Because the fleeing rebels had alarmed the countryside, Surby decided to abandon all pretense of being Confederates. The bridge guards certainly would have described them as Yankees in disguise, and he told his men to fire on any armed citizens. But most of the countrymen were keeping a safe distance from the road; there was little opportunity to exchange fire.
The squad moved at a slow walk so as not to push too far in front of the column. The land leveled now almost to a rolling plain, pine-studded, the soil reddening, the sandy road drying rapidly to a fine dust under the bright, hot sun.
The closer they came to Philadelphia the more evidence there was of possible resistance ahead. Instead of single farmers riding hurriedly away, three or four would be seen together, out of range, the sun glinting on their weapons.
“Within about three hundred yards of town,” said Surby, “they were discovered drawn up in a line across the road, upon which we were approaching. I immediately sent a man back, requesting the commanding officer of the advance guard to send me ten men. I waited long enough to see they were coming, and turning to my men ordered them to charge, and as we neared them amid a cloud of dust, we commenced to discharge our revolvers at them, which had the desired effect of stampeding them; they fired but a few shots, and in a few minutes we had full possession of the town; resulting in the capture of six prisoners, nine horses and equipments.”2
In a few minutes the column arrived on the gallop, quickly encircling the town. Colonel Grierson dismounted to interview the prisoners. One of them was the county judge, “a very worthy man,” and from him Grierson learned that the Philadelphians had heard early that morning of the brigade’s approach, and were organizing a party to burn the Pearl River bridge at the very moment when later news came that the Yankees had already crossed. The judge declared that he had attempted armed resistance because he feared for his life and property.
To calm the few townspeople who still dared to show themselves in the street, Grierson made an extemporaneous speech, explaining that his cavalrymen “were not there to interfere with private citizens or to destroy their property or to insult or molest their families, that we were after the soldiers and property of the rebel government.”3
The speech was brief with no applause, but it was apparent that the fear and tension were eased. Before leaving Philadelphia, Grierson summoned Colonel Prince, giving him orders to remain with the rear-guard battalion and swear the citizens to a period of silence concerning the Union cavalry movements. As the column moved out, Prince in a good-natured manner asked the Philadelphians to line up in the town’s main street. “The last I saw of them,” Sergeant Surby commented, “they were standing in line with arms extended perpendicular, and Colonel Prince was swearing them not to give any information for a certain length of time.”4
Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, as the column moved south toward Decatur, two horsemen in Secesh disguises overtook the rear guard, waving their carbines and shouting a greeting. They were Captain John Lynch and Corporal Jonathan Bullard of Company E, returning from Macon. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since Grierson had sent them east from Louisville to cut the telegraph lines along the Mobile & Ohio. Lashing their spent horses, they raced speedily up the side of the column to report to the colonel.5
Captain Lynch had failed to reach the telegraph wires. After riding all night from Louisville, he and Corporal Bullard had come within half a mile of Macon at eight o’clock on the morning of the 23rd. In their rebel clothing they had expected no trouble, but suddenly a Confederate picket appeared on the road, halting them and demanding identification.
“I’ve been sent out from Enterprise,” replied Captain Lynch, “to ascertain the whereabouts of the Yankees.”
“You need not go any further,” said the picket. “They are now within two miles of here.”6
Lynch knew then that Forbes was in the vicinity. He asked how many Confederate soldiers were defending Macon, and was told there were two regiments of cavalry, one of infantry, and two pieces of artillery. Considering it inadvisable to approach the railroad telegraph lines while so large an enemy force was on the alert, the captain told the picket he had left a couple of men at a plantation a mile to the rear, and would have to ride back for them. He and the corporal swung their horses about, riding away at a slow canter until they were out of sight of the picket; then they galloped until Macon was some distance behind. After a seventy-four-mile circuit beginning at Louisville, they had finally rejoined the column.
