WHEELER’S RAID INTO TENNESSEE, AUGUST, 1864
The tremendous exactions of the Confederate cavalry, in the summer
and fall of 1864, gave severest test of both their physical
resistance and their patriotism. Food for man and beast was reduced
to the minimum of existence. As food lessened, work increased, and
the dumb brutes felt more sorely than man the continual shortening of
rations.
In July official reports showed that for three days the cavalry of
General Wheeler received thirteen pounds of corn per horse. The
regular ration was ten pounds of corn and ten pounds of hay. As
against the amount experience had shown essential for maintaining
strength and vigor, the Confederate horsemen saw the beasts that
they loved even as their own lives cut to three and one-third pounds
of corn, just one-third of what nature demanded, outside of rough
provender, such as hay or oats. The horse could live, but that was
all. To put these starving beasts into active work, to exact of
them thirty miles a day, with an average of one hundred and eighty
pounds on their backs, was only to leave many of them stranded by the
roadside to die of starvation and neglect, or to be picked up by the
country folks with the hope that a ration of grass or leaves would,
in the course of months, bring them back to health.
The cavalryman often starved himself without complaint to help his
horse. When it comes to work with insufficient food, as between man
and brute, the man is the stronger. The spirit of the man, like
the air plant, extracts life from his surroundings and thus begets
a strength and virility to which the beast is a stranger. At this
period there was a little green corn found here and there, in the
patches planted by the women and children, who were fighting for life
in the rear of the army, where war’s relentless ravages had left for
beasts little but the air, a sprinkle of grass, the branches of the
trees, or the sprouts that had come up about the roots. These most
frequently were the largest part of the ration served the southern
cavalry horse. The men watched these animals grow weaker day by day,
and when corn was issued to the soldiers to be parched, they took a
small portion for themselves, and patting the noses of the mounts
with fondest touch, they would slip a part of their own food into the
mouths of the steeds they had learned to love as if they were human.
Western Confederate genius was now engaged in wrestling with the
destruction of Sherman’s lines of communication. It was one hundred
and fifty-two miles from Chattanooga, the real base of Sherman’s
supplies, to Atlanta. Bridges and trestles were numerous, and against
these again and again Confederate ingenuity exhausted its power and
its enterprise. Sherman was dreaming of a march to the sea. Hood,
who succeeded Johnston, was dreaming of flank movements and marches
to the rear, and while these leaders were figuring and counting the
cost, upon the cavalrymen was laid the heaviest burdens of conflict.
Former conditions had now been reversed. In the earlier stages
of the War, the Federals were chiefly solicitous to repel cavalry
incursions and raids, but now the Confederates were to swap jobs and
thwart Federal assaults on lines of communication. This put upon
the Confederates increased vigilance and demanded of them that they
should make military bricks without the straw necessary to their
manufacture.
The proper care of horses was now an important part of the martial
regime. If the men were thoughtless enough to overburden their
mounts, experience and necessity told the officers, responsible for
results, that these details must be watched, and higher authority
must intervene to protect the animals, now even as necessary as men
in the operations of the hour.
On August 9th, 1864, an order was issued looking to a most rigid
enforcement of this sane and wise regulation. No officer of any grade
or any soldier was allowed to carry any article outside of his gun
and his cartridge box, other than a single blanket and one oil cloth.
Naught but something to warm the body and protect the skin would be
tolerated, and once, every day on the march, inspection was a part
of every officer’s duty for the enforcement of this requirement.
Ordnance wagons, caissons and ambulances were subjected to the same
close scrutiny and the immediate destruction of all contraband was
the stern and irrevocable order of General Wheeler.
General Hood was feeling the constant and relentless pressure of
General Sherman around Atlanta. Wheeler and Forrest were his only
reliance to lessen the hold that was silently but surely throttling
the life of the Army of the Tennessee. Something must be done
to relieve this acute situation and to Wheeler and Forrest, Hood
appealed in the extreme hour asking if they could not cut off or
shorten Sherman’s supplies. If they could compel him to withdraw some
thousands of his men, there might yet be a chance. Without these, it
could only be a question of days, mayhap with good fortune, weeks.
No one could foretell what a brief span might bring forth, and so,
catching at faintest hope, these two wondrous cavalry soldiers were
to take another turn at the wheel.
