Company B picked up Grierson’s trail at Philadelphia, which the main column had ridden through 21 hours earlier. The troopers also came upon “a large number of horses tied near the old-fashioned hotel.” Forbes ordered his men to surround the building and learned the citizens were forming a company to resist more enemy raids. “To a man and to a horse and to a shot-gun they were made prisoners,” confirmed Forbes, who added that the Federals “sat down to their dinner which was just being spread as we appeared on the scene.” He and his men also engaged in “some one-sided swapping of horses, but we left as good as we took, save that ours were less fresh.”55
Matters took a more serious turn just south of Philadelphia, where the three scouts from the company who had not heard the bugle call to halt had ridden on and met up at a house with straggling Confederate soldiers. The suspicious Southerners accused the scouts of being spies. The accusation triggered an argument that escalated until shots rang out. Forbes’s men heard the firing and set their spurs, but they were too late to affect the outcome. When they arrived at the scene, scout William Buffington was “dead on his back in the middle of the road” and a wounded Charles E. Martin and the third companion were found hiding nearby in the woods. “We left our dead soldier stretched on a Southern porch, under solemn promise from the householder that he would decently bury him,” one Federal reported. The troopers of Company B rode away despondent, “not merely because we had lost a comrade,” explained Stephen Forbes, “but because the men who had killed him were ahead of us and now knew who and what we were.” The fear of an ambush was “in all our minds as we rode that day through the thickety woods, scanning every cover and watchful of every turn in the road.”56
***
Grierson and the main column, meanwhile, had made decent time while Forbes and Company B sidetracked to Macon. The Federal commander remained concerned about Forbes’s ability to reach the town and cut the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. When the main column passed through Louisville, Grierson decided to send yet another detachment east to Macon to sever the railroad or at least cut the telegraph lines running along it. As he later explained, he worried that Forbes “might not be able to reach the line of the railroad with so large a force.” This time Grierson dispatched a pair of volunteers to make the trip: Capt. John Lynch of Company E, 6th Illinois Cavalry, and a trooper, Cpl. Jonathan W. Ballard. Lynch and Ballard dressed in civilian attire before splitting off from the main column, focused on cutting the telegraph wires “to prevent information of our presence from flying along the railroad to Jackson and other points.” After a long ride Lynch and Ballard came up against the same obstacle Forbes’s small command had encountered, namely, Confederate forces. The pair managed to make it to the outskirts of town where, Grierson later reported, they “ascertained the whole disposition of their forces and much other valuable information.”57
Lynch kept a cool head when he ran into Confederates already agitated at the news of Forbes’s approach from the north. The enemy was contemplating mounting infantry on mules to give chase. Rumors ran wild about Federal numbers, with one Confederate insisting Forbes’s 36 men numbered closer to 4,000. After Lynch told the Southerners he had been sent from Enterprise to locate and scout the Federals, a talkative Confederate told him all about his own command around Macon and that the enemy was near the town, just to the north and within a couple of miles. The news was especially welcome because, as Grierson later observed, Lynch was “at once made aware of the movement of Captain Forbes’s command.” With that valuable information in hand, Lynch told the men that he had to ride back a couple of miles to get two men he had left at a plantation, and he would return with them to camp with the Confederate pickets that night. “The guards thought it alright and allowed him to depart,” Grierson reported, adding, “Of course, they were not troubled by another visit from the captain, who made good his escape.” Lynch and Ballard rode hard to rejoin the main column on the road to Newton Station. Incredibly, they covered nearly 200 miles in just two days.58
By this point Grierson had detachments riding in almost every direction across much of Mississippi. He had earlier sent a lone scout west to the Mississippi Central and Major Love’s battalion back north. Colonel Hatch’s regiment, meanwhile, was busy luring Confederates north toward Tupelo. Detachments under Captains Lynch and Forbes were moving east toward the Mobile and Ohio, and small numbers of troopers had been dispatched to gather horses and mules to remount troopers whose own animals had broken down during the unrelenting journey. Grierson and the main column, meanwhile, were still riding south.
