Nathan Bedford Forrest: First With the Most - Chapter 7a

CHAPTER VII
FROM MISSISSIPPI TO KENTUCKY
June 1, 1862-September 25, 1862

On June 11, 1862, almost exactly one year after his enlistment in the Confederate service, Bedford Forrest enacted for the first time a part with which he was to become familiar-taking leave of a body of troops which he had raised, equipped, trained and fought, and going forth to do like for another command.

General Beauregard, struck with Forrest's performance at Shiloh, determined both to increase his sphere of usefulness and to solve a difficult organization problem, by sending him to Chattanooga, in the area under command of Major General Kirby Smith, with special instructions to take command of the several cavalry regiments in that vicinity and organize them into a brigade, for action as a unit. "Forrest hesitated at first," according to General Beauregard's biographer, "modestly alleging his inability to assume such a responsibility; but yielded, finally, when again urged by General Beauregard, and after receiving the promise that his old regiment should be sent ho him as soon as it could be spared from the army of the Mississippi."

Forrest, consequently, turned over the "Old Regiment" to Lieutenant Colonel Kelley, and set out from Tupelo across country with an escort of ten men led by his redoubtable brother, Captain Bill Forrest.

On the same day on which he started, as it happened, the Union advance upon Chattanooga, interrupted more than two months before when Buell was called to assist in Grant's movement against Corinth, was resumed in earnest. With Corinth at last disposed of, Halleck ordered Buell to start again for the point which, as both sides were beginning to realize, was the true gateway to both East Tennessee and Georgia.

Buell's original advance toward Chattanooga had been down the railroad from Nashville, through which he could maintain connection with his base on the Ohio River at Louisville. Instead of permitting him to continue along this line, however, Halleck ordered him to base on Memphis, which the Union gunboat fleet had captured on June sixth, and to advance eastward along the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, putting it in repair as he went-in spite of the fact that the railroad line was and remained for the greater part of the war a sort of unofficial "frontier" between the armies, subject to raid and attack by either. Buell, obeying orders, gradually advanced his headquarters as far east as Huntsville, Alabama, but at the same time he prudently put in repair the railroad from Nashville toward Chattanooga which, he correctly judged, would afford him a safer and more practicable line of advance.

As Buell's army worked its way eastward, Forrest and his little party passed well to the south of their lines, to arrive at Chattanooga in the third week of June. The task of organizing the assortment of independent cavalry commands there into a unit was not easy. The Colonel of one regiment, from Louisiana, was his senior in rank. The members of another regiment, from Kentucky, which had been enlisted originally for twelve months' service by Ben Hardin Helm, brother-in-law of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, were anxious for their discharges so that they might re-enlist in a distinctively Kentucky command. Of all the troops assigned to Forrest's new brigade only Terry's Rangers, the Eighth Texas, made no objection to fighting with him. Some of them, indeed, and already done so, handsomely, at the affair of the fallen timbers on the road from Shiloh to Monterey.

Finding the brigade assigned to his command not only somewhat disaffected toward its new commander, but also, in his opinion, in need of both training and supplies, Forrest characteristically "proposed active duty as a training scheme and the enemy as a source of supply for needed equipment." Before engaging in this program, however, the internal situation was somewhat eased when General Kirby Smith ordered the Louisiana regiment northward to Kingston, west of Knoxville, planning to replace them in Forrest's brigade with Morrison's First Georgia Battalion of cavalry, then stationed at Kingston, while Lawton's Second Georgia Cavalry, just up from Atlanta, was added to the brigade which Forrest was ordered to take into Middle Tennessee, to find out what Buell was doing and to hold him in check until Chattanooga could be reinforced.

On July ninth, the little column consisting of only the Texans and Lawton's Georgians, hardly more than 1,000 men, crossed the Tennessee River, climbed steep Walden's Ridge, dropped down into the long, narrow trough of Sequatchie Valley well to the north of the Federal forces in the same valley at Battle Creek, and climbed again to the plateau of Cumberland Mountain, where, on the night of the tenth, the troopers bivouacked around the little mountain courthouse at Altamont.

On the eleventh, they marched on past the long columned portico of the summer hotel at Beersheba Springs, where they turned down the mountain and, after a thirty-mile march, halted at the county-seat town of McMinnville. There they were joined by Morrison's Georgians, who had come directly from Kingston, by two companies of Tennessee cavalry under Major Baxter Smith, and by two Kentucky companies—bringing the total force up to about 1,400 men.

On the twelfth, the very day on which Buell's repair forces completed their work on the railroad from Nashville to the crossing of the Tennessee River at Bridgeport, Alabama, 120 miles away and only thirty miles short of Chattanooga, Forrest completed the organization of his brigade, and assigned to each of the commands which composed it parts in the work ahead. The morning was spent in the work of organization of and preparation. Horses were to be shod, rations prepared, ammunition distributed, everything checked—for at one o'clock in the afternoon the new brigade was to start on a march which, before dawn of the next day, was to carry them fifty miles and into their first fight.