It was believed by General Hood, and in this General Forrest
concurred, that if Wheeler could pass around Sherman’s army, tear up
the railroad north of Atlanta, then reaching to Chattanooga, force a
passage of the Tennessee River, swing around towards Knoxville and
thence down into Middle Tennessee and assail Nashville and wreck
the railroads between Nashville and Chattanooga, this, accompanied
by Forrest’s assailment of the lines in Western Tennessee and
Southwestern Kentucky, would, if it was within the lines of human
possibilities, loosen Sherman’s hold on Hood’s throat.
General Wheeler had concentrated four thousand men at Covington, Ga.,
forty miles south of Atlanta. The best horses were selected. They
were shod and fitted by every means at hand to enter upon one of the
most wearying marches of the War. They would perforce rely on some
captures of steeds. The Confederate cavalry never failed to count on
the United States government to supply a full share of their wants,
when thus in need. With the long, long tramps ahead, there were even
some dismounted men who resolved to go on this expedition, willing to
take the risk of capture, believing that the uncertainties of war and
the certainties of striking some loose Federal cavalry force would
stand them well in hand, and give them earth’s now richest treasure,
a horse. The warrior of old had cried out, “My kingdom for a horse,”
but these dejected and bereft horsemen were putting a higher value on
such a priceless gift, and were placing their lives in the balance,
to win, if mayhap they might win, the coveted prize.
General Hood had calculated that if Wheeler could safely trust to
capture food and ammunition, that surely he would break Sherman’s
line, and that inevitably Sherman must pay not only some, but much
heed to this active, devastating force in his rear.
No extended rations were allowed to go. A blanket and gum coat
blanket were all the baggage permitted except a loose horseshoe and
a frying pan. It required only the cooking of some water-softened
cornmeal, made into soggy bread, to supply immediate wants.
The Confederate horsemen had long since learned the full import
of the petition of the Lord’s prayer, “Give us this day our daily
bread.” He had shortened it up to say, “Give us one square meal”; and
he laid down on the wet or hard ground, covered his face with his
worn hat or tattered blanket, and let no thought of the next meal
disturb his dreamless sleep.
Starting on this long journey, General Wheeler swung eastwardly
to avoid, as far as possible, Federal interruption. In less than
twenty-four hours, he began to let his enemies know that he was in
the saddle. He struck the railroad near Marietta, Ga., and proceeded
to wreck it for miles. He and his followers were hungry. Their larder
was empty. They felt certain that Sherman’s supply trains were on
the march between Chattanooga and Atlanta. Their horses needed corn,
their bodies needed food, and they resolved to apply the old doctrine
of “He takes who may; he keeps who can.” A long train of cars was
captured, but men and their horses could not eat engines and cars.
Then came the comforting message, through friendly sympathizers,
that a long wagon train, well guarded, was on the highway a little
farther north. This glad news quickened hope and cheered body and
soul. A short distance away, a great vision crossed their gaze.
When it first stood out upon the horizon, the weary troopers rubbed
their eyes, pinched their tired limbs, to discover if they beheld a
mirage, or was it real things that loomed across their perspective.
The men first saw horses and mules, as if trees walking. The white
tops of the commissary schooners, led horses, trailing mules, and a
vast horde of driven beeves moving southward, headed for Sherman’s
headquarters, developed into a reality. The only drawback was men
in blue, some riding, many tramping alongside the wagons. All of
these carried guns, and they had special orders to kill all who
attempted to take these things from their custody. Necessity is a
great incentive, and the Confederates, with patriotism and hunger
impelling, without preliminary proceedings, made vigorous assault
on the custodians of what to those attacking was the equal of life
itself. The odds were against the Confederates, but these had so
much at stake that the issue could not long be doubtful. They went
after their enemies with such dash and determination that the guards
soon fled and left to them the possession of the wagons, the beeves,
the horses, the mules and great stores of good things to eat. The
cravings of nature were quickly met, but, as with hands full, riders
supplied their own bodies, bits were removed from the mouths of
the faithful steeds, and with greatest dispatch a bountiful supply
of shelled corn and oats was spread upon the ground before the
enraptured vision of the jaded steeds. The lowing, restless cattle
were corralled by the new masters. Doomed to an early death, it made
but little odds whether they fed men who were clad in blue or gray.
