For Newton, Pemberton had nothing but infantry to send. A brigade under John Adams at Jackson began the journey late on April 24, but logistical roadblocks hampered the effort. Delayed by the need to issue rations, Adams managed to lead the small 420-man 26th Mississippi from Jackson, along with seven companies of the 373-man 15th Mississippi westward by train around 4:00 p.m. He stopped them at Lake Station, where Pemberton erroneously informed Adams the Union raiders “have certainly been.” Adams waited there for the other three companies of the 15th Mississippi (111 men) and the Point Coupee Louisiana Artillery battery of six guns, which were on the way on a later train.48
Closer to the scene of action, Adams discovered what he could and relayed the information to Pemberton. The brigadier detected Confederate movement on the far side of Newton Station, which seemed to indicate that General Loring at Meridian was aware of the developments and responding accordingly. Just what Grierson’s raiders were up to, however, remained a mystery. Adams learned several waves of Federals had been through Newton, one as recent as 2:00 a.m. on April 25. He estimated the strength of Forbes’s Union column at 500, when in reality it was closer to 35. The fact that Grierson had ridden south and Forbes east only added to the brigadier general’s confusion.49
Adams spent a nervous night at Lake Station. He thought he heard firing off to the east, but most of it was a figment of his imagination. He tried opening a line of communication with Loring at Meridian and even sent a train there, but nothing could get through. Adams also attempted to keep Pemberton advised of his actions by telegraph, but even that proved problematic. At one point the Jackson operator wired Pemberton, “Did you get a dispatch from General Adams, dated 3 o’clock this morning? The courier being absent (delivering a message) at the time of its reception, I left it by his bedside with lighted candle near it.” When civilians in the area informed Adams that no enemy had been spotted around Meridian, he moved his infantry toward Morton Station.50
Other commanders were also moving troops. Lloyd Tilghman at Canton shifted the 54th Alabama and a pair of artillery pieces east, although that left his position at Canton vulnerable. Winfield S. Featherston and others at Fort Pemberton, near Greenwood on the Yazoo River, were ordered to move east to Grenada to cover the Mississippi Central line. While Tilghman and Featherston shored up the western front, the major activity about to unfold occurred well to the east and south around Meridian. There, brigade commander Abraham Buford informed Pemberton that nothing had happened. “I can hold this place,” he added. “Nothing lost or destroyed on the Mobile road.” As had other commanders, Buford confirmed that he could not take the offensive without cavalry.51
Although Meridian was safe, the next major station down the line was not. Captain Forbes and his small company from the 7th Illinois Cavalry had ridden from Macon along Grierson’s track. Forbes crossed the railroad at Newton Station after Grierson’s Illinoisans had left—the move that resulted in Adams reporting waves of Federals moving through the area. From Newton, Forbes continued southeast, trying to learn anything he could about Grierson’s whereabouts. He knew Grierson had ridden south to Garlandville and hoped he would turn east as Colonel Prince had indicated. Thus, Forbes moved directly east to “cut off a large part of their loop [whereby] we could save the day’s march which they were in advance.” His decision moved his three-dozen riders toward Enterprise, south of Meridian. In actuality, as Grierson later wrote, Forbes “was thrown off at Newton Station by the very success with which he had fooled the rebels. He had to go through swamps, [cross] swollen streams, [and] travel through timber, often regardless of roads, for hours at a time in order to avoid forces that were patrolling the country in quest of the Yankees.”52
Forbes stopped his company within five miles of Enterprise at the home of a Dr. Hodges. Although the doctor was absent, his daughters were not. The Hodges women failed to appreciate the demand for food or that, as one Mississippi newspaper reported, “the rose bushes and flower beds of the young ladies were . . . sadly despoiled by the unwelcome visitors.” All things considered, the Hodge property and occupants got off easy, as the paper admitted: “Beyond this, our informant says they did not damage, nor did they insult the ladies.”53