The march was made "with no halt, except for a short time to feed and water the horses," at the village of Woodbury. There, at eleven o'clock on Saturday night, the people turned out to welcome Forrest's troopers with hospitable attention for man and beast—including the cakes and pies and other delicacies which the Woodbury housewives had prepared for their own Sunday dinners. That afternoon, Forrest was told, a Federal patrolling party had raided the village and carried off many of its men to the jail at Murfreesborough, under vague charges of giving aid and comfort of the Confederacy.

Being himself headed for Murfreesborough, Colonel Forrest reassured the people of Woodbury, summoned his men from their pleasant midnight halt and at one o'clock on Sunday morning, July thirteenth—the day being his own forty-first birthday—was on the road again.

The garrison at Murfreesborough, the largest and most important along the railroad, consisted of two regiments of infantry, a cavalry detachment and a four-gun battery—the whole force being about equal in number to that which Forrest was bringing against it. For some weeks previously the post had been under command of Colonel Henry C. Lester, of the Third Minnesota Infantry, which, with Hewett's Kentucky battery, was camped about a mile and a half northwest of the town. In the eastern edge of the place there were camped the Ninth Michigan Infantry, Colonel William Duffield, and a detachment of the Seventh Pennsylvania Cavalry. One company of the Michigan regiment, serving as provost guard, held the center of the town, including the courthouse and jail—the latter filled with Confederate sympathizers, including several under sentence of death.

Command of the post had been taken over by Brigadier General T. T. Crittenden on the morning of the twelfth—just about the time that Forrest's raiders, nearly fifty miles away, were getting ready to make their start—but he had as yet made no changes in Lester's dispositions. He recognized that the camps of the several units should be concentrated, but there was no great rush about getting it done. He ordered the cavalry patrols which went out every day on the five turnpikes radiating from Murfreesborough to be doubled in number, but nobody told him that it was the practice of the patrols to come in each night, trusting to the fact that there had been no Confederate force nearer than Chattanooga during the five months' occupation of the place, and to the belief that this was still true.

And so, on the night of the twelfth, General Crittenden, with his plans for the morrow, went peacefully to bed at his headquarters in the town, and Colonel Duffield, second in command, retired to his tent in the Michigan camp, while Forrest and his men marched, and marched fast.

At 4:30 in the morning, half an hour before reveille, with no one in the Federal camps awake except a few cooks chopping wood for the breakfast fires, Forrest's men struck. Wharton and the Texans, in the lead, were told off to assail the camp of the Michigan infantry and the Pennsylvania cavalry east of the town. Morrison's Second Georgia was to sweep on into the town to take the jail, the courthouse and the private buildings occupied by the Federals. Lawton's First Georgia and the detached companies of Tennesseans and Kentuckians were to pass on through the town and attack the camp of the Minnesotans and the Kentucky Union artillery beyond.

Through a mishap, the greater part of Wharton's regiment followed the rush into the town, instead of turning off to attack the camp assigned to them, but this "did not abate their commander's courage or that of his men." The fragment of the regiment which made the attack charged "over the tent ropes right into the camp," where they were met by men who, in spite of being roused from their Sunday morning sleep, fought with courage and resolution. Almost at the outset of the fight, both the Michigan Colonel Duffield and the Texas Colonel Wharton were wounded. Lieutenant Colonel John G. Parkhurst of the Michigan regiment rallied his men for a countercharge which pushed the small body of Texans back far enough, and held them back long enough, to permit the creation of a strong defensive position, with a cedar-post fence in front and baggage wagons and baled forage blockading the flank approaches. And there, throughout the hours of the morning, Parkhurst and his men maintained themselves under punishing fire, giving as good as they got.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Confederate command swept on into and through the town, the hoofs of their horses beating out on the hard metaled road "a strange noise like the roar of an approaching storm," as the sound of deliverance drawing near seemed to one of the prisoners held in the jail under sentence of death. One part of the Second Georgia surrounded and stormed the jail, though not until a vindictive guard had fired the building and made off with the keys, leaving the prisoners to be burned to death unless sooner rescued with axes and crowbars—as they were. Others of Morrison's men battered their way into the guarded courthouse, while still others rounded up the Federal officers who had their lodgings in near-by private dwellings—including General Crittenden and his provost marshal, Captain Rounds, whose unpopularity with citizens of the town is attested by the gleeful persistence of the tradition that he was captured under the bed in the house of a citizen. The town was in a joyous uproar. "We sprang from our beds and rushed to the windows to see the streets full of gray-coated, dusty cavalrymen," a lady of Murfreesborough wrote, "while . . . bang! bang! bang! was heard in every direction. The glad cry of 'our boys have come' rang from one end of the town to the other, and staid, elderly citizens clapped their hands in delight . . . that day when the rebels burst so suddenly upon us was the happiest day experienced by the citizens of Murfreesborough during the war."

