Whip and Spur

Sherman was about to advance eastward from Vicksburg, destroy the lines of railroad by which Forrest received supplies from the fertile prairie region of Northern Mississippi, and strike the Rebellion in the pit of its stomach. A. J. was to take all my infantry down the river, and the cavalry was to move to Colliersville, on the line of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and join a considerable cavalry force gathering there under Sooy Smith and Grierson; thence we were to move southeasterly through Mississippi, to engage Forrest’s forces and to meet Sherman’s army at the crossing of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad at Meridian.

We lay in camp more than a week, ready to move, but awaiting orders. The country (a very wet one) was frozen hard and covered with snow. Our order to march and the thaw came together, on the 22d of January. We were to cross the Obion River (and bottom) at Sharp’s Ferry, twenty-three miles southwest of our camp. The command consisted of the Fourth Missouri (with a battery), Second New Jersey, Seventh Indiana, Nineteenth Pennsylvania, and Frank Moore’s Battalion of the Second Illinois; in all about twenty-five hundred well-mounted men present for duty. The roads were deep with mud and slush, and every creek was “out of its banks” with the thaw. We reached the ferry only at nightfall of the 23d, over roads that had hourly grown deeper and more difficult. Two regiments had crossed, through floating ice (eight horses at a trip), by a rope-ferry, and at nine o’clock in the evening, under a full moon and a summer temperature, I crossed with staff and escort. The river was already so swollen that we landed in two feet of water, and still it was rising.

Our camp was fixed five miles away on the upland. The first mile was only wet and nasty, and the trail not hard to follow. Then we came to the “back slough,” thirty feet wide, four feet deep, and still covered with four inches of ice. Those who had gone before had broken a track through this, and swept the fragments of ice forward until near the shore they were packed in for a width of ten feet or more, and to the full depth of the water. I can make no stronger statement than that we all got through safely, only wet to the skin. How it was done I do not pretend to know. Some went in one way and some in another. All I can assert is that my stalwart old Max, when he found himself standing, belly deep, in broken ice, settled quietly on his haunches and took my two hundred pounds with one spring on to dry land four feet higher than his starting-point, and twelve feet away,—but then, Max always was a marvel. Guy, who carried Ike, scrambled over the top of the broken ice as only he or a cat could do. The others fared variously. All were drenched, and some were hurt, but all got to the shore at last. Then came the hour-long tug to get my ambulance through with its store of tent-hold goods and we started for our remaining four miles. The trail, even of cavalry, is not easily followed by moonlight when covered with half a foot of water, and we lost our way; reaching camp, after fourteen miles of hard travel, at four o’clock in the morning.

The river was still rising rapidly, and word was brought that Kargé, with more than half the brigade, would have to make a détour of fifty miles and cross the Three Forks of the Obion far to the eastward, joining us some days later, near Jackson. So we idled on, marching a few miles each day, camping early, cooking the fat of the land for our evening meal, cultivating the questionable friendship of the Rebel population by forced contributions of subsistence, and leading, on the whole, a peaceful, unlaborious, and charming picnic life. Finally, taking Kargé again under our wing, we pushed on, resolutely and rapidly, over flooded swamps, across deep, rapid rivers, and through hostile towns, to our rendezvous; whence, under the command of two generals, and as part of an army of eight thousand well-mounted cavalry and light artillery, and all in light marching order, we started for our more serious work.

The chief in command was a young and handsome, but slightly nervous individual, who eschewed the vanities of uniform, and had about himself and his horse no evidence of his military character that could not be unbuckled and dropped with his sword-belt in case of impending capture. He was vacillating in his orders, and a little anxious in his demeanor, but he had shown himself cool and clear-headed under fire, and seemed resolutely bent on the destruction of the last vestige of Forrest’s troublesome army. It would be tedious to tell all the adventures of our forward expedition; how we marched in three columns over different roads, each for himself, and with only a vague notion where and how we should meet, and how we should support each other. As it afterward proved, the details of the order of march had been given to the commanders of the other brigades, while I had been forgotten; so that the whole advance was vexed with cross-purposes and with the evidences of a hidden misunderstanding. The contretemps that thus came about were annoying, and, in one instance, came near being serious: as we were going into camp at Prairie Station, my advance reported having come in sight of the camp-fires of the enemy; a skirmish-line was sent forward, and only on the eve of engaging did they discover that we were approaching Hepburn’s Brigade, of our column, which had reached the same point by another road.

