As Adams was also expecting reinforcements from along the New Orleans & Jackson Railroad, he left a lieutenant and a few men behind to inform any approaching Confederate troops as to his location and battle plans. With his column he then turned off into the woods and began a flanking movement around Union Church. He would join Captain Cleveland, leave all except an escort squad with him, and then speed on to Fayette for the reinforcements. Tomorrow, if everything went well, he would have an ambuscade waiting for these abolitionist Yankees somewhere on the Natchez road.
III
Not long after Colonel Adams vanished into the woods with his small column, the lieutenant left behind to act as a liaison heard horsemen approaching from the east. He ordered two men to mount immediately, and the three rode out along the dark road to meet what they expected would be Confederate cavalry. But they could see only one lonely rider moving cautiously toward them in the starlight. They cocked their weapons, the sharp clicks of the hammers echoing along the tree-bordered road.
“Who comes there?” the stranger challenged.
“Friends,” replied the rebel lieutenant.
“Advance one and give the countersign.”
“We don’t have any countersign. Who are you?”
“Scout for Colonel Falkner’s First Mississippi Cavalry. We been traveling all day and all night to catch Colonel Adams and reinforce him.”
One of Adams’ men laughed. “I reckon we can rest our guns, boys,” said the lieutenant. “All right. We belong to old Wirt Adams’ cavalry. And tomorrow we’re goin’ to give the Yanks hell.”
The lone scout moved closer. “Is Colonel Adams nearby? Colonel Falkner would like to see him.”
“Colonel Adams went up to Fayette to get reinforcements. He left me behind to tell anybody coming up just to camp here till morning. He’s aimin’ to fix up ambush for the Yankees on yonder side of Union Church.”
“Ambush?”
“That’s right. If the Yankees think they’re goin’ to make Natchez, they’re sure goin’ to get slipped up.”
The scout nodded solemn agreement, then said he would ride back and meet his advance troop. “I’ll tell ’em you’re here, so we won’t have any accidents in this dark.”
“We’ll wait here,” said the lieutenant.
A few minutes later, blue-uniformed soldiers swarmed in on the three Confederates from both sides of the road. Colonel Adams’ men were prisoners, but their captors did not bother to question them further. The easy-talking lieutenant had already told the Yankees everything they wanted to know.12
The lone scout in Confederate butternut who met, questioned, and arranged the capture of Colonel Adams’ well-informed liaison lieutenant was Sergeant Surby, returning with Captain George Trafton’s battalion which during the morning had been detached from Grierson’s main column for the feint against Bahala.
As soon as Surby turned his prisoners over to Captain Trafton and informed him of Wirt Adams’ night movement and of his intentions to draw Grierson into ambush, Trafton ordered the scouts to speed up the march into Union Church.
Between three and four o’clock in the morning, the scouts sighted the first friendly picket fires, and a few minutes later the battalion was inside the lines. They rode through the quiet streets of Union Church, past lawns filled with sleeping cavalrymen sprawled upon the grass without blankets on this warm starlit night. As soon as he found Grierson’s headquarters, Captain Trafton halted the column, ordering the men to dismount and find feed for their horses. The captain adjusted his belt and saber, then turned and walked rapidly over to Grierson’s guard. He asked the man to wake the colonel immediately. The stars were already losing their brightness in the lighting sky.
IV
From various sources [said the Jackson (Mississippi) Appeal for April 28], we have particulars of the enemy’s movements from the north line of Mississippi, through the eastern portion of the State, almost to the Louisiana line. The route chosen for this daring dash was through the line of counties lying between the Mobile and Ohio, and New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern railroads, in which, as they anticipated, there was no organized force to oppose them.
