight miles away, but they kept the secret of their destination hidden in their own hearts.

McPherson, young, brave, vigorous, was leading the Federals; he was hunting for Snake Creek Gap, some miles south and west of Dug Creek. A corps of the Army of the Cumberland were covering these movements and marching forward down the railroad. Hooker was ordered to seize Dug Creek Gap, and then push south, so as to protect McPherson, who, marching west, then south, then east, was to pass through Snake Creek Gap and strike the railroad in the rear of Johnston.

The position at Dug Creek once taken would necessitate an immediate retreat from Dalton, and with this Gap in the mountains held by the Federals, Gen. Johnston’s left flank would be severely exposed.

Before the break of day of the morning of the 8th, scouts of the 9th Kentucky Cavalry had told the story of McPherson’s flank movement and of Hooker’s advance on Dug Creek Gap. To the experienced eyes of the cavaliers of the Kentucky brigade, the large infantry forces being massed along the line left no doubt that serious work was ahead, and that Dug Creek Gap was an important point and the key to the present situation, and for its possession the Federals had begun a vigorous movement.

Across Dug Creek, at the foot of the mountain, the Kentucky cavalry had advanced north and picketed the road against the enemy. Eight hundred Kentucky cavalrymen and two hundred and fifty Arkansas infantry were to hold this now important position. It was a difficult and a dangerous task, but these men in gray felt they were able to answer the summons and hold the defile.

Later, when it was dark (full moon), Granbury’s Texan footmen would come up, but in May, in Georgia, it was a long while from two o’clock in the afternoon until the shades of night should cover the sides of the mountains, and the sun would hide its face behind the western slopes of the eminences through which nature had cut the gap for the passage of man. So strategic had this position become that it was now well settled in the minds of the Confederates that it was one of the doors into Dalton, and these thousand and fifty fighting men were to hold it against four and a half times their number, composing Geary’s division of Hooker’s corps.

The Federal forces seemed impressed with the idea that they would take the Confederates unawares. They had not calculated the sort of stuff that made the men who held the Gap. The Federal signal corps, at the dictation of an assistant adjutant general, flagged General Sherman, “The infantry has just formed and started to attack the Gap. The artillery is in position and I hope to be able to send you word within half an hour or an hour that the Ridge is taken.” General Geary admitted that he was assaulting with forty-five hundred men, four and a half to one, without counting his batteries.

The advance guard and picket line of the Kentuckians that had crossed the creek were slowly but surely driven in. They retired sullenly, and at each favorable opportunity stopped, turned and showed that they were not disposed to run away, and with fierce volleys disputed every inch of ground. The Federals had not supposed that any important force would be there to oppose their march, and when the thin line of skirmishers receded from the advancing wave of blue-coated marchers, they felt that the conflict was practically ended, and that Dug Creek was theirs. Crossing the creek and up the mountain side, the Confederate cavalry retreated, until at last they found their comrades and backers, the remainder of the brigade, awaiting the final grapple on the mountain crest. The gray line was thin, very thin, but what it lacked in numbers, it made up in grit, and now that the limit of retreat was reached, they set about the more serious business of teaching the enemy of what material the defenders were made.

The brave infantry from Arkansas and the chivalrous cavalry from Kentucky stood side by side, and no sooner had the head of the Federal column come within reach of the cavalry Enfields than a hot and incessant fire was poured in upon the advancing line. All through the day, these cavalrymen had been hard at work, but as the shadows of evening were falling, they were less prepared for the vigorous and lusty attack that was now to be made.

Up and up the mountain side came the men clad in blue; above them the weary Southrons, long without food, either for man or beast, were waiting their onslaught. The Confederates had largely the best of the position, and they improved it to the fullest. It soon dawned upon the Federals that, instead of having undertaken an easy task, they had assumed a most arduous work, and that their progress would be resisted with great skill, unyielding tenacity and dauntless persistence.

