General Christopher C. Augur, commanding land forces in Baton Rouge for General Nathaniel P. Banks’s Department of the Gulf, had heard nothing of any Illinois cavalry regiments in that vicinity. Banks’s headquarters was in continual communication with General Grant’s headquarters, and as far as Augur knew there had been no advice from the Department of the Tennessee concerning such cavalry. (As a matter of fact, neither Grant nor General Hurlbut, Grierson’s corps commander, had informed the Department of the Gulf that a cavalry raid was in progress across the state of Mississippi. Both Grant and Hurlbut had assumed that Grierson would return to his Tennessee base through Mississippi or Alabama.)
General Augur, however, may have recalled hearing rumors of a cavalry raid on the Vicksburg railroad some days ago; at any rate he decided to send out two companies of cavalry under Captain J. Franklin Godfrey to “proceed cautiously” and “ascertain the truth.”10
Colonel Grierson described the meeting as follows: “I rode out to meet them, and found it difficult to approach, so cautious were they, with their skirmishers creeping along behind the fences.” By this time, Godfrey had all his men dismounted and “apparently was not at all satisfied with the looks of things.” Grierson also dismounted and walked forward, waving his handkerchief and shouting out his name. “The Captain then climbed on the fence while I kept on towards him, and soon thereafter he jumped off to the ground and when we met and shook hands, his soldiers sprang up and clambered onto the fence and gave a shout. The Captain ordered his men to mount and we walked on to where I left my horse, and upon his being brought to him we rode to our camp.”
No doubt the taunts of Grierson’s captured Confederate prisoners helped convince Captain Godfrey’s skirmishers of the true identity of the raiders. “The prisoners were rather jubilant,” Grierson commented. “They twitted the Baton Rouge soldiers that they couldn’t take them, only ten miles off, and that the Union Army had to send a force all the way from Tennessee to take them in the rear.”11
As soon as he was positive that Grierson and his men were genuine Yankees, Captain Godfrey dispatched a courier back to Baton Rouge. “About noon,” said a correspondent for the St. Louis (Missouri) Republican, “the inhabitants of Baton Rouge were startled by the arrival of a courier, who announced that a brigade of cavalry from General Grant’s army had cut their way through the heart of the rebel country, and were then only five miles outside the city. The information seemed too astounding for belief.”12
General Augur responded immediately by sending Colonel Nathan Dudley and a staff in full regalia to escort Colonel Grierson into the city.* Grierson’s first request of General Augur was permission to bring his brigade into Baton Rouge for such time as would be required to recuperate his men and horses and to receive further orders. The Department of the Gulf was honored, General Augur assured him, to receive the Illinois cavalry regiments from the Department of the Tennessee. But first, was not a welcoming parade in order?
Grierson demurred politely. His horses were blown and laming; his men looked more like freebooters than soldiers; their uniforms were barely recognizable as such.
But General Augur insisted on a parade, and early in the afternoon the column formed on the road outside Baton Rouge in the following order: the Sixth Regiment, the four two-pounder guns, the Confederate prisoners, the Seventh Cavalry, the led horses and mules, and then the Negroes. According to one newspaper account there were 300 former slaves at the end of the procession, celebrating their new-found freedom, “their white teeth and the whites of their eyes shining, all grinning, singing, playing and shouting, they presented the most wonderful appearance imaginable.” Some of them probably joined the march in Baton Rouge; Grierson gave no estimate of the original number, but said there were “about thirty vehicles of every description, from the finest carriage to lumber wagons.”
This parade, two miles long and probably the most tatterdemalion procession ever officially sponsored by the United States Army, moved into the streets of Baton Rouge about three o’clock in the afternoon. Under their common coloration of yellow road dust, Grierson’s cavalrymen and their Confederate prisoners could scarcely be distinguished. A number of the raiders had exchanged their woolen blouses for captured linen dusters; many were hatless, trousers were ripped and torn, boots were cracked and crusted with mud.