The penetration of an enemy’s country, however, so extensively, will be recorded as one of the gallant feats of the war, no matter whether the actors escape or are captured. The expedition, we learn, was under command of Col. Grierson, of Illinois, who has already acquired considerable reputation as a dashing leader in West Tennessee. He boasted that he had no fears of his ability to extricate his command from the dangerous position it seemed to be in, but gave no indication as to the route he should take to get out of the country. …
Whether they will move thence to Natchez … can only be conjectured; but we still incline to the opinion so confidently expressed some days ago, on first being advised of their presence at Newton, that Baton Rouge will be their haven, if undisturbed.13
General Pemberton was not so certain that Grierson’s cavalry was heading for Baton Rouge. A few hours after the Appeal published its prediction, however, he notified General Franklin Gardner at Port Hudson that the enemy was en route to Natchez, adding, “I wish you to make your dispositions, if possible, to ambuscade them in case they should approach you, going to Baton Rouge.” Gardner complied with this mild request by sending Colonel H. B. Granbury with the Seventh Texas Regiment, Major James De Baun with a company of Wingfield’s partisan rangers and a section of Bledsoe’s battery, to form a concentration point at Woodville, thirty-five miles below Natchez.
Sometime during the morning Pemberton authorized Colonel Wirt Adams to take command of all cavalry pursuing Grierson, and then, in an effort to build up Adams’ reserve strength, he sent numerous detailed orders to the eleven scattered cavalry units along the New Orleans & Jackson Railroad. Captain R. C. Love had finally reached Hazlehurst, after being thrown off Grierson’s trail two days before by scout Samuel Nelson; Pemberton instructed Love to gather up all cavalry in that area and proceed westward to join Wirt Adams. In characteristic fashion, Pemberton prodded the captain: “Hire horses and citizens and act promptly.”
Major M. R. Clark, commanding a training camp at Brookhaven, twenty miles below Hazlehurst, was warned to watch out for a visit from the enemy. “The principal object will perhaps be to parole prisoners,” said Pemberton with what turned out to be remarkable divination. “It will be well in that event to send all the men you cannot arm to the country, if only a few miles.”
By noon, information was coming into Pemberton’s headquarters confirming reports that the enemy cavalry had taken the Natchez road out of Gallatin. Convinced that Grierson was driving for Natchez, Pemberton wired the quartermaster captain in command there: “Enemy believed to be moving toward your city. Communicate with the mayor. My cavalry have orders to fall on rear and flanks.”
Later in the day, Pemberton decided to send a reassuring message to General John Bowen at Grand Gulf: “Have reason to believe enemy are striking for Natchez or Baton Rouge.”
Bowen’s reply was a shock to the commanding general: “Transports and barges loaded down with troops are landing at Hard Times, on the west bank.”
Grant was moving at last.
Pemberton’s first reaction was to telegraph President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. He wanted Davis to know that Grant was coming, but all he asked for was more cavalry to protect the rear approaches into northern Mississippi. He then sent his daily plea to General Johnston in Tennessee, informing him that the enemy was preparing to attack Grand Gulf. “I must depend upon the Army of Tennessee to protect the approaches through northern Mississippi.”
Grant was coming across the big river to strike a hard blow for Vicksburg, but Pemberton could not put out of his mind the enemy raiders under Grierson still loose in Confederate-held territory. While he was busily preparing emergency orders and scraping up reinforcements for his desperate generals in the forts along the Mississippi, he interrupted himself long enough to direct the commander of the Twent
ieth Mississippi Regiment stationed in Jackson to mount three companies and have them ready to depart by train at 9 P.M., to join in the pursuit of Grierson’s raiders.”14
* Bahala later changed its name to Beauregard in honor of the Confederate general.
* Every fourth man served as a horse-holder when cavalry dismounted for an attack on foot.
FOX AND HOUNDS
AT 2:30 ON THE MORNING OF April 29, the last men and horses of three companies of the Confederate Army’s Twentieth Mississippi Mounted Infantry were loaded aboard a train in the New Orleans & Jackson depot in Jackson. General Pemberton’s orders for these troops had set their departure time at 9 P.M.; they were five and one-half hours late in beginning their pursuit of Grierson’s raiders.
Commanding this battalion of mounted infantry was a fiery, enigmatic, incorrigible Tennessean—Colonel Robert V. Richardson. During the past two months, General Joseph Johnston, commanding Confederate armies in middle Tennessee, had been attempting to arrest Colonel Richardson for persistent abuse of conscript laws and for his unorthodox actions as leader of the First Tennessee Partisan Rangers in enemy-occupied western Tennessee.