The uproar in the town wakened and warned the outlying camp of Colonel Lester, who advanced his regiment to a little rise in the ground, about a mile west of Murfreesborough. There he drew them up in line, with a section of artillery on either flank. They were rather too much for Lawton's small regiment and the four detached companies to tackle by themselves, but there Lawton held them immobile through the early hours of the morning, while Forrest's men finished up the job in the town itself.

That done, Forrest hurried out to take a hand in the desultory fight west of the town, swept around Lester's flank, charged into his camp, drove off or captured his camp guards and destroyed tents and baggage. Leaving Lawton with seven companies to keep on holding Lester in play, he rushed back to the other side of town, where Parkhurst's men, behind their breastworks of fence rails, wagons and baled hay, kept up the fight. At the same time, he started the prisoners already taken toward McMinnville, under escort, and also sent off in captured wagons and with captured teams as much of the captured stores as he could transport.

It being now nearly noon, and there being a virtual certainty that news of the attack had stirred up the heavy garrisons along the railroad, some of Forrest's officers suggested that enough had been done, and that prudence dictated a prompt withdrawal from their exposed position. "I didn't come here to make half a job of it. I'm going to have them all," was his response.

With the troops which had been shifted from the other fights Forrest was able to bring to bear a heavy preponderance of force on the beleaguered encampment of Parkhurst. With his men in position, he sent in under flag of truce a demand for surrender, the first of a sort which he was to use more than once:

"COLONEL: I must demand an unconditional surrender of your force as prisoners of war or I will have every man put to the sword. You are aware of the overpowering force I have at my command, and this demand is made to prevent the effusion of blood.

"I am, Colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"N. B. FORREST,
"Brigadier-General of Cavalry, C. S. Army."

This communication Parkhurst forwarded to his wounded commander, Colonel Duffield, who was in a near-by residence, asking for his "order or advice." Duffield left the matter to his subordinate's direction. With half his force killed or wounded, with no sign or hope of help from Lester, and with a strong feeling that if Forrest did take his place by assault he "evidently intended . . . to execute the threat contained in his demand for a surrender," Parkhurst gave up the fight at twelve o'clock, and surrendered.

Free to concentrate on the forces west of the town, Forrest moved that way again, and again sent in one of his notes demanding immediate surrender to "save the effusion of blood." The Minnesota Colonel asked for an opportunity to confer with Duffield, who, by that time, was a prisoner in Forrest's hands. The interview was arranged, to assure Lester that the other parts of the garrison had surrendered. As he was taken through the town, to and from the house where Duffield lay, through the tree-shaded vistas of the Murfreesborough streets he caught fleeting glimpses of Confederate soldiery—although, had the Colonel but known it, quite frequently they were one and same column being maneuvered for him to see.

While this military mummery was going on, others of Forrest's men were busy sending off prisoners, loading up captured stores, destroying what could not be loaded, burning bridges and tearing up track on the railroad, doing all the damage they could, preparatory to pulling out for McMinnville as soon as Lester's inevitable surrender should be completed.

With that accomplished in midafternoon, the total bag of prisoners was brought to nearly 1,200 officers and men, and perhaps a quarter of a million dollars' worth of property, including more than fifty road wagons with teams and harness complete, a considerable quantity of much-needed cavalry equipment and small arms and, most prized of all by Forrest's men, their first artillery—the three 6-pounder brass smoothbores and one 10-pounder Parrott of the Kentucky Union battery. Forrest's own loss was never definitely reported, although it was probably higher than the tentative and preliminary estimate of "about 25 killed and from 40 to 60 wounded" included in his report.

By six o'clock the day's work was done and the last of Forrest's men was out of Murfreesborough. Major Baxter Smith's two companies were sent southeast along the railroad to destroy bridges over small tributaries of Stones River, while the remainder of the command followed the train of the prisoners and the captured property back toward McMinnville. Nine miles they marched that night, to camp at Readyville—making a total march of nearly sixty miles, besides twelve hours of fighting, in about thirty hours. Finding next morning that he did not have enough men both to maintain proper guards and to drive all the captured teams and artillery, Forrest promised the enlisted prisoners that if enough of them would volunteer to act as teamsters, all would be paroled and released at McMinnville—an arrangement which was entered into and faithfully kept on both sides.

