The Confederate carrying the white kerchief wore a gold sash around his waist; his horse pranced nervously to within a few feet of Captain Forbes. The man glanced once at the company drawn up in a column of fours on the slope beyond. His voice came firmly, yet disinterestedly courteous, soft and Southern, the words stilted in the old chivalric form: “To whom are we indebted for the honor of this visit?”
“I come from Major-General Grierson,” replied Captain Forbes sternly. “To demand the surrender of Enterprise.”
Betraying no surprise, the Confederate officers held their horses steady, the eyes of all three fixed on Captain Forbes’s austere face, as if waiting for a limiting clause to follow the blunt request. After a moment of silence, the spokesman replied: “Will the Captain put the demand in writing?”
“Certainly,” replied Forbes quickly. “To whom shall I address it?”
“To Colonel Edwin Goodwin, commanding the post.”
“Very well. I shall give the Colonel one hour to consider the demand for surrender.”18
My informants were either lying or mistaken, Captain Forbes was thinking. This town is garrisoned.
He finished scribbling the surrender demand: “One hour only for consideration, after which further delay will be at your peril.” Glancing up, he saw that the rebel carrying the white flag had also written a message. Their horses came closer, the notes were exchanged.
“Will the Captain await the reply here?” asked the Southerner.
“We shall fall back to the main body,” replied Captain Forbes, “and there await the reply.”
The Confederates swept off their hats in a gesture of farewell, turned their mounts about, and galloped back toward the town. Captain Forbes nodded to Lieutenant McCausland. “Right about, gentlemen! And let’s pray that we find the main body.” They rode at a slow canter back to the company, the captain unfolding the Confederate officer’s note and reading it hurriedly: “Colonel Goodwin’s compliments to General Grierson, commanding United States forces, and asks permission to consider his demand for one hour.”
Forbes slipped the paper inside his saddlebag. He hoped he would be lucky enough to pass it on to Grierson; the colonel would appreciate his promotion in rank.
We never officially knew what the Confederates’ reply was, as for reasons best known to themselves they failed to make it reach us. Perhaps it was lack of speed. We fell back, very cheerfully, four miles, and fed, and resumed our retreat, which was diligently continued all night. We learned afterwards from the Southern papers that our reply was forwarded six miles on our track that evening with an escort of 2,000 infantry, under the impression that we were at least 1,500 strong.
Once more we were out of the lion’s mouth, but woefully and inextricably entangled in his den. We rode on towards the sinking sun and—planned. Should we run north? Should we attempt Pensacola, Mobile, Vicksburg?* We determined on one more despairing effort at a stern chase of the regiments. We had lost another forty miles. The nearest point where we were certain of the whereabouts of our command was Garlandville.19
Garlandville was twenty miles away, the roads bad, the streams unbridged, but by dusk they were approaching the town, the men so long without sleep they had lost all fear and caution.
We made rapid work, and passed through this place in the early dusk. Here was a home guard of sixty men (the Garlandville Avengers) who had sworn to fight at sight any Yanks they might encounter. Our scouts fell in with one of these guards and actually accompanied him to warn his companions that we were Alabama cavalry, fearing that they might mistake us for Yankees and give us trouble!20
As the company marched through Garlandville where yellow lights gleamed in the windows and mounted armed men lurked in the shadowy streets, the riders were unnaturally silent, their exhausted nerves and muscles grudgingly taut against this new danger. They wondered if fortune would desert them now—an alert rebel suddenly discovering a telltale Yankee symbol, a spray of lanternlight revealing a trouser-leg too blue beneath its dust, or a carelessly spoken word in an accent strange to Southern cars.
They were out of Garlandville suddenly, every man of the little company resisting an urge to flee in a wild gallop. But they marched calmly on, and in a few seconds were excitedly talking among themselves, the news coming down quickly through the column from Captain Forbes. Grierson had marched to the west!