A sense of danger and strategic instinct had brought General Hardee and General Cleburne to aid, by their counsel and their presence, in the defense of this valuable position. Intently and eagerly they watched the Kentucky cavalry and Arkansas infantry face the superior forces, but it was not their presence that made the fighting spirit of these Confederates rise to the highest plane—it was the fact that they knew they were holding a stronghold of importance and that General Johnston, over at Dalton, was expecting and believing that they would beat back the foe.

Again and again the infantry assaulted the Confederate line, but each time they were driven off with loss. When probably the struggle was more than half over, the ammunition began to grow scarce in the cartridge boxes of the Confederates; in a spirit of more dare-deviltry than intention to do any great damage to their foe, some of the Kentuckians began to hurl stones down the mountain side into the midst of the Federals. It took a few minutes to catch the import of this new style of warfare, but as the great stones began to rush down steep declivities, gathering impelling forces from every foot of descent, tearing the tops of trees and breaking limbs and cutting down saplings, the men on the hill began to take in the effectiveness of these improvised engines of war. It is true, they had no catapults, like the Romans of old, with which to fling them far down the mountain, but they had strong arms, guided by brave and fearless hearts. They caught, with soldierly impulse and sagacity, the effectiveness of this new plan of defence, and stone after stone was seized and sent crashing below, until along the whole line went up the shout, “Throw down the rocks, throw down the rocks,” and a great hail of stones began to fly from the heights and sides of the eminence into and through the ranks of the ascending Federal legions.

General Geary, under whose immediate order the assault was made, in his report, said, “Hand to hand encounters took place, and stones as well as bullets became elements in the combat.”

For a little while, the Federals thought that these stones were cast down by accident, that some soldier by a misstep had turned them loose. But quicker and faster and fiercer fell the stone storm, and with terror they realized that their enemies above them were turning loose these strange emissaries of death, and their souls and hearts were shadowed with a touch of panic at this new method of defending the pass, adopted by their enterprising foes.

With diminishing ammunition, but yet without decreasing courage, the fierce and unequal contest was maintained. Those who had no cartridges threw down the stones. Those who had cartridges sent bullets below to stop the advance of the brave and adventurous assailants.

In a little while, the gloom of night began to brood over the baleful scenes around Dug Creek Gap. As darkness finally set in, the stone-throwing cavalry and infantry heard the rebel yell creeping up the southern mountain side. In their rear, closer and closer, the inspiring voices sounded. They wondered from whence the gladdening sound came, and who were these assailants, from whose vigorous lungs, were speeding messages of help and cheer, and bidding them still longer defy their foes. They heard the tramp of horses, the rush of horsemen, and the cry of battle. And, in a little while, up from the mountain on the southern slope emerged Granbury’s Texan Infantry. These men were born horsemen. They had all their lives ridden across the prairies of Texas, and they were at home in the saddle.

Under orders from General Cleburne and General Hardee, the infantry had been rushed forward to carry encouragement and bring succor to these valiant Kentuckians and Arkansans who, with such superb courage and unlimited patience, were defending the Gap with unfaltering vigor.

As the Texans at double-quick speeded to the scene of the conflict, at the foot of the slope they saw, in charge of the horse holders, the steeds of the cavalry, who had dismounted to go forward on the mountain height to battle. With a wild whoop, the astonished horse holders were commanded to turn their bridles loose, and upon the steeds, waiting now through the long day for their riders to come, at once sprung these sturdy, brave and resolute Texans. Mounted in the saddle once more, they felt war’s delirium and seemed to catch the spirit of the chainless winds that swept across the prairies of their state, and shouting and yelling they galloped forward at a breakneck speed to the succor of their hard-pressed comrades on the mountain top.