This first independent operation of Forrest as a brigade commander was afterward summarized by General Viscount Wolseley as a "rare mixture of military skill . . . and bluff," while at the time, General Braxton Bragg, who on June twentieth had succeeded Beauregard as Confederate commander in the West, described it as a "gallant, brilliant operation. . . . Such successful efforts deserve immediate reward, and I will cheerfully meet with you [the letter addressed to Kirby Smith] in recommending Colonel Forrest. This affair, aided to his gallantry at Shiloh, where he was severely wounded, mark him as a valuable soldier."

The affair at Murfreesborough, however, was more than a brilliantly successful local raid. By the time Forrest was back in McMinnville, local garrisons in Middle Tennessee were being called in for the protection of Nashville against his force, estimated by Union commanders as high as 7,000 men, while larger bodies of troops were ordered back from Buell's army strung out along the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Before Forrest left McMinnville for his next operation, on July eighteenth, Brigadier General William Nelson's division had been moved up from Alabama to Murfreesborough, and other brigades were marching into Middle Tennessee. And even these movement were but incidents in the larger picture of protecting Chattanooga by delaying Buell's advance. "The safety of Chattanooga depends upon his [Forrest's] cooperation," Kirby Smith telegraphed General Samuel Cooper, the Adjutant and Inspector General of all the Confederate forces, on July nineteenth, adding that his operation might "delay General Buell's movement and give General Bragg time to move on Middle Tennessee."

It was not until July twenty-first, however, that General Bragg definitely determined to move the main western army of the Confederacy from Tupelo to Chattanooga. Two independent forces were left in Mississippi—one under Major General Earl Van Dorn to defend Vicksburg against attack from the river, the other under Major General Sterling Price to guard the state against Grant's possible advance from the Memphis-Corinth line.

Bragg's cavalry and artillery horses were started across country, the guns sent part way by rail, the infantry sent by rail from Tupelo south to Mobile, there to be ferried twenty miles across the bay and up the Tensas River to the end of the new railroad and thence sent on by rail again through Montgomery and Atlanta to Chattanooga—the first time an army had been so shifted from one theater of action to another, by rail. The movement was accomplished far more quickly than it could have been by marching but, even so, it was to take time, and time was what Forrest had been sent to Middle Tennessee to gain.

"Our cavalry is paving the way for me in Middle Tennessee," Bragg wrote to his friend and predecessor in command, Beauregard. ". . . Crittenden is quite a prize, and the whole affair [at Murfreesborough] in proportion to numbers more brilliant than the guard battles where strategy seems to have been the staple production on both sides. . . ."

By the time this was written Forrest had gone on to other exploits. After paroling his prisoners, sorting out his captured property, and sending what was not immediately required back to safety in East Tennessee under command of the wounded Wharton, Forrest left McMinnville again at noon on July eighteenth. In the week which followed, his small command was to ride almost into the suburbs of Nashville, to break again the newly repaired railroad, to cause the concentration of 10,000 men in pursuit of him, and to gain more time for Bragg's arrival at Chattanooga.

Learning that the Federal garrison had returned from Nashville to Lebanon, and hoping to repeat there the surprise attack he had made at Murfreesborough, Forrest made a fifty-mile forced march to reach Lebanon at sunrise on Sunday the twentieth, only to find that the new garrison had taken alarm and left, in a hurry, the night before. The people of Lebanon did their best to solace the disappointment of Forrest's men by feeding them upon poultry, roast pig, choice hams and other "Sunday dinner" fixings, and by sending them away on Monday morning with three days' supply of such provisions.

Forrest's appearance at Lebanon started the wires to buzzing again. From points as far away as Bowling Green, Kentucky, messages as to his whereabouts and intentions began to fly in. The commandant at Bowling Green, indeed, contributed a cryptic gem to the general uncertainty of the situation when he wired Nashville that "Forrest is at Lebanon, Tenn., with large rebel force. Without doubt he will move on Gallatin or Nashville, or probably make his way to Kentucky."

From Lebanon, Forrest moved directly on Nashville. Midday of the twenty-first found him at Andrew Jackson's "Hermitage," twelve miles from Nashville, where the command was given an hour's rest, which some of them improved in converse with a party of ladies and gentleman who had driven out to celebrate the first anniversary of the Confederate victory at Manassas.

That afternoon Forrest pushed on down the Lebanon Pike to within five miles of Nashville, in sight of the tower of the state capitol, where he captured part of the Union picket and drove in the rest, before swinging around the city toward the Chattanooga railroad. There, before dark, he cut the telegraph, battered down the stockades with his captured artillery, and began the work of destroying the bridges at three crossings of Mill Creek. Before he reached the wires, however, they were buzzing with messages about him. Brigadier General William Nelson, who had been brought back from northern Alabama with his division as a result of the affair of the thirteenth, figured that Forrest would return by the way he had come, and started a heavy column out from Murfreesborough toward Lebanon to cut him off. Hardly had the column been got together before another wire came that Nashville itself was threatened by Forrest—who had no idea whatever of attacking the garrisoned city with his little band, even though he did report afterward his regret that he did not have enough men to attempt "a more solid demonstration."