“For half a mile before entering the city,” said Grierson, “the road was lined with wondering spectators, old and young, male and female, rich and poor, white and black, citizens and soldiers. Amidst shouts and cheers, and waving of banners, heralded by music, the tired troops marched through the city, around the public square, down to the river to water their horses, and then to Magnolia Grove, two miles south of the city.”13
It was a long, slow parade, and the sun was setting when the last company filed into Magnolia Grove, halted, and dismounted. “Magnolia Grove, a most delightful spot, shaded by the magnolia, whose long green leaves encircle a beautiful white flower, which fills the air with its rich perfume.”
For the first time in sixteen days, Grierson’s raiders could sleep without fear. No guards were assigned. As soon as saddles could be stripped off and the horses fed, the men rolled in their blankets. And only a few of them could be aroused when squads from the Forty-eighth Massachusetts and the 116th New York Infantry Regiments brought over cooking stoves and attempted to serve coffee and refreshments. “A noble and kind act,” said one of the raiders, but food could wait until tomorrow.14
Colonel Grierson summed up the raid as follows:
During the expedition we killed and wounded about one hundred of the enemy, captured and paroled over 500 prisoners, many of them officers, destroyed between fifty and sixty miles of railroad and telegraph, captured and destroyed over 3,000 stand of arms, and other army stores and Government property to an immense amount; we also captured 1,000 horses and mules.
“Our loss during the entire journey was 3 killed, 7 wounded, 5 left on the route sick; the sergeant-major and surgeon of the Seventh Illinois left with Lieutenant-Colonel Blackburn, and 9 men missing, supposed to have straggled. We marched over 600 miles in less than sixteen days. The last twenty-eight hours we marched 76 miles, had four engagements with the enemy, and forded the Comite River, which was deep enough to swim many of the horses. During this time the men and horses were without food or rest.15
V
At noon on this day in Memphis, General Stephen Hurlbut—Grierson’s corps commander and the man who had given the orders setting the raid in motion—received his first news of the brigade’s activities south of Jackson. Sensing that Grierson might be accomplishing the first dramatic cavalry raid for the Union Army in the war, Hurlbut decided the news was worth more than a routine report to General Grant or to General-in-Chief Halleck in Washington. With his usual disregard for military channels, he addressed himself to:
His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States:
I learn from two independent sources that Colonel Grierson has passed below Jackson, Miss.; cut the railroad at Hazlehurst, and destroyed 50,000 pounds of bacon and an ammunition train, and is on his way down to Baton Rouge to join General Banks. I believe it to be true, as my orders were to push south if safer than to come north.
S. A. HURLBUT.16
VI
And where were Grierson’s pursuers, the brave men who had failed, on this last day of the raid?
Major James De Baun, the tall Creole from New Orleans, who had given Grierson’s cavalrymen their only real fight, reported as follows:
At 2 a. m., May 2, we started in pursuit of the enemy toward Greensburg. On arriving at that place, we received positive information that the enemy had traveled all night, crossed Williams’ Bridge, and were beyond our reach, in Baton Rouge. My men and horses being almost exhausted for want of food and rest, I proceeded to Camp Moore, it being the nearest commissary depot. … My loss is 1 captain, 1 lieutenant, and 6 privates. The lieutenant and men belonged to the rear guard; all
captured. Too much praise cannot be awarded the officers and men composing the detachment for the bravery and coolness displayed, the officers fighting with their revolvers, and all showing a disposition to punish the daring of our enemies.17
As for Grierson’s old enemy, Colonel Robert Richardson, who had hoped to even old scores, he also regretfully abandoned the futile chase:
I reached Greensburg at 9 o’clock in the morning of the 2d of May, where I learned that the enemy at great speed had passed the previous evening at about sunset, and had crossed the Amite River at Williams’ Bridge, which had not been destroyed. I sent a scout on his track, from whom I learned that the enemy had crossed at Williams’ Bridge about midnight … of the 1st May, and had stopped about day to feed and rest at Sandy Creek, 15 miles beyond the Amite, and had gone on the road to Baton Rouge.
