Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee's Union Cavalry in the Civil War

17. Forrest on the Railroads

1. OR, 32(3):536, 38(4):462. 2. TICW, 1:323, 325–26, 328, 332, 352; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 109, 117. CHAPTER 17 Forrest on the Railroads A s Sherman approached Atlanta in June 1864, he wrote his cavalry commander in Tennessee, General Sooy Smith, that Gillem’s division should prevent Forrest from crossing the Tennessee River in Alabama. But at a minimum he expected Gillem’s homegrown Yankees to be “in motion” in the seventy-five miles “between Columbia and Florence.” They should not “occupy the same camp [any] two successive days.” In doing so they would need to “habituate their horses to grass and green food.” If greatly outnumbered, they could fall back to well-defended Decatur. Clearly Sherman felt less than optimistic about the Tennesseans. To his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Joseph D. Webster—still in Nashville dealing with transport to the front—he wrote: “I have always regarded General Gillem’s command as a refuge hospital for indolent Tennesseans. I . . . have never reckoned them anything but a political element.”1 Gillem’s Fourth Division included all of the state’s Union cavalry except for Brownlow’s First and remnants of what remained of those units in West Tennessee. Miller’s Third Brigade (8th, 9th, and 13th Tennessee) guarded the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Gallatin. In July Rousseau took the 4th Tennessee on his Alabama raid. This left the other regiments of the First Brigade, the 2nd and the temporarily dismounted 3rd, at Decatur, and the Second Brigade (5th, 10th, and 12th Tennessee) at Pulaski. The 5th Tennessee, as usual, was scattered at a number of posts, mostly on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad.2 Roddey, the self-proclaimed “Defender of North Alabama,” spent much of Forrest on the Railroads 273 3. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 109, 117; Robert Dunnavant Jr., The Railroad War: N. B. Forrest’s 1864 Raid through Northern Alabama and Middle Tennessee (Athens, Ala., 1994), 13–14; ORS, 65:335, 432, 436, 438, 448. 4. Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 120–21. 5. Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, 342–421. the summer guarding his own recruiting camps near Courtland and Pond Springs from Prosser’s brigade at Decatur. Scouting on August 8 with “five hundred picked men” of the recently remounted 2nd Tennessee and the mounted two-thirds of the 3rd Tennessee, Prosser moved toward Courtland through a countryside “populated with well-to-do farmers.” Five miles from their destination, they charged and “stampeded” an enemy encampment of a few hundred men and captured fifty prisoners of Col. Josiah Patterson’s 7th Alabama of Roddey’s command. Then they galloped into Courtland. Encountering no opposition in the town located “on a beautiful slope, with streets well laid off . . . , [and] shaded with Catawba trees,” they rested for two days as detachments pressed stock from the surrounding area. Afterward they departed for Decatur with about “one hundred head of cattle, two hundred sheep, and several hogs.”3 Ten days later Prosser found himself outnumbered by Patterson’s five hundred graybacks as he scouted to Moulton. He fell back toward Decatur. Patterson pursued “in the dead hours of the night” and found the Federals at Antioch Church, sleeping near the “smouldering coals” from their campfires. “With a wild yell” the Alabamians charged as they scooped up “fire brands . . . and [threw] them at men and horses.” Some Tories panicked, hastily mounted, and fled for Decatur. But Prosser, “standing firm,” rallied the others. “Form[ing] in a pell-mell way,” they gave battle and repulsed the enemy. Before the fight ended, Prosser’s men had killed fifteen Rebels, wounded twenty, and captured another fifteen.4 Fortunately for the Tories, Forrest had to defend Mississippi in three separate summer raids out of West Tennessee. In addition to guarding his recruiting camps, Roddey did dispatch a few undermanned regiments across the Tennessee River to destroy tracks and bridges, though with negligible results. By September he had returned from Atlanta. From his base at Moulton, Roddey again threatened to cut the Nashville & Decatur Railroad. If permitted by his superiors to operate on his own terms, Forrest himself wanted to attack the railroads in Middle Tennessee.5 When Roddey’s troopers went on the offensive in September, they fared 274 The Atlanta Campaign 6. OR, 38(5):760. 7. Ibid., 39(1):542; Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late...