Upon receipt of news that Forrest was threatening Nashville, Nelson recalled his column and started them in that direction. Hard marching brought them, by ten o'clock on the night of the twenty-first, to within ten miles of Nashville, but no enemy could be found. Forrest, having accomplished what he had come to do in breaking the railroad line again—thereby delaying any possibility of a Union advance for another eight critical days—and having killed and captured more than 100, without the loss of a man, simply disappeared from the Nashville-Murfreesborough pike on which Nelson's men continued their march.

Turning aside on the Chicken Pike, Forrest's men camped for the night within easy hearing of the pound of the marching feet of Nelson's column. With the coming of morning they marched back into the main pike behind the Federal column, and coolly proceeded toward Murfreesborough, while their pursuers countermarched down the dusty pike on a July day.

Six miles short of Murfreesborough Forrest swung away form the main pike again, circled around the town which was too heavily garrisoned for him to dare an attack with Nelson's column at his back, and pushed on to McMinnville. Nelson's weary men footed it back into Murfreesborough, whence, on July twenty-fourth, their General reported to Buell his scorn for the way he had been misled by the panicky messages from Nashville, together with his own plans for catching Forrest when other troops came up. "When they do come," he wrote, "I will have about 1,200 cavalry, and Mr. Forrest shall have no rest. I will hunt him myself."

On the day of this dispatch the advance brigades of Bragg's army began to detrain at Chattanooga, while their commander and Kirby Smith were working out plans for their combined campaign into Kentucky—one of the most soundly conceived and, up to a fatal point, most brilliantly executed movements of the whole war. While the main armies moved, the gadfly Forrest stayed in Middle Tennessee, delaying "the completion of Buell's arrangements," as Kirby Smith wired Bragg, and "giving time for your advance."

Buell himself testified afterward that "the consequence of this disaster [the capture of Crittenden and his command at Murfreesborough] was serious. The use of the railroad from Nashville, which had been completed the very day before and which I was depending on to throw supplies into Stevenson for a forward movement, was set back two weeks; the force of Forrest threatened Nashville itself and the whole line of railroad through Tennessee. . . . It became necessary to move northward some of the troops in North Alabama to drive out the rebel force and guard against further embarrassment. Nelson's division was ordered by rapid marches to Murfreesborough, one brigade going by railroad through Nashville; two brigades of Wood's division were ordered from Decatur to Shelbyville by forced marches . . ."—all as the result of the work of one newly organized and imperfectly equipped cavalry brigade!

To Halleck, who had telegraphed from Washington that "there is great dissatisfaction here at the slow movement of your army towards Chattanooga," Buell explained that his lines of communication had been "constantly beset by a vastly superior cavalry force. They have been twice seriously broken in that way just as they were finished. The army could not be sustained in its present position, much less advanced, until they were made secure. We have therefore found it necessary to fortify every bridge over more than 300 miles of road."

As the trains bringing Bragg's men up from the south continued to roll into Chattanooga, the cavalry force which chiefly had accomplished this result stayed on in Middle Tennessee, alert to do all the damage and cause all the delay possible. On the morning of July twenty-seventh, two weeks after the affair at Murfreesborough, Forrest struck again, this time at Manchester, on the branch railroad from Tullahoma to McMinnville. There, for the first but not for the last time, Forrest's forces met those of Brigadier General William Sooy Smith, of whom they killed three and captured fifteen. Once more they raised the alarm all along the railroad—and once more they vanished. Ordered out by Buell from Murfreesborough to reinforce the hunt, Nelson responded, somewhat wearily it would seem: "I leave tomorrow. I have been detained by all sorts of vexations."

Nelson was still at Murfreesborough on the twenty-ninth, however, sending Buell another telegram complaining of the nonarrival of cavalry. On the next day, still at Murfreesborough, he disgustedly answered his commander's query why he had not gone out after Forrest on the twenty-eighth as he promised, with the same reason that he had not cavalry and that "to chase Morgan and Forrest, they mounted on race horses, with infantry this hot weather is a hopeless task." In further explanation, he added that "neither troops nor officers have had a change of clothing or the shelter of a tent since we left Athens," that being more than two weeks before. The chase of "Mr. Forrest" was turning out to be a wearing affair.

Finally, however, on the morning of August second, Nelson got in motion with nearly 4,000 infantry and cavalry combined. One column marched from Murfreesborough toward McMinnville by way of Woodbury; another, under Brigadier General Richard Johnson, toward Sparta by way of Liberty. Sooy Smith at Manchester and Thomas J. Wood, about Tullahoma, wre ordered to hold brigades ready to support Nelson in case of need.

