Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

Refreshed with food and a momentary rest, the Federal leader realized that all impedimenta must be thrown away; that to escape Forrest, he must march with quicker gait and move with longer strides. Rations and ammunition were counted out to the men. A portion of the contents of the wagons were packed upon mules. He parked his wagons and set them afire. They had hardly begun to burn when the 4th Tennessee Regiment, under Starnes, charged into the village and drove out Streight’s rear guard. Streight had rested two hours, but he had rested the wrong two hours. Forrest’s men were fresh from their two hours’ sleep. Streight’s rear guard was constantly and vigorously pursued and attacked. Federals concealed in the bushes fired into the advancing column. Here and there a man fell wounded, maybe dead, and dying or disabled horses were the markers that were revealing to the pursued and the pursuers the savageness of war, but none of these stayed the men who were harrying the Federal rear guard.

Blountsville was ten miles from the Black Warrior River. The road had become wider and smoother, but Forrest’s pursuit became still more aggressive. Protecting the crossing by heavy lines of skirmishers on each side of the river and pointing his two howitzers westwardly, a spirited resistance was made by Streight, but Forrest’s men, seemingly never tiring, charging again and again, finally broke the line. It was five o’clock in the afternoon of May 1st when the last Federal forded the Black Warrior River. Men sleeping on their horses, here and there dropping from their steeds by either fatigue or sleep, reminded General Forrest that he had about reached the limit of human endurance, that there were some things even his trained riders could not do. Reserving one hundred men for pursuit, he now permitted his soldiers to go into camp for three hours. Scant forage furnished his horses a small ration, but his men preferred sleep to food, and they laid down to profoundest slumber. This gave Streight surcease from battle until nine o’clock next morning, but unwisely he drove his men every moment of the night. He reached Black Creek, four miles from Gadsden, but he reached it with his men fearfully worn and depressed. Forrest, true to his instincts and his knowledge of the powers of human resistance, let every man he could spare from picket duty enjoy a brief undisturbed repose. He calculated that he could release some from aggressive assault and sent one of his regiments to the rear and told them to sleep. Streight had marched during all the night. Forrest had rested three hours, and he was thereby enabled to begin pursuit with increased vigor. Riding at the head of his men, he spurred them on to supremest effort, to reach Black Creek and save the bridge. He hoped to push Streight so hard that he would not find time to wreck or burn the structure spanning that stream.

At Blount’s Farm, ten miles from Gadsden, one of the dismal tragedies of the expedition was enacted. On the first day of May, at 4 p. m., Colonel Streight reached Blount’s Plantation. There were only fifteen miles between him and Gadsden. This plantation furnished abundant forage for his horses. While the horses fed, the soldiers ate; a portion standing attentive in line ready to obstruct the advance of the Confederates. This rear guard was again vigorously attacked by Forrest. In resisting this advance, Colonel Gilbert Hathaway was mortally wounded. Forrest had become wary of ambuscades, and was so cautiously watching for them that Streight declined to waste his time in further preparing them. The rear guard was under the direction of Hathaway. This soldier Streight was now cherishing as his best helper. This Federal hero, leading his men in a charge, fell with his face to the foe, crying out, “If we die, let us die at the front,” and there he went down, covered with the glory and honor which fame always accords to the brave. There was only time for comrades to request a decent burial for the brave Indiana colonel who had died so far away from home, and had been cut down in the full pride of his splendid career. These officers had known different experiences from the Confederates. They had been accustomed, when men of rank were killed, to handsome coffins and the consoling ornaments and trappings which robbed death on the battlefield of some of its terrors. The owner of the plantation was asked to provide a metallic case for the remains of the dead soldier. He mournfully said, “There are no metallic cases in this country.” “Then give him a plain pine coffin,” pleaded the Federal officer, now exposed to and endangered by the fire of the advancing Confederates. “We have no coffins,” replied the man, sadly shaking his head. “Then take some planks and make a box and bury him and mark his grave.” “You have burned all my planks,” replied the man, “and I have nothing with which to make even a box.” “Then,” he pleaded once again, with the bullets whistling around his head and with the Confederates immediately in sight, “wrap his body in an oil cloth and bury him, for God’s sake, where he may be found,”—and this the magnanimous planter agreed to do. He faithfully kept his pledge, and in the Alabama garden he gave sepulture to the gallant soldier. The Federal officer, with his enemies at his heels, and with the Confederate bullets buzzing about his person, waved the dust of his comrade a last sad adieu, and putting spurs to his horse galloped away and left the dead hero with his enemies to make and guard his tomb.

