The Real Horse Soldiers

by Timothy B Smith

  Heavy rains had saturated the region over the past few days, and the “rushing of the turbulent flood” increased as the Federal troopers approached the river. When the water came into view that morning, it was obvious the river was at flood stage and flowing rapidly. The Pearl was “very high and unfordable,” concluded Grierson. The Union commander dispatched scouts to collect information, and before long Surby came upon “an old gentleman” named George P. Woodward, who confessed that a few locals, including his son, were planning to burn the bridge upon word of the enemy’s arrival. Though genial and kind by nature, Surby could be harsh when necessary. The news convinced the scout that a different approach was needed, so he threatened to burn down the old man’s house if he did not disband the group intent on destroying the bridge. “My object,” explained Surby, “was to save life if possible, the bridge at all hazards.” Woodward saw the wisdom in cooperating and convinced the defenders of the bridge to leave. The Union scouts moved ahead at a gallop, with Colonel Prince of the 7th Illinois Cavalry accompanying them and the balance of his troopers charging behind them. To everyone’s delight, the bridge was intact and the few Southerners visible were fleeing as fast as they could get away. It was a close-run affair, because the men had already stripped a few planks off the structure and were preparing kindling to set fire to the bridge. The Federals were on them “so suddenly and unexpectedly that their well-laid plan was disconcerted, and they all fled without firing a shot or lighting the incendiary match,” Grierson proudly reported. Several troopers dismounted and replaced the planks so the column could cross the river and its soggy valley. Grierson was overjoyed when he heard “the tread of the horses feet . . . as the command crossed to the south side of the swollen river.” Everyone involved knew they had come within a hair’s breadth of potential catastrophe. Just “a few minutes delay or hesitation would have cost us trouble, and that delay might have proved fatal to the success of the expedition,” he confessed. As fate would have it, the Pearl was the last major obstacle standing between Grierson and the Southern Railroad of Mississippi.37

  Grierson, to his wife’s chagrin, was not a religious man, although others riding with him attributed their success to God. “Here the shielding Providence of God was manifested,” exclaimed Colonel Prince, who agreed with Grierson on the importance of what had just been achieved when he added, “If the bridge had been destroyed it would have been fatal to the expedition.” Another man described the crossing of the bridge even more pointedly. “Ten minutes later and all would have been lost. But for hours and days back minutes of grace had been, by God’s care, accumulating for their rescue. It is a solemn thought, and one which those brave troops did not forget to hold in devout recognition,” he continued, “that at any time in the whole course of their six days’ marchings, haltings, and startings, a few minutes’ tardiness on the part of a commander, a few moments’ delay with a restive horse, a few minutes’ lingering on a tedious ascent, would have brought them too late to the Pearl River bridge, and have made to all of them the difference between life and death.” Although he never wrote about it, Rev. Capt. Jason Smith, the commander of the Illinois battery riding with Grierson, surely said a prayer of thanks.38

  Securing the bridge over the Pearl River turned out to be much less trouble than Grierson had feared it might be. Riding through the town of Philadelphia just south of the river, however, proved more troublesome. “Our advance caught sight occasionally of a mounted rebel,” confirmed Grierson, and the frequency of such sightings increased the closer the Federals came to town. “Finally,” continued Grierson, “quite a number of mounted and dismounted men were observed stretched in line across the road, apparently in readiness to dispute our passage.” The last thing he wanted was a pitched fight with what looked to be a Confederate force this far from the railroad, but it looked increasingly like he would have no choice. Grierson sent his scouts, along with several regular troopers, forward to test the enemy line. To his surprise and thanks, it dissolved after a few of the enemy fired a handful of wild shots. Riding hard and fast, the scouts captured six of the defenders and their horses. The men were not Confederate soldiers after all, but simply armed citizens of Philadelphia.39

  The leader of the ragtag defenders was an older man who served as a Neshoba County judge, “under whose fatherly lead it seemed his citizen neighbors had armed for resistance,” reported Grierson. “He was no doubt a very worthy man, and one who would naturally be looked to for advice in an emergency, but he was decidedly out of his element in command of those would-be soldiers.” The “misguided” citizens of Philadelphia were “greatly agitated and alarmed” because they believed the Federals were going to either shoot or hang them. Grierson quieted their fears, “good-humoredly” explaining they were not there to tamper with civilians, only regular Confederate forces. When one Philadelphian asked if he was going to burn the town, Grierson peered at the dilapidated courthouse and other buildings, smiled, and sheepishly replied, “No Sir. My orders are not to leave the countryside better off.” Additional conversation ensued, an informal parole administered, and the men were turned loose, “a wiser if not better lot of men.” Surby recalled the odd scene of the Mississippians “standing in line with arms extended perpendicular, and Colonel Prince swearing them not to give any information for a certain length of time.”40

  Grierson bid his captives goodbye and moved through Philadelphia, where, he reported, “nothing was disturbed.” There might have been good intelligence to be had or supplies in town waiting to be found, but the Federal leader did not have the time to question civilians or locate and destroy things of military value. He had to keep riding south. “We moved through Philadelphia about 3 p. m. without interruption,” he reported. Concerned his column might be discovered and confronted with a credible enemy force, he kept Surby’s scouts “well out in every direction with a view to prevent any information as to our whereabouts or movements reaching the enemy.”41