Nelson reported his arrival at McMinnville on August third, but Forrest was not there. He was, according to Nelson, thirteen miles away, toward Sparta. Expecting that Johnson's column would block Forrests movement in that direction, Nelson reported: "I march tomorrow in pursuit and will not stop till I drive the enemy across the mountain."

On the fifth, however, as Nelson was continuing his pursuit of the elusive brigade toward Sparta, he received an imperative dispatch from Buell to turn back southward, to meet a reported advance of Bragg's whole army-which, as a matter of fact, was not to happen for nearly another month. Nelson countermarched as soon as he received his orders, "within five minutes," the more willing perhaps because the cavalry which he had ordered to be at Sparta on the third had not yet shown up. That night he was back in McMinnville, under instructions from Buell to "make permanent advance . . . control the country in your vicinity . . . and destroy Forrest if you can."

As Nelson fell back to McMinnville, Forrest closed in again. On the seventh Nelson sent out a regiment to the Caney Fork River "to attract Forrest's attention," intending, as soon as Johnson was in position with the supporting Union cavalry and artillery, "to move myself and envelop him." The plan failed, and on the following day, according to Nelson's reports, Forrest was at large between McMinnville and Sparta "with 2,500 to 3,000 men."

While he was sparring with Nelson's force between McMinnville and Sparta, Forrest received Kirby Smith's notification of August fourth that his commission as a Brigadier General, dated July 21, 1862, had been received from Richmond and would be forwarded to him as soon as a safe opportunity offered. Two new Tennessee regiments of cavalry-one commanded by the physician Colonel James W. Starnes, who had fought with Forrest at Sacramento-and a howitzer battery were being sent him, the dispatch said, and another Georgia regiment was promised. Finally, he was ordered to maintain himself in that section of the country where he was, at the request of General Bragg, most of whose infantry had by that time completed the rail journey from Tupelo to Chattanooga.

Summoned to Chattanooga for conference with General Bragg, the new Brigadier General left his command in camp above McMinnville and set off across the mountains. Four days later, having ridden 200 miles, he was back with his troops, intent on carrying out Bragg's idea of "harassing Nelson out of all idea of advancing." Meanwhile, John Hunt Morgan and his Kentuckians had whilred away on one of their daring raids against Buell's communications between Nashville and Louisville, while Buell had ordered two more brigades, under Wood, to reinforce Nelson at McMinnville. On the sixteenth Nelson himself was ordered away to take command north of the Cumberland River, and George H. Thomas took command north of the combined Union forces at McMinnville.

The opening moves in Bragg's Kentucky campaign came this same week, when Kirby Smith left Knoxville for Lexington, by-passing and containing the Union garrison under Brigadier General George W. Morgan at Cumberland Gap. Bragg, at Chattanooga, began "crossing and massing" his troops from Tupelo prepatory to advancing on Kentucky, so threatening Buell's communications that he might give up Nashville and Middle Tennessee. "My infantry is all up," Bragg wrote Kirby Smith on the fifteenth, "the artillery coming in daily, and part of my train is arriving." To Forrest he wrote two days later, "My cavalry is slow in coming in, so that you have not been reinforced as I have desired, but as soon as it comes you shall have the whole." Bragg was uneasy about the situation of his advanced cavalry, for, as he wrote to Kirby Smith, Buell had "taken such position at McMinnville and Sparta as to render it impossible for Forrest to operate there at all.

To Forrest he declared, "It is perfectly evident you cannot cope with the enemy in our front as he is now located." The commanding general's suggestion was that he leave a "mere corps of observation" on the west side of the Cumberland Mountain, and drop back across into Sequatchie Valley, to interfere with the Union communication lines in the lower end of that Valley. There is no certainty that Forrest received this message sent on the seventeenth. Forrest himself made no reports of this phase of his operations, but from the Federal reports it apperas that, by August eighteenth, he was already well beyond McMinnville, threatening Johnson's force at Smithville, which was reinforced by two regiments and a battery.

The scare, in fact, extended clear to Nashville whose garrison Buell ordered reinforced by troops brough up on a forced march, if necessary, and whose defenseive works he ordered hastened to completion. At the same time stockades and bridge guards for the Tullahoma-Manchester-McMinnville railroad were ordered. On the twenty-fourth Buell reported to Halleck in Washington that "our communications have now been effectually cut off for twelve days"-the result of the combined activities of the Confederate cavalry commands operating in his rear. As late as August twenty-sixth, being concerned about reports that "Forrest and Morgan are reported at Lebanon, to attack Murfreesborough or Nashville," Buell inquired of Thomas, "Do you know a colonel fit to command a light brigade of cavalry, artillery and infantry to operate against Forrst?" On the twenty-seventh Federal reports had Forrest at Woodbury and, later in the day, as having captured the trains of a division near Murfreesborough.