The first days of our march in Mississippi were through Tippah County, as rough, hopeless, God-forsaken a country as was ever seen outside of Southern Missouri. Its hills were steep, its mud was deep, its houses and farms were poor, its facilities for the subsistence of a protecting army like ours were of the most meagre description, and its streams delayed us long with their torrents of bottomless muddy water, fast swelling from the thaw that had unlocked the snow of all the deep-buried hills and morasses of their upper waters. We built ferry-boats and swamped them, built bridges and broke them, and slowly and painfully, horse by horse, transferred the command across the nasty riverbeds. Tippah Creek detained us and kept us hard at work all day and all night, and we reached the Tallahatchee at New Albany barely in time to ford our last man across before it rose to an impassable depth. And then for two days we pressed forward, in company with the whole column, through the rough, rocky, and wooded country, reaching Okolona only at nightfall.

Here we struck the marvellous prairie region of Northeastern Mississippi, literally a land flowing with milk and honey. An interminable, fertile, rolling prairie lay before us in every direction. The stern rule of the Confederacy had compelled the planters to offset every small field of cotton with a wide area of corn, until the region had become known as the granary of the Southern army. Not only must every land-owner devote his broadest fields to the cultivation of the much-needed cereal, but one tenth of all his crop must be stacked for public use in cribs at the side of the railroad.

It was an important incident of our mission to destroy everything which directly or indirectly could afford subsistence to the Rebel forces; and during the two days following our arrival at Okolona, while we marched as far south as West Point, the sky was red with the flames of burning corn and cotton. On a single plantation, our flanking party burned thirty-seven hundred bushels of tithe corn, which was cribbed near the railroad; no sooner was its light seen at the plantation houses than hundreds of negroes, who swarmed from their quarters to join our column, fired the rail-built cribs in which the remaining nine-tenths of the crop was stored. Driven wild with the infection, they set the torch to mansion house, stables, cotton-gin, and quarters, until the whole village-like settlement was blazing in an unchecked conflagration. To see such wealth, and the accumulated products of such vast labor, swept from the face of the earth, gave to the aspect of war a saddening reality, which was in strong contrast to the peaceful and harmless life our brigade had thus far led. In all this prairie region there is no waste land, and the evidences of wealth and fertility lay before us in all directions. As we marched, the negroes came en masse from every plantation to join our column, leaving only fire and absolute destruction behind them. It was estimated that during these two days’ march two thousand slaves and one thousand mules were added to our train.

The incidents of all this desolation were often sickening and heart-rending; delicate women and children, whom the morning had found in peace and plenty, and glowing with pride in the valor of Southern arms and the certainty of an early independence for their beloved half-country, found themselves, before nightfall, homeless, penniless, and alone, in the midst of a desolate land.

Captain Frank Moore, the Cossack of our brigade, went at night to an outlying plantation, of which the showy mansion-house stood on a gentle acclivity in the edge of a fine grove. Here lived alone with an only daughter, a beautiful girl, a man who had been conspicuous in his aid to the Rebellion, and whose arrest had been ordered. The squadron drew up in front of the house and summoned its owner to come forth. He came, armed, sullen, stolid, and determined, but obviously unnerved by the force confronting him. Behind him followed his daughter, dressed in white, and with her long light hair falling over her shoulders. The sight of the hated “Yanks” crazed her with rage, and before her father could reply to the question with which he had been accosted, she called to him wildly, “Don’t speak to the villains! Shoot! shoot them down, shoot them down!” wringing her hands, and screaming with rage. The excitement was too much for his judgment, and he fired wildly on the troops. He was riddled through and through with bullets; and as Moore turned away, he left that fine house blazing in the black night, and lighting up the figure of the crazy girl as she wandered, desolate and beautiful, to and fro before her burning home, unheeded by the negroes who ran with their hastily made bundles to join the band of their deliverers. Moore’s description of this scene in the simple language that it was his unpretending way to use, gave the most vivid picture we had seen of the unmitigated horror and badness of war.