General Hannon, with a guard, soon herded the precious drove and its
course was promptly turned eastward to escape Federal interference.
The captors hoped to run the gauntlet of Federal pursuit and with
the glorious prize to bring gladness and relief to the hungry men
who, in and about Atlanta, with unfailing courage, were hanging on to
that citadel with the grim courage of a forlorn hope to save it from
capture and destruction.
These cattle and their guards, although vigorously pursued, with
favoring fortune escaped the imminent dangers about them and were
landed within the Confederate lines. They would yield more than
one million pounds of choice beef, thirty-five pounds for every
soldier in General Hood’s army. When these lowing beasts joined the
Confederate commissary, there was universal delight, and many joys
were added to those who so valiantly were defending the environed
citadel about which so much of Confederate faith was now centered.
Emboldened by his success, the Confederate chieftain now followed the
railroad, northward from Marietta. He was going over the ground with
which he became so familiar a few weeks before on Johnson’s retreat
from Dalton to Atlanta. No Federal foresight could stay the avenging
hand of the Confederate railway wreckers. Dalton, Sherman’s starting
point in the early days of May, was captured, and from Resaca to
that point, in many places the track was completely torn up. There
were Federals behind and Federals all about, but their presence did
not disturb the game little southern general and his men in gray.
Bridges, trestles, cattle guards, guns, ammunition, mules, horses,
were the things he had calculated to capture and destroy, and to this
work he bent all the energies of his willing and active followers. In
crossing the streams, the ammunition of every soldier was inspected
by officers and every man was compelled to tie his cartridge box
about his neck to prevent contact with water. The man, the horse, the
gun, the powder and ball must be kept in the best possible condition.
On these, combined, depended not only the safety of the command, but
the success of the campaign. A few sentences from General Wheeler’s
order of August 9th, 1864, will tell how stern was the demand for
the protection of the horses who were to carry their masters on this
strenuous march: “No soldier of any grade whatever will be permitted
to carry any article of private property, except one single blanket
and one oil cloth.” Officers and men alike were to share these
prevailing and bear these stringent exactions. There was no complaint
against these drastic regulations. Rarely, if ever, were these orders
disobeyed. With noblest patriotism and sublimest self-sacrifice, the
volunteers under Wheeler recognized the necessity of such a call and
there was no claim of self-denial and no call of physical privation
they were unwilling to face or endure, if they only might win their
country’s freedom and drive its enemies from its soil.
When marching out of Dalton, the Federal general, Steedman,
furiously assailed Wheeler’s command, but he was beaten off, and
a direct march was made on Chattanooga. This greatly alarmed the
Federal leader, and he hastened to the rescue of that stronghold;
and then General Wheeler, as if playing hide and seek, turned again
to Dalton, to which place he was in turn followed by Steedman,
only to find his wary enemy gone. These valuable days for Federal
repair of the railroad were thus consumed in fruitless marching
and countermarching, induced by General Wheeler’s strategy. This
interrupted the use of the railway for twelve days, and these two
hundred and eighty-eight hours meant much to Sherman’s one hundred
thousand followers, camped on the Chattahoochee. The exactions of
twelve months of war and alternate occupation of both armies had
depleted the country along the railway of all that could sustain man
or beast, and by the necessities for forage, General Wheeler was
compelled to leave this ravaged territory, and marched eastwardly
towards Knoxville. There he was sure of reaching supplies, and he
quickly turned his steps towards the valleys along the Tennessee
River above Chattanooga. Once before, he had crossed at Cottonport,
forty miles above that city; but when he came to the scene of his
former brilliant operations, floods filled the banks of the stream
and prevented a passage there. He resolved to follow the line of the
river towards Knoxville and search for some spot at which he might
swim or ferry over. Leaving six companies of thirty men each along
the railway to harass and alarm the Federals, with the remainder of
his troops he rode away. Those left behind gave a good account of
themselves. More than twenty loaded trains became victims of their
matchless daring, and it was some time before the enemy knew that
General Wheeler had moved his sphere of operations.