For a little while, the dismounted cavalry could not understand the changed situation. They looked upon the animals and knew they were theirs, but they had strange riders, the saddles were filled with soldiers they had never seen before, whose names they could not call, whose regiment they could not distinguish. But the Texans had come for war and, quickly dismounting, they turned over the steeds of the Kentucky men to their rightful but tired owners, and took position in the battle line in Dug Gap to defend its now renowned and blood-stained heights. They had come to succor and to relieve these Kentucky and Arkansas soldiers, who for twenty-four hours had known neither rest nor food. They had come to tell them to go down the mountain side, and in sleep recuperate their wasted and tired energies, while they watched and defended the place now made illustrious by their valor. Granbury’s Texan Brigade came ready to share all the danger of the place and hour, but the assaults were over and the victory had been won ere they had in such startling fashion appeared on the scene. In the darkness of the night, the men who so splendidly and so patiently had stood throughout the day against great odds, to save the destruction of the left flank of General Johnston’s army, marched down into the plain below. They had fought a great fight with the help of their Texas allies. They had set a splendid example of noblest endurance and heroic gallantry. They had given the first notice to General Sherman that the way he was to march would be a path of blood, and that if he won, it would be at a tremendous sacrifice of his best and bravest troops, and that in facing the oft-defeated, but not dejected, Army of the Tennessee, he was to encounter men worthy of any cause and whose defense of their homes and firesides would dot the mountains and valleys of northern Georgia with many thousands of Federal graves, and if he did reach Atlanta, it would only be when his losses would equal even those his soldiers had witnessed at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Perryville, Chickamauga and other fields upon which already fearful sacrifices had been the price of victory. It was a success that declared that the Army of the Tennessee had lost none of its courage and that in the coming seventy days more than sixty thousand Union men, in death or with wounds, should fall by the way, on the road to Atlanta.

The Kentucky brigade and the two hundred and fifty Texans had set the standard. Their comrades would accept the measure. They had outlined the manner of conflict that Sherman’s army must expect. It was to be a series of battles where “Greek would meet Greek,” and there would not be a single mile of the entire distance to Atlanta traversed without the copious shedding of the blood of brave and true men.

Chapter IV
GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER’S RAID INTO
TENNESSEE, FALL OF 1863

General Joseph Wheeler’s raid into Tennessee in October, 1863, has few parallels in cavalry campaigns. Removed from the excitement and delirium of war, many of its happenings appear incredible, and were it not for official reports of both sides, the account of it when read would be declared unbelievable, and deemed the result of highly wrought imaginings, or the Munchausen stories of some knight errant, whose deeds could not measure up to the creations of his ambitious fancy.

Half a century between these occurrences and their narration only increases our wonder and admiration at the exploits of these courageous horsemen, who seemed to have known neither fatigue nor fear in the pursuit and punishment of their country’s foes. Viewed from either a strategic point, or considered in relation to the losses inflicted upon those who opposed them, this raid stands out in military history as one of the wonders of war, and assigns its masterful leader and its no less masterful men a very high place among the world’s cavalry heroes. Hard riders, fierce fighters, insensible to fear, they hesitated at no undertaking assigned them, and they never questioned, but were glad to go where their gallant leader bade them march.

Wheeler, himself, seemed immune from death. Engaged in two hundred battles and in six hundred skirmishes or smaller conflicts, he escaped injury. Like Forrest, he led wherever he was present, and he never hesitated to charge any line or assail any force that came his way.

A partisan cavalry leader can never know fear or doubt. His chiefest hope of success is based on the surprise of his foes, and quick, reckless dash and bold onslaughts make up oftentimes for lack of numbers. A soldier, who at twenty-five years of age had risen to be a brigadier general, at twenty-six, a major general and commander of a corps, and a lieutenant general at twenty-eight, and achieved such great success and renown as General Wheeler, could neither be the product of favoritism nor the output of accidental promotion. Behind such rapid advancement, there must have been magnificent genius, coupled with the fullest improvement of every opportunity that crossed his path. He had no real failure in his career. Victory after victory came to him as if sent by a biased fate; and a calm review of his life by a just and impartial critic must force to the conclusion that he was one of the most remarkable men of the wonderful period in which he acted.