  Night was only a few hours off by the time the tail of the column exited the town. Grierson pushed on another five miles, angling southeast toward Meridian to give any watching Confederates the impression his objective lay in that direction. Once well away, he called a halt to feed his mounts and take stock of the situation. Usually the horses were fed when the column stopped to camp for the night, and where they had stopped was a logical place to camp. The regiments had already covered about 25 miles that day, but this night was different. When darkness arrived, observant troopers who were surprised with the order to stop earlier than usual to feed the mounts began to realize they would not make camp at all that night. Grierson was only stopping to feed his horses and rest the men for a couple of hours before taking to the saddle once more.42

  ***

  While Grierson continued south at a rapid pace, he took care to cover his flanks and confuse the enemy. Before arriving at Louisville, he had sent an entire company west toward the Mobile and Ohio Railroad at Macon, south of the West Point–Starkville–Columbus area and north of Meridian. It was the same area he had directed Colonel Hatch to ride toward with his Iowans, although he had no way of knowing Hatch had actually retreated northward. Perhaps Grierson intended to mass a large number of Federal raiders at the small Mississippi town as a further distraction for the Confederates. If Hatch had failed to reach the railroad near Macon, pushing a company in that direction offered another opportunity to damage the line. Grierson talked over the plan with his officers, all of whom agreed it was dangerous but necessary.43

  According to one Federal, “The detachment to be thrown against this road was used as a forlorn hope, and was expected to be thrown away.” Grierson’s actions lend some credence to this claim because he asked for volunteers rather than select the men himself. A couple of scouts stepped forward, but they changed their minds once they had time to think about it. Grierson next asked Colonel Prince of the 7th Illinois Cavalry to “pick” the volunteers. The selection fell upon Capt. Henry C. Forbes’s Company B when P
rince “dropped back to what chanced to be for the day’s march his rear Co.” When the colonel asked the captain if he would undertake the dangerous journey, Forbes agreed—despite Prince’s being unable to tell him much about what he would find or how to get back to the main column. Prince “could give him no intimation of the course the regiments would take, but that it seemed to him highly probable that after they had crossed the Vicksburg road they [Grierson’s column] would swing eastward into Alabama, and through it retreat northward to the Federal lines.”44

  Henry C. Forbes. As commander of Company B, 7th Illinois Cavalry, Captain Henry C. Forbes led his company on a raid within the raid, making a miraculous journey and escape. University of Illinois

  Company B was a solid outfit. Under Forbes’s leadership, the 30-plus troopers had become a brotherly unit. Forbes often acted as a father figure and even paid for supplies out of his own pocket. His younger brother, Stephen, was also a member of the company. One family member described the pair as “the one, a dashing, sagacious captain of thirty; the other, an impulsive, loyal corporal of nineteen.” Ironically, the Forbes brothers also had a cousin who lived in Mississippi and fought for the Confederacy with the Jeff Davis Legion in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.45

  Stephen, the younger of the Forbes, was a good soldier with a poetic bent. In a letter home, he used colorful prose to describe the April weather. “The woods are green and the sun bright, the sky blue and the birds musical, the peach trees are covered with young fruit, the thunderstorms are getting quite fashionable, and everything bears evidence of the unmistakable presence of spring. Perhaps it seems a little strange to you,” he added, “that we should think anything about pleasant weather, we, who have come down here to kill our fellows and carry distress to families, to dislocate the country and destroy life by wholesale.” There was no glory in war, he confided to his sister. “If you only knew what a commonplace matter it was to be a soldier . . . we are not at all anxious for a battle . . . what a miserable dressing for a shattered bone or a gunshot wound glory makes! In short,” he continued, “for all of the untold honor that is to descend unto our cherished names for unnumbered generations is we shed our blood for our country, it hurts like the deuce to be shot.” Stephen went on to describe how he dreamed of “myself riding boldly over the hills and coming suddenly upon the enemy and blazing away at them with my revolver, when at least three men were to tumble down.” He also dreamed of “blood running down from my left shoulder, never my right; when, after a few days of graceful bandaging, I would be alright and eager for another one, and have the honor of carrying rebel lead in my body to the grave.”46

  The dreamy youth at the beginning of the war was, by 1863, a grizzled veteran who knew better. Stephen had been captured in the 1862 fighting around Corinth and had spent four months in a Confederate prison before spending a similar stretch in a hospital. In an odd twist of fate, the enemy had shipped him south to a Confederate prison along the same railroad he was now riding toward on horseback, and he had stopped in the same town of Macon that was now the target of his detachment.47

  Henry Forbes was older, wiser, and more down-to-earth than his artsy younger brother. The realist in him was soon on full display. Before he led his company away from the main column, Forbes pulled a few troopers of questionable health out of the ranks. He also asked that his men detailed to ride and scout with Surby—William Buffington, Arthur Wood, and Isaac Robinson—be returned so they could perform similar duties for his own small column. It did not take long for some of the men to wonder what they were getting into, or, as one would put it, whether “this little band would ever rejoin their comrades, unless, indeed, in a Confederate prison.” Captain Forbes put it a different way, writing simply, “A soldier accepts every challenge to duty.” And so the 36 troopers of Company B rode east with orders from Grierson to, “if possible take the town, destroy the railroad and telegraph, and rejoin us.”48

