WEST TENNESSEE
After the battle of Chickamauga, Forrest, with 300 picked men, turned
toward Mississippi to begin the recruiting for his third army. By
December 1 we had quite an army of raw recruits, but they were poorly
mounted and many of them unarmed. Up to this time Forrest had depended
upon his enemy for arms and supplies; and as there was no foe in
immediate striking distance, he determined to march through North
Mississippi into West Tennessee, then entirely in the hands of the enemy
and guarded by a large army, with strong garrisons at Corinth, Miss.,
Memphis, Bolivar, and Union City, Tenn. General Hurlbut, the commander
of the department, had announced that if Forrest should return he would
surely be captured.
About December 1, 1863, we left Holly Springs, Miss., on our northward
march. Making the greatest possible display of his force, at the proper
time Forrest pushed across the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, left a
small force of Mississippi troops to threaten Memphis and Collierville,
and moved rapidly on with his main body, reaching Jackson, Tenn., in the
very center of Hurlbut’s net, before the enemy knew that Forrest was
back in his old haunts. Operating in and around Jackson through
December, we added about 2,000 men to our force and collected many beef
cattle. The enemy, now realizing that this force was commanded by
Forrest, never sought to molest us within our limited area, but awaited
the time for our get-away, confident of being able to crush and capture
us. The Union forces had already captured John Morgan, and they now felt
that Forrest was within their grasp.
On January 1, 1864, we began our movement southward, threatening in all
directions, but moving toward the Hatchie River at a point above
Bolivar, Tenn. The enemy had failed to find a boat which we had sunk in
this stream. At Jack’s Creek we encountered the Bolivar force, and
easily pushed it back, allowing our main column to pass on to the
crossing place on the Hatchie.
Forrest posted a regiment in front of the Bolivar army, and gave them
orders to fight to the last if necessary, to hold the enemy until we
could cross the river. It took us all night. The enemy had made a
desperate fight with our rear guard just at sundown, but withdrew their
line at night and reported to their commander that they had hemmed us in
a bend of the stream where we had no means of crossing. They had sent a
regiment across the river, and it had gone into camp in a cornfield
about a mile from our crossing place.
Forrest had distributed his 300 veterans among the new troops in order
to instruct them as to what was expected of them.
After we were safely across the Hatchie followed one of those daring
feats of our General so difficult to understand from a description in
cold type--so peculiar to his originality on the battle field. Instead
of hurling a heavy force against the regiment camping in the cornfield,
he attacked them with his picked escort of eighty men, scattering them
to give the impression of a full regiment. With ten special captains
giving loud commands, as if company after company were moving to the
attack, our thin line dashed upon the sleeping foe in the darkness just
before daylight and put the entire regiment to flight mainly with our
six-shooters. Forrest did not wish to be burdened with prisoners just at
this time, and so he planned to frighten this regiment out of the
pathway of his army and secure as many of their horses as possible. The
plan succeeded, and we lost only three men, one of them being the
gallant “Nathan Boone,” commander of the escort.
Many of our men were given good mounts from the number captured. My
horse was slightly wounded, and I exchanged him for a large, fine animal
which I named “Hatch,” “in memory” of a Union colonel commanding a
regiment at Bolivar.
Our difficulties grew with our progress. An army of 30,000 men, divided
into four divisions, was pressing us on all sides. We had to cross Wolf
River and the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and our force did not
exceed 5,000 or 6,000 men, many of them neither armed nor mounted. We
were burdened with a drove of beef cattle, our supply wagons, and
artillery. General Forrest’s plans were known neither to the enemy nor
to his own men, and all we could guess was that he would do the
unexpected.
Then, while threatening a crossing of the railroad between Collierville
and LaGrange, Tenn., with a swiftness that was incredible, our main
column pushed out toward Rossville and Memphis, as if to attack the
latter. We crossed the Wolf River near Rossville, putting the guard to
flight and reflooring the partially wrecked bridge with fence rails. We
then dispersed the force between us and the railroad, and defeated the
division which opposed us at the railroad, thus, with the loss of not
more than thirty men, escaping the wrathful meshes of a force five times
our number.
It has been said that “comparisons are odious,” but it is a living truth
that values exist only in comparison; and the military student cannot
fail to retrace the immortal campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar,
Frederick, and Napoleon in the lightning-like, yet perfectly timed,
movements of this untrained, unpolished genius of war, now known to
history as Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The enemies of General Forrest were the first to recognize his great and
dangerous ability as West Pointer after West Pointer toppled before his
flying column.
After this raid it is said that General Sherman, more than any of the
other Union commanders, saw and appreciated the danger of this untutored
captain of the Confederacy, and that he openly declared that the
commander who could vanquish or capture Forrest would be made a major
general in addition to receiving a reward of fifty thousand dollars.
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