While they were passing through Garlandville the disguised scouts, posing as Alabamans, had made certain of Grierson’s route. Cheered by the news and the knowledge that the hard flight from Enterprise had probably saved their lives and brought them back within a day’s ride of the brigade, the men’s energies were renewed for another night march, their third in succession.
Not until midnight, when his scouts reported a plantation well off the main road, did Captain Forbes call a halt. They stopped at Dr. Hodge’s for “several hours,” reported the Jackson Appeal of April 28. “Some of them entered the doctor’s enclosure and required his daughters to furnish them provisions, which was done to the extent of cooked articles on hand. The rose bushes and flower beds of the young ladies were also sadly despoiled by the unwelcome visitors, but beyond this, our informant says they did no damage, nor did they insult the ladies. The doctor was absent.”21
And what were the feelings of the young daughters of plantation owners toward these invading Yankees? The visit of Captain Forbes and his company with the Hodge sisters apparently is unchronicled by any of the participants, but another planter’s daughter, Miss Cordelia Scales of Oakland Plantation, recorded a similar experience in a letter to a friend. (See also p. 52.)
“Grierson’s Thieves,” she called the raiders. “I can’t write of these; it makes my blood boil to think of the outrages they committed. … Capt. Flynn & Col. Steward* protected us. One of them [Grierson’s men] sent me word that they shot ladies as well as men, & if I did not stop talking to them so & displaying my Confederate flag he’d blow my damn brains out.”
In another letter, Miss Scales was equally indignant:
I must tell you about the Yankees as you are so anxious to know how they behaved. You may congratulate yourself, my dear friend, on being slighted by them. They came & stayed in our yard all the time … they took corn, fodder, ruined the garden & took every thing in the poultry line. I never heard such profanity in all my life & so impudent, they would walk around the house & look up at the windows & say, “wonder how many Secesh gals they got up there.” I did not have my pistol & Ma would not let me go where they were, but one evening she was so worn out she sent me down to attend to the skimming of some wine & other household matters, when she thought they had all left. Just as I got out in the yard, two Cavalry men & six infantry came up & surrounded me. Pa was not at home. Ma & Sis Lucy were looking on & were frightened very much for they knew I would speak my mind to them if they provoked me.
The first Lt. asked me if we had any chickens.
I told him, “no.”
“Any milk?”
I said, “no,”—that some of his tribe had been there that morning and got everything in that line. He smiled & said “they did not pay you for them did they?” I told him a few pretended to pay by giving us federal money, that I preferred leaves to that.
He said “why federal money dont seem to be in demand.”
I said “not down this way sure.”
The second Lt. a red-headed ugly pert thing commenced to laugh about our men running from Holly Springs & said “our men never run, Miss,” I told him, no, we all knew what a orderly retreat they made from Bull Run, Manassas, & Leighsburg, that it did their army a great deal of credit & that I hope they felt proud of it.
One of the pickets remarked then “Oh! hush Tom you dont know how to talk to Secesh gals.”
I turned to him & thanked him that we were all ladies in the South.
The 2nd Lt. got very mad at what I said about their men running—said, “I can inform you, Miss, I was in the battle of Leighsburg & ou
r men did not run far.”
I told him I knew they did not, they ran as far as they could and then jumped in the river.
The first Lt. broke out in a laugh & said “Ah! Tom she’s got you now,” & turned to me & said, “I admire your candor very much. I had much rather see you so brave than for you to pretend to entertain Union sentiments.”
Just as I was walking away and congratulating myself that they had not cursed me one of them said “She is the damnest little Secesh I ever saw” & another “she is a damn pretty gal, I be-dog if she aint.” I could write you a newspaper about them but I reckon you are tired now & it makes me mad to think about them. Goodbye little darling I will write you more news next time.22
* Grierson evidently confused the names of the scouts, George Steadman and Samuel Nelson. According to Sergeant Surby, who knew both men intimately, Steadman was quite small and wiry, not large and muscular like Nelson. From Surby, who was in charge of the scouts, we learn that it was the robust, hesitant talker, Nelson, who was ordered to Forest Station. Grierson’s description is certainly that of Nelson rather than Steadman.
