Dee Brown on the Civil War

Grierson's Raid, The Bold Cavaliers, and The Galvanized Yankees

Dee Brown

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781504049597
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Three true tales of Civil War combat, as recounted by a #1 New York Times –bestselling author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The acclaimed historian of the American West turns his attention to the country's bloody civil conflict, chronicling the exploits of extraordinary soldiers who served in unexpected ways at a pivotal moment in the nation's history. Grierson's Raid: The definitive work on one of the most astonishing missions of the Civil War's early days. For two weeks in the spring of 1862, Col. Benjamin Grierson, a former music teacher, led 1, 700 Union cavalry troops on a raid from Tennessee to Louisiana. The improbably successful mission diverted Confederate attention from Grant's crossing of the Mississippi and set the stage for the Siege of Vicksburg. General Sherman called it "the most brilliant expedition of the war." The Bold Cavaliers: In 1861, Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan and his brother-in-law Basil Duke put together a group of formidable horsemen, and set to violent work. Morgan's Raiders began in their home state, staging attacks, recruiting new soldiers, and intercepting Union telegraphs. Most were imprisoned after unsuccessful incursions into Ohio and Indiana years later, but some Raiders would escape, regroup, and fight again in different conflicts. "Accurate and frequently exciting" ( Kirkus Reviews ). The Galvanized Yankees: The little-known and awe-inspiring true story of a group of captured Confederate soldiers who chose to serve in the Union Army rather than endure the grim conditions of prisoner of war camps. "An accurate, interesting, and sometimes thrilling account of an unusual group of men who rendered a valuable service to the nation in a time of great need" ( The New York Times Book Review ).

GRIERSON’S RAID

Contents

A NOTE ON SOURCES

First day—Friday, April 17
A SOUTH BREEZE WAS BLOWING

II

III

IV

Second day—Saturday, April 18
THE SKIRMISHES BEGIN

II

III

IV

V

Third day—Sunday, April 19
BARTEAU IN PURSUIT

II

III

IV

Fourth day—Monday, April 20
GRIERSON’S GAMBIT

II

III

IV

V

Fifth day—Tuesday, April 21
THE BUTTERNUT GUERILLAS

II

III

IV

V

Sixth day—Wednesday, April 22
A MISSION FOR CAPTAIN FORBES

II

III

IV

V

VI

Seventh day—Thursday, April 28
THE SCOUTS CAPTURE A BRIDGE

II

III

IV

Eighth day—Friday, April 24
ACTION AT NEWTON STATION

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Ninth day—Saturday, April 25
PINEY WOODS COUNTRY

II

III

IV

V

Tenth day—Sunday, April 26
“CAPTAIN FORBES PRESENTS HIS COMPLIMENTS”

II

III

IV

Eleventh day—Monday, April 27
ACROSS THE PEARL TO HAZLEHURST

II

III

IV

V

VI

Twelfth day—Tuesday, April 28
COLONEL ADAMS SETS AN AMBUSH

II

III

IV

Thirteenth day—Wednesday, April 29
FOX AND HOUNDS

II

III

IV

Fourteenth day—Thursday, April 30
THE TRAP BEGINS TO CLOSE

II

III

IV

Fifteenth day—Friday, May 1
THE FIGHT AT WALL’S BRIDGE

II

III

IV

V

VI

Sixteenth day—Saturday, May 2
THE LAST LONG MARCH

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III

IV

V

VI

Seventeenth day—Sunday, May 3
HEROES TO THE UNION

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

NOTES

INDEX

A Biography of Dee Brown

A NOTE ON SOURCES

THIS ACCOUNT IS BASED upon five major sources: Benjamin Henry Grierson’s manuscript autobiography and the Grierson Papers in the Illinois State Historical Library; his privately published Record of Services Rendered the Government; the Forbes family letters and journals of Stephen Alfred Forbes; Richard W. Surby’s Grierson Raids; and the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.

Grierson’s lengthy autobiography apparently was in process of revision at the time of his death in 1911. Many sentences and paragraphs in the original manuscript were marked out and extended passages were penciled on the margins. Grierson devoted considerable space to the raid which made him famous, and although he relied heavily upon his official report for these chapters, he also included new material.

In addition he drew from his Record of Services Rendered the Government, a unique document with a fascinating history of its own. While Grierson was stationed at the Old Arsenal in St. Louis, some years after the Civil War, a close friend of Mrs. Grierson visited with them one summer and became interested in the general’s adventurous background. The friend was Mrs. Ella L. Wolcott of Elmira, New York, and, using Grierson’s private and official papers, she compiled a detailed chronological record of his military career. Subsequently, during a long tour of duty at Fort Concho, Texas, Grierson arranged to have this record printed on an army hand-press, which was in use only occasionally for publishing local orders. The type was hand set, and evidently no attempt was made to correct typographical errors. Distribution of the few copies printed was limited to the Grierson family, and it is undoubtedly one of the rarest items of Americana, the only library copies on record being in the Illinois State Historical Library.

The Forbes family letters and the journals of Stephen Forbes, collected and arranged chronologically by Ethel Forbes Scott, are rich sources of information on details of the raid, the cavalry dress and equipment, the weather, the food or lack of it, the countryside through which the raiders passed, the attitudes and emotions of the men before, during, and after the raid, all the various minutiae which help to bring history to life. Both Stephen Forbes and his older brother, Henry Forbes, were sensitive observers and recorders of events, persons, and everything that came into their ken, and many passages of their letters and journals, particularly Stephen’s, are written with unusual eloquence and beauty. Stephen Forbes later became a naturalist and one of the great scientific writers of his time.