The affair which gave rise to this report, apparently, was one covered in a later report by the commander of the Union Tenth Brigade, that an attempt by Forrest against his wagon trains at Round Mountain near Woodbury, in the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, was met by two regiments and a battery which "handsomely repulsed" the Confederates, and "pursued and drove them over 2 miles, scattering them in every direction."

On August twenty-second, with the first touch of asperity in their relations, Bragg had ordered Forrest, as soon as he had accomplished his object, "to return and act according to the instructions you have previously received." There is no record of when Forrest got the order, but at the time of the brush at Woodbury he was on his way out of Middle Tennessee, heading for the top of Cumberland Mountain, where he was to await the coming of Bragg's army-and showing the same skill in dodging fights as he had earlier shown in seeking them, when it was to his advantage to do so.

By the second morning after the brush at Round Mountain, Forrest had crossed the guarded line of the McMinnville-Manchester railroad, and headed into one of the long, narrow coves leading back into the Cumberland plateau beyond, marching for Altamont. In the early morning of the twenty-ninth one of the cloud of scouts by whom his march was preceded and surrounded came in with the news that McCook's Union division, which for so long had been in the lower Sequatchie Valley, had fallen back to the top of the mountain and occupied down the mountain toward Forrest. Almost at the same time, other scouts came in with news that in the rear Federal columns were converging from three different directions-Winchester, Manchester and McMinnville. Forrest was never to be in a tighter spot.

Pushing his horse to a commanding spur of the mountain from which he could overlook the floor of the valley for miles, he spotted the approaching blue columns and, at the same time, made his plan for avoiding them. Turning back down the cove, he led his men into the dry bed of a creek, deep cut between overhanging banks, whence they emerged when the converging columns had passed on in pursuit of the rebel raiders.

With McCook at Altamont, it was obvious to Forrest that he would have to make his junction with Bragg's advancing army farther north, at Sparta, so to Sparta he headed. The safest way to get there wihtout fighting was to recross the line of the railroad, swing west and north, and pass behind the Federal garrison at McMinnville-which he proceeded to do.

That afternoon the force which was supposed to have been "scattered in every direction" two days before recrossed the railroad line eight miles southwest of McMinnville. There, according to Federal reports, Forrest attacked the bridge stockade and its garrison, and was repulsed. "The rout was complete, the rebels throwing away arms and fleeing, leaving on the field their dead and several of their wounded." To Forrest and his men, however, the attack was a mere bluff and a dare, from which they went on their way to their appointed place.

On the very next day, as they passed northward across the McMinnville-Murfreesborough road at Little Pond, Forrest's men were "routed" again. This time, according to reports, "the rebels fled in the utmost consternation and confusion," losing by capture "Genearl Forrest's light spring wagon, riding-horse, and body servant of Captain Forrest, brothe to the general."

All of which led up to Thomas' exultant dispatch of August thirty-first to Buell:

"Thursday Forrest was whipped . . . near Woodbury. Friday he attacked the stockade on the railroad 8 miles from McMinnville and was whipped again. . . . Started yesterday for Bragg's camp by Altamont; was met by McCook's advance and again whipped. He then returned toward Woodbury again, but was pusued by one of Wood's regiments, overtaken and attacked . . . and again badly whipped and dispersed."

Not taking quite so seriously the reports of his "whippings," Forrest and his "dispersed" command marched on toward Sparta where, on September third, they met the advance of Bragg's army, and after two months on their own inside the enemy's lines entered upon the next phase of their work in the Kentucky campaign.

Bragg from Sparta and Buell from Murfreesborough and Nashville were in a foot race for Louisville. Forrest was ordered to operate far out to the left of Bragg's column, both to cover it and to hang on Buell's flank and rear, and impede his progress. Before leaving Sparta, Forrest was reinforced by a section of artillery and by the four Alabama companies of the "Old Regiment"-still referred to in the reports as "Forrest's Cavalry"-under Captain W. C. Bacot.

Straight west from Sparta Forrest pushed to Lebanon, only thirty-two miles short of Nashville. From Murfreesborough, General McCook reported on September sixth that his "cavalry was just in from Lebanon" with advice that "a strong cavalry force of the enemy" was advancing on Murfreesborough, which he entered on the seventh as McCook's rear guard was leaving, being in time to save the courthouse and the center of the town from destruction by fires set by irresponsible Union stragglers. To reports of his whereabouts and activities, Forrest added an urgent and characteristic recommendation of an "energetic movement forward."