As an instrument of destruction in the enemy’s country, our raid had thus far been more successful than we could have anticipated; but we had come for even more serious business than this, and there were already indications that its main purpose would be a failure. Our commander had evidently no stomach for a close approach to the enemy, and his injunctions at Colliersville that we were to try always to “Fight at close quarters!” “Go at them as soon as possible with the sabre!” and other valorous ejaculations, were in singular contrast to the impressions he evinced as the prospect of an actual engagement drew near.

Forrest was in our front with about our own number of cavalry, but without artillery, of which we had twenty good pieces. The open country offered good fighting ground, and gave to our better drilled and more completely organized forces a decided advantage, even without our great odds in artillery. There lay before us a fair opportunity for dispersing the most successful body of cavalry in the Rebel service; and, could we effect a junction with Sherman, we should enable him to divide the Confederacy from Vicksburg to Atlanta. One of the most brilliant and damaging campaigns of the war seemed ready to open. Its key lay in our successful engagement, on a fair field, with an inferior force. Yet all of us who were in a position to know the spirit with which we were commanded were conscious of a gradual oozing out at the finger-ends of the determination to make a successful fight; and it was a sad night for us all when, at West Point, with our skirmish-line steadily engaging the Rebel outposts, an order came that we were to fall back before daybreak toward Okolona.

The brigade commanders and their staffs had had severe duty in the scattered work of destruction, and even Max, tough though he was, had been almost overworked with constant galloping to and fro, and with the frequent countermarching our varying orders had required. Still he was better than his comrades, and many a man was anxious for his mount, should our retreat be pressed.

Early in the morning we were on our way toward the rear,—about eight thousand cavalry, ten sections of artillery, two thousand pack-mules, and an unnumbered cloud of fugitive slaves mounted on their masters’ mules, often two or three on each, and clustering under our shadow as their only means of escape to the happy land of freedom. In an organized advance, all of this vast hanging on could be kept at the rear and in good order; but on a retreat the instinct of self-preservation always attacks first the non-combatant element, and during all the days that followed, we found our way constantly blocked with these throngs of panic-stricken people.

No sooner had we turned tail than Forrest saw his time had come, and he pressed us sorely all day and until nightfall, and tried hard to gain our flanks. A hundred times we might have turned and given him successful battle, but, at every suggestion of this, we received from our general, who was well in advance of the retiring column, the order to push forward and give our rear a free road for retreat. Midnight found us again in the vicinity of Okolona, and the next daybreak showed the enemy’s long column filing out of the woods and stretching well on toward our right flank.

Even the plains of Texas could offer no field better suited for a cavalry engagement, and it was with satisfaction that we received, at five o’clock in the morning, an order to prepare at once for a fight; but our men were barely mounted and in line when an order came to turn our backs upon this open field, and to retreat with all expedition toward Memphis.

When we left Okolona we left hope behind, for our road struck at once into a wooded, hilly country, full of by-ways and cross-roads known to the enemy and unknown to us, and we well knew that this movement would double Forrest’s power and divide our own. Then, for a long day, tired and hungry from the hard work and constant movement we had just gone through, and with our horses half-fed and overworked, we pushed on, our rear often attacked and sometimes broken, our mule-train and negroes thrown into frequent confusion, one of our brigades demoralized and put to flight, and the enemy still pressing our rear and reaching for our flanks. At last, towards night, it became evident that a stand must be made or all would be entirely lost, and at Ivy Farm, near Pontotoc, we found a broad, open hill-top, with large fields, high fences, and stout log-houses, which offered an opportunity. By this time the command was too widely separated, and some of it too much disorganized, for the concentration of even a whole brigade, but a part of Hepburn’s and a part of my own were disentangled from the corral of fugitives and brought into line. Both of our generals were upon the field, and to our surprise both seemed brave and resolute; and this not with the resolution of despair, for the actual immediate necessity of fighting often steadies nerves which are easily shaken by the anticipation of danger. Brave they were, but not always of the same mind, and conflicting orders continued to add to our embarrassment and insecurity.