From the best information I could get, the enemy’s strength consisted of the Sixth and Seventh Illinois Regiments of Cavalry, the pride and boast of the United States Army, numbering in all about 1,100 picked men, well armed and mounted. It was not his desire to fight. He wanted to make observations, destroy railroads and telegraphic communications. It is said he pressed horses, the best he could find, to mount his men when a horse was jaded. He also captured mules and horses, negroes, forage, subsistence, and stole money and jewelry from the people in his course. He has made a most successful raid through the length of the State of Mississippi and a part of Louisiana, one which will exhilarate for a short time the fainting spirits of the Northern war party.
We may expect a repetition of this raid on a smaller and a similar scale. We had forces enough to have captured and destroyed him, but his movements were so rapid and uncertain of aim that we could not concentrate our scattered forces or put them in concert of action. You had assigned to me men enough to have whipped him, but they were so scattered that I could not find half of them until the enemy had entered his own lines. While I had to pursue him, I could not do more than send out couriers to find the commands ordered to report to me. I followed him two days and nights with only 170 men, one day and two nights with 270 men, and one day and night with 470 men.18
* Lieutenant Hinson, sent to New Orleans as a prisoner, later distinguished himself by escaping from a steamer somewhere in Chesapeake Bay while in transit to a Delaware prison camp.—Records of Louisiana Confederate Soldiers and Louisiana Confederate Commands, compiled by Andrew B. Booth, New Orleans, 1920, vol. 3, p. 317.
* “One of my orderlies who happened to be asleep and therefore did not hear the order, went moping on nodding to the motion of his horse and the tired steed realizing that a town was near and a better resting place, walked on to the Federal picket line …”—Grierson’s manuscript autobiography, p. 438.
* Colonel Nathan A. M. Dudley achieved national fame some years later when he became embroiled with Billy the Kid in New Mexico’s Lincoln County War.
HEROES TO THE UNION
“GRIERSON HAS KNOCKED THE heart out of the State [of Mississippi],” an unnamed informant told General Grant a few days after the raiders reached Baton Rouge. Grant was quick to acknowledge the military value of the Illinois cavalry leader’s achievements. On May 3, he said in a report to General-in-Chief H. W. Halleck: “Colonel Grierson’s raid from La Grange through Mississippi has been the most successful thing of the kind since the breaking out of the rebellion. … The Southern papers and Southern people regard it as one of the most daring exploits of the war. I am told the whole State is filled with men paroled by Grierson.”
In his final report to Washington after the fall of Vicksburg, Grant was more explicit concerning the relationship of the raid to his campaign. Grierson, he said, made “a raid through the central portion of the State of Mississippi, to destroy railroads and other public property, for the purpose of creating a diversion in favor of the army moving to the attack on Vicksburg. On April 17, this expedition started, and arrived at Baton Rouge on May 2, having successfully traversed the whole State of Mississippi. This expedition was skillfully conducted, and reflects great credit on Colonel Grierson and all of his command. The notice given this raid by the Southern press confirms our estimate of its importance. It has been one of the most brilliant cavalry exploits of the war, and will be handed down in history as an example to be imitated.”1
Grant also said later: “It was Grierson who first set the example of what might be done in the interior of the enemy’s country without any base from which to draw supplies.”2
Years afterwards, when he recounted Grierson’s operations in his Personal Memoirs, Grant said that the raid “was of great importance, for Grierson had attracted the attention of the enemy from the main movement against Vicksburg.”3
It is probable, however, that Grierson himself relished most of all the terse compliment of Grant’s tough, red-bearded infantry commander, General William T. Sherman, who was always reluctant of praising anyone, particularly a cavalryman. “The most brilliant expedition of the war,” said Sherman.4
Because of lack of telegraphic communication between the Department of the Gulf and the states of the Union, most citizens of the North did not learn of Colonel Grierson’s cavalry raid until two weeks after the brigade’s parade through Baton Rouge. But when the story finally reached New York on May 17, it swept across the country on the front pages of almost every newspaper, and Grierson’s raiders suddenly became national heroes. After many grim weeks of winter stalemate, the dramatic story of their exploits was the first cheering news for the North, the first truly successful raid of the much maligned Union cavalry.
