Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

The Confederate chieftain did not long hesitate. He knew whatever was done must be done quickly. The Federal cavalry would soon be reorganized; the clash with the infantry (if they withstood the onslaught from the Confederates) would give the defeated horsemen new courage, and they would come back into the struggle far fiercer than before, for as brave men they would long to wipe out the memories and avenge their humiliating defeat with final victory.

The Federal infantry did not reach the battlefield until 1 p. m. They came under the most trying circumstances; the roads and the weather together were against them. The human body has its limitations. The Federal infantry did all men could have done; a majority of them were unaccustomed to the dreadful heat of the Mississippi thickets and swamps; they had been forced to the very highest efforts on the way; the sounds of battle were ringing in the ears of their leaders—the sultry air did not conduct the sound waves distinctly, but they heard enough to know that a desperate struggle was already on, and they were soon to participate in its dangers and its experiences. Aides came riding in hot haste from where the noise of strife was heard; the messages were delivered to the advance guard, but the hard-riding couriers were hastily escorted to the Federal leaders, and the solemnity of their faces and the seriousness of their visage unmistakably proclaimed that sternest business was being enacted at the place from which they had in such haste so furiously ridden.

The Federal cavalry, in squads and disorganized masses, was retreating from the front. No shout of victory or cheers had come from the horsemen to urge the infantry forward to the conflict, which had gone sorely against those who rode. Here and there an ambulance bearing wounded officers and privates told in unmistakable terms what losses were awaiting those who were pressing toward the conflict, and bandaged heads and bloody faces, and wounded arms and legs told the story of carnage where these sufferers had been.

Regimental and company officers were commanding more rapid marching. These men in blue had suffered, on the way, dreadful punishment from the sultry heat, still they were bidden with loud and vociferous orders to press forward. They were now beginning to catch sight of the wreckage, an overturned ambulance, a dead horse, streams of disabled men, broken wagons, fleeing teamsters, riding detached animals with the harness swinging about their legs, all made a depressing scene.

The Federal infantry were of good stuff. When within half a mile of the Confederate lines, they vigorously responded to the command “double quick march” and ran forward to meet a foe of which they could see but little. The buzz of the rifle balls they heard on every side, and the defiant yells, which came from the bushes and recesses of the thickets, into which the men in blue were being hurried to find somebody to fight, were no pleasant sounds.

As the Federal infantry swung into line, yells and cheers from the Confederate forces came across the short space between them. Something important was happening. Some relief and mitigation was at hand. The shouts were of gladness and not those of grief or even of battle. The Confederate artillery was swinging out to the front. The Confederate cavalry always had good artillerists, Pelham, Chew, Cobb, Rice, Morton, Thrall and Freeman were men whom any commander might covet and in whose services they might glory.

Forrest had two wonderful qualities. He made all his associates recklessly brave. They absorbed the touch of strange and ever-masterful courage that came oozing from his every pore. He was, besides, a wonderful judge of men; all his staff were men not only of intrepid spirit but of quick intelligence and infinite patriotism. They knew Forrest’s limitations, but they understood his marvelous greatness. That Forrest was sometimes harsh, even cruel and bitter in his judgment and in his words and acts, none knew better than the superb men on his staff; but his transcendent genius, his matchless courage and his immeasurable loyalty overshadowed his faults, so that the light which came from his greatness so magnified his presence and power as to dwarf and blot out that which in many men would have been hateful deformities.

The battle line was not an extended one. Well for the Confederates that this was so. With no reserves and outnumbered two to one, the shorter the range of action the better, for the smaller force.

Three thousand six hundred fresh infantry were now thrown into the whirlpool of battle. The Federal cavalry cowered behind their allies, who had walked and then ran in that dreadful summer heat to help them in their extremity. The heavy fire of the infantry, the constant peal and boom of the artillery notified Forrest that the best reliance of the Federal general was at hand. It looked gloomy for the Confederate commander, but while the character of men and the fire on the Federal side had changed, General Forrest also had a present help in this trouble. Brave, gallant Tyree H. Bell had come. True, his troopers with jaded steeds had trotted or galloped for nineteen miles under the blaze of the torrid sun, but the poor beasts who had carried the men could calmly rest while the fighting part of the outfit were now ready to take their place in the freshening fray.

Bell had a noble record. He had been from the first captain of the 12th Tennessee Infantry. He had acted as colonel at Belmont, and on the bloody field of Shiloh again commanded this splendid regiment. Made its colonel, he had won fresh laurels at Richmond, Kentucky, in the great victory there under Kirby Smith, and still later he had become commander of a cavalry regiment, and at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga had furiously hammered the Federal flanks. In January, 1864, Forrest, who knew good fighters by instinct, gave Bell a brigade with five regiments. The most of these on this glorious day at Bryce’s Cross Roads were to give another good account of themselves. At Fort Pillow, Bell with the rifle and revolver had assailed and won a very strong position, and now again in this conflict, and in many afterwards, he was to win his great commander’s admiration and trust.