As he rode southward from the burning trestles, Grierson decided to raid the next town, Summit, before halting for noon feeding. He set the column moving at a faster rate, with frequent gallops under the hot sun, the horses’ hooves raising clouds of yellow-brown dust. Longleafed pines became more numerous again, and the white plantation houses seemed untouched by war—their entrances landscaped with neat rows of trimmed cedars among the native pines.
Shortly after noon, the scouts sighted the town of Summit on a hill sloping out of the undulating plain.
II
While Grierson’s raiders were moving on Summit, their old enemy Colonel Robert Richardson was approaching Brookhaven, twenty miles to their rear. At nine o’clock in the morning Richardson overtook Captain R. C. Love, who in response to Pemberton’s orders had augmented his force with hired horses and civilians at Hazlehurst. Love had been pursuing Grierson for five days now, and for the second time had found himself thrown off the trail.
Attaching Love’s troops to his regiment of Mississippi mounted infantry, Richardson hurried on to Brookhaven. “We reached Brookhaven at 11 A.M.,” he said, “fed, and rested three hours.”
The smoking ruins of the railroad station and freight cars were immediate evidences of Grierson’s passage, but Richardson was eighteen hours behind the raiders and no one could tell for certain where they might be at that moment. Rumors were strong, however, that the Yankees had marched south from their camp that morning, heading for Bogue Chitto, and Richardson ordered Captain Love to proceed immediately to that point.
“After I had ordered Captain Love, as my advance, to proceed to Bogue Chitto, I received information that the enemy had committed his depredations there in the forenoon, and had gone to Summit, to do the same thing, that evening.”3
Richardson now believed he had a good chance to overtake Grierson by nightfall, but he needed Wirt Adams’ regiment to insure a victory. He had heard nothing from Adams, but hoped that he might be somewhere west of Summit en route to Liberty, as Richardson had advised him. Before leaving Brookhaven, Richardson dispatched a courier to seek out Adams’ column and notify the Mississippi colonel that if the two regiments could be brought into concerted action somewhere in the vicinity of Summit, Grierson might very well be trapped before morning.
III
Grierson’s raiders in the meantime were marching quietly and leisurely into Summit. “The people seemed to expect us,” said Sergeant Surby, “and there were no signs of excitement or fear displayed.” Colonel Grierson believed this response to be positive rather than apathetic: “We found much Union sentiment in this town, and were kindly welcomed and fed by many of the citizens.”4
In his autobiography, written long after the event, Grierson added a story of a lady who came down to her gate in front of her house and asked to see the Yankees’ commanding officer. When she was presented to Colonel Grierson she told him her husband was an officer in the Confederate Army and that her whole heart was in the Southern cause, that she was a Southern woman through and through, but that this whole thing [the raid] beat anything she ever heard of, or had ever read of in history; that if the North should win in the end and Grierson should run for President, her husband would vote for him or she would get a divorce.5
Whether this story is entirely factual or not, Grierson evidently found his reception in Summit to be more friendly than any yet given the raiders in Mississippi. He kept his brigade there all afternoon, although there was little for his men to do. They found a quantity of Confederate commissary supplies—sugar, salt, molasses and corn meal—which they loaded into several empty freight cars. The cars were rolled down the track away from the town and burned. The Summit depot was spared because it stood too near private dwellings; Grierson decided his men had done enough fire-fighting in Hazlehurst and Brookhaven.
After this work was finished the men prowled around the town. They forced the custodian of the town hall to open the doors for inspection, and found several old and useless muskets stored inside. Folded in a box beneath the weapons was a Confederate battleflag which had been brought back from Shiloh by the survivors of a local company. The prowlers appropriated it at once; Confederate battleflags were seldom come by with such ease.
Another group of explorers discovered thirty barrels of Louisiana rum hidden in a swamp behind the town. As Sergeant Surby observed, “it was no use trying to hide anything from the Yankees.” News of the find spread rapidly, “and the swamp became a place of much resort,” until Colonel Grierson heard about the hidden rum barrels.
“I discovered them before it was too late to save my men,” he said, “and emptied the vile stuff as remorselessly as I did the canteens of whiskey of my soldiers at Shawneetown, Illinois, two years before.”6 According to Surby, the squad of men assigned to destroy the rum “with great reluctance stove in the head of each barrel, and thus did waste the balm of a thousand flowers.”
And why did Grierson linger in Summit for so long? In the first place, he was still hopeful of receiving news concerning General Grant’s movements. Secondly, he was attempting, through questioning as many persons as possible, to learn the whereabouts of enemy forces assembling to overtake or ambush his brigade. It is also probable there was disagreement among his officers as to what direction the column should take upon resuming march. And for the first time during the raid, he appears to have reached a state of indecision.
