Fascinated by this reception, Surby lingered until the column’s advance caught up with the scouts. Then they rode away hurriedly, continuing through the small village of Pineville where there was no evidence of resistance. A short distance beyond the village the sergeant found the first large plantation since leaving Bender’s, and he sent a man back to recommend it for the noon bivouac.
In a few minutes Lieutenant-Colonel Blackburn arrived with the advance company. When he and Surby rode up to the veranda entrance, they were informed that the plantation owner, Elias Nichols, was down in the cornfield a mile distant.
Surby rode down to the field alone and found Nichols seated on a stump, a large leatherbound whip across his knees. About twenty-five Negro slaves of both sexes were working in the field, swinging hoes as they moved along the corn rows.
Surby unslung his carbine but Nichols showed no surprise as he watched him approach across the field. “Any luck hunting?” the planter called cheerfully.
“I’m not on that kind of business,” Surby replied.
Nichols glanced at Surby’s carbine, then at his revolver. “How is Pemberton getting along at Vicksburg?” he asked.
“I reckon Vicksburg is safe against the whole northern army,” Surby replied. “I was sent to ask you to come up to the house.”
The plantation owner called one of the Negroes, an old man with woolly gray hair, and handed him the whip. He then walked along beside Surby’s horse as they turned back toward the house. “Whose command you belong to?” Nichols demanded suddenly.
Anticipating the question, Surby replied easily: “Williams’ from Tennessee, stationed at Jackson. General Pemberton sent us out to gather commissary stores and pick up deserters and conscripts.”
They swung around the barn and Nichols gasped in astonishment, completely unprepared as he was for two regiments of cavalry. Grierson’s men had already helped themselves to his corn and fodder. The plantation owner began grumbling loudly about the impertinence of soldiers who had not asked permission to use his corn, besides he had none to spare—not that the Confederate vouchers were not good enough, he was willing to do his share, but he didn’t have more than he needed for his own use.
Surby made a path for him through the scurrying horsemen. Nichols began remarking on the fine uniforms, some captured, he allowed, being as they looked like Yankee blues, healthy-looking fellows, fine arms, too.
“Best equipped cavalry in the Confederate service,” Surby assured him, as he dismounted in front of the house. Noticing Colonel Grierson’s horse hitched to the veranda railing, he led Nichols through his own front door and into the room where Grierson was waiting with Blackburn and some of the other officers. Quite solemnly, he introduced Elias Nichols to “Colonel Williams from Jackson, Mississippi, formerly from Tennessee,”6 and it was some time before the planter discovered the true identities of his visitors.
During the long halt at Nichols’ Plantation the raiders saw their first ill-treated slave, a field hand who had been recaptured by his master after attempting to run away. He was found imprisoned in a log hut, manacled and chained to a ring in the floor. Colonel Blackburn ordered the irons cut loose and told the slave to join the brigade as a horse herder if he still wished to escape to freedom. The Negro accepted with profuse thanks.
Before resuming march, Grierson sent several detachments back to the north with orders to make rapid feints toward the railroad, but to avoid if possible any skirmishing with the enemy. He informed the detachment leaders that the column would proceed only a few miles farther along the road toward Raleigh, probably would camp for the night at the next large plantation. His object in sending out these troops was to create an impression that he intended to strike the railroad again, this time near Jackson. While the Confederates were preparing to receive him there he could make his dash westward toward Grand Gulf to join Grant’s landing party on the Mississippi.
At two o’clock the regiment began filing slowly out of Nichol’s Plantation. “They robbed Elias Nichols of all his mules,” said the Paulding Clarion, “took a carriage, several of his negroes, and a greater part of his corn and meat.”7
The road now ran straight south, following the Leaf River valley, the country becoming more rugged, with occasional ridges and deep ravines. At dusk they halted on the plantation of a physician, Dr. Mackadore.
