Nathan Bedford Forrest

Ulysses S. Grant, the Union's key strategist and tactician in the West, gives the United States its first victories of the war at Forts Henry (February 6, 1862) and Donelson (February 11 to 16, 1862), by which the Union seizes control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.

Nathan Bedford Forrest rallies nearly four thousand troops and leads them to escape across the Cumberland.

Nashville and central Tennessee thus fall to the Union, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social organization.

Grierson's Raid, a Union cavalry raid during the Vicksburg Campaign, runs from April 17 to May 2 as a diversion from Grant's main attack plan on Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Starting from La Grange, Tennessee, the raid ends in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Early in 1863, Major General Charles Hamilton, the commander of the Corinth section of Grant's division, had suggested what would eventually become Grierson's Raid.

Subsequently, due to Hamilton's insistence on procuring a command that would garner him more glory, Hamilton had offered his resignation.

Grant had quickly accepted.

Until this time in the war, Confederate cavalry commanders such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, John Hunt Morgan, and J.E.B. Stuart had ridden circles around the Union (literally, in Stuart's case, in the Peninsula Campaign), and it is time to out-do the Confederates in cavalry expeditions.

The task had fallen to Colonel Benjamin Grierson, a former music teacher who, oddly, hates horses after having been kicked in the head by one as a child.

Grierson's cavalry brigade consists of the 6th and 7th Illinois and 2nd Iowa Cavalry regiments.

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and about fifteen hundred of his men capture Fort Pillow in Jackson, Tennessee on April 12, 1864.

The fort contains two hundred and sixty-two African American troops from the Sixth U. S. Colored Heavy and Light Cavalry, and two hundred and ninety-five soldiers from the white Thirteenth Cavalry. (It will afterward be claimed that most of these soldiers had been killed after they surrendered.)

Of the white soldiers, one hundred and sixty-eight are marched to prison camps, but of the black troops, only fifty-eight are taken into custody, with the rest either dead or too badly wounded to walk.

Lincoln condemns the atrocity but refuses to agree to the demands of Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, that an equal number of Confederate prisoners should be executed in an act of revenge. (After the war, an official investigation will discover evidence that the “Confederates were guilty of atrocities, which included murdering most of the garrison after it surrendered, burying Negro soldiers alive, and setting fire to tents containing Federal wounded” However, Forrest—who in fact had ordered his men to stop firing, placing himself between his men and the Yankees—will never be prosecuted for the offense, and will go on to become the first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.)

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman had long known that his fragile supply and communication lines through Tennessee are in serious jeopardy because of depredations by Forrest's cavalry raids.

To effect a halt to Forrest's activities, he has ordered General Samuel D. Sturgis to conduct a penetration into northern Mississippi and Alabama with a force of around eighty-five hundred troops to destroy Forrest and his command.

Sturgis, after some doubts and trepidation, had departed Memphis on June 1.

General Stephen D. Lee, alerted of Sturgis's movement, had warned Forrest.

Lee had also planned a rendezvous at Okolona, Mississippi, with Forrest and his own troops but told Forrest to do as he saw fit.

Already in transit to Tennessee, Forrest had moved his cavalry (less one division) toward Sturgis, but remained unsure of Union intentions.

Forrest had soon surmised, correctly, that the Union had actually targeted Tupelo, Mississippi, located in Lee County, about fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) south of Brice's Crossroads.

Although badly outnumbered, he decides to repulse Sturgis instead of waiting for Lee, and selects an area to attack ahead on Sturgis's projected path.

He chooses Brice's Crossroads, in what is now Lee County, which features four muddy roads, heavily wooded areas, and the natural boundary of Tishomingo Creek, which has only one bridge going east to west.

Seeing that the Union cavalry moves three hours ahead of its own infantry, Forrest devises a plan that calls for an attack on the Union cavalry first, with the idea of forcing the enemy infantry to hurry to assist them.

Their infantry will be too tired to offer real help and the Confederates plan to push the entire Union force against the creek to the west.

Forrest dispatches most of his men to two nearby towns to wait.

At 9:45 a.m. on June 10, a brigade of Benjamin H. Grierson's Union cavalry division reaches Brice's Crossroads and the battle startsat 10:30 a.m. when the Confederates perform a stalling operation with a brigade of their own.

Forrest then ordersthe rest of his cavalry to converge around the crossroads.

The remainder of the Union cavalry arrives in support, but a strong Confederate assault soon pushes them back at 11:30 a.m., when the balance of Forrest's cavalry arrives on the scene.

Grierson calls for infantry support and Sturgis obliges.

The line holds until 1:30 p.m. when the first regiments of Federal infantry arrive.

The Union line, initially bolstered by the infantry, briefly seizes the momentum and attackst he Confederate left flank, but Forrest launches an attack from his extreme right and left wings, before the rest of the federal infantry can take the field.

In this phase of the battle, Forrest commands his artillery to unlimber, unprotected, only yards from the Federal position, and to shell the Union line with grapeshot.

The massive damage causes Sturgis to reorder the line in a tighter semicircle around the crossroads, facing east.

At 3:30, the Confederates in the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry assault the bridge across the Tishomingo.

Although the attack fails, it causes severe confusion among the Federal troops and Sturgis orders a general retreat.

With the Tennesseans still pressing, the retreat bottlenecks at the bridge and a panicked rout develops instead.

The ensuing wild flight and pursuit back to Memphis carries across six counties before the exhausted Confederates retire.

Confederates suffer ninety-two casualties to the Union's twenty-one hundred and sixty-four (including fifteen hundred prisoners).

When the retreat had occurred, with food and supplies exhausted, many of the Union soldiers were unable to retreat with the rest because of fatigue.

This was much of the reason why so many Union soldiers were captured during the battle.

Forrest also captures huge supplies of arms, artillery, and ammunition as well as plenty of stores.

Sturgis suffers demotion and exile to the far West.

After the battle, the Union Army again accuses Forrest of massacring black soldiers.

Sherman plans to march east to seize the city of Savannah, Georgia (the campaign that will be known as Sherman's March to the Sea) but he is concerned about his lines of communications back to Chattanooga.

One particular threat is the cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had long bedeviled Union expeditions with lightning raids into their rear areas.

On September 29, Grant urges Sherman to dispose of Forrest and Sherman sends Thomas to Nashville, Tennessee, to organize all of the troops in the state.

Sherman sends another division, under Brigadier General James D. Morgan, to Chattanooga.

Sherman has had some advance notice of the nature of Hood's proposed campaign.

In a series of speeches given at stops along his way back to Richmond, President Davis had rallied his listeners by predicting success for Hood, speeches that are reported in the press and read avidly by Sherman.

The Confederate strategy is working so far, because Sherman is being forced to disperse his strength to maintain his lines of communications.

However, Sherman is not about to fall into Hood's trap completely.

He intends to provide Thomas with sufficient strength to cope with Forrest and Hood, while he completes plans to strike out for Savannah.

On September 29, Hood had begun his advance across the Chattahoochee River, heading to the northwest with forty thousand men to threaten the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Sherman's supply line.

On October 1, Hood's cavalry is intercepted by Union cavalry under Brigadier Generals Judson Kilpatrick and Kenner Garrard in a raid on the railroad near Marietta, but Sherman is still uncertain of Hood's location.

Stewart's corps captures Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw) with its garrison of one hundred and seventy-five men on October 3, the day that Thomas arrives in Nashville, and ...

..take Acworth, with an additional two hundred and fifty-man garrison, the following day .

Sherman leaves Major General Henry W. Slocum in Atlanta and moves toward Marietta with a force of about fifty-five thousand men.