Also for the first time, Grierson was completely duped while he was in Summit by a clever piece of rebel trickery. Eighteen miles below Summit, in the town of Osyka, the Confederate government had concentrated large stores of military supplies, a storage base selected because of its remoteness from the enemy and its accessibility to the river forts by rail and wagon train. Only thirty men had been assigned to guard the storehouses, an adequate force to prevent petty thieving but quite insufficient, of course, to cope with two enemy regiments. When Captain Thomas C. Rhodes, commanding the Osyka detachment, received warning of the raiders’ approach toward Summit, he sent his second lieutenant, William S. Wren, north to meet them. Captain Rhodes ordered Lieutenant Wren to spread a rumor that Osyka was garrisoned by two regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and a battery of artillery.7
Lieutenant Wren’s mission was a complete success. Sergeant Surby recorded that the Butternut Guerillas captured a courier and learned of a large force at Osyka. And Grierson himself said that “large forces were concentrated to meet us … at Osyka,” a misrepresentation of the truth which he probably never discovered.
It is quite evident that Grierson was influenced by this manufactured story in his decision to turn away from the railroad and make a dash to the southwest for Baton Rouge. Late in the afternoon he discussed the plan with his officers; his final order was to cut across country avoiding main roads until they reached the Louisiana line. “Hearing nothing more of our forces at Grand Gulf and not being able to ascertain anything definite as to General Grant’s movements or whereabouts, I concluded to make for Baton Rouge.”8 He also must have instructed the officers to keep their destination secret for the time being; not even the scouts were informed.
About five o’clock all companies were assembled along the road south of town for a brief inspection. The officers redistributed ammunition; some men still had their original forty rounds while others were in short supply. Lame mounts were cut loose, reducing the led horses to a small number.
An unexpected discovery during the inspection was the absence of three men from the rear guard company. The men had been present for roll call that morning at Gill’s Plantation, but none of their comrades could recall seeing them in Summit. They were presumed to be stragglers and were so listed.
In the meantime, Grierson was contriving a small deception for the enemy. He had always enjoyed amateur theatricals—while teaching music in Jacksonville he had composed skits and music for minstrel shows—and he could not resist playing parts, particularly when he might thereby mislead the enemy. Now, acting the
part of the interlocutor in a minstrel show, he asked questions of the citizens which would lead them to believe he planned to march directly south along the railroad to Osyka by way of the next town, Magnolia.
The sun was going down when the bugle calls sounded boots and saddles. To horse! “A straight line for Baton Rouge, and let speed be our safety!” were Grierson’s final words to his officers.9
But instead of turning west for Baton Rouge, the raiders rode out of Summit south along the railroad. According to Grierson, the people of the town watched them march away “waving handkerchiefs with much genuine good feeling,” but no doubt the Summit citizens were secretly wondering what would happen when these over-confident Yankees met their own soldiers in butternut and gray down at Osyka Station. Not until the column was well below the town did Grierson swing the point to the west along a secondary trail leading away from the railroad and Osyka.
Some of the scouts had calculated that New Orleans was only a hundred miles away. “Were we going there? That was the question,” said Sergeant Surby.
“We … marched about 15 miles on the Liberty road,” Grierson said in his report, “and halted until daylight on the plantation of Dr. Spurlark.”10 In later years one of Grierson’s favorite stories of the raid was based on an incident occurring at Spurlark’s Plantation.
There had been all these fourteen days of hard work and scanty rest and rations, wherein the officers had scarcely fared better than the men; at least the men were always first served. This night I was determined that my staff and I should have a good supper. I accordingly stationed a guard at the well-filled chicken coop, while the smokehouses and store-houses were opened as usual, and their contents dealt out to the men.
But perhaps some of the Louisiana rum was not yet worked off—I was suddenly made aware that the men, either by hustling away, or conniving with the guard, were devastating that chicken coop. I looked in, and saw the last chicken, and a hand grasping for it. Saber in hand, I went for that private. Over the hen coop, around the pig-sty, through the stable, behind the smokehouses, between the horses, and under the horses, dodging the trees, and jumping the briers, down the steps, and smashing the trellis—the hen squawking, I vociferating, the laughing officers cheering the novel chase, till over a picket fence went the soldier, dropping the fowl under my saber. It did not require much picking by this time, but I had earned my fricassee.11
While Colonel Grierson was enjoying himself in this quite unmilitary recreation, the Confederate colonel whom he had outwitted at Union Church was moving his regiment into camp only five miles to the west, beside the main road running from Liberty to Summit. Sometime during the day, Colonel Wirt Adams, waiting at Liberty for a rendezvous with Colonel Robert Richardson, had learned of Grierson’s destructive march along the railroad. Adams had decided not to wait for Richardson, but to move toward Summit in the hope of cutting across Grierson’s path. He had almost succeeded in this objective. Certainly during that night the Confederate and Yankee pickets must have been close enough to shout challenges at one another.
IV
Colonel Robert Richardson also had spent the afternoon endeavoring to close the trap on the Yankee raiders. About two o’clock in the afternoon he marched his regiment south from Brookhaven, “hoping to be able to find the enemy encamped [at Summit] or in the vicinity, and determined to make a night attack.”12
He sent a courier toward Bogue Chitto to notify Captain R. C. Love of his plans. Love, who had preceded Richardson’s march by about two hours, had already galloped on beyond Bogue Chitto, overtaking and capturing the three stragglers from Grierson’s rear guard company. When Richardson and Love joined forces at dusk, three miles above Summit, the Tennessee colonel immediately interviewed the prisoners. The prisoners swore that they knew nothing of Grierson’s destination beyond Summit, and Captain Love seemed convinced that Grierson was planning to camp in or near that village. As the rebels were too far from town to see the Yankees marching out (at that very hour) Richardson decided to plan a surprise attack.