If one will take an enlarged map and start with a line beginning
at Covington, Georgia, forty miles south of Atlanta, where General
Wheeler concentrated his troops on August 10th, to begin this
expedition, and trace through all the journeyings of his command
for the next twenty-eight days, some idea can be obtained of the
tremendous energies and wonderful skill that marked this raid.
To make this ride without let or hindrance, within the period it
covered, with the animals and supplies possessed by Wheeler’s men,
would be considered a reasonable march; but encumbered with artillery
and ammunition wagons, the sick and wounded that always must follow
in the train of a cavalry incursion make the difficulties appalling.
Hidden dangers lurked on every side. The constant pursuit, as well
as the constant change in the Federal disposition of both cavalry
and infantry forces, rendered the game at all places and hours
distractingly uncertain, and only a leader of consummate energy,
combined with masterful skill, could hope to escape in safety
from such desperate and perilous complications. To make the most
conservative estimate of excursions from the main line of march would
require something like six hundred and fifty miles of riding on
this raid. No well-appointed commissary was present to feed man and
hungrier beast. These must live from hand to mouth and either take
food from the enemy or to impress it from people, loyal in most cases
to the South, and already so impoverished by war that starvation was
a real and ever present factor. In partisan warfare, soldiers do
not care much for the taking of even the necessaries of life from
those who oppose or do not sympathize with them; but to go into a
farmer’s barn lot and take his hay, corn and oats, shoot down his
hogs and cattle for food, and clean up his chicken coops, because you
are compelled to take these or starve yourself and your horse; and
knowing all the while the owner loves the cause and country for which
you are fighting, and probably his sons and relations are somewhere
out in the army contending for that which is dear to you and them, is
bound to create a profound sense of grief and sorrow and even shame
in any honorable soul. These takings of food from sympathizers often
leave in the hearts of true men bitter and more depressing memories
then the death and wounds on the battlefield, or the pathetic scenes
where comrades in the cheerless hospital are wrestling with disease
in a combat for life.
If General Wheeler and his men could not find and take from Federals
the things that were essential to life, then they were compelled to
despoil in the struggle for self-preservation their own friends and
countrymen.
There were but few soldiers in General Wheeler’s four thousand
men who rode out of Covington, Georgia, on August 10th, 1864,
who, as between the consequences of battle and the taking from
aged men, helpless women and dependent children their only food
supply, would not have gladly accepted the alternative of battle
with absolute cheerfulness and the chances it brought of death or
wounding. Two-thirds of the territory to be traversed was a friendly
country. In East Tennessee, Confederates found few supporters, or
well-wishers, and here the southern soldier was not disturbed about
discrimination; but Middle Tennessee and Northern Georgia were
almost unanimously loyal, and ever greeted the legions in gray with
smiles and benedictions, and so long as they had any surplus over
starvation’s rations, would gladly have shared it with the trooper
who followed Wheeler, Forrest or Morgan on their arduous rides.
In all this long march and hard campaign, there was not one day,
hardly one hour, in which there was not contact with the enemy.
The Federals appreciated, as well as the Confederates, what the
destruction of the railway between Atlanta and Chattanooga meant to
Sherman and his great army camped southward in Georgia. If forced by
lack of food and munitions of war to recede, it meant losing what had
cost a year’s vigorous campaigning and the waste of the thousands
of lives that in battle or by disease had been paid as the price of
winning the most important citadel of Georgia.
The twenty-four days, from August 10th to September 3rd, were
eventful days in the history of the army of the Tennessee. Sherman
sat down in front of Atlanta in July, and by slow degrees was
endeavoring by siege and starvation to drive General Hood away.
