“‘Run here, boys, run quick, and see the curiosity of the century. Here is a wounded cavalryman!’
The Lane of the Lost Opportunity, near Spring Hill, Tennessee, where Hood came so near cutting off Schofield.
“And before I could get on they had surrounded me and proceeded to make life a greater burden. In vain I tried to explain; as far as I went I heard only one yell:
“‘Look at the wonder of the century! Here is a real wounded cavalryman. Sonny, how in the world did you ever get that close to a bullet?’ and so on. I got off of that horse as soon as I could and never tried to play cavalry again during the war.”
“I think it pretty well established,” remarked General Jackson, “that the greatest cavalry leader of the Confederacy was Gen. N. B. Forrest. His career was a curious one, as illustrating the heights to which a natural genius, uneducated though it may be, can go in its chosen path. He had twenty-nine horses, in all, killed under him during the war, and yet came out unhurt save when a minie ball one day ploughed through his stirrup and the sole of his boot. After the war, in which he rose to be a lieutenant-general, his fame as a cavalry leader had spread so far that during the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III sent a distinguished military tribunal over here to get General Forrest’s mode of fighting cavalry. On their way to Memphis they stopped over at Belle Meade to inspect my stud, and as I had seen a good deal of service with Forrest I was telling them of some of his ways of fighting cavalry. Only one of them could speak English, and I remember how the other two laughed as I told their interpreter how Forrest escaped annihilation by pure audacity, on Hood’s retreat out of Tennessee, of whose army his cavalry covered the retreat. Forrest’s cavalry was really mounted infantry, and he had in it also two of the deadliest batteries in the Civil War. On Hood’s retreat he saved the army by planting his batteries and checking the Federal advance—then, when they came in overpowering numbers he would fall back to another natural hill breastwork and check them again, while Hood was trying to get over Duck River. But one time he came near being annihilated. He held his ground too long when suddenly an officer dashed up and shouted:
“‘General! General, we are ruined! The enemy is in our rear. We will have to surrender! What shall we do?’
“‘Do? Do?’ shouted Forrest, as he cursed the officer for a chicken-hearted coward. ‘Is that all you know about war? What will I do? In my rear, are they? Well, I’ll just about face and then I’ll be in them, won’t I?’ And he did, capturing more prisoners than he could take into the Tennessee River with him. The French committee were highly amused, and said such a course would never have been thought of in European warfare. I afterwards learned that the only information they got from Forrest on their visit was his now historic answer to their question as to what was his rule of warfare, to which he answered, ‘There ain’t but one rule—I always tried to git thar fust with the most men.’ Now, the thoroughbred horse is the best horse in Tennessee to ’git thar fust’ on,’” laughed the general, “unless it is one of Trotwood’s pacers,” he said, as he winked my way, “and the only reason they are fit for anything is because they are built on the best kind of thoroughbred lines, as he has admitted time and again.”
“I remember a laughable incident on Hood’s retreat at a small creek between Nashville and Columbia,” said another old soldier present. “It was early morning, cold and sleety. We had waded the creek, but had to go back to help pull the artillery over. As we came out of the mud and water, a long line of us tugging at a gun, a lank, solemn soldier walked up on the bank, drew himself up with great dignity, and in a sepulchral voice said: “Fellow citizens!”
Instantly every man stopped and listened for some important announcement.