  Stephen A. Forbes. The younger brother of Captain Henry C. Forbes, Stephen A. Forbes revisited places he knew well from his earlier stint as a prisoner of war in Mississippi. University of Illinois

  The small Federal company rode southeast and soon came upon one of the consequences of the raid into Mississippi. Behind and on either side of the main column was a mad rush of civilians desperately trying to move out of the reach of the roaming Federal cavalry. “We had not been long on our route before we were made ludicrously aware of the tremendous panic which the raid was causing in these parts,” explained Captain Forbes. Much like a boat creating a wake through otherwise calm water, Grierson’s raid had caused a wave of panic all along the route. Gossip and rumors inflated Federal numbers into the thousands, and the kind treatment meted out along the route evolved and spread into stories of harsh treatment. “The whole region was terrorized,” observed Forbes. The Illinois troopers were shocked they had caused such an uproar, because so little alarm had been raised along the main route. After some effort, Company B reached the front of the human wave and overtook it, where, explained the captain, “We found ourselves in the midst of the left hand crest of the panic-stricken overflow from the main march, a stampede wh[ich], as we afterwards learned extended 20 to 30 miles in either direction. As our march cut through this crest diagonally,” he continued, “near evening we got outside it and approached Macon.”49

  The key question facing Forbes was whether Macon had been alerted to their approach and then garrisoned. He questioned several local slaves but found them unreliable. “They were exceedingly gullible: they always preferred the biggest story,” he explained, and “if the negro could divine what he thought his questioner would wish to hear, he would often say it, although he had to manufacture his statement out of whole cloth.” Forbes called a halt at “Madame Augustus’ plantation” a couple of miles outside Macon and sent scouts ahead to find out the truth. They returned a few hours later with a prisoner, John Bryson. Unfortunately, as Forbes explained it, Bryson “had that most difficult virtue to contend with, a nice sense of honor. He refused to give information.” What happened next is unclear, but Forbes confirmed that “much diplomacy was finally rewarded” with news that a train was expected any minute with troops. The intelligence was supported by a report from the scouts who had heard locomotive whistles. A scout dressed in a Confederate uniform and sent into town returned with confirmation of the news. Forbes wisely decided to bypass Macon, which he considered “too large a prize to be captured by 36 men.”50

  Forbes may have failed in taking Macon, but he succeeded in other ways. Exaggerated rumors of his strength increased the value of his diversionary side raid, and the people who had gathered in Macon were not motivated to march out and stop them. “This is a good example of an instance in which the shadow is more important than the substance,” Forbes concluded. Meanwhile, he continued, “We had accomplished what we were sent for: we kept all eyes on the Mobile and Ohio Road.”51

  Knowing he had nothing left to accomplish, Forbes released Bryson and gave him “a good horse and . . . a poor pistol,” a gesture that prompted the Confederate to part “with many expressions of esteem. . . . He had seen the Yankee Devils at close range and they were not so black as common report had painted them.” Forbes turned Company B around and rode back toward the main column.52

  The troopers of Company B trotted through the night and the following day in an effort to link up with Grierson, passing through the small hamlets of Summerville, Gholson, Pleasant Springs, and Caffadelia in their effort to do so. At Summerville, the small column was taken by surprise when “an ovation from an entire female Seminary, whose lovely members had been temporarily released from their tasks to give us joyful greeting . . . fluttered their dainty kerchiefs and kissed their daintier finger tips to us.” As the amazed troopers later learned, the scouts riding ahead of the column “had lied to them, making them suppose us a company of Alabamians in pursuit of the horrid Yankees.” A military school for boys in Summerville repeated the mistake when the cade
ts stepped outside to cheer the passing riders. One overly excited youngster dressed in his uniform performed “a series of hand springs which he turned on the grass.” The ruse was soon discovered, however, and the inhabitants realized the riders were Yankees. Once that knowledge sank in, the animated gymnast “strutted away rigid as an icicle,” penned one eyewitness, “with the rankling consciousness nevermore to be dismissed, that . . . [he] had been turning somersaults of joy in honor of [the] invaders, who, as he slipped behind a hedge, were roaring with irrepressible laughter.”53

  A similar occurrence unfolded at Gholson, where a fine old gentleman offered everything he had to the supposed Confederates. The man “gloated over the thought that we had the courage to march toward those execrable Yankees whom report placed to the south and west of us in immense numbers,” wrote Forbes, “and when we told him that if we could but overtake them we would go through them from end to end if we perished to a man, his ardor knew no bounds.” As it had in Summerville, the realization that all was not as it appeared soon dawned on the residents of Gholson, and a proffered supper was enjoyed “with some lack of hospitality, [although] it was eaten with a relish that did not need that fine sauce.” The Federals, wrote Forbes, left the old man “a sadder, a wiser and a madder man.”54