Leaving New Orleans on May 10 with correspondents’ dispatches, the United States Mail Steamship George Washington docked in New York on Sunday, May 17. Next morning the New York Times devoted most of its front and back pages to Grierson’s raid, under such headlines as the following:
IMPORTANT FROM NEW ORLEANS!
The Great Cavalry Raid Through Mississippi
Safe Arrival of Colonel Grierson’s Command at Baton Rouge
Wonderful Cavalry Exploit
The two national picture magazines, Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper vied with each other in their issues of June 6, presenting the Grierson raid in glowing words and highly imaginative illustrations. Frank Leslie’s front cover was a full face-and-shoulder portrait copied by an artist from a photograph of Colonel Grierson made by Karl Jacobs of New Orleans. Harper’s Weekly also devoted its cover to Colonel Grierson. The artist used the Jacobs photograph as a model but also dressed the Union’s new hero properly in a neatly buttoned blouse, polished knee-boots, plumed hat, scarf, and spotless gloves—and mounted him upon a rearing white charger. Another drawing by J. R. Hamilton, “Triumphal Procession of Colonel Grierson, commanding Sixth and Seventh Illinois Cavalry, through Baton Rouge,” filled one inside page. A third page carried a short account of the raid and a large map showing the route. All this was topped off by an editorial, “Symptoms of Caving-In,” in which the writer concluded that the western Confederacy was weaker than the Union had formerly believed it to be, but he also extolled Grierson’s raiders for their courage and audacity.
“The illustrated newspapers of New York,” Grierson later wrote, “pictured us riding trimly and daintily in, as if carpet soldiers on dress parade; but the Baton Rouge correspondent who witnessed it, says: ‘We were exceedingly surprised to-day, by the arrival of a brigade of Cavalry from the interior of the country, dust covered to an extent that made it nearly impossible to judge from appearance whether they were Federals or Confederates—their horses blown and loaded down with miscellaneous plunder.’”5
The first accounts in the New York Times, which were the sources of most of the Grierson stories which spread rapidly across the Union, contain several minor inaccuracies, but for the most part agree with diaries and letters of the participants.
One of the dispatches began quite leisurely:
The Department of the Gulf has, at last, aroused itself to action, and
events of the most startling character are so rapidly succeeding each other down here, that it is not very easy to keep pace with them. You have been so long accustomed in the North, to keep your eyes constantly fixed on Richmond and the Rappahannock that I can readily imagine the surprise with which you must read the tidings which each successive mail brings you from this distant latitude. Be assured that you have only yet received the first instalment of events that will electrify the world.
After directing the reader to provide himself with a good map of the state of Mississippi, the Times correspondent finally got down to facts and gave a detailed description of the raid. He said in summation:
Let the reader think of the dangers these men had to encounter, the physical difficulties to overcome, their small numbers and the forces opposed to them, their hair-breadth escapes, the enormous amount of injury they have done to the enemy, and the terror they have inspired,—and then ask himself whether for rapidity of movement, strategic conception and daring execution, courage, patience, and heroic endurance, he ever heard or read of anything to surpass it in the whole annals of warfare, ancient or modern. To go over all that these men have accomplished, men, the majority of whom probably were, but a very short time ago, following the peaceful avocations of life, seems almost encroaching on the marvelous, and yet the record is clear enough. …