Grierson congratulated Lynch, even though he had failed to cut the telegraph lines.* The news that Captain Forbes had reached Macon, drawing strong Confederate forces to that point, was good news for the brigade, but Grierson doubted more than ever now that he would ever see the men of Company B again.
Around five o’clock in the afternoon, Blackburn’s scouts sent back information that a well-stocked plantation was just ahead. Grierson decided to hold up for a few hours to rest and feed the horses before beginning the final drive to the Vicksburg railroad, only twenty-five miles away.
II
At the moment Captain Lynch was confronted by the Confederate picket half a mile west of Macon, Captain Forbes and his thirty-five men were marching quietly away from their camp north of the town. Following back trails and using woods cover where possible, they detoured westward and then turned south, somewhere crossing the same road used by Captain Lynch.
During the morning they captured a lone Confederate artilleryman who talked freely and seemed rather pleased when Captain Forbes informed him that he would be paroled as a prisoner. Forbes asked him if he were a volunteer. The man replied that he had volunteered to escape conscription, adding that he was opposed to the war.
When the captain asked if he could guide the company to the Mobile & Ohio bridge over the Noxubee immediately below Macon, the rebel said that he would do so. Forbes was determined to attempt one strike against the railroad before abandoning his mission completely. He sent the captive out with his scouts, warning him that any false move would mean his death.
Around noon the scouts informed Captain Forbes that they had sighted the Noxubee bridge and that it was heavily guarded. Forbes went up to have a look. The Confederates had anticipated his visit; his little company was outnumbered by a well-armed bridge guard.
Reluctantly he gave the order to countermarch. “We were now entitled to overtake the brigade, if we could,” Forbes wrote, “and stretched our march for Philadelphia which we knew they must pass on their way to Newton Station.”7
When the company reached the main road running west, he ordered his men into a long gallop. By day’s end they were out of the flat woods country into the sandy-lands, coming down off a green wooded ridge into Gholson, family home of Confederate General Gholson, commander of the Mississippi state troops. (General Gholson was on this day hurrying north to take command of his troops who, with Colonel Barteau, were still pursuing Colonel Hatch’s Second Iowa Regiment.)
Company B paid General Gholson the compliment of halting and feeding near his home village, then continued the march toward Philadelphia. Not a man objected to this night march; they sang merrily as they rode along under the stars.
Sergeant Stephen Forbes had a little song of his own, which he had heard the Negroes singing along the Mississippi:
Oh, in the old and happy days
When Linda and I were one
Then I was like a fat raccoon
A-bathing in the sun.8
III
But as Company B rode so confidently toward Philadelphia, hoping to overtake the brigade before morning reveille, Colonel Grierson was preparing to break camp. About ten o’clock that evening he ordered Colonel Blackburn to take the First Battalion of the Seventh Regiment and make a rapid march to Newton Station on the Vicksburg railroad. The main column would follow within an hour.
Blackburn characteristically had volunteered for this dangerous assignment. In the darkness his huge, high-stepping horse pr
anced along the forming column of his four companies. Saddle up, boys, and fall in lively! He had a personal word for almost every one of the 200 men; he told the non-commissioned officers exactly what the battalion was expected to accomplish during the coming eight hours.
As soon as the battalion was ready to march, Blackburn rode out ahead with Sergeant Surby and two other scouts. After the warm day the temperature had dropped sharply so that the long woolen Confederate coats worn by the Butternut Guerillas felt quite comfortable. “The night was a beautiful starlight one,” said Surby, “the roads in good condition, and meeting with no enemy, nothing occurred to interrupt the stillness that reigned until midnight.”
For a time Blackburn rode back and forth between the scouts and the battalion’s advance. He was wary of ambush in the darkness, knowing that warnings of a Union invasion must certainly have spread miles before them on this road. He moved his advance guard a quarter of a mile out in front of the first company, and strung out moving pickets at hundred-yard intervals in front of them with orders to scour each byroad and crossroad in search of lurking enemies. Far ahead of the guard rode the Butternut Guerillas, Surby and his two companions alternating on the point.