This proved a most difficult task. From Atlanta to Nashville was
two hundred and eighty-eight miles, and while Sherman might hammer
Hood’s lines south of Atlanta, Hood had most potential wreckers in
Forrest and Wheeler to operate on this three hundred miles, upon
one hundred and fifty-two of which, from Chattanooga to Atlanta, he
must rely for those things without which war could not be carried
on. Against this line of Sherman’s, the Confederate cavalry again
and again were hurled, always with tremendous effect. Now and then
they put Sherman and his men on half rations, and the ordnance
department counted their stores to calculate what might happen if
the pressure was not relieved. No phase of the war presented nobler
evidences of skill, great self-sacrifice or physical endurance, as
month after month, Wheeler and Forrest went out upon their errands of
destruction and waste. Over in Virginia, Stuart and Hampton grandly
met the conditions that faced them there. Across the Mississippi,
in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas, brave spirits were fearlessly
keeping up the conflict against ever-increasing odds; but along the
Mississippi, the Tennessee and the Cumberland were surroundings that
invoked a breadth of genius and a scope of operation that excited
wonder and admiration everywhere the story was told. The distance
here was so great, nature’s obstacles so pronounced, that those who
measured and calculated and mastered these, needed something almost
above the human to forecast and overcome.
The War, from 1861 to 1865, developed many problems that no soldier
in the past had ever faced. There were no experiences that the books
described that could fully guide the men in this department as to the
best means of harassing and defeating armies that came like Sherman’s.
For the special work that the time and place had cut out for the
South, Providence provided two men whose names must go down in human
history as superb examples of skill, daring, resource and patience,
which will always give them a proud place in the annals of war.
Whether we write Forrest and Wheeler, or Wheeler and Forrest, it
counts not. Different minds may gauge them differently, but at the
end, all who study what they did and how they did it, must set them
down as amongst the greatest soldiers of the world. Those who looked
upon their faces might not catch at once the splendor of their
powers. They were totally unlike in most of their physical makeup,
but when once the beholder looked into their eyes, the only safe
index to the soul and mind, there was in both of these remarkable
men something that at once challenged admiration and proclaimed
superiority. In both of their countenances, the Creator stamped
valor, intrepidity, self-confidence, individual force and genius
and power of achievement. To thus speak of these two extraordinary
men takes nothing from the achievements or talents of other great
southern cavalry leaders. Stuart, Hampton, Morgan, Marmaduke, Shelby
and many others filled their spheres with a luminosity that age
cannot dim. It may be that it is probably true that Forrest and
Wheeler would have failed when Stuart, Hampton and Morgan won. Each
takes, by his performance, an exalted place in the resplendent
galaxy of the South’s heroic world. One cannot be judged sharply by
the other. There was so much that was brave, skillful and intrepid
in them all, that the pen of criticism, by way of comparison,
falls paralyzed by the wonder, love and admiration for the various
achievements of these military prodigies.
Even during the last days of the War, men who wrote rather than
fought, attempted to draw comparisons between the cavalry leaders
and what they had accomplished; but the hour for this is now forever
gone, and they who love the South and its precious memories sit and
gaze in rapture and astonishment at what all and any of these men,
with such meager resources, were able to accomplish in those days
of darkness and trial, and what the men who followed the stars and
bars were doing and daring so constantly in their struggle with an
opposing destiny, to win a nation’s crown for the Confederate States.
Some say that Wheeler’s raid through Northern Georgia, into Middle
and Eastern Tennessee, in the last days of August and the first days
of September, 1864, is a performance so unique and marvelous that it
takes a place in history by itself.
Others point to Forrest’s raid into Middle Tennessee, which,
succeeding that of General Wheeler, sets a mark on such campaigns
that none other ever reached; but those who love Morgan, with the
pride of his great achievements, point to Hartsville and the
Christmas raid of 1862 as the most remarkable achievement of the
great performances of southern cavalry. Another voice speaks of
Stuart’s Chickahominy raid and of his ride from Chambersburg to
the Potomac, and the Battle of Fleetwood Hill (Brandy Station) as
overshadowing all other cavalry triumphs, while others call to mind
Hampton’s cattle raid, his Trevilian Station battle and campaign
with his jaded mounts, and cry out, “Here is the acme of cavalry
successes”; but when we recall what all of these men and their
chivalrous followers accomplished for the renown and glory of a
nation whose life span was only four years, the human mind is dazzled
with the wealth and extent of the glorious memories that gather about
the pages which tell of southern cavalry achievement, service and
fame.