Once at Enterprise, Forbes boldly approached the place and, as Grierson later related, “found instead of myself and command, 3,000 rebels.” The heavily outnumbered Forbes kept his head. “Quick as thought,” Grierson continued, Forbes raised a handkerchief, borrowed from a nearby laundry line, on his sword and rode toward a stockade. Even though at least one Confederate fired a round in their direction, Forbes and his lieutenant continued. Three Confederates appeared with a handkerchief of their own tied on a ramrod and bellowed, “To what are we indebted for the honor of this visit?” Forbes boldly replied, “We came from Maj. Gen. Grierson to demand the surrender of Enterprise.” Forbes later observed, “It is unnecessary to remark that Grierson was promoted from Col. on the spot.” When Grierson learned of Forbes’s claim, he acknowledged proudly, “My name was a host on that occasion.” The real “host,” however, was on the Confederate side of the lines.54
When Loring received word via telegraph that the Federals were approaching Enterprise, he responded decisively by moving two regiments (the 7th Kentucky and 12th Louisiana) to the area to reinforce Col. Edward Goodwin and his 35th Alabama. The Alabamians, one remembered, “beat him [Forbes] there, and, leaping instantly from the train, we double-quicked down a dirt road to a bridge near the town.” By that time, Loring reported, the Alabamians had “defied them [Forbes]” by sending back a note asking for an hour to consider the surrender. Forbes continued his bold bit of trickery by asking to whom he should address his note. “Col. Goodwin commanding Post,” replied a Confederate. The response informed Forbes that Enterprise was garrisoned and that Goodwin was buying time to get his men and perhaps reinforcements in line for defense. Forbes, who knew he was outnumbered, promised to carry the Confederate message back to “Gen. Grierson” and return with an answer. With that, the captain turned his mount and, once out of hearing range, ordered his men, “Attention Company! By twos right; column right; march; trot; gallop march!” Grierson, who had nothing but praise for Forbes’s bold effort to gain an hour’s head start, could not help but wonder “whether he was pursued, or how long the rebel colonel with his 3,000 men waited for the expected reply or to consider the proposition.” Colonel Prince pondered much the same thing, adding, “It is not known whether Enterprise surrendered or not.” One Alabamian described Forbes’s actions as a “rascally trick on him.”55
Once out of immediate harm’s way, Forbes turned his troopers west and moved quickly to rejoin Grierson’s command, having now “lost, by this attempt to shorten our ride, much more than we had gained the preceding day.” The Confederates attempted but failed to catch up to the Illinois company. “I have no hope of catching them on foot,” Loring admitted to Pemberton. An Alabamian agreed, writing the effort was “a very tiresome expedition in which we were engaged.”56
In the ensuing hours, with Federals popping up on several points of the compass, Loring took firm command of the situation on his side of Newton Station. The Southern general telegraphed Mobile, Alabama, to send troops north to hold the key bridges, and he dispatched some of Buford’s troops to do the same along the critical Southern Railroad. Loring also tried to box Grierson in by destroying bridges farther south between Meridian and Paulding. Thinking the Federal raiders would probably return north by way of Newton, he also called on Pemberton to send cavalry east from Jackson to tighten the noose. “If they get there in time,” Loring explained to Pemberton, “and you can send force to intercept them at Newton, it will force them to go in the direction of Baton Rouge. Please order cavalry to intercept them in that direction.”57
As the hours passed, Loring acquired good intelligence about Grierson’s whereabouts. “When last heard from,” the Federals were at Garlandville on April 25, reported Loring, and then later at Montrose and even Westvill
e farther west. All indications were “they will attempt to cross the road at Newton, or some point between Meridian and Jackson.” Loring promised to do what he could “to prevent their doing so this side of Newton.” By this time Grierson had moved west, and Loring informed Pemberton that he “thought they would go that way, striking for Baton Rouge, as we have blocked their return by the way they came.” Eventually, Loring was only able to mount some 150 men to pursue Grierson, but it was much too little and far too late. A Confederate brought up from Mobile with his regiment summed up the inability to do much of anything worthwhile: “For ten days we rushed up and down the roads of Mississippi, ordered around by telegraph, and saw the Yankees but once.”58