Around midnight Surby was riding with George Steadman, the third scout being somewhere ahead of them in the starlight. “In coming to a point where the road forked, I was at a loss which one to take,” Surby said, “and to decide the question, sent George Steadman back to a house to inquire.”
While awaiting Steadman’s return, the sergeant rode slowly along the road to the right, halting his horse crosswise in the trail, which was shadowed by a thicket of scrub oaks forming a narrow triangle between him and the left road of the fork. Unknown to Surby, the third scout was halted almost exactly opposite on the other road, waiting for his companions, and likewise unaware of Surby’s presence.
After a few minutes Steadman came trotting back from the farmhouse, reining up his horse as he came to the fork, searching the darkness for Surby. To let Steadman know where he was, Surby called out: “Is this the right road?” Steadman was startled by the voice, Surby being indiscernible in the shadows of the trees. Hesitating a moment, Steadman then turned his mount slowly into the right fork.
Steadman, according to Surby, “came up within a few feet of me and peering into my face a moment, without saying a word, wheeled his horse and galloped off.” A moment later a revolver cracked. Two other shots followed in rapid succession, then a volley from carbines or rifles. When Surby saw fire-sparks flying from a stone on the road beside him, he knew that he was the target.
Lashing his horse, the sergeant dashed into the thicket between the branching roads. Briars swept his hat away, scratching his face. He knew that Steadman could not have fired all the shots. “I … was of the opinion,” he said, “that we were ambushed from the point of timber between the two roads, and that the enemy had let us pass, and were firing into the advance of our column.”
A moment later as he moved his horse cautiously into the other road, he met his second scout. Both men were holding their revolvers at ready, but luckily they recognized each other. “We struck out,” said Surby, “and circled about a mile, striking the middle of the column, and soon learned that I was the sole object of all the firing. It appears that Steadman, when he rode up, did not recognize me, but hastily retreated to the fork of the road, and commenced firing at me with his revolver, causing the advance to hurry forward, who in turn began to fire with their carbines. Loss sustained, one hat.”
Around three o’clock in the morning, as the column was approaching Decatur, Lieutenant-Colonel Blackburn ordered Surby to take his two scouts and enter the town. Blackburn wanted to learn whether or not there was an enemy force at Newton Station, and if so, their exact position, the number of men, artillery strength, and any other information which could be obtained.
When the scouts entered Decatur they found no one in the quiet streets, and Surby decided to enter a house. Halting in front of an old-fashioned country inn with pigeonhole windows cut half way up its slanting roof, he dismounted and left his horse with one of his men. He approached the nearest door, knocking loudly, but no one answered. He tried another door, and this time a voice inquired: “Who’s there?”
“A Confederate soldier,” replied Surby. “On important business.”
The door opened. “Come in,” said the voice in the darkness.
Surby stepped inside what appeared to be a combination sitting room and bedroom. He wrote afterwards in his account of the incident: “I begged to be excused for disturbing them at so unreasonable an hour. … The old gentleman, who proved to be the proprietor of the establishment, scraped out a few coals in the fire place, which threw a lurid light across the room, drew forth a chair, and told me to be seated. At the same time he sprang into bed again, from beneath whose covering I could see a pair of sparkling, roguish black eyes, tresses black as the raven’s wing, a mischievous mouth, belonging to a young and charming woman. Can it be possible, thinks I, that she is married to this old man.”
The sergeant’s thoughts were interrupted by a mild query from the gentleman, demanding the nature of his visitor’s business. Surby quickly replied that he was a scout from Van Dorn’s command, stationed at Columbus. He explained that the Yankees were raiding toward Decatur, and that he was carrying messages to Confederate forces guarding the Vicksburg railroad. He wanted to know where these forces could be found.