Something akin to panic was, by this time, spreading in teh North. In central Kentucky, Kirby Smith had, on August thirtieth at Richmond, completely defeated the Union forces under Nelson, and advanced to Lexington, Frankfort and beyond. All business houses in Cincinnati were closed, while the citizens feverishly fortified the place to resist his expected assault. In Virginia, at the same time, John Pope's army had been astonishingly defeated at Second Manassass, and Lee had crossed the Potomac into Maryland. Washington was hearing rumors that Bragg, too, was heading for Virginia and a junction with Lee. President Lincoln asked the Union commanders in Cincinnati and Louisville, on the seventh, whether, indeed, even then Bragg "might not be in Virginia?" On the evening of the eighth, he addressed a like question to Buell at Nashville, to which, on the ninth, Buell replied that "Bragg is certainly this side of the Cumberland Mountains with his whole force."

By that time, in fact, Bragg was north of the Cumberland River and well on his way into Kentucky. Forrest, fulfilling his appointed task, moved north from Murfreesborough on the morning of the eighth-reporting, meanwhile, to Bragg, where there was a large amount of "good flour at $10 a barrel," and offering to send for it; crossed the Cumberland eleventh near the mouth of Stones River, near the Hermitage; and on September eleventh struck the Union pickets at Tyee Springs, Tennessee, eighteen miles south of Franklin, Kentucky. "I have halted their whole command," he reported, "and they still remain where we left them," shelling the woods. "I shall continue to annoy them as far as Franklin," he added.

Thomas, commanding Buell's rear guard, reported on the twelfth that he was "thinking of sending out an expedition" for Forrest's capture the following night, but by that time Forrest was well away harassing and delaying Buell's march by bold and persistent attacks which forced the Union forces to waste precious time in deploying to beat him back.

By special orders issued at Bragg's headquarters at Glasgow, Kentucky, on September fourteenth the cavalry of the command was divided into two brigades-one, under Colonel Joseph Wheeler, assigned to Hardee's left wing of the army; the other, under Forrest, assigned to Leonidas Polk's right wing. Forrest was ordered by General Polk on the next day to "dispose of his baggage trains and everything else that may be in the way of his rapid movements via the Louisville turnpike, and prepare his command to move at a moment's notice."

On that day the Confederate army was closing in on Munfordville, where the Louisville & Nashville Railroad crosses Green River. Forrest's movement was part of the encircling of that place which resulted, on the seventeenth, in the surrender of the post and its garrison of more than 4,000 men. General Bragg had won his race. His army was squarely between Buell and his base. Louisville was added to the list of cities in panic.

In that third week of September 1862 the affairs of the Confederacy reached high tide, with Lee in Maryland outfacing the great army of McClellan across the Antietam, and with Bragg in Kentucky having Buell, as one of his officers put it afterward, "in the hollow of his hand." With the necessary withdrawals of Lee after the bloody stand at Sharpsburg, and with the never really explained decision Bragg to "open his hand," the tide began its long ebb, to run out to the end.

During the few days before Bragg decided to stand aside from Munfordville and let Buell pass to safety, Forrest pushed forward along the railroad to Elizabethtown, whence he turned eastward to Bardstown, picketing out toward Louisville and toward Frankfort as well. On September nineteenth Polk ordered him to "leave a detachment to protect his baggage train" where it was, while he returned to Munfordville immediately. "The presence of your command is of importance to us," he added. Forrest sent the majority of his brigade back, retaining only his pickets. He himself, "being disabled," remained with the baggage train.

Receiving another order from Polk two days later "to make a demonstration on West Point, at the mouth of Salt River, and to break up the railroad," he protested the impossibility of complying with it for lack of men and horses. By the twenty-third, however, following Bragg's order to march to central Kentucky, Polk himself had come up to Bardstown with infantry support and Forrest was ordered forward another twelve miles along the turnpike to Louisville, with picket guards out right and left toward Taylorsville and Shepherdsville. At ten o'clock that night Forrst, from his camp two miles beyond Cox's Creek, replied that he had furnished so many guards and pickets that he would make up a detail from different companies and send it out to report on the whereabouts of the enemy-that being, incidentally, about as close as the Confederates came to Louisville.

On the next day but one, September twenty-fifth, army headquarters having moved to Bardstown, Forrest was summoned to meet General Bragg, by whom he was informed that he was informed that he was to be relived of duty in Kentucky and sent back to Middle Tennessee, authorized to raise there four regiments of infantry and two of cavalry, muster them into the Confederate service, and with them and such other troops as he might find, to operate against the enemy in all practicable ways. He was to be permitted to take with him as his escort, and to keep in his command, the four companies of the Old Regiment under Captain W. C. Bacot.

And so at the end of September Forrest's part in the fateful and promising Kentucky campaign ended as it had begun in mid-June, by his taking leave of a command which had been stamped with his name and personality, and setting forth with a small escort to raise another.

Henry, Robert Selph. "First with the Most" Forrest. 1944.

---