Once again Grierson and his officers could dine comfortably and leisurely, ending the dinner with a discussion of their situation. The day had been almost too peaceful, but all were fully aware that a hornet’s nest was certainly in full swarm a few miles to their north. “About nine o’clock,” wrote Sergeant Surby, “Colonel Grierson requested Colonel Blackburn to select one of the scouts and report with him. In a few minutes Colonel Blackburn appeared with scout Samuel Nelson.”8
Describing Sam Nelson* in his autobiography, Grierson said: “He had a peculiar impediment or sort of stutter in his speech which enabled him to think twice before he answered once any question put to him; altogether his make-up with his long hunting rifle, powder horn, etc., was most admirable.”9
Nelson was instructed to proceed north to the railroad at Forest Station, some twenty miles away. His orders were to cut the telegraph line on the Vicksburg railroad; he was to bring back a piece of the wire as proof of accomplishment. And if he could find any bridges or trestlework before daybreak, he was to set fire to them. Grierson then handed Nelson a sheaf of Confederate money; he might need to return some of it to the rebels before he found his way back to the column.
At the conclusion of the interview, Grierson shook hands with the scout. “I bid him God’s speed,” he said, “and I thought to myself that in any event the rebels would not get the best of that singular looking but bright and sharp individual.”10
III
Late in the morning, Captain R. C. Love, commanding a Confederate cavalry picket stationed at Brandon twelve miles east of Jackson, was surprised to receive a telegram sent direct from General Pemberton’s headquarters and bearing the general’s name:
CAPTAIN R. C. LOVE, Brandon, Miss.:
Ascertain where the enemy is, and go in that direction. You will not stay at Brandon, but if enemy is at Raleigh, go there and get on his rear, and plant ambush and annoy him. See if something can be done.
J. C. PEMBERTON.11
Captain Love wasted no time. Impressed by this order out of channels, he sent an immediate compliance reply, gathered up every available cavalryman and mount in the vicinity, and marched off on the double along the road that ran to Raleigh.
At that hour, then, Captain Love’s Confederates and Colonel Grierson’s raiders were marching directly toward each other, only thirty-four miles separating their forces. Pushing his men hard, Love was far down into the longleaf pine forests by nightfall. After an hour’s halt to feed and rest, he resumed the march, intent on reaching Raleigh before dawn. Around midnight, sometime after his column reached a crossroads and turned south, his advance scouts picked up a lone northbound traveler.
They hustled him back to the captain.
The traveler was Grierson’s scout, Samuel Nelson.
Corporal Nelson fortunately possessed a slight Southern accent, his home being in Gallatin County, Illinois, separated from Kentucky only by the Ohio River. When Captain Love demanded to know who he was and what he was doing on the road in the middle of the night, Nelson explained in an exaggerated drawl that the Yankees had pressed him in for a guide, had kept him two days, released him on parole, and that he was then on his way to see a friend who lived at Forest Station.
Love wanted to know when and where Nelson had left the Yankees.
“Garlandville,” Nelson replied, “yesterday at noon.”
“What force do the Yankees have?” asked Love.
“About eighteen hundred,” Nelson said, doubling the brigade’s strength. He added that they were well armed.
Captain Love indicated that he believed he could furnish the Yankees a fight. He then asked
if Nelson knew the nearest route to Garlandville, and which direction the Yankees had taken from there.
Nelson directed the Confederate captain so as to lead him away from Mackadore’s Plantation, telling him that the Yankees had gone eastward toward the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.
Love seemed to be satisfied with this information, and told the scout that he could continue to Forest Station.
As he continued northward Corporal Nelson rode slowly along the side of the Confederate column, attempting to estimate the enemy’s strength. But the men were scattered, and in the thick darkness of the forest-bound road he could not be certain whether they consisted of squads or companies. He could not believe there were as many as 1,800, yet the Confederate officer had bragged he would give the Yankees a fight after being told they numbered 1,800.