The Battle of Chickamauga, one of the fiercest of the great conflicts of the war, was marked by an unyielding courage, a sullen and intense obstinacy on both sides. That engagement again proclaimed the determination of both sides to fight out the issues which the war involved, until one or both antagonists, in the awful destruction of men and resources, should be unable to longer continue the struggle. The results, beyond the immediate relief from pressing invasion, certainly did not compensate the Confederate armies for the dreadful loss Chickamauga involved. Whether the Confederate leaders thoroughly improved the partial advantages gained will remain an open question, but the outcome imposed upon the Confederate cavalry new and greater labors, which all history will declare were met with a courage and enterprise, which added new laurels to their hitherto nobly earned fame.

With Chattanooga still in possession, and with the Tennessee River behind them, the Federal armies now were to face one of war’s most dreadful foes. Hunger is a most potent general that no antagonist chieftain can ignore. Supplies for the Federal armies were to reach them either by the Tennessee River, or by the wagon trains starting from points on the railroad, operated from the territory north in Tennessee, and against these slow and tedious methods of feeding an army, the Confederate cavalry were now turned loose, to burn, scatter and destroy.

General Wheeler was given the entire command of the Southern horsemen operating in this territory. Barely twenty-seven years of age, wisely or unwisely, he was given prominence over Forrest and other cavalry leaders, who had on many fields demonstrated dazzling genius and exhibited sublime courage. Brave and patriotic as were the armies of the Tennessee Department, yet as always where human ambitions and services are involved, jealousy is bound to arise, and no sixty thousand men can be aligned under a flag for any cause, where some differences will not occur and where in leadership and assignments some animosities will not arise. Some men are born to lead and some to follow, and neither in Virginia, Tennessee, nor in the farther West were the soldiers of the Confederacy exempt from those ills that ever attend army organizations. This was somewhat intensified in the army of Tennessee, which by the summer of 1863 had developed three great cavalry leaders, Wheeler, Morgan and Forrest. General Wheeler’s youth made against him in the consolidation of the cavalry by General Bragg. His real virtues were obscured by the suggestion that his almost unparalleled advance over the older men was the result of official partiality, and not the just outcome of military skill and his achievements. For a long while, this unfortunate condition hampered both Generals Forrest and Wheeler. General Bragg saw the solution of this most serious problem later and removed it so far as he could, but there are those who think he unduly delayed action in so critical a period and where transcendent opportunities were at hand. With such a leader as General Forrest, at the time of the October raid (which was led by General Wheeler), also turned upon the enemy’s line of communication, it appeared to the men of that time that only one result could have come to Rosecrans’ army, and that would have been practical starvation and annihilation.

These personal differences were at the most acute stage when General Wheeler was assigned a difficult and almost impossible task. It is but fair to General Wheeler to say that, under these trying circumstances, he acquitted himself with most commendable modesty and delicate tact and, except in so far as he was required by unpleasant orders, he did nothing to add to the seriousness of the complications then existing. He was to accomplish a Herculean task, one involving supreme risks to his own command and to General Bragg’s entire army. The capture of General Wheeler’s cavalry at that time meant calamitous results to the cause of the Confederacy,—reckless courage, untiring work and supreme daring, with quickest perception and thorough comprehension of surrounding conditions, made the call upon the young general such as had never come to a man of his age before.

The events succeeding the Battle of Chickamauga had placed upon all the cavalry, under General Bragg, demands that were wellnigh insupportable and which involved personal privations and soldierly effort, which few men could endure. Both men and beasts had felt the burden of these tremendous exactions during this brief but important period. Less than two weeks had elapsed since that great engagement, and from the horror of its closing scenes the cavalry, led by Generals Forrest and Wheeler, had known neither rest nor release from diligent and vigilant service.

Horses, unshod and broken down, driven to the limit of endurance; men, illy fed and emaciated by the demand of those horrible hours, were allowed no season of quiet, so necessary for physical recuperation. Pity for their beasts, rendered dear to them by common sacrifice and common danger, had a depressing effect upon the minds of even those brave soldiers, now well trained to the difficulties which war brings to every brave soul.

