[Cleburne]

N.B. Forrest (now there's a man our Yankee friends must love! Hee-hee..) once rounded up some known Yankee symapthizers while on a long raid in West Tennessee, which was occupied at the time by Northern forces. He had them stand alongside a road for a little while, under guard, and while they were standing there, he bagan to march his meager forces by, which at the time were somewhere between 1200 and 2000 strong (various portions were spread out over the area). At first he marched his men by on foot, playing infantry drums he had brought with his calvary. After all his troops had marched by, he had them circle around and mount up on horses, then ride by the Yankee symapthizers. He repeated this a couple times, then released his prisoners. As he expected, they ran off to the nearest Federal officer and reported all they had seen. By the end of the expedition, Federal reports on the size of Forrest's little army ranged from 7,000 to 15,000 to, according to one poor officer, 20,000! His ruse worked, drawing off massive numbers of troops to hunt him down, which of course they failed in (though they had a fine opportunity to do so at Parker's Crossroads). He would not infrequently use similar tactics to convince large Union garrisons to surrender when they still had a chance of defeating Forrest's calvary.

[Non-Sequitur]

But in the end N.B. Forrest lost, didn't he?

[drjimmy]

N.B. Forrest (now there's a man our Yankee friends must love! Hee-hee..)
Why would Yankees love him?

[Mudboy Slim]

Great little vignette, my FRiend...Mr. Forrest was also one of the seven men who founded my fraternity, Sigma Chi, sometime in the mid-1850's. My brother is a big Civil War buff and has regaled me with many a good story about the ingeniousness of the Southern leadership...I'm going to pass this one on to him via email. He's in Germany now on active Air Force duty and will appreciate it.

FReegards...MUD