In addition to the military aspects of the raid, the deep ride through Mississippi exposed the Illinoisans and Iowans to a heavy dose of Mississippi culture and society, including the institution of slavery. Every plantation along the state’s meager interior road system allowed the Federals to set eyes on the practice held in such contempt by so many Northerners, including Republican Benjamin Grierson. A few slaves found the opportunity for freedom too powerful to resist and followed the column “of their own accord,” recalled an Illinois trooper. Many of Grierson’s troopers hailed from the Democrat-stronghold southern counties of Illinois, however, and may not have viewed slavery with the same critical eye Grierson did.59
Most of the slaves were fearful of the Federals because, like many of the white children in Mississippi, they had been told the “hated Yankees [were a] kind of beast, had horns, hooves and claws; were like the devil and would eat people up, would run the blacks off to Cuba and sell them, etc.,” explained Grierson. Some believed the lies, but Grierson had the distinct idea that the slaves let their white masters try to scare them but believed very little of it. “Among themselves,” he elaborated, “they imagined God was sending the Yankees, like angels, on purpose to make them free.” The arrival of the God-sent angels, however, added another layer of complexity to their already difficult lives. The slaves were happy to see the Federal troops, but they could not openly express their joy for fear of repercussions from their white owners. Grierson noticed this fear and later wrote, “Not a word could be pumped out of them in the presence of their masters. But out of sight of the manor house, from under bushes or logs or fence corners or tall weeds or swamp grass, a wooly head and shambling figure would crawl slowly out, look carefully about, and then tell with grinning lips or point with dusky finger ‘whar massa’s horses done be hid,’ or ‘whar spec de secesh soldiers is.’” And, when it was safe to do so, they would also inquire, “When are you uns gwine to make we uns free?”60
***
Grierson was doing all he could to keep the enemy off balance by dispatching diversionary detachments, but the ultimate success of the raid depended on his main column. He had to keep moving toward his objective. Word spread among the companies stopped south of Philadelphia that Grierson intended to push on to the Southern Railroad of Mississippi, now only a little more than 20 miles to the south. Like he had the day before, Grierson sent troopers ahead to surprise any enemy at Newton Station while the remainder of the brigade approached the town behind them. At an officers’ council, Lieutenant Colonel Blackburn of the 7th Illinois Cavalry offered to take the advance and Grierson agreed, sending him with two battalions to “capture the place and to inflict all the damage possible upon the enemy.” Blackburn’s command thundered down the road toward Decatur at 10:00 p.m. The 7th Illinois’s remaining battalion, together with the 6th Illinois Cavalry and Smith’s battery of small guns, rested an hour longer before mounting up and riding off around 11:00 p.m.61
For the second day in a row, Grierson refused to allow his men a full night of rest. The troopers had enjoyed only a few hours out of the saddle the night before at the Estes place, halting about midnight and marching once more about 5:00 a.m., with all the attendant duties of feeding and caring for the horses and themselves sandwiched into those five hours. This second night would be even more arduous, with even less time for rest and recuperation.62
Grierson had a couple of good reas
ons for pushing his men so hard. First, he was so close to the target of his raid that he could not take the chance of any word of his pending arrival reaching Newton Station before he and his men arrived. Grierson knew the Confederates could use the railroad and telegraph to concentrate more troops at Newton than he had in his entire command before the Federal column could cover the last 20 miles to the rail line. If he arrived and Newton Station was well defended, one of the main objectives of the dangerous campaign would go unfulfilled. Getting the entire column out of Mississippi safely at that late date would be doubly difficult.63
The second reason Grierson pressed so hard was that, if surprise could be achieved, he wanted to enter Newton at the best possible time of day, which was about daylight. The tactic of surprising your enemy around dawn had been around since the beginning of warfare. Johnston had attacked Grant at Shiloh under similar circumstances earlier in the war, and the Japanese would strike America at Pearl Harbor 78 years later in the same manner. Reaching Newton at daylight required an approach under the cover of darkness, with the first glow of dawn providing just enough light to see where and how to attack. It would also catch many of the enemy sound asleep.64
Grierson and his men had ridden nearly 80 miles in just 48 hours—50 miles in the last 24 hours alone. These difficult miles included crossing three major waterways. It would be worth the effort if everything went according to plan. If Grierson could reach the railroad before the enemy concentrated there against him, he could inflict the significant damage and chaos he had been dispatched to achieve.