It was under these circumstances that General Bragg called upon General Wheeler to cross the Tennessee and destroy the wagon trains, which in long white lines dotted every road north of Chattanooga and upon which, for food and ammunition, the Union forces were compelled to rely. Calling his subordinates, and explaining to them the work that General Bragg had mapped out, almost without exception they pleaded for mercy to man and beast and for a brief season of rest before such arduous and difficult tasks were assumed. Not a few declared that it was impossible to meet such demands and that to require such service, under existing circumstances, was not only unwise but inhumane.

One of General Wheeler’s marked characteristics was absolute obedience to orders, and he never permitted anything short of the impossible to prevent their fulfillment. The quick answer to all these objections was a general order to his command to prepare for the raid and to cross the Tennessee River at once. In the early dawn, with less than two thousand men, he forced a passage of the river at Cottonport, thirty miles east of Chattanooga, in the face of a force twice as large as his own, and with such vigor did he press the enemy, who stood in his pathway, that he captured more than a hundred prisoners and brushed them aside from his chosen line, as the wind drives straw from its path.

Before the shades of night came on, two brigades under peremptory orders joined him. They promptly followed in the path that he had opened, and now, with three thousand eight hundred jaded horses and tired men and a limited supply of ammunition, he stood alone, defying a great army both in his rear and his front, and with a mighty river flowing between him and his supports and comrades.

No soldier heart ever faced more difficult conditions or assumed greater responsibility, and none ever met them with calmer courage or more cheerful complacence. His men measured up to the demand of their leader. In the past they had always taken care of themselves when beset by enemies and danger, and now, under the valiant leadership of General Wheeler, sustained by their indomitable will and unfailing gallantry, they believed that in the end all would be well.

WHEELER BURNING FEDERAL WAGON TRAINS, SEQUATCHIE VALLEY, JULY, 1862

If there were hesitation and doubt, these were immediately flung to the winds. There was no time to scan the darkening horizon. Gloomy enough was the outlook if they listened to fear, but fear these gallant men had never known. Some spoke of disaster, but the orders of their superior stood out before the mind, and misgivings were quickly drowned by the prospect of vigorous action. The brave man, seeing danger, braces himself to face it and with resourceful powers lays his plans to avoid it. General Wheeler’s pessimistic advisers pointed out the consequences of failure and gave expression to their serious fears of the result of so hazardous and so uncertain a movement. Caution suggested to turn back while the way was open, but General Roddy, with his brigade, had crossed the river some miles below, and if all the enemy should concentrate upon him, they would annihilate his command. The cavalry leaders of the Confederacy were always faithful in the succor of their comrades, and no danger could deter them from going to the help of those who were sorely pressed. Stuart, Morgan, Forrest, Wheeler, Marmaduke, Shelby and Hampton never forgot this cardinal principle of cavalry faith; and Wheeler declared that he would not desert Roddy in this emergency because of any risk that was open before his vision, and bidding fears begone, he ordered a forward march through darkness of the night in a drenching rain. He had encountered a Federal regiment of cavalry and, pushing these aside, the appetites of his men, like tigers tasting blood, were whetted for still fiercer work. On the morning of October 2nd, hours before daylight came, he started out in search of richest prey. One hour’s ride revealed the presence of thirty-two wagons and two hundred mules and horses. There was nothing General Wheeler’s command needed more than horses, and those welcome additions to his mounts were to his troopers sure omen of greater victories. This capture was concluded before the full orb of day had come to cheer the victorious marchers. As the sun in glory rose over the mountain tops, from a lofty elevation, there burst upon the view of Wheeler and his followers a panorama of beauty and joy. Twelve hundred wagons, with their covers whitened as snow, spread like a gleam of silver down through the valley and across the hillsides and over the mountain ridges, were crawling along the highway, laden with supplies of the most tempting kind and weighted down with ammunition, designed to take the lives of the men in gray, brothers of Wheeler’s followers, who across the Tennessee were holding in check the Federal army invading the Southland.

To many starving men, with but scant supplies in their cartridge boxes, and still scanter in their haversacks, and now already aware of the but short delayed breaking down of the steeds they were astride, this scene presented an enrapturing vision.