During the past month the Union Army’s General Stephen Hurlbut (Grierson’s corps commander) had also been pursuing Richardson not as an enemy officer but as an outlaw acting “without and against Confederate orders.”1 Hurlbut declared he would bring the freebooting colonel to a drumhead court-martial.
And within the past fortnight, General Pemberton had sent a Confederate major through the lines into western Tennessee with orders to arrest Colonel Richardson and attempt to salvage the Tennessee partisan rangers for the Southern cause. Pemberton’s emissary discovered, however, that Grierson’s Sixth and Seventh Illinois Cavalry Regiments had captured or made casualties of the better part of Richardson’s rangers in a running fight east of Memphis, only two weeks before Grierson started his raid from La Grange. Richardson himself was reported to be severely wounded. And it was said that the partisan leader was last seen fleeing across the Mississippi River in a canoe, carrying a fortune in Federal money stolen from Tennessee citizens loyal to the Union.*
While this extensive search was under way, Richardson himself appeared suddenly in Jackson, Mississippi, a balding, thin-nosed man with large, wide-spreading ears and a pointed beard. He reported to Pemberton’s headquarters with all the bland innocence of an erring schoolboy. And in his petulant schoolmaster fashion Pemberton certainly must have scolded Richardson, although he does not appear to have placed him under arrest before giving him command of the Mississippi mounted infantry, with orders to overtake and fight Grierson.
Just how Richardson persuaded Pemberton to give him a new command so quickly is not made clear in the official records. Originally the general had intended to assign Lieutenant-Colonel W. N. Brown as commander of the Mississippi mounted troops ordered out of Jackson to pursue Grierson’s raiders.2 But at the last moment Pemberton chose Colonel Richardson. Perhaps Richardson told him of the blood-feud he had to settle with Grierson and the Sixth and Seventh Illinois Regiments. Perhaps Pemberton decided that this fire-eating rebel with revenge in his heart would drive himself and his men with such furious purpose that even the slippery Grierson could not escape him. At any rate, Colonel Robert V. Richardson received his orders early in the evening of April 28, and promptly at 9 P.M. arrived at the Jackson railroad station, eager to take up the chase of his old enemy, Grierson.
When I got to the depot I was chagrined and surprised to find that the three companies of the Twentieth Mississippi Mounted Infantry, who were to constitute a portion of the forces subject to my orders in the movement projected against the enemy, with horses, were just beginning to be placed on the train.
About 2:30 A.M., April 29, 1863, the men and horses were all aboard. I inquired for the conductor, and learned that he was in bed at his chamber. I sent him an order to get up and proceed with his train immediately, or I would send for him a file of men. After a short time, he came. He then inquired of the engineer whether he could pull the train, who replied that he could not, because there were too many cars in the train.
The conductor and engineer then said that three cars must be taken from the train. This was done. Now they said they had not wood enough to run the train to the next station, and they had no lamps. I inquired whether or not they had an ax to cut wood; they replied they had none. About daybreak they started with the train, and did not reach Hazlehurst until 11 A.M. In spite of all efforts, these men were churlish, and seemed to be laboring to defeat as far as possible the movement of troops. They claim their privilege of exemption from military service as employees of the railroad company. It should not be granted to men who are so unmindful of the public interests.3
II
While Colonel Richardson was arguing with the reluctant trainmen in Jackson, Colonel Grierson in Union Church was listening to Captain George Trafton’s account of the capture of Wirt Adams’ garrulous liaison lieutenant who had revealed Adams’ plan of ambush. Grierson congratulated Trafton for his bag of twenty-one prisoners and requested that the lieutenant be brought up for questioning. The young Confederate was much less communicative than he had been with the Butternut Guerillas, but Grierson learned enough to be convinced that Adams was waiting somewhere to the west with a large force of cavalry.
After ordering Adjutant George Root to set up a parole table on the veranda of the house which he was occupying as headquarters, Grierson summoned the regimental officers for a council.