* According to Stephen Forbes, they also considered breaking up and scattering, riding north by twos and threes, in the hope that though some might be taken, the rest would escape. “A consultation was held quietly by the leading officers as we rode along. … Should we return to Grierson’s trail and make another effort, under new disadvantages, at a direct pursuit? We stood three to one for the last alternative, and so we kept on to Garlandville.”—Stephen A. Forbes, “Grierson’s Cavalry Raid,” Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1907, p. 112.
* Two Union officers admired by Cordelia Scales, who referred to them as “Irish Democrats.” They were with the 90th Illinois Infantry.
“CAPTAIN FORBES PRESENTS HIS COMPLIMENTS”
THE PICKETS CAME ALERT, set carbines at ready, and then out of the darkness one of them sounded the familiar call: “Halt! Who goes there?”
Scout Samuel Nelson replied with the password of the Butternut Guerillas, identifying himself by name. As soon as the pickets signaled him past, Nelson urged his lathered horse into a trot, moving up through the graying light to the front veranda of Dr. Mackadore’s plantation house.
Colonel Grierson was still asleep, but when the officer of the guard heard Sam Nelson’s story he immediately awakened the brigade commander. In a few moments Grierson was listening to the scout’s hasty report of the encounter with Confederate cavalry. As soon as Nelson had finished, Grierson questioned him carefully about the enemy’s location, the time of the meeting, the number of soldiers.
Nelson could not be certain of the number; he told how he had set the raiders’ strength at 1,800, a number which did not appear to cause the rebel captain to have any qualms about a possible meeting with them. But Nelson was certain he had not passed more than a regiment in the darkness.
In his official report Grierson estimated that his scout had met the rebel cavalry about seven miles below the railroad. “He succeeded in misdirecting them as to the place he had last seen us,” the colonel said, “and, having seen them well on the wrong road, he immediately retraced his steps to camp with the news. When he first met them they were on the direct road to our camp, and had they not been turned from their course would have come up with us before daylight.”1
Grierson immediately ordered the buglers to sound boots and saddles. His plan for cutting the telegraph line at Forest Station was, of course, abandoned, and Nelson was sent to report for duty again with Sergeant Surby; the Butternut Guerillas would have plenty of work to do out in front of the column this morning.
Before the regiments marched, Surgeon Archibald Agnew reported to Grierson that he had three men who were unable to travel farther. One of them was the man wounded in the charge through Garlandville, the other two were seriously ill. Grierson settled the matter promptly, arranging to leave the men under the care of their host, Dr. Mackadore, a physician.
Another and more vital problem facing Grierson this morning was the shortage of provisions. With the best of luck they would need four days in which to reach the Mississippi River. This would be their tenth day out of La Grange, and the five days’ rations issued at departure were long since gone. Such meat and corn as they had been able to take from the sparsely furnished plantations in the Piney Woods had been cut fine among the 900 haversacks and 1,000 nosebags of the two regiments.*
To handle the problem of food supply during the raid, Grierson had selected a young farm boy from his Sixth Regiment, appointed him acting commissary sergeant, and attached him to headquarters staff. His name was William Pollard and he carried out his duties like a veteran forager. Sergeant Pollard always rode into a plantation with the advance, detailing men to guard the doors of each smokehouse, barn, and kitchen, allowing no one to pass without permission from a commissioned officer. After surveying the food and forage supplies available, Pollard would then assign men to issue each company its share of hams, shoulders, cornmeal, corn, and hay.2
But as the brigade moved deeper into the Piney Woods, Sergeant Pollard was finding his commissary post a more and more frustrating duty. Officers and men alike were beginning to grumble over the lack of coffee, a commodity virtually unknown in the South since the coastal blockade had become effective. Almost every one of the raiders carried a tin pail, usually made from an emptied quart fruit can, in which to make his coffee. “This rude little kettle,” wrote one cavalryman, “was seen hanging to every saddle on the march, and three or four or half a dozen times a day, if opportunity offered, small fires were started and water set on for making coffee.”3
The men refused to drink Secesh coffee made from parched peas and corn ground together, or from dried chicory and okra seeds. They detested this wartime beverage of the South as much as they disliked the Union Army’s “desiccated vegetables”—potatoes and shredded carrots and turnips dried and pressed hard and intended to be cooked by boiling.