1OR 24, pt. 3, 770.
2Ibid., 761, 770, 776-78.
3Ibid..
4Ibid., 779.
5Ibid., pt. 1, 535, 552; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, vol. 2, 197.
6Ibid., pt. 1, 535, 552; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, vol. 2, 197.
7OR 24, pt. 1, 535-36.
8Ibid., 523-24.
9Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 51; Grabau, Ninety-Eight Days, 114; Company C, 2nd Iowa Cavalry, Muster Roll, RG 94, E 57, NARA.
10OR 24, pt. 1, 530.
11Ibid., 531; Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 52; “The Enemy in Starkville,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, April 21, 1863; Joe Rollins, “Ex-Slave Autobiography,” in West Point, Mississippi, Miscellaneous Papers, Mississippi State University.
12OR 24, pt. 1, 531; Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 52; “The Enemy in Starkville,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, April 21, 1863.
13OR 24, pt. 1, 530-31.
14Ibid., 530.
15Ibid., 530, 554.
16Ibid., 530.
17Ibid., 523-24.
18Ibid., 523-24; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 692; Surby, Grierson Raids, 34; Daniel E. Robbins to Brother, May 7, 1863.
19Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 693-94.
20OR 24, pt. 1, 524.
21Ibid., 523-24.
22Ibid., 524.
23Ibid.
24“The Day the Yankees Came to Town: 1863,” Winston County Journal, May 1, 2014.
25Jennie Newson Hoffman, “A History of Winston County Volume 1,” in Federal Writer’s Project: Works Progress Administration, 1938, Winston County Public Library, 146-47.
26Ibid., 83, 159; William T. Lewis, The Centennial History of Winston County, Mississippi (Pasadena, TX: Globe Publishers, 1972), 107-9; Josie Worthy Holman, in Accounts, Civil War in Winston County Vertical File, Winston County Public Library, 5; Hoffman, “A History of Winston County Volume 1,” 150.
27OR 24, pt. 1, 524.
28Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 156.
29Ibid.; Surby, Grierson Raids, 33, 35.
30Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 691; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 156.
31OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 156; Abbott, “Heroic Deeds of Heroic Men,” 276-77; Surby, Grierson Raids, 40; Partridge, “Grierson Raided Here 130 Years Ago”; “Details of Grierson’s Great Raid,” Sacramento Daily Union, June 10, 1863; “From New Orleans,” n.d., in Thomas W. Lippincott Papers, ALPL.
321860 Winston County, Mississippi, Population and Slave Schedules; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, vol. 2, 203; Louis Taunton and Nancy R. Parkes, Winston County and Its People: A Collection of Family Histories (Louisville, MS: Winston County Genealogical and Historical Society, 1980), 79-81.
33Freyburger, Letters to Ann, 46.
34Partridge, “Grierson Raided Here 130 Years Ago.”
35Surby, Grierson Raids, 37.
36OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 156-57; Abbott, “Heroic Deeds of Heroic Men,” 277; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 695; Surby, Grierson Raids, 36; Pearl Valley Location, Historic Neshoba County Maps, Neshoba County Public Library; Reece, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, vol. 8, 54; Partridge, “Grierson Raided Here 130 Years Ago”; “The Great Cavalry Exploit of the Times,” New Orleans Era, May 5, 1863.
37OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 156-57; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 695-96; “Museum Memories,” Neshoba Democrat, April 24, 2013; Surby, Grierson Raids, 38; Jenelle B. Yates and Theresa T. Ridout, Red Clay Hills of Neshoba: Since 1833: Roots—Reflections—Ramblings: The Early History of Neshoba County, Mississippi (Philadelphia, MS: Neshoba County Historical Society, 1992), 223.
38“The Grierson Raid,” Weekly Register (Canton, IL), September 7, 1863; Abbott, “Heroic Deeds of Heroic Men,” 277.
39Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 157.
40Ibid.; Surby, Grierson Raids, 39; Steven H. Stubbs, Neshoba at War: The Story of the Men and Women of Neshoba County in World War II (Philadelphia: Dancing Rabbit Press, 2003), 10-11.
41OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 157-58.
42OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 696.
43William D. Lyles to Daniel Ruggles, April 22, 1863, in John J. Pettus Correspondence, MDAH; OR 24, pt. 1, 528; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 164; Surby, Grierson Raids, 31.
44Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 13-14; Abbott, “Heroic Deeds of Heroic Men,” 274; “From New Orleans,” n.d., Thomas W. Lippincott Papers, ALPL. For more on Henry C. Forbes and his poetry, see the Henry Clinton Forbes Collection, University of Arizona.
45Forbes Edited Letters, 1863, in Stephen A. Forbes Papers, UI, 203; Brown, Grierson’s Raid, 79-80; J. B. Forbes to S. A. Forbes, November 27, 1908, in Stephen A. Forbes Papers, UI.
46S. A. Forbes to Sister, April 13, 1863.
47Roth, “Grierson’s Raid,” 18.
48William D. Lyles to Daniel Ruggles, April 22, 1863; OR 24, pt. 1, 528; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 164; Brown, Grierson’s Raid, 80; Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 14; Forbes, “Grierson’s Cavalry Raid,” 105. See also Forbes, “An Adventure of Co. B.”
49Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 14-15.
50Ibid.,16; William D. Lyles to Daniel Ruggles, April 22, 1863; OR 24, pt. 1, 528; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 164; “The Yankee Raid,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, May 2, 1863.
51Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 17.
52Ibid.
53Curtiss, diary, April 23, 1863; Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 17-18.
54Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 18-19.
55Forbes, “Grierson’s Cavalry Raid,” 110; Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 19.
56Curtiss, diary, April 24, 1863; Forbes, “Grierson’s Raid,” 20; Forbes, “Grierson’s Cavalry Raid,” 110; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 705; “Museum Memories,” Neshoba Democrat, April 24, 2013; Surby, Grierson Raids, 74; Zenas Applington to Wife, March 4, 1862, in John W. Clinton Papers, ALPL; William Buffington, Compiled Service Record, NARA.
57OR 24, pt. 1, 528; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 155.
58William D. Lyles to Daniel Ruggles, April 25, 1863, and D. Lyles to John C. Pemberton, April 22, 1863, in John J. Pettus Correspondence, MDAH; John J. Pettus Correspondence, MDAH; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 158; Woodward
, “Grierson’s Raid,” 695.
59Surby, Grierson Raids, 32.
60Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 162.
61OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 158; Surby, Grierson Raids, 40.
62OR 24, pt. 1, 524.
63Ibid., 524.
64For Pearl Harbor, see Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: Penguin, 1981).
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Attack
By April 1863 the overworked and undermaintained Southern Railroad of Mississippi was the most important rail line in the state. It was also one of the worst in the entire Confederacy. Since its official charter in 1857 and completion prior to the war, the railroad had experienced economic downturn and stagnation despite increased wartime business. The railroad could barely maintain its locomotives and track under the best of conditions, and the heavy demands of war only increased its burden. Frequent weather-related problems, including the heavy monsoon-like rains that had recently descended upon the area, completely shut down some sections of track.1
By the spring of 1863 the rail line was so unreliable it had become the butt of jokes. English traveler and wartime observer Arthur Fremantle, who would soon travel to the Eastern Theater and witness the climactic battle at Gettysburg, experienced it firsthand. The railroad is “in a most dangerous state, and enjoys the reputation of being the very worst of all the bad railroads in the South. It was completely worn out and could not be repaired. Accidents are of almost daily occurrence, and a nasty one had happened the day before.” One such calamity took place that February, just a couple of months before Grierson’s arrival, when a train derailed and tumbled into the Chunkey River between Newton Station and Meridian, killing a large number of its passengers. The Jackson Daily Southern Crisis engaged in some dark humor about the horrendous events when it asked, “Have you heard of the railroad accident[?]” to which another responded, “No—where was it?” The reply: “The Western Train left Meridian and arrived at Jackson in schedule time.” Some found humor in using fatal train accidents to point out how unreliable the rail line had become. John Pemberton was not among them. The Southern Railroad was no laughing matter to the commander in Vicksburg. In fact, it was his lifeline.2
The Real Horse Soldiers Page 20