Grierson outlined his plans briefly and to the point. Of course, he had no intention of marching into Wirt Adams’ ambush. Nor would he wait here for a fight. “I had previously hoped to join General Grant in the vicinity of Grand Gulf or Port Gibson, yet the heavy firing from the gun boats heard by us satisfied me that it would be impracticable to undertake to do so, as it was very evident he had not at that time effected a landing with his troops. To delay an indefinite time to effect a junction would be too hazardous with my small command, in view of the large forces—over 20,000 men—sent out from various points to intercept and destroy us.”4
The last place the enemy would expect them to move would be back to the New Orleans & Jackson Railroad; therefore, that was where they should go. But first they would “fool the enemy by a strong feint,” and throw Wirt Adams off balance. “I made a strong demonstration toward Fayette with a view to impress upon the enemy the belief that we certainly intended to go to Natchez or Port Gibson.”5
Grierson ordered Colonel Loomis’ Sixth Regiment to make the demonstration. Colonel Prince would take the opposite direction with the Seventh, moving slowly across country to the Brookhaven road until the Sixth could overtake them.
Before leaving Union Church, Grierson used a theatrical trick to further deceive his enemy. He arranged for one of the prisoners, a prominent citizen of the county, to be brought into the room he was using as headquarters. “This gentleman,” Stephen Forbes later wrote, “was permitted to overhear conversations and orders, made merely to deceive him, all implying a march for Natchez the next morning; and later a guard, instructed to be negligent, permitted him to slip away and escape.”6
At six o’clock the Sixth Regiment was moving west on the Fayette road for a strong demonstration against Adams’ men under Captain Cleveland. Shortly afterward the Seventh marched out as if to follow the Sixth, then made a wide sweeping turn through the woods until the column faced east. The Butternut Guerillas, in full strength again under Sergeant Surby, rode a few hundred yards ahead of the Seventh’s advance company, following obscure trails through thick forests of oak and magnolias. “Considerable dodging was done the first three or four hours’ march,” said Surby. “I do not think we missed traveling toward any point of the compass.”
Not long after the raiders struck the Brookhaven road they met a train of ox and mule teams hauling hogsheads of sugar; the wagons had loaded at the Brookhaven railroad station and were destined for the Mississippi River forts. T
he train was destroyed after the men had replenished their haversacks.
As the advance companies approached Brookhaven in the early afternoon, they encountered increasing evidence of excitement among the citizenry. Volunteer enemy scouts and spies were frequently seen dashing off into the thick woods ahead. Eight unarmed Confederate infantrymen, bound for Port Hudson from home furloughs, and five armed citizens were captured, but many more escaped by vanishing among the trees before they could be overtaken.
Two miles outside Brookhaven, while still under cover of the forest which surrounded the town, the column halted and Sergeant Surby went forward to reconnoiter. From the edge of the woods Surby looked out upon a “very pretty location,” the rooftops of the houses shimmering under the bright sun. Two or three hundred men scattered in small groups were moving restlessly about the streets. None was in uniform, few appeared to be armed, but it was obvious that Brookhaven was expecting an immediate visit from Grierson’s raiders. A mile to the south on a high oak-shaded hill were several rows of tents, revealed in white splashes of sunlight, and beyond the tents some long low frame buildings—a military training camp.
But where were the rebel soldiers? Surby could see only one or two, lolling in the shade.
The sergeant hurried back to report to Colonel Grierson. “We ascertained that about five hundred citizens and conscripts were organized to resist us,” Grierson said in his official report. “We charged into the town.”7
The Seventh Regiment made the charge into Brookhaven, the Sixth swinging to the right to overrun the tent camp. As they swept out from the trees the men of the Seventh formed in columns of fours. Somewhere to their left a rebel watch fired a single shot to warn the Brookhaven defenders that the Yankees were coming.
But the sudden rush of 500 sunburned, bearded, dusty, mud-stained Yankee cavalrymen, waving carbines and swinging sabers, took the heart out of Brookhaven’s poorly armed citizens. “There was much running and yelling,” Grierson said, “but it soon quieted down into almost a welcome.”8