Riding until the sounds of the Confederates had died away behind him, Nelson turned his horse aside and waited quietly for several minutes. Satisfied that the rear guard had passed, he began retracing his path. He knew that as soon as the rebels reached the main road somewhere to the east they would discover signs of the brigade’s passage, and then would immediately turn in pursuit. His orders to proceed to the railroad seemed less important now than the danger of these night-riding rebels. It was up to him to outrun them to Mackadore’s Plantation and give Colonel Grierson warning of their coming.12
IV
In addition to sending Captain Love in search of the Union cavalry force which had devastated his eastern supply line, General Pemberton followed up his actions of the previous day, leaving nothing undone which might ensnare the tricky enemy.
General John Adams had reached Lake Station only twelve miles from Newton at 2:20 o’clock in the morning, reporting that telegraph operators were at work restoring the wire in the long-break. Pemberton advised Adams to send messages to General Loring at Meridian, General Simon Buckner at Mobile, and General Johnston in Tennessee, notifying them of the raid on Newton Station and requesting them to send troops to help track down the raiders.
Adams put the messages through by courier to the other end of the severed line, wiring copies back to Pemberton. When Pemberton saw Adams’ telegram to Buckner, his edgy temper flared up. The telegram read:
GENERAL BUCKNER:
All is lost unless you can send a regiment or two to Meridian. General Pemberton directs me to urge you to send.
JOHN ADAMS, BRIGADIER-GENERAL.13
Pressed as he was, Pemberton took the time to write a blistering reprimand to Adams: “You say in your dispatch to General Buckner ‘all is lost, unless &c.’ Correct it. I never authorized you to use such an expression.”14
His intense concern with the petty details of his command, details which hourly increased in number as the enemy prepared for the big strike, was beginning to tell on Pemberton. His generals at Grand Gulf and Vicksburg were asking for reinforcements, but he reminded both of them sharply that cavalry raiders on his rear were doing far more damage than Grant’s army across the river. The commander of his arsenal in Jackson also sent him an urgent inquiry concerning the condition of the broken railroad. Seven hundred thousand musket percussion caps and 30,000 pounds of powder from Alabama arsenals were somewhere on the way to replenish the depleted stores at Grand Gulf and Vicksburg. But Pemberton could not tell his arsenal commander when the tracks would be repaired. Perhaps the enemy cavalry might even strike the road again at some other point.
Late in the afternoon a message arrived from General Loring, dispatched from Enterprise, a town on the Mobile & Ohio ten miles below Meridian: “Enemy appeared here at 1 o’clock and demanded the town. They were represented as 1,500 strong. Colonel [Edward] Goodwin was here with the Thirty-fifth Alabama, who defied them. I hastened here with two regiments; enemy have fallen back at last accounts 3 miles. I am now on the road pursuing them. …”15
After reading this, Pemberton was fairly confident that he now had the Yankees cornered. Loring would block an escape through Alabama and Adams would stop them if they turned back to Newton. And if they attempted to flee all the way to Baton Rouge, units drawn from the Mississippi River defenses would surely bring them to bay.
V
The force of 1,500 Yankee cavalry believed by Loring and Pemberton to be near Enterprise was of course the will-o’-the-wisp Company B, Captain Henry Forbes and his thirty-four horsemen. Grierson’s brigade at that hour was all of fifty miles to the west, marching leisurely through the Piney Woods country.
Shortly after dawn on April 25, Captain Forbes and his men galloped down the road from Philadelphia into Newton Station, where the fires kindled by Grierson’s men still drifted smoke over the scorched metal undercarriages of the trains. The little town bore the look and smell of devastation.
Outside the hospital the paroled convalescents were waiting to receive the new visitors; instead of offering resistance they politely answered all of Captain Forbes’s questions. The raiders’ rear guard, they said, had departed late yesterday afternoon, about fifteen hours past.
Company B, then, had gained only six hours on the main column after riding hard for twenty-four hours.