It is not worth while to detail all the incidents of the opening of the short engagement; it was ended by the only legitimate cavalry charge made by the “Vierte Missouri” during the whole of its four years’ history.

We had withdrawn from the line where we had been fighting on foot, had mounted, formed, and drawn sabre; the road about one hundred yards in front of us was swarming with Rebels, who crept along the fence-lines and in the edge of the bordering woods, and kept up a steady rain of fire well over our heads, where we heard that pfwit—pfwit—pfwit of flying bullets which, happily, has no relative in the whole chorus of sounds, and which is heard above all the din of battle, and is felt through every remotest nerve.

At the command “Forward,” excitement ran down the line, and there was a disposition for an immediate rush. But “Steady—right dress—trot!” in a measured tone, taken up in turn by the company officers, brought back all the effect of our three years’ discipline of the drill-ground. Later, “Steady—gallop—right dress!” accelerated the speed without disturbing the alignment, and then, at last, “Charge!” and with a universal yelling and brandishing of sabres we went forward like the wind. I then felt how mad a venture we had undertaken, for before us was the enemy, it is true, but the enemy behind a high and stout, staked and ridered rail-fence. As we drew very near this, still under heavy fire, which now at the short range was telling, the command became conscious that the six-foot fence would withstand our shock, and it wavered. I turned to my bugler to sound the recall, when I saw him out of the corner of my eye, his white horse rearing literally to his full height and falling backward with a crash that must have killed the poor boy at once. The recall was not needed: the regiment had turned and was running. The officers, being the best mounted and generally the lightest weights, soon reached the front, and “Steady—right dress—trot! Steady—right dress—trot!” was repeated along the line, until the drill-ground precision was regained, and then “By fours—right about—wheel!” and we stood facing the enemy again, ready for another advance. Max had been struck by a grazing bullet and had been plunging heavily, but the wound was not serious and he was soon quieted. We now saw that our charge, futile though it seemed, had done its work. The advance of the enemy was checked; the sight of troops that could retire and re-form for a new attack seemed to have a stunning effect upon them. Practically the engagement was ended.

Subsequently, one of Forrest’s staff officers told the Hun that the size of the division which had charged was variously estimated at from five to ten thousand, but that he had been accustomed to such things and knew that we were not more than two thousand. In fact, we were less than six hundred. Forrest’s report of the battle of Pontotoc states that the engagement was ended “by a cavalry charge of the enemy, which was repulsed.”

There was still some sharp scrimmaging, and we had to make two or three more squadron and company charges to drive away small attacks upon our retreating guns; but the battle, as a battle, was over, and Forrest’s whole advance had been stopped and ended by six hundred Fourth Missouri Dutchmen, galloping, yelling, and swinging their sabres at several thousand men well secured behind a rail-fence. I had before, in drill-ground charges, seen old soldiers and experienced officers jump down and run away from a fence on which they were sitting to watch the advance of charging cavalry which they knew must wheel before coming within five rods of them; but I had never supposed that hot-blooded soldiers, in the full excitement of a successful attack, could be unnerved and turned by the roar and thundering oncoming of a regiment that could by no possibility reach them. Our first setting out had driven back a thin skirmish-line which had to cross the fence under high speed; this, doubtless, aided in the débâcle; the charge had stunned them, but it was the rally that stopped the pursuit.

The rest of our march was without interesting incident all the way to Memphis, but it was almost incessant, day and night; without incident, that is, that it is worth while to tell here, but our days and nights upon the road were filled with annoyance and disgust, and with a store of unhappy and ludicrous memories that will last the lifetime of all who knew them.