When General Wheeler, on the 28th day of August, marched up almost
to the gates of Nashville and terrified its defenders, he carried
with him a motley crowd. The brigades of General Williams and General
Anderson had not returned to General Wheeler. They moved east and
did incalculable service for the cause in saving the salt works,
in Southwestern Virginia, upon which the people and the armies of
the Confederacy, west of the Mississippi River, depended for salt,
which, next to bread, was the staff of life. But the defection,
whether wise or unwise, reduced General Wheeler’s force, already
scant enough, to only two thousand men, and thereby imperilled the
success of the incursion and threatened the destruction of General
Wheeler’s entire command, which at that time would have proven an
irreparable loss to Hood’s army. The rise in the Tennessee River had
forced General Wheeler to extend his line far east of where he had
intended originally to go. These unexpected currents carried him
miles beyond Knoxville and out of his chosen path, and the detour
south and east of Knoxville to cross the rivers greatly stayed the
work of wrecking the railroads between Nashville and the South. Once
he was over the Tennessee and its tributaries, the Holston and the
French Broad, General Wheeler turned his face westward. The country
through which he was to march was in some parts unfriendly. At
Clinton, Kingston and other points on his way, he found scattered
Federal camps and supplies, but what he needed most now was horses.
He had come three hundred miles, and three hundred more must he
traverse before he could draw a long breath or be sure that he
could, without disaster, reach General Hood’s quarters. Day by day,
his beasts became more jaded. No animal, which could carry a man,
was left behind, and what could not be taken from the enemy must be
impressed from friend or foe along the road which he was passing. The
extra shoe or pair of horseshoes with which every prudent cavalryman
provides himself, where it is possible, when starting on these
marches, had in most cases been exhausted. The company farrier or
the comrade who could put on a horseshoe loomed up as the noblest
benefactor of the hour. Some were already dismounted. Love, money and
force were all beginning to be powerless to mount those who composed
the columns. Then, too, ammunition was getting very scarce, and the
few cartridges which now rattled in the partly emptied cartridge
boxes were constant warnings to the commander to seek his base of
operations. All these things spoke to General Wheeler with forceful
emphasis, but he also remembered his work was not fully done. The
long detour around Knoxville had changed his march, but it had not
changed his plan or his purpose, and he could not be satisfied
until he grappled again with the railroads which supplied Sherman
and put out of commission some more bridges, trestles and cars and
supply stations south of Nashville. The road by Sparta, McMinnville,
Lebanon, Murfreesboro and intervening places was long, rough and
rocky. It proved very trying to the speechless beasts who had now
marched, counting the detours, an average of over thirty miles a day.
The men had done the fighting, but the beasts had done the carrying,
and the beasts in these raids always got the worst of it. The way
home was not distressingly: beset with enemies until the vicinity of
Nashville would be reached, but there was a sufficient sprinkle of
foes to keep the southern riders aware that they were engaged in war,
and no twenty-four hours passed without some evidence of the presence
of the Federals. The march around Knoxville had mystified the Federal
leaders. They were as surprised as General Wheeler that he had gone
so far east, but now that he had turned north and westward, none
had wisdom enough to prophesy where he would turn up in the very
near future. General Wheeler had a wide, wide territory before him.
He might strike in north of Nashville and pass around through West
Tennessee, or he might follow the Louisville & Nashville Railroad
north and destroy that great artery of commerce. Whither he would
go, none could even guess, and when Grant at Washington, and Sherman
at Atlanta, pleaded for some tidings of the aggressive Confederate
and begged to know whither he had gone, the men watching Middle and
East Tennessee could only answer, “We cannot tell where he is or into
what place he will come.” As the posts became scarcer General Wheeler
traveled the harder, and he soon put in an appearance at Sparta and
then at McMinnville, the last only sixty miles from Nashville. He was
getting close to the danger line. At this juncture, General Wheeler’s
difficulties began to greatly enlarge. His fighting men, with the
loss of Williams and Anderson, had been cut down, even with several
hundred of recruits, to twenty-five hundred men.
On the 30th of August, he made a stirring patriotic appeal for every
able-bodied man to flock to his standard. He pointed out what Georgia
was doing in demanding the services of every male from seventeen to
sixty-five, and he pleaded with all who could fight or were willing
to fight, to gather under his standard and to go to the help of their
fellow-Tennesseans, who, down at Atlanta, were meeting every call
unreservedly and rendering every service to stay the tide of conquest.
