Sherman's Mississippi Campaign

7. An Opportunity Lost

As February 19 came to a close, Sherman gazed into the distance and searched for dust rising on the horizon. He was looking for one of his couriers with news of Sooy Smith’s arrival. He saw nothing. Sherman, thinking of Sooy Smith, now nine days late, may have remembered the words he had written to Grant in December: “I deem General Sooy Smith too mistrustful of himself for a leader against Forrest.” His assessment, it seemed, had come true. The opportunity to continue into the heart of Alabama slipped away as the hours passed. Smith never arrived.1 The overall plan, in the beginning, had seemed well designed. Grant had written Halleck in December that he intended “to start a heavy cavalry force to move against Forrest [while he was] in West Tennessee.” This cavalry command would cooperate with Stephen A. Hurlbut, whose forces garrisoned Memphis. General Benjamin H. Grierson, who commanded the combined cavalry force, however, proved unable to destroy Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry or even become fully engaged with the wily cavalryman. Grierson did, however, drive Forrest out of western Tennessee and into northern Mississippi in late December. Another chance at hitting Forrest came when Sherman approached Grant about returning to Mississippi. It was then that he proposed using a cavalry force from Memphis to join him at Meridian. The Union column, moving through Forrest’s vicinity, could meet the enemy, destroy him, and link with the main army. Forrest’s “irregular force of cavalry was constantly threaten7 / An Opportunity Lost ing Memphis and the river above, as well as our routes of supply in Middle Tennessee,” Sherman argued. Grant thought he knew the best man to lead such an expedition, thirty-three-year-old Brigadier General William Sooy Smith, a ¤ne infantry commander and former civilian engineer. In November 1863, after recovering temporarily from a severe case of arthritis, Smith had become the chief of cavalry for the Military Division of the Mississippi. Grant had ordered Smith to move near Memphis on February 1 with twenty-¤ve hundred cavalry from middle Tennessee to add to part of Hurlbut’s cavalry of roughly seventy-¤ve hundred men. The combined forces, with the best brigades chosen to ride with Smith, were to be a strong force of about seven thousand horsemen. Smith organized three brigades under the command of Colonel George E. Waring Jr., Lieutenant Colonel William P. Hepburn , and Colonel La Fayette McCrillis.2 Smith, an Ohioan, had graduated from West Point in 1856. He was assigned to an artillery post, but soon he resigned to work in the railroad industry as a civil engineer. When the war started he returned to service as an infantry colonel with the Thirteenth Ohio, Army of the Ohio. After ¤ghting primarily in western Virginia, Smith commanded one of Don Carlos Buell’s brigades at Shiloh, and later he participated in the Vicksburg campaign as a division commander in the Army of the Tennessee. After the fall of the river city, Smith became Grant’s cavalry chief.3 Some of Smith’s horsemen were no strangers to battle either, while some were untested. The veterans had fought in battles at Forts Henry and Donelson , Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. Although Hepburn’s Second Brigade and McCrillis’s Third Brigade contained many veterans, Waring’s First Brigade was made up of regiments that had only recently formed. The Second New Jersey had organized in August 1863, the Seventh Indiana and Nineteenth Pennsylvania in October 1863. These men had seen little action, and their inexperience in combat would prove troublesome for Smith when he met Forrest’s Confederate horsemen.4 As commander of Union cavalry in western Tennessee, Grierson expected to lead the cavalry expedition. He had caught Sherman’s attention when he led an effective diversionary raid through Mississippi during the Vicksburg campaign. Sherman believed Grierson was the best man for this new command , but Grant thought otherwise. Sherman, not wanting to differ with his friend, placed all the Army of the Tennessee’s cavalry under Smith’s command . Understanding Grierson’s disappointment, Sherman promised him 126 / Chapter 7 that if he went along as second in command to Smith, who was unfamiliar with the territory, “after the cavalry reached him [Sherman] at Meridian he would relieve General Smith and send him back to [Nashville], giving [Grierson his] own independent command again.” Grierson agreed but continued to harbor...