One day, at New Albany, Max and I were feeding and sleeping in the door of an old mill while the command was slowly crossing the antiquated bridge over the Tallahatchie, when I was awakened by Grierson’s riding up in great alarm, calling upon me “for God’s sake” to use the ford as well as the bridge, for Hepburn was being cut to pieces in the rear, and I must give him the full road for his retreat. I had always been a respectful subordinate, but none of us were then in the best temper; I did not believe a word of it, and I frankly told him so. Even old Max pricked up his ears and snorted as if in derision. Almost as we were talking, there came an aid from Hepburn saying that he had found a good supply of forage and would be glad to go into camp for the night. But there was no camp to be thought of for that tired crew; the bogey of incessant pursuit loomed up portentously close upon our rear-guard, and sent its shadow deep into the bowels of our commander, who was miles away in the advance, and who would allow us only the fewest possible hours in the very dead of night for hasty cooking and scant repose. We were a worn and weary lot as we finally went into camp at the rear of the town; worn and weary, sadly demoralized, and almost dismounted. I had lost fifteen hundred good horses, and my men, who had been eager and ready for a successful campaign, were broken in spirit and sadly weakened in discipline.

All who had been compelled to bear the brunt of the hard work now needed for themselves and their horses absolute rest for days; but being called into the city the morning after our arrival, my eyes were greeted with the spectacle of General Sooy Smith, no longer ill, and with no trace of shame or annoyance on his face. He had shed his modest and prudent attire, and shone out with all the brass radiance of a full-fledged major-general. From this time until the Fourth Missouri cavalry was mustered out of service, our headquarters were in the immediate neighborhood of Memphis, and our life was much more active than it had been at Union City.

Not very much is to be said for Max during this time, except in connection with the Sturgis expedition, beyond the fact that we lay long in the immediate vicinity of the race-course, which we repaired and used faithfully, and, so far as he was concerned, with eminent success. The more frequent necessity for duty, the great labor of remounting, reorganizing, and redrilling the command, united with the greater publicity of our position to lay some restraint on our mode of life, and to make our conduct more circumspect. Still we were not miserable, and the neighborhood of a large town has, to a well-regulated headquarters’ mess, its compensations as well as its drawbacks.

Sturgis’s expedition to Guntown and back—especially back—has passed into history, and its unwritten memories will always remain with those who took part in it.

Guntown is far away in Northeastern Mississippi. It is not laid down on the map of the country, but it lies just across the Tishamingo Creek, and it consists mainly of two plantation houses and a school-house. Our stay there was not long, and we were too much occupied to study the locality minutely, but it is my impression that the most important incident in its history was connected with our visit.

We were a force of about nine thousand infantry, cavalry, and artillery,—some black and some white, some good and some bad,—sent out by Sherman as a tub to the Forrest whale; a diversion to keep this commander from joining Hood in Northern Georgia; though I doubt if even General Sherman in his moments of wildest enthusiasm anticipated just the issue that followed. Our march out was not rapid, and it was well ordered. We were allowed to take our train, and old John Ellard’s four stupendous mules drew our headquarters’ wagon, well laden with the comforts we had accumulated during a long service, including a brand-new, well-furnished, and abundantly stored camp-chest that had just arrived from St. Louis. So far as the comforts of a home for five youngsters can be stored in one mule-wagon, we were well supplied for a campaign of any length; and judging from the mess-tables to which we were invited, others of the command were no less well provided. In due time we reached the town of Ripley, a rather pretty New-England-looking village, but, like all Southern towns at that time, entirely devoid of men and overflowing with women of the most venomous and spiteful sort, who did all in their power to add to the interest of the Sunday evening we passed in their company.

We had some light skirmishing on our arrival, but whoever it was that attacked us withdrew and left us in undisturbed possession of the comfortable rooms and fireplaces of the town. Our next day’s march brought us to a large open plantation on a commanding hill, whence our evening scouting-parties soon found the enemy posted in some force and apparently disposed for an engagement.