elevating entertainment of horse-racing played a prominent part. Both
Max and Guy were conspicuous by their successes until, long before the
close of our leisurely career, but only after they had hung my walls
with spurs and whips and other trophies of their successful competition
with all comers, both were ruled out by the impossible odds they were
obliged to give. The actual military service required was only enough
to convince me that Max was a beast of endless bottom and endurance,
and that, accidents apart, he would need no help in any work he might
be called on to perform. For the rest of the war, with much duty of
untold severity, I habitually rode no other horse for light work or for
hard, for long rides or for short ones, on the march or on parade; and
with all my sentiment for his charming predecessors, I had to confess
that his equal as a campaigner had never come under my leg. He would
walk like a cart-horse at the head of a marching column, would step
like a lord in passing in review, would prance down the main street of
a town as though vain of all applause, would leap any fence or ditch or
fallen timber to which he might be put, would fly as though shot from
a gun in passing along the line; and when, whether early or late, he
was taken to his stable, would eat like a hungry colt and sleep like a
tired plough-horse. In all weathers and under all circumstances he was
steady, honest, intelligent, and ready for every duty. I had ridden
before, at home and in the army, horses ideally good; I have ridden
since, over the hunting country of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire,
horses that were counted of the best, but never, before or since, have
I mounted such a magnificent piece of perfectly trained and perfectly
capable horse-flesh.
On one occasion, at Union City, word was brought in that a flag of
truce from Faulkner had arrived at our picket line, and I rode out
for a parley over a trifling matter of an exchange of prisoners.
The officer in charge of the flag, with the company escorting him,
had originally come from our neighborhood and had belonged to
Merryweather's "band." As Max trotted up to their bivouac, he was
greeted with cries of recognition, and a lieutenant of the company was
kind enough to warn me that I had shown them a stronger inducement
than they had hitherto had to make an attack on our position; for,
since Frank Moore had captured the horse I rode, they had determined
to regain him at any risk. Happily, this laudable wish was never
fulfilled, and Max remained, in spite of the devices they may have laid
for his recapture.
During the five months of our stay at this post, we made some hard
scouts in a hard country, and we held a good part of West Tennessee
under strict surveillance, but the most memorable feature of all our
scouting was generally the welcome dismounting under the wide eaves of
our own house; not, I hope, that we had grown effeminate, but a week's
tramp through the woods of West Tennessee offers little that memory
can cherish, and prepares one for a sensation on the near approach of
comfort.
But five months of such life is enough, and I was not sorry when the
order came that I must go for a soldier again.
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.