But the raiders had learned how to mix Mississippi cornmeal with salt and water in their tin pails and bake the mixture on a hot flat stone, or at the end of stick, or wrapped in a corn husk. Nor did they object much to the fat pork and molasses diet of the Piney Woods country, and they cheerfully roasted in the hot ashes of their campfires the mountains of sweet potatoes unearthed by Sergeant Pollard and his persevering foragers.
As they marched out of Mackadore’s Plantation, however, their haversacks carried almost as much corn as their horses’ nosebags, and the old joke about the solicitous general undoubtedly was going the rounds:
“How are you getting along, boys?”
“Pretty well, General, only them blamed mules are eating up all our rations.”
II
Shortly after departing from Mackadore’s Plantation at six o’clock in the morning, Grierson’s raiders began crossing Leaf River. Before the rear guard passed over, a fire detail had heaped piles of leaves and brush around the supports, and as soon as the last horseman was across, the bridge was blazing. What hopes Grierson had held for the return of Captain Forbes and Company B went down with the bridge, but he decided to burn it as a necessary delaying action against the Confederate cavalry reported by Corporal Nelson.
Ahead of the column, Sergeant Surby and the Butternut Guerillas turned northwestward with the twisting road, leaving the reed brakes of the river bottomlands and climbing into hills where sedge grass and pines struggled for supremacy on the red soil. Occasionally a gaunt, long-snouted hog would dart across their path. The farms were small, fields of young cotton, corn, and sugar cane lay unfenced around log cabins that were little more than hovels.
It was about eight o’clock when the scouts sighted the first houses of Raleigh scattered along the top of a narrow red ridge, the first town of any size they had seen since leaving Garlandville two days before. “On entering the place,” said Sergeant Surby, “I discovered a man hastily mounting his horse and riding away at full speed. … He was requested to halt, bu
t paying no attention, kept increasing his speed.”4
After ordering his men in pursuit, Surby began patrolling the town alone while awaiting the advance squad. Within a few minutes, the scouts galloped back with their captive. He proved to be the county sheriff, and he was carrying in his saddlebags three thousand Confederate dollars in county funds. As soon as Lieutenant-Colonel Blackburn arrived, Surby turned the sheriff and the money over to him and took the lead again, following the road which now veered back to the southwest.
Rain began dripping from the dark skies during the noon bivouac; by midafternoon the fall had increased to a steady drenching downpour. But in spite of weather and lack of forage in this lonely grassless land of everlasting pines, Grierson urged the regiments to set a lively rate of march. In contrast to yesterday’s leisurely pace, he seemed now to be obsessed with a desire for speed.
As the column moved steadily westward, the rear guard burned every bridge they crossed. This precaution, together with the heavy rain flooding the streams, kept the brigade doubly secure from a pursuing enemy.
Soon after nightfall the downpour slackened to a drizzle. They passed through Westville unopposed, moving on through the darkness a couple of miles to Williams’ Plantation. Strong River was only two or three miles farther, and Grierson ordered the Seventh Regiment to proceed and cross, set a bridge guard, and halt at the first plantation beyond. As Colonel Prince was to remain with Grierson for a staff conference, Lieutenant-Colonel Blackburn took command of the Seventh, marching across Strong River to Smith’s Plantation.
The Sunday night meeting of Grierson and his officers is not recorded in detail, but it appears from subsequent events that it marked the beginning of an intense rivalry between Colonel Prince and Colonel Grierson, a rivalry that was to end in bitterness and a threat of court-martial. Tired and wet as they all were, they probably gathered around one of their unwilling host’s fireplaces, drying their uniforms and damp socks, smoking cigars and sipping rebel wine.