Richard Surby’s Grierson Raids was first issued in 1865 as a section of a book which included two other narratives, Hatch’s Sixty-four Days March and Adventures of Chickasaw the Scout. It was prepared from a diary kept by the author, who was a sergeant at the time. Surby also used the New York Times report of the raid to fill in details with which he was not familiar. Grierson read the manuscript and pronounced it “correct in every particular.” Stephen Forbes in 1907 said the Surby account was marred by many typographical errors, especially in place and proper names, but was entirely reliable as to matters which came under the author’s personal observation and usually so as to events occurring in his immediate neighborhood.

In 1883 Surby slightly revised his account for publication in the veteran’s weekly, the National Tribune, and a small edition of this revision was then issued in book form by the Tribune under the title, Two Great Raids, a history of Morgan’s raid being included in the same volume.

The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies contains supporting documentation and is essential for tracing related military operations of the Confederate forces attempting to block Grierson’s raid, and of General Grant’s armies moving in conjunction with the raid.

Other useful sources consulted were Stephen Forbes’s address before the Illinois State Historical Society at its eighth annual meeting, Springfield, Illinois, Jan. 4, 1907, and Henry H. Eby’s Observations of an Illinois Boy in Battle, Camp and Prison. Eby borrowed some of his incidents from Wilbur Hinman’s Corporal Si Klegg, the same source used by Stephen Crane for The Red Badge of Courage. But he also included some interesting original anecdotes about cavalry camp life in the West. Unfortunately—from this writer’s viewpoint—Eby was on detached service at the time of the raid.

The following helped to complete the background and clarify some of the episodes in the story: Reports of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, 1861–66; Journal of Mississippi History, volumes 1–12; Springfield Illinois State Journal, 1863; T. H. Bowman, Reminiscences of an ex-Confederate Soldier; or Forty Years on Crutches, 1904; Albert G. Brackett, History of the United States Cavalry, 1865; E. Merton Coulter, Confederate States of America, 1950; Clement A. Evans, Confederate Military History, 1899; R. R. Hancock, Hancock’s Diary: or a History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, 1887; Adam R. Johnson, Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States, 1904; George H. Hepworth, Whip, Hoe, and Sword; or the Gulf Department in ’63, 1864; Francis T. Miller, Photographic History of the Civil War, 1911; Lyman B. Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 1865; William Forse Scott, Story of a Cavalry Regiment, 1893; Fred Albert Shannon, Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865, 1928; Emory Upton, Military Policy of the United States, 1912.

The drawings at chapter openings are adapted from etchings in Life Studies of the Great Army (1876), a portfolio by Edwin Forbes, who was not related to the two Forbes brothers in Grierson’s brigade. Photographs have been made available through the courtesy of the Library of Congress, Louisiana State University Archives, Illinois State Historical Society, and Mrs. Ethel Forbes Scott.

The author wishes to express sincere appreciation to Harry E. Pratt, State Historian, Illinois State Historical Library, for his assistance in the search for documents relating to Grierson and the raid. Special thanks are also due Mrs. Marguerite J. Pease, Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, and to Mrs. Ethel Forbes Scott for permission to use material from the Forbes family letters.

A SOUTH BREEZE WAS BLOWING

AT DAWN 1,700 CAVALRYMEN WERE moving south out of the base camp at La Grange, Tennessee, the columns of twos coiling down into the shortleaf pine forests away from the town that had seen no fighting, yet was dying in the backwash of raids and counter-raids of two years of war.

The day was April 17, 1863: the Civil War at midpoint after its darkest winter. “The morning … was a beautiful one,” wrote Sergeant Richard Surby, “with a gentle breeze from the south. The fruit trees were all in full bloom, the gardens were fragrant with the perfume of spring flowers, the birds sang gaily, all of which infused a feeling of admiration and gladness into the hearts of all true lovers of nature.”¹

On that morning, Quartermaster-Sergeant Surby had no certain idea as to where his regiment was riding. Like the other men he had heard the rumors, and in passing them on had enlarged upon them: “We are going on a big scout to Columbus, Mississippi, and play smash with the railroads.”

The rumors had been sweeping the base for a week, but the men had got their orders only yesterday: “Oats in the nosebags and five days rations in haversacks, the rations to last ten days. Double rations of salt. Forty rounds of ammunition.”²

Columbus was about five days’ march, the wise troopers had figured, a strong point in the Confederate defense from which General Daniel Ruggles occasionally dispatched annoying rebel raiders on the Union positions along the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Columbus would be a good place to ride in for a strike, destroy supplies, burn a few railroad bridges and gallop back to La Grange. A ten-day holiday from camp drill. The reckoning was good enough. Even the regimental officers might have figured it that close. Perhaps no one except Grierson could have guessed that after ten days they would be ten days out from the headquarters base, deeper into the heart of the Confederacy than any Yankee cavalry had ever penetrated, and virtually surrounded by enemy troops.

Benjamin Henry Grierson, Colonel, Volunteers, was commanding the three cavalry regiments, the Sixth Illinois, the Seventh Illinois, the Second Iowa, and a detachment of Battery K from the First Illinois Artillery, six mounted two-pounder guns—all comprising the First Brigade, First Cavalry Division, Sixteenth Army Corps of Major-General Ulysses S. Grant’s Department of the Tennessee. Grierson, like his officers and men, was an amateur soldier, his total experience of war packed into eighteen months of training, skirmishing, and some brief but sharp and bitter fighting.

Only a few da...