This appeal did not fall on deaf or unresponsive ears. Two thousand
came to join Wheeler and hundreds more to take place with other
commands, and almost a mob followed his line of march. Some of them
brought guns, most all of them horses, but twenty-five hundred men
were to do the fighting for this unorganized host. Only twenty-five
hundred could fight, but they could and all must eat, and the
impoverished country could not maintain this hungry throng. A supply
for all of these could only find sustenance in Federal storehouses,
and to these General Wheeler turned his attention, ever keeping in
mind that under all the pressure about him, he had come to harass
and distress his foes, and this must not be omitted. Forcing his
way northwardly from McMinnville to Lebanon, thirty miles west of
Nashville, his enemies became almost desperate, and the commandant
at Gallatin, twelve miles from Lebanon, burned up a great supply
of stores and hastily decamped. Several other stations joined in
this move for safety. Of what was ahead of him, General Wheeler had
no accurate news. On a straight line, he was nearly three hundred
miles from Hood, and if the pace became desperate, Hood in the
end must become his best backer outside of his own gallant and
intrepid followers. Cutting in behind Murfreesboro, thirty miles
south of Nashville, with apparent indifference to consequences, he
turned sharply to the north again and came up within eight miles of
Nashville, and with his pickets in sight of the spires and smoke,
he began to wreck the railroad leading to Chattanooga. The Federals
did not appear to know just where the bold leader was and they did
not care where he went if he kept out of Nashville, but in the very
shadow of its domes, he set his wreckers to work demolishing the
line which meant so much to Sherman. These experienced destroyers
made haste in their work of ruin. Moving southward, they left savage
marks to tell of their presence, and the burning ties and twisted
iron informed the onlooker that experienced men were engaged in this
mission. General Wheeler had only occasion to keep out of the path
of large forces. Stockades were exempt, except where their occupants
had fled, and for seventy miles south of Nashville, the wrecking went
vigorously on. Rousseau, Steedman and Granger, who were managing the
watch for Sherman, either did not know where Wheeler actually was or
they did not appear overly anxious to stop his progress. Following
the Tennessee & Alabama Railroad for seventy miles with leisurely
movements, General Wheeler, seemingly regardless of his foes,
pursued his appointed way to a position north of Florence, Alabama.
General Wheeler’s audacity apparently paralyzed the efforts of his
pursuers. At Franklin, they had forced some sharp fighting, and here
the chivalrous major general, John H. Kelly, fell. Rarely did the
South, with its transcendent oblations on the altar of freedom, make
nobler offering than this gifted army officer. A graduate of West
Point, endowed with great military genius and burning with unbounded
patriotism, few men with his opportunities did more for the South
than he. In the full tide of a magnificent and brilliant career, he
died, leading his men on to battle. Trusted and loved by General
Wheeler, he had learned his leader’s methods and, like him, always
went to the front, and when it was necessary to inspire and enthuse
his command, he led them in every assault upon the lines of their
foes. It was in such work he fell.
Recruits, wagon trains, ambulances and wagons filled with wounded,
dismounted men and broken down steeds, were the constant reminder to
General Wheeler of the dangers of his perilous retreat. About him,
all these disturbing difficulties and dangers momentarily stared him
in the face. Behind him, vigorous foes were many times pressing his
rear guard. What forces might be moved by the Federals to block his
path, he could not foresee, but over and above all these disturbing
complications, the Confederate leader, weighing not more than one
hundred and thirty pounds, sat in his saddle, calm, self-possessed
and fearless, awaiting with a brave heart and an undisturbed soul all
that fate could bring across his path. He felt that with the brave
men about him, war could bring no conflict and present no experiences
from which he could not, with credit to his chivalrous command,
emerge without defeat and destruction, and in which he would not
punish his enemies and give them experiences that would cause them
to regret that they had ever assailed his followers or disputed his
pathway.
On this great raid, one hundred and twenty dead and wounded was all
toll that the God of War exacted of General Wheeler’s forces. He
compelled General Sherman to send more than twelve thousand men to
the help of his commands. He had destroyed the use of one of the
railroads on which the Federals relied for twelve days, the other for
thirty days, put General Sherman’s forces on half rations and created
in his army a dread and apprehension that did much to help depress
their activities and awaken doubts as to the final outcome of the
conflict for Atlanta.