"First with the most" Forrest

558 Pages·1991·227.577 MB·English

by  Robert Selph Henry

+- - - - - -
N!m!N BEDFORD FORREST
:&.
WITH
THI
With the Most"
~Tirst
F o r r e s t
by
Robert Selph Henry
MALLARD
PRESS
MALLARD PRESS
An imprint of BOD Promotional Book Company, Inc.
666 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10103
Mallard Press and its accompanying design and logo
are trademarks of BOD Promotional Book Company, Inc.
Copyright © 1991 by William S. Konecky Associates, Inc.
This edition first published in the United States of America
in 1991 by The Mallard Press
ISBN 0-7924-S60S-X
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
To
THREE LONG-SUFFERING LADIES

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A MEASURE OF THE MAN 13
II THE FIRST FORTY YEARs-1821-1861 22
III THE FIRST COMMAND AND THE FIRST FIGHT-July 10,
186l-December 28, 1861 . . . . . . . . . . 32
IV OUT OF THE FALL OF FORT DONELSON-December 28,
1861-February 16, 1862 . . . . . . . . . . 47
V PURPOSE IN THE MIDST OF PANIc-February 17, 1862-
March 16, 1862 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
VI BATTLE AT THE PLACE OF PEACE-March 16, 1862-May
30,1862. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
VII FROM MISSISSIPPI TO KENTUCKY-June I, 1862-Septem
ber 25,1862. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
VIII THE FIRST WEST TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN-September 25,
1862-January 3, 1863. . . . . . . . . . . 102
IX MIDDLE TENNESSEE: THRUST AND PARRy-January 3,
1863-April 10, 1863. . . . . . . . . . . . 122
X THE PURSUIT AND CAPTURE OF STREIGHT-April 10,
1863-May 5, 1863. . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
XI RETREAT WITH THE ARMY OF TENNEssEE-May 5, 1863-
July 6, 1863. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
XII VICTORY WITHOUT FRUITS-July 6, 1863-September 20,
1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
XIII To NEw FIELDs-September 21, 1863-November 14,
1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
XIV A GENERAL FINDS-AND MAKES-HIS ARMy-Novem-
ber 15, 1863-February 12, 1864 . . . . . . . . 203
XV OKOLONA'S DEBUT IN VICTORy-January 8, 1864-Febru-
ary 26,1864. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
CHAPTER PAGE
XVI THE "OCCUPATION" OF WEST TENNESSEE AND KEN-
TUCKy-February 26, 1864-ApriI1O, 1864. . . . . 235
XVII "FORREST OF FORT PlLLow"-April 10, 18M-April 13,
1864 . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
XVIII A SWORD AGAINST SHERMAN'S LIFE LINE-April 14,
1864-June 9,1864. . . . . . . • . . . . . 269
XIX BRICE'S CROSS ROADS: HIGH-WATER MARK OF VICTORY
-June 10, 1864-June 13, 1864 . • . . . . . . 286
XX HARRISBURG: AN INVASION REPELLED BY VICTORy-June
14, 1864-July 23, 1864 . . . . . . . . . . . 305
XXI MEMPHIS: THE RAID THAT RECALLED AN INVADING
ARMy-July 24, 1864-August 25,1864. . . . . . 328
XXII To TENNESSEE-Too LATE-August 25, 18M-October
10, 1864. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
XXIII AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS, 1864 STYLE-October 10,
1864-November 13, 1864 . . . . . . . . . . 366
XXIV ADVANCE: SPRING HILL AND FRANKLIN-November 14,
1864-November 30, 1864 . . . . . . . . . • 382
XXV THE REAR GUARD OF RETREAT FROM TENNESSEE-De
cember 1, 1864-December 28, 1864. . . . . . . 401
XXVI THE LAST CAMPAIGN AND SURRENDER-December 29,
1864-May 9, 1865. . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
XXVII THE GRAND WIZARD OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE-1865-
1869 . . . . . . . . . 439
XXVIII THE HARDER WAR-1865-1877 452
A NOTE ON GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES . 466
NOTES ..... 471
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 538
BmLlOGRAPHY . 539
INDEX 543
INTRODUCTION
SOME ARGUE that modern guerilla warfare has become the only war of
the latter half of this century, that no full-scale conflicts will ever
again erupt. The price has become too high, this argument goes, for
any large armed power to take on another face to face. The battle has
been abandoned to surrogates, smaller forces fighting smaller battles
in less important places employing arms manufactured by the inter
ested onlookers.
How different this climate of warfare is from that which nurtured
Nathan Bedford Forrest. In his time the full-scale confrontation was
considered the only definitive resolution. For the more heavily armed,
manned and bureaucratized Union army this was sound aesthetic
policy, the Union being more likely to prevail in any sort of sustained
colLision between massed forces.
But as the Union prevailed by its superior weight of numbers in all
arenas, the Confederacy, it could be argued, survived as long as it did
by dint of the very qualities suppressed in any heavily bureaucratized
and organized system: cunning, daring and ferocity. In these three
departments, Nathan Bedford Forrest had no equal on either side of
the Mason-Dixon line.
Forrest did not invent mobilized guerilla warfare, but he did mod
ernize and polish it to an extent that has left few theoretical areas for
improvement. Tanks and jeeps, it could even be said, do not possess
the mobility relative to the main force which they attack that Forrest's
dedicated band of horseman enjoyed. Following in the footsteps of
Francis Marion and Lighthorse Harry Lee, American practitioners of
the devastating hit-and-run cavalry attack of the Revolutionary War,
Forrest raised their effective but geographically limited campaigns to
an art-form spread over the widest possible tactical theatre. He ac
complished this with 'superior knowledge of terrain and of horses
coupled with an iron will, a complete disregard for physical exhaus
tion (his own and that of his men) and, this book will demonstrate; by
the most admirable sort of sheer country orneriness.
Forrest, a man of simple upbringing, is the perfect symbol for the
odd melange that was the Confederate Army: patrician West Pointers
like Lee side by side by unregenerate racists like Forrest. These well
bred students of battles from the classical era were not prevented by
an almost unimaginable difference in class from being able to recog
nize the tactical genius of a farmer from the low country. Nor were
they sufficiently threatened by Forrest's innate comprehension of the
sort of war required to prevent Forrest from becoming the only
enlisted man in the entire Civil War to achieve the rank of a General.
That any scholar of this history of warfare would have to judge
Forrest rather more harshly for his conduct after the war than this
conduct during it is just another tragic aspect of the larger tragedy
that generated The War Between the States. Heroes rose from un
likely places and returned, when the time for heroism had past, to
their more unheroic pursuits. Whether that return negates the valor
shown during the conflict is only for you to determine, after you have
learned of Forrest's life in all its aspects, heroic, and less so.
David N. Meyer II
LIST OF MAPS
PACE
Northern Tennessee and Southern Kentucky . 33
The Lower Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers . 48
Middle Tennessee and Northern Alabama . . .84
West Tennessee and Kentucky and Northern Mississippi 103
Southern Tennessee, Northern Alabama and Northwestern Georgia 140
The Chickamauga Campaign. . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Western Tennessee and Northern Mississippi . . . . . . . 218
Sherman's System of Communications-Atlanta Campaign, 1864. 306
The Tennessee Campaigns-1864 . 346
The Selma Campaign-1865 . . 419