“All preliminaries were made for a night attack and surprise,” he said.
Thus, while the raiders slept peacefully on Spurlark’s Plantation, five miles to their west Wirt Adams’ was resting his regiment for the night, and fifteen miles to their east Richardson’s forces were cautiously surrounding the town of Summit. None of the three was aware of the location of the others.
And some distance to the south, large numbers of Confederate troops were losing sleep this night in movements designed to block Grierson before he could reach the security of the Yankee lines at Baton Rouge. General Franklin Gardner, having received warning that Grierson was heading south along the railroad, ordered Major James De Baun to leave Woodville with all available cavalry and proceed to Osyka by forced march. Woodville was fifty miles from Osyka, and De Baun covered about half this distance before halting late in the night near Liberty. Another dawn would find him moving directly across Grierson’s path.
And from Ponchatoula, Louisiana, almost fifty miles south of Osyka, Colonel John M. Simonton was leading his First Mississippi Infantry on a night march towards the vulnerable supply base. Simonton sent a message to his commander, General Gardner, informing him that he was taking a battery of artillery and sixty cavalrymen with his infantry regiment. “Enemy reported at Summit, on railroad, advancing on Osyka. … My object is to protect Government property at Osyka, if possible. All quiet in my front. Our scouts well advanced. I make this move without orders, but could not communicate with you.”13
For once, while Grierson’s raiders slept, the Confederates were marching. The trap was beginning to close.
But General Pemberton in Jackson, overwhelmed by the news of Grant’s successful crossing below Grand Gulf, issued no orders concerning the pursuit of Grierson.
* The New Orleans & Jackson Railroad was unable to make full repairs on this section of track until after the war’s end. “There was scarcely a bridge … that was not wholly or partly destroyed by fire or rendered unfit for use by decay.”—Carlton J. Corliss, Main Line of Mid-America, the Story of the Illinois Central, New York, 1950, pp. 197–99.
THE FIGHT AT WALL’S BRIDGE
COLONEL ROBERT RICHARDSON COMPLETED the disposition of his Confederate troops around the town of Summit, at three o’clock in the morning, May 1, and gave orders to charge into the streets, to fire at will at the first sign of an encamped enemy. “We learned,” said Richardson, “that the enemy had left about sunset on the previous evening, marching on the road to Magnolia … saying he intended to go to that place; thence to Osyka. … The commanding officer had been heard to ask a negro guide if he knew the way to Magnolia, and, upon an affirmative answer, had ordered him to take the lead.”
Colonel Richardson did not suspect Grierson’s neat deception, for he knew of the important Confederate tannery at Magnolia and of the large storehouse at Osyka, and naturally assumed that his old Yankee enemy was bent upon destroying these resources while en route to Baton Rouge. And even though his men and horses were worn from their two successive night marches, Richardson determinedly resumed his pursuit of Grierson. “I hoped to be able by taking a road east of the railroad to get in his front, and form an ambuscade.” By sunrise the persistent Tennessean had formed a line of battle, with his men dismounted under cover of a thick undergrowth of timber, on the road between Summit and Magnolia. As there were no cavalry tracks on this road, Richardson believed he had successfully bypassed Grierson’s camp and was now prepared to give him a reception that should even old scores.
He sent a scout west of the railroad to determine Grierson’s exact position, and waited impatiently. About nine o’clock the scout returned with the disheartening news that Grierson had marched westward at dawn and apparently was on the road to Liberty.
Even the stubborn Richardson was now discouraged. He looked at his fatigued, bedraggled troops and ordered them into bivouac. “My men and horses had marched all night, and were wearied and hun
gry,” he said. “I remained three hours to feed and rest, when I marched for Magnolia, hoping to be able by another night march to overtake and attack the enemy at or near Osyka.”1 In spite of Grierson’s westward course, Richardson was confident that the Union leader planned to turn back and attack Osyka.
During this delay a courier from Colonel Wirt Adams reached Richardson’s bivouac, and Richardson sent the messenger back to advise Adams to follow him down to Magnolia, where their forces might be joined to attack the enemy there or at Osyka. As Colonel Adams also believed that Grierson would attempt to destroy the Osyka stores, he was agreeable to this arrangement. During his march down the railroad behind Richardson, Adams overtook Lieutenant William Wren, the Osyka officer who had so successfully spread the false rumors of a large defense garrison at the supply base, rumors which had led Grierson to turn directly for Baton Rouge. After talking with Wren, Adams evidently became less certain that Grierson would swing back to the east and attack Osyka. At Wren’s suggestion Adams ordered the young lieutenant to ride on the double for Williams’ Bridge on the Amite River. It was a forty-mile ride, but if Lieutenant Wren could get through and burn that bridge, Grierson’s raiders would find themselves stranded in the Louisiana lowlands with an unfordable stream between them and Baton Rouge.
II