Posted on 04/17/2015 8:49:02 AM PDT by Kartographer
After conferring with General William Sooy Smith, commanding at La Grange, Grierson issued orders for "light rations" to his brigade, which now consisted of the Sixth and Seventh Illinois, and the second Iowa. On the beautiful spring morning of April 17, Grierson led the long column of seventeen hundred officers and men out of La Grange and headed south. Grierson himself, carried a small-scale map of plantations and Confederate storehouses, and a jew's harp in his blouse. The command met no opposition on the first day, traveling an easy thirty miles to halt just short of Ripley, Mississippi at the Ellis plantation.
(Excerpt) Read more at lagrangetn.com ...
600 miles from Lagrange TN. to Baton Rouge LA. while destroying 50 miles of track and a good number of un-replaceable rolling stock at minimal losses.
There are a number of cavalry officers of both sides more famous and yet almost none lead a more efficient and successful action than the music teacher who hated horses General Benjamin Grierson
The Horse Soldiers with John Wayne and William Holden was a movie based off this campaign. Still, one of my favorites.
A good article from the Newton County Mississippi Historical Society:
http://www.nchgs.org/html/griersons_raid.html
And a copy of Harper’s Weekly’ story on Grierson provided the Sons of the South:
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/june/grierson-raid.htm
Great flick!
It’s always nice to have more cavalry than you know what to do with.
Miss Hannah Hunter of Greenbriar...
A sense of chivalry not lost on at least a few of the Yankee invaders.
Miss Hannah Hunter: They'll catch up to you and cut you to pieces, you nameless, fatherless scum. I just wish I could be there to see it.
Col. John Marlowe: If it happens, Miss Hunter, you will be.
What? JEB Stuart wasn’t the only effective cavalry commander in the war? Imagine that.
I would think from my interactions the Nathan Bedford Forest is considered the finest Southern cavalry commander of the Civil War
“Reaching Louisville late on the afternoon of April 22, Grierson found the townspeople had boarded up their buildings in preparation of his arrival. Again, Grierson showed his concern for the welfare of Southern civilians by issuing strict orders; “drive out stragglers, preserve order, and quiet the fears of the people.” (CW) The Federal cavalrymen passed through Louisville without incident, only to strike a dismal swamp where they lost several horses from drowning. On April 23, they moved through Philadelphia, stopping to rest at 10 o’clock that evening.”
http://www.lagrangetn.com/grierson.htm
Both Duke and Bill Holden in that pic...
Well, as someone once said, cavalry can get into places where, if they were infantry in large numbers, they could do a great deal of mischief.
Civil War infantry, on both sides, had a saying “who ever saw a dead cavalryman”
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