And which direction had the raiders taken? The convalescents were certain they intended to turn east; the commanding colonel and several of his officers had made repeated inquiries concerning the roads in that direction. It was true they had marched southward from Newton; travelers from Garlandville had already brought stories of a skirmish there. The Yankees were said to have continued eastward on the road to Paulding which would take them across the Mobile & Ohio at Quitman.
Thus did Colonel Grierson’s carefully planned deception mislead one of his own company commanders. Captain Forbes, of course, had more reason to believe than to doubt the rumors that the brigade was marching toward the east. Three days ago when Colonel Prince gave him orders to make the feint on Macon, Prince had said that it seemed highly probable the column would swing eastward after raiding the Vicksburg railroad and move into Alabama for a retreat northward to the Federal lines.
After listening to varying stories in Newton, Captain Forbes was convinced that Grierson had indeed marched eastward. He decided there would be no point in following the brigade directly. It seemed more sensible to cut off the southward loop, which he believed Grierson to be making, by turning directly east from Newton, crossing the Mobile & Ohio at or near Enterprise, and joining the brigade beyond the railroad as it passed up to the north. Enterprise appeared to be the logical crossing point since all his informants agreed that the town was without defenders.
At once Company B filed off to the east on the road to Enterprise, every hoofbeat taking them in the opposite direction from their comrades in Grierson’s brigade.
We spent the day in this move, until at about one o’clock we were within six miles of the town. All rumors agreed that there were no rebels in Enterprise.
The town lies on two benches, the lower of which is not in sight until the upper one has been crossed. We rode confidently in sight of the upper bench, when looking down to the right toward a fringe of woods about three quarters of a mile distant, we saw a party of perhaps forty Negroes, who had gathered in the rear of our little column, scampering down a lane as fast as their old mules and hacks could carry them. What they were running from we never knew, for we never saw one of them again.
Perhaps they had seen two or three horsemen who were dashing madly about through the town; for about this time we ourselves discovered them. We kept straight ahead at a walk, until we discovered to our left front what appeared to be a stockade, with a sentinel bearing a musket, at its corner. Halting a moment, we borrowed a pocket handkerchief from a wash hanging in one of the door-yards, fastened it to the end of a saber, and under this as a flag of truce rode down to demand a conference.16
Captain Forbes ordered his lieutenant, William McCausland, and the first file of four to follow. Although he waved the white flag continually, several shots were fired at them from the sentry gate as they approached the st
ockade. But they kept moving ahead.
Back with the company on the slope, Sergeant Stephen Forbes watched his brother Henry riding unhesitatingly forward, the town beyond drab under the cloudy sky. Was this the place where the prison train had stopped a year ago, where the rebel recruits coming over from their camp had almost taken the cars by storm? Where one of our guards benevolently ransacked the town in search of something to eat for us, finally obtaining three dozen cookies for which they charged us one dollar and twenty cents?
Stephen remembered the rebel recruits swarming over the prisoners’ car. In their open-mouthed eagerness to catch a glimpse of a dozen “live yankees,” collecting in crowds about the car and even climbing the roof and peering through the cracks, from whence the guards could only dislodge them by using their bayonets … As they looked to me from the car window, there was only a surging sea of butternut rags and dirt, above which rolled and bobbed a tumult of faces composed mostly of old hats and open mouths, while the whole mass was kept in a state of constant agitation by the efforts of a swaggering, good-natured rum-shop blackguard whose cavern of a mouth gave vent to alternate floods of ribaldry and tobacco juice, and the occasional remarks of the sportively inclined of our party.17
There had been, on that other day, barrels and barrels of sugar and molasses lying beside the railroad, and now Stephen Forbes, sitting straight in his saddle with his hands gripping the sweated bridle leather, must have looked around wonderingly for the barrels, the one feature of the colorless landscape that had marked it in his memory.
Then three finely mounted Confederate officers appeared, one carrying a white kerchief fluttering at the end of an infantry ramrod. Captain Forbes halted, awaiting the approaching enemy.