Far down in Walton County in Southwestern Georgia, a plain, hard-working farmer of Scotch-Irish descent, known among his neighbors as Macajah Sansom, lived at a little town called Social Circle. He heard of richer land in Alabama bottoms and decided to migrate. The youngest child in the family was Emma Sansom, born in 1847.

The change was not propitious for the father, and in 1859, seven years after his change of home, he died, leaving a son and two daughters to the care of his widow. In 1861, the lad, Rufus, the oldest of the family, heard the call of his country and went away as a member of the 19th Alabama Infantry, to defend its rights. The little farm was left to the oversight of the mother and her two daughters. War’s ravages had not reached where they lived. The son and protector had been away twenty months, and all this desolate family knew of war was what Rufus had written of his campaigning and the narratives brought back by an occasional furloughed neighbor, or some who in battle had lost a leg or an arm, and returned disabled, bearing in their persons memorials of how terrible was real war.

The father had settled on Black Creek, four miles west of Gadsden, on the highway from Blountsville to Gadsden. On one side of his farm was an uncovered wooden bridge, plain and unsightly, but saved the passers-by from fording the deep, sluggish stream that essayed to halt man and beast on their travels across this new and thinly settled country. The dead father had built a small doubled, one-storied frame house from lumber sawed out of the pine trees that grew in luxuriance on the hills, a short distance back from the Creek. These two girls and their mother had but little of this world’s goods. Some cows, chickens, a few pigs and a horse constituted all their possessions. They loved their country, and they gloried in the courage of the young man who was so faithfully and bravely fighting at the front. Joseph Wheeler was the first colonel of the 19th. This regiment had been at Mobile and later at Shiloh, where two hundred and nineteen of its members had been killed and wounded. It had marched with Bragg into Kentucky and down through Mississippi, and later in the valley of Stone River, at the Battle of Murfreesboro, where one hundred and fifty-one of its members were killed or received wounds. In his simple, guileless, homely way, he had written the awful experiences through which he and the neighbor boys had passed, and the mother and sisters were proud of him and loved him for the dangers through which he had come, and what he had done made them zealous for the cause for which they had sent him away to endure and dare so much. Each mail day—for mails did not come often into this isolated territory—they watched and waited for the letter to tell what the brother was doing at the far-off front. A fifth of the neighbors and friends who made up the Gadsden company were filling soldier’s graves in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama, and these defenseless women were afraid to open the letters that were post-marked from the army lest there should come tidings of the death of the one they so dearly loved.

By the afternoon of May 2d, the pressure of Streight and his men by Forrest was at its fiercest tension. Guided by his two companies of Alabama refugee horsemen, Streight had been told if he could only cross Black Creek and burn the bridge, that he might hope for a few hours’ respite, and if he could not feed his weary men and wearier beasts, he could at least let them sleep enough to restore a part of their wasted energy, and from a few hours’ repose get new strength for the struggles and trials that yet faced them in this perilous campaign upon which they had so courageously come.

The rear guard was the front of the fighting, and there the plucky and indomitable Federal leader was pleading with his soldiers to stand firm and beat off the pitiless onslaught of the relentless Confederates, who seemed devilish in their vehement and impetuous charges. He had chosen men of valor for this work, and they nobly responded to his every call.

Sitting in their cottage, mayhap talking of the soldier brother, there fell upon the ears of these defenseless home-keepers strange sounds: the galloping of horses, the clanging of swords, frequent shots, sharp, quick commands. They wondered what all this clamor could mean, and rushing to the porch, they saw companies of men clad in blue, all riding in hot haste toward the bridge over the creek. They were beating and spurring their brutes, who seemed weary under their human burdens, and in their dumb way resenting the cruel and harsh measures used to drive them to greater and more strenuous effort. The passers-by jeered the women, asked them how they liked the “Yanks,” and told them they had come to thrash the rebels and run Bragg and his men out of the country. They said “Old Forrest” was behind them, but they had licked him once and would do it again.

The well in the yard tempted them to slake their thirst, and dismounting, they crowded about the bucket and pulled from its depths draughts to freshen their bodies and allay the fever that burned in their tired throats. They asked if they had any brothers in the army; and not to be outdone, the women said they had six, and all gone to fight the Yankees. Two cannon went rumbling by. The men on their horses were belaboring them with great hickory wythes, and were driving at a mad pace to get over the wooden bridge. Some of the blue-coated men came in and searched the house for guns, pistols, and opened and pried through the drawers of the wooden bureau, and looked in the closets and presses and under the beds; but they found nothing but a side saddle; and one, more malignant than the others, drew his knife from a sheath dangling by his side, and slashed and cut its skirts into small pieces and threw them upon the floor at the feet of the helpless women.