Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

Louisville, Kentucky.
1914.

Chapter I
FORREST AT BRYCE’S CROSS ROADS,
JUNE 10TH, 1864

The spring and summer of 1864 in Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and in the Trans-Mississippi Department proved one of the most sanguinary periods of the war.

During this time, Joseph E. Johnston made his superb retreat from Dalton to Atlanta, regarded by military historians as one of the ablest strategic movements of the campaigns from ’61 to ’65, and General Robert E. Lee, in his famous defensive campaign culminating in the decimation of Grant’s armies at Cold Harbor, had killed or wounded more than eighty thousand of General Grant’s followers, twenty thousand more effective men than Lee’s whole army numbered!

In the Trans-Mississippi, between April and August, ’64, General Dick Taylor at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill gained glorious victories in attempting to stay the advance of General Banks into the heart of Louisiana; and Kirby Smith, Price, Shelby and Marmaduke in Arkansas still maintained a courageous front to the foe. After three years of constant fighting, their soldiers were more thoroughly inured to the hardships of war, better trained to face its dangers, and men on both sides exhibited a recklessness in facing death which marked the highest tide of courage.

Early in the war the cavalry became one of the most effective arms of the agencies of the Confederates. With the vast territory in the West defended by the Confederacy, with a frontier line twenty-five hundred miles in extent, the marching speed of which mounted men are capable, the cavalry of the South, at this period, enabled them to do more, man for man, than any arm of the South’s defenders. They proved not only the best allies of the Confederate cause, but later developed some of the most renowned cavalry leaders of the world.

There were many cavalry battles during the fifteen hundred and twenty days of the war—Trevilian Station, Fleetwood Hill, sometimes called “Brandy Station,” Harrisburg, Hartsville, Okolona, Murfreesboro, Shiloh, Parkers Cross Roads, Reams Station, all of which gave resplendence to the fame of the Confederate horsemen. Over and above these cavalry battles, there was Bryce’s Cross Roads, designated by the Federals as the Battle of Tishomingo Creek. Measured by losses, it stands pre-eminent; along strategic lines it is amongst the first, and counted by results to the defeated foe, it has no counterpart in any engagement fought entirely on one side by cavalry.

On the Federal side, two thousand officers and men, including the wounded, were made prisoners, and more than twelve hundred dead were left on the battlefield or in close proximity thereto, if Forrest’s contemporary reports be correct. The Confederates lost a hundred and forty killed and three hundred wounded. General Forrest held the battlefield. His forces buried the dead, and his count was based upon the fullest knowledge of the tremendous mortality of this sanguinary engagement. There were differing statements concerning the casualties. The numbers here given are from men who saw the havoc on the field.

At Fleetwood Hill, the Confederates lost five hundred and twenty-three killed and wounded, and the Federals nine hundred and thirty-six killed and wounded. At Trevilian Station, a purely cavalry engagement, June 11th, 1864, Hampton carried into battle four thousand seven hundred men against nine thousand Federals. After the battle and in ten days’ subsequent fighting, his losses in killed, wounded and prisoners were less than seven hundred. He captured six hundred and ninety-five Federals, including one hundred and twenty-five wounded. Hampton’s killed numbered less than seventy-five. In the Trevilian campaign, continuing fifteen days, Hampton’s losses did not exceed seven hundred and fifty killed, wounded and missing, while the Federals report a loss of one thousand five hundred and twelve, more than twice that of the Confederates. At Hartsville, the Confederates lost a hundred and twenty-five killed and wounded, and the Federals four hundred and thirty, with eighteen hundred captured. At Harrisburg, Mississippi, one thousand two hundred and eighty-seven Confederates were killed and wounded. At Bull Run the Federals lost in killed and wounded one thousand four hundred and ninety-two, with one thousand four hundred and sixty missing. The Confederates lost one thousand eight hundred and seven. On both sides approximately fifty-six thousand men were engaged. At Shiloh, April 6th and 7th, 1862, the Federal death roll was seventeen hundred and that of the Confederates seventeen hundred and twenty-eight, and yet on both sides ninety thousand men were engaged in the struggle. At Wilson’s Creek, the Federal loss was one thousand three hundred and seventeen, the Confederate loss one thousand two hundred and eighteen. There the forces were nearly evenly matched, and there were about ten thousand in the struggle. Accepting General Forrest’s report to be true that more than twelve hundred men were killed and wounded in the six hours of fighting at Bryce’s Cross Roads, then more men were killed and captured on that day than in any two other purely cavalry engagements of the war.

By June, 1864, Forrest had reached the full tide of his fame. He had improved every opportunity to develop his genius, and he never failed to make use of all the fighting opportunities that came his way. He did not always get the best the quartermaster had, and he had been hampered by interference from headquarters. He had long since ceased to rely upon his government for his mounts, clothing, arms and food. He had months before learned from actual experience that the Federals had better supplies than it was possible for the Confederacy to distribute, and that capture from his enemies was a quicker and surer way of getting what he wanted than to risk the red tape and poverty of Confederate quartermaster regulations.