Suspecting nothing of Surby’s trick, the innkeeper replied that the nearest force would be at Newton Station, about ten miles south. A hospital was there, he said; about a hundred sick and wounded soldiers occupied it. Some infantry might be there, also.
Surby asked if any soldiers had been past Decatur recently, and was told that a considerable force of cavalry had passed going east, but that had been a few days ago. Thanking his host for the information and apologizing to his hostess for intruding, Surby prepared to leave. He wrote, in concluding this scene: “A sweet voice invited me to call if I came that way again. I promised, and, bidding good-bye, left them to slumber.”9
Entering the houses of the conquered was an exhilarating experience for Yankee cavalrymen. When on night patrol they saw every dark silent house as a challenge in this strange southern land of soft feminine voices and hard masculine violence. For Grierson’s men, sometimes the drama turned to farce, as Stephen Forbes recorded in his diary:
I entered the yard, struck the dog over the head with my saber, and knocked at the door. A very tremulous voice within managed with some difficulty to articulate the question: “Who is there?” “A Federal soldier,” I replied, “and I want to get in.” A moment of hurried bustling and smothered frightened talk, and the door opened reluctantly on an old man en dishabille with a candle in his hand, who immediately began the most profuse professions of welcome and happiness at my visit, while his face and stammering speech indicated the utmost consternation. He told me that he truly rejoiced to see me, while his hand shook so with fear that he could hardly hold his candle upright, and ludicrously asked me to come in and sit by the fire in a voice as if he was begging for his life, while there was not a live coal in the fireplace.
I allayed his fears as far as possible and proceeded to search his house, but to my infinite dismay was greeted at the threshold of the first door by a series of faint shrieks and the sight of the fairer portion of his family in a most charmingly distressful situation. I was very nearly overwhelmed with bashfulness, and if there had been a guerilla present, I think I would have thanked him to have shot me instantly for my baseness. As it was, I retreated with all haste, and completed my search elsewhere.10
IV
While Grierson’s advance raiders were marching swiftly and unchallenged toward the Vicksburg railroad on April 23, the attention of the Confederate commanders remained fixed on the Mobile & Ohio. General Ruggles, directing the pursuit of Colonel Hatch’s diversionary force, wired General Pemberton in Jackson that the enemy was “falling bac
k before our cavalry.”11 Ruggles was still unconvinced by the rumors that a large enemy force had slipped through his district. He estimated Hatch’s probable strength at two thousand men, exactly the same as the enemy force he had reported at Pontotoc three days earlier, leaving no margin for the rumored Yankee cavalry in the Macon area.
Instead of falling back before the Confederate cavalry, Colonel Hatch’s actual force of 500 men was marching slowly northward “by all points of the compass,” destroying bridges and capturing horses and mules. “We soon accumulated 600 head of horses and mules,” said Sergeant Lyman Pierce, “with about 200 able bodied negroes to lead them. As the colored women and children could not be taken along, they expressed their feeling towards us by running out to the road, as we passed, with a bowl of milk or a pone of corn bread and slice of meat.”12 The Second Iowa Regiment camped that night near Tupelo.
Confronted by destroyed bridges and flooded creeks everywhere he turned, the luckless Colonel Barteau was not able during the day to come close enough for another fight with Hatch. He bivouacked his men that evening three miles from Hatch’s camp and conferred with General Gholson, who had arrived to take command not only of his state troops but of the entire campaign as well. Lieutenant-Colonel Cunningham of the Second Alabama, still sulking because Barteau had refused to yield to his seniority, announced that his men and mounts were too exhausted to continue farther with the pursuit.
General Pemberton in his Jackson headquarters, having received no reply from General Joseph Johnston to his request for cavalry assistance, was telegraphing directly to Richmond: “I have so little cavalry in this department that I am compelled to divert a portion of my infantry to meet raids in Northern Mississippi. If any troops can possibly be spared from other departments, I think they should be sent here.”