When General Forrest arrived, the boats were ready to move, the horses were detached from all the wagons and artillery, driven into the river and made to swim across. The same process was gone through with the cavalry horses. It was a wonderful sight to a looker-on,—hundreds of horses struggling in a swollen stream. All understood what even an hour’s delay might mean. The beasts could swim, but no man could endure the freezing waters, or hope after half a mile of immersion under its chilling currents to emerge on the other side alive. Logs were searched for in the drift, fence rails were hunted. These were lashed together with grape vines, halter ropes or bridle reins, and on these improvised rafts, bushes and drift were piled, and with poles or board paddles, pushed and pulled across the stream.

The artillery and wagon horses and a majority of the cavalry mounts were animals which had been captured from the Federals. The supreme hour was at hand. Only the speediest action could hold out the slightest hope of escape. One section of artillery, under Captain Douglass, and one regiment were posted a mile away from the ferry. These were directed to fortify their position as best they could, to hold it in the face of all odds, under all circumstances, and to fight even to annihilation. Only brave men, who have received such a command, can realize how calmly human courage rises to its very zenith under such conditions. No one detailed for this important duty sought relief. Forrest himself told them they must stay and if need be, die to save their comrades. They made no excuses, they asked no exemption. They were ready to serve as told and, had the occasion required, every man was ready to fall where his country, at that hour, called him to stand.

The river was eighteen hundred feet wide, but it had banks which were favorable for the escape of the animals from the stream.

From twelve o’clock until eight o’clock at night, the flatboats pulled up stream half a mile and were then permitted to drop down with the current, and were drifted and poled across, and after eight hours the five pieces of artillery, six caissons, sixty wagons and four ambulances, equipments of all kinds, and the whole command had been carried over the swollen stream and were landed on the eastern side of the river. Thirty-six hours out from Parker’s Cross Roads, where Dunham and Sullivan and Fuller had raised such a rough-house with Forrest, he had marched forty miles, and safely passed all his forces with their horses and trains over the Tennessee. This remarkable feat again demonstrated Forrest’s wonderful wealth of resource, and served notice on his enemies that there was nothing he would not dare and few feats that he could not accomplish.

Fourteen days had elapsed since the passage of the river, but what marvelous experiences had Forrest and his raw levies passed. They had traveled over three hundred miles, had been in three sternly contested engagements, with daily skirmishing, had destroyed fifty large and small bridges on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and had burned trestles, so as to make it useless to the enemy; had captured twenty stockades, captured and killed twenty-five hundred of the enemy, taken and disabled ten pieces of artillery, carried off fifty wagons and ambulances with their teams, had captured ten thousand stands of excellent small arms and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, had returned fully armed, equipped and mounted; had traversed roads with army trains which at that season were considered impassable, even by horsemen. Only one night’s rest in fourteen days had been enjoyed, unsheltered, without tents, and in a most inclement winter, constantly raining, snowing and sleeting; but these wonderful men had endured all these hardships, neither murmuring, complaining nor doubting, but always cheerful, brave and resigned to do any and every duty that sternest war could bring.

This one campaign had made Forrest’s new troopers veterans. There was now no service for which they were not prepared. They were ready to follow their leader at any time and everywhere, and thereafter no troops would perform more prodigies of valor or face a foe with more confidence or cheerfulness; and yet before them were many of war’s sacrifices, dangers, disasters, toils and trials, which would call for the best that was in man.

Chapter VII
TEXAS HORSEMEN OF THE SEA,
IN GALVESTON HARBOR, JANUARY, 1863

General John Bankhead Magruder was born in Winchester, Virginia, on the 15th of August, 1810. He came of not only a distinguished but a martial family. Singularly attractive in personality, he entered West Point and graduated from that institution in 1830.

Thirty-six years of age when the Mexican War began, he was not without a wide military experience, and on many battlefields had exhibited the superb courage which marked his entire career as a Confederate officer. He won fame at Palo Alto in the Mexican War, he earned a brevet at Cerro Gordo, and at Chapultepec and in the City of Mexico he added still more largely to his splendid reputation for gallantry and dash. Imbued with all the patriotic state pride and love of a native born Virginian, he early resigned his position in the United States army and took service under the Confederate government.

By March 16, 1861, he was colonel; ninety days later a brigadier general; less than four months afterward he was a major general; and, with probably one exception, when it was claimed he was tardy, he justified the opinion of his friends and superiors that he was a great soldier, an eminent strategist, with extraordinary aptitude for all phases and departments of war.