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15. Two Cavalry Raids
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1. Sherman, Memoirs, 2:69; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:462; TICW, 1:323, 328. 2. TICW, 1:323, 328; Starr, Union Cavalry, 3:463; Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 49–50; OR, 38(2):904–5; RAGT, 388; Jacob M. Thornburgh to Johnson, July 21, 1864, PAJ, 7:46. CHAPTER 15 Two Cavalry Raids W hen Atlanta proved difficult to capture, Sherman decided to bombard it and to cut its railroad links from Montgomery, Macon, and Augusta. Maj. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau, eager to exchange his Nashville desk job as commander of the District of Tennessee for some action, offered his services to Sherman to cut the Montgomery & West Point Railroad. Rousseau would concentrate three thousand cavalrymen at Decatur (on the Tennessee River) and move southeast, destroying enemy property, cutting the railroad junction at Opelika, and finally joining Sherman near Atlanta.1 The Louisville lawyer intended to combine the 2nd Kentucky and 8th Indiana , garrisoned at Nashville, with Duff Thornburgh’s brigade of Tennesseans at Decatur. But he decided against using the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee because of their behavior at Okolona. Rousseau selected only Maj. Meshack Stephens’s 4th Tennessee, commended for “coolness and courage and discipline ” at Okolona. To these he added the 5th Iowa Cavalry. To supply the 8th Indiana, he commandeered the “horses, saddles, and bridles” of the 3rd Tennessee . The general’s actions caused the highly respected Thornburgh to resign from the army. His brother, Lt. Col. Jacob M. Thornburgh, replaced him as brigade commander. But the brigade now was scattered in four locations, with one regiment gone to Georgia, one dismounted, and one partially mounted— altogether only three hundred mounted men.2 Rousseau moved out of Decatur on July 10 with two brigades—the First commanded by Col. Thomas J. Harrison of the 8th Indiana and the Second by 246 The Atlanta Campaign 3. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 50; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 98–101. 4. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 50; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 101–3; Adam Johnson, The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army: Memoirs of General Adam R. Johnson, ed. William J. Davis (Austin, 1995), 164. 5. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 56–57; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 104. Col. William D. Hamilton of the 9th Ohio—and Battery E, 1st Michigan Light Artillery. On two rather uneventful days, the column rode over forty miles and crossed much of Sand Mountain. Along the way the men fired at a few enemy scouts, captured a few furloughed Rebels who Rousseau paroled, seized some horses, and consumed hardtack and coffee. At the hamlet of Summit, where they concentrated and camped the second night out, the Federals raided the combined general store and post office, where they found only a little mail and dried-out plug tobacco.3 The next day Stephens’s troopers, in the advance, rode into an ambush by Col. Adam Johnson’s partisan rangers. According to Johnson, he “sent two [scouts] into the road to fire . . . and then to retreat” to a ravine, where he had placed his horsemen. Although “the ruse occasioned some confusion in the Federal force, they declined to follow [his] scouts as if they feared some snare.” Down the road Stephens’s men drove away a few bushwhackers. Later they captured a train of four wagons manned by a quartermaster and eighteen soldiers. Along with other Federals at Blountsville—a town of four hundred inhabitants—they plundered the post office, freed two deserters and four runaway slaves from the jail, and burned some cotton. This became their modus operandi when raiding towns on the expedition.4 Riding on several miles, two of the East Tennesseans stopped alongside a cabin, where a woman stood framed in the doorway. Exhausted and thirsty, they asked for a drink of water. After satisfying their thirst, they requested food. She served them a corn pone, which they quickly consumed. As they turned to ride away, she asked, “Who mout you’ns be?” “Yankees,” they said. “You’ns ain’t no Yankees,” she declared. Although they insisted, she shook her head from side to side: “I know you’ns ain’t no Yankees,” because “you’ns haint got no horns.” “Oh,” said one of the Tennesseans, “we are young Yankees, our horns haven’t sprouted yet. The horned Yankees are in the rear and will be up directly.”5 [54.226.222.183] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 10:07 GMT) Two Cavalry Raids 247 6. Eckel, Fourth Tennessee, 50–51; Evans, Sherman’s Horsemen, 104–7. 7...