On the 3rd day of November, Forrest reached the scene of action with his chief of artillery, John W. Morton. Johnsonville, at this time, appeared as a sort of heavenly resort, or a Commissary Utopia, to the Confederates, and Forrest promptly undertook its destruction and all that was gathered in it. The landing was filled with transports and barges and gunboats. The great problem with the Confederates in the later periods of the war was something to eat, wear, shoot and ride, and the little town beside the Tennessee, with more supplies than these oftentimes hungry and illy clad horsemen had ever dreamed of, appeared to contain all the provisions in the world. On the banks were houses filled to overflowing with valuable supplies, and acres of army stores were piled around the warehouses. A new battery had come up during the following night, under Captain Thrall. This was placed just above the town, while the Morton and Hudson batteries were placed just opposite and below the town. At two o’clock Forrest opened with his artillery. He had kept his movements so well concealed that the Federals at Johnsonville were unaware of his presence until the Confederate guns announced the presence of an enemy. Morton promptly opened fire upon the forts and gunboats. For a little while the Federals had no apprehension that Forrest could effect very much, but Morton, always skillful, soon obtained the range and by cutting the fuses with precision, he put his shells into the midst of the supply station. Flame and smoke soon began to rise from many of the boats that lined the river, and from the goods along the wharf and the warehouses. By nightfall, the boats and the walls of the commissary were fired, and for three-quarters of a mile up and down, the river presented a great forest of flame. Flames illuminated the horizon for miles and huge volumes of smoke rose up towards the heavens in glorious signals of a great consuming fire. Some said that the Federal soldiers fired their own boats. Morton, Thrall, Bugg, Zaring, Brown and Hunter, the men who directed the artillery firing on this expedition, won splendid laurels by the accuracy of their aim. Colonel Rucker had an extended experience in artillery service in the Mississippi in the earlier stages of the war; while General Lyon, who before his resignation from the United States Army had served as an artillery officer, gave their assistance in the important work of destroying the Federal boats and supplies. The artillery were the chief instruments in this crowning act of destruction, and all others in the other corps were glad to give them due praise and plaudits for the splendid way in which they had performed their part in this magnificent victory.
Forrest had now accomplished all he had come to do. He had burned up millions’ worth of property. The Federals said he had thirteen thousand men with twenty-six guns. Sherman, telegraphing General Grant, said, “That devil, Forrest, was down about Johnsonville, making havoc among the gunboats and transports.”
The roads had become well-nigh impassable, and the return march to Corinth was slow and toilsome. On November 10th, however, he arrived at Corinth in reasonably good order. He had been absent a little more than two weeks. He had captured and destroyed four gunboats, fourteen transports, twenty barges, twenty-six pieces of artillery, and six million seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property. One thing that particularly pleased the Confederates was the capture of nine thousand pairs of shoes and one thousand blankets, and strange to say, in all these operations and fourteen days’ fighting of the Confederates, two were killed and nine wounded.
Forrest always was able to mystify his enemies. He had left enough troops in the neighborhood of Memphis to keep the commanders there busy and to fear an attack on the place. General Smith reported from Memphis, on the 16th of October, that the houses had been loop-holed for sharpshooters, and an inner line of cotton defenses constructed, and told his commander that Forrest was at Grenada on the Friday night before. Halleck, in Washington, wired Thomas that Forrest was threatening Memphis. General Sherman was so alarmed by this destruction of Johnsonville that he telegraphed to General Grant, saying, “Sherman estimates that Forrest has 26,000 men mounted and menacing his communications.” The 23rd Corps was despatched to Johnsonville, and up at Columbus, Kentucky, Sherman had given orders that guns must be defended to death and the town should be burned rather than that Forrest should get a pound of provisions. The Federals seemed to be doing more telegraphing than fighting and marching. While they were comforting each other or alarming each other, Forrest’s soldiers, well dressed, well mounted, thoroughly equipped, were pulling through the mud, trying to get out of Tennessee. The mud and slush became such a menace that General Forrest was required to use sixteen oxen to pull one gun. The teams were doubled to carry the cannon, sixteen horses were hitched to a single piece. The oxen would haul the guns ten or fifteen miles and then were turned back to their owners, who were allowed to drive them home.
On the 15th day of November, Forrest reached Iuka, and then by rail from Cherokee Station, Forrest and his men were transferred to Florence, Alabama. On this trip, horseshoes and nails became very scarce. Many times Forrest was compelled to take the tires from the farm wagons along the route and have these forged into shoes and nails for the use of the horses.
This marvelous expedition was to close the really great destructive career of General Forrest. The ink was hardly dry upon his letter to General Dick Taylor, detailing a portion of the work under his command, until orders were given for General Forrest to proceed at once to Florence and there take command of the cavalry of the Army of the Tennessee, under General Hood.
It was a sad mistake when the Confederate Government at Richmond had failed, a year before, to invest General Forrest with command of the cavalry of the Army of the Tennessee. He was not braver than General Wheeler; he was not more patriotic than General Wheeler; but without any reflection, it may be confidently said that from the same number of men, General Forrest would get more fighting than any officer of the Confederate Army, General Lee not excepted. When damage to his enemies was to be calculated Forrest had no superior in the world. He captured and destroyed more Federal military property than any other officer of the war.
Forrest, like Wheeler, always went to the front. Both seemed destined by miraculous interposition to be preserved from death. Many times all those about them went down before the enemy’s fire. Both Forrest and Wheeler were several times injured, but never very seriously. No two men were more reckless or courageous on the battlefield, and no two men with the means at their command ever did more for any cause than Forrest and Wheeler. Of these two men many thousands of pages might be written, and yet much would be left unsaid that ought to be said in recounting their wonderful campaigns. With charmed lives, with brave spirits, with courageous souls and intrepid hearts, they seemed immune from death.
Chapter XIII
CAVALRY EXPEDITION OF THE TEXANS
INTO NEW MEXICO, WINTER, 1861-62
Only three rivers escape from the American Desert—the Columbia, Colorado and Rio Grande. The last of these, the Rio Grande, rises far up amid the mountains of Colorado, close to the Montana line. It was named by the Spaniards Rio Grande del Norte, or Grand River of the North, because of its great length. It was sometimes called Rio Bravo del Norte, “Brave River of the North.” Fighting its way amid mountain gorges, through canyons, cutting channels deep down into rocky defiles, it forces a passage over nature’s fiercest obstacles and drives its currents through New Mexico and Colorado for seven hundred miles. Then turning southwardly, it seeks a resting place in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. For more than eleven hundred miles it is the boundary between Mexico and the United States.