***
In the state capital at Jackson, meanwhile, a group of high government executives and citizens, presided over by Governor Pettus, met “to devise the best means for repelling the present daring raid of the enemy.” Lieutenant Colonel Edward Fontaine, Mississippi’s chief of ordnance, offered resolutions for mounting infantry, moving troops quickly, and assigning less-pressing positions to citizens to free up soldiers for more important tasks. The resolutions passed. “I am afraid that the action upon them will be so slow that the Yankees will escape with impunity,” Fontaine admitted. “I wish that I could this day be in Genl. Pemberton’s place, & have the power to give orders instead of advice.” The Jackson Mississippian took a sarcastic swipe at the ineffective Confederate efforts by observing, “We hope . . . Grierson . . . will not take off the wires of the telegraph as he proceeds—for, as it seems he can’t be caught or headed off, we feel some curiosity to be regularly informed of his whereabouts.”59
John Pemberton was also busy, sending a flurry of messages in several directions in an effort to garner some help to stop Grierson. Like the rail lines themselves, the telegraph wires running through Meridian and beyond ran through Newton Station. Breaking the line there isolated Pemberton, cutting him off from theater commander Joseph E. Johnston and his superiors in Richmond. Pemberton ordered General Adams to move east in an effort to reestablish contact with Loring in Meridian and through him other commanders in order to get word to Johnston at Tullahoma of the debacle unfolding inside Mississippi. The message that made it through to Johnston noted that Pemberton was “sorely pressed on all sides, and urges you to send at once 2,000 cavalry to fall on rear of enemy.”60
Pemberton hoped also that word would reach Maj. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner at Mobile to send more troops north. When Adams notified Buckner, “All is lost unless you can send a regiment or two to Meridian,” Pemberton scolded the brigadier, telling him, “I never authorized you to use such an expression.” Word reached Loring to move west from Meridian to block the route of the enemy, a course the one-armed general was already pursuing. Pemberton also sent a message south to Maj. Gen. Franklin Gardner at Port Hudson that Grierson had hit Newton Station and “It is possible they are making their way to join [Nathaniel] Banks.” The news would have interested Gardner on several levels, especially since Banks was the Union commander trying to capture Port Hudson. Pemberton wanted Gardner to send cavalry east and shift infantry to a position near Tangipahoa, Louisiana, to block Grierson’s advance in that direction.61
The strike against Newton Station and the Southern Railroad of Mississippi had changed everything. Pemberton’s focus had shifted from one of casual interest in Grierson’s activity, as evidenced by the paltry number of prior messages, to a sudden realization of its importance and a nearly obsessive preoccupation with pinpointing and capturing the Federal raiders. Thomas Lippincott, an observant Federal trooper, later wrote about how Grant benefited from Grierson’s raid. “Thus, already so early in our progress the plans of Grant for the disposal of his enemy’s forces had been so perfectly fulfilled, that all dangers of these numerous brigades being sent to confront him was removed,” he explained. “Had his own adjutant written these various orders for Pemberton’s troops they could not have been more perfectly in accordance with Grant’s plans.” The job of diverting Pemberton’s attention away from Grant and the Mississippi River to Grierson in the interior of the state was complete. The Confederate command played right into Grant’s hands, who was now in position and poised to strike across the Mississippi River while Pemberton and his lieutenants were looking in the opposite direction.62
In some regard, Pemberton’s scattered reaction is understandable. Multiple reports were flooding his desk that phantom Federals were operating across a broad swath of the state. General Tilghman, for example, wrote Pemberton from Canton on April 24 that a messenger from Carthage reported “a regiment of cavalry approaching that place.” Other Federal forces were reported at Kosciusko, Bankston, and even Paulding, south of the railroad. In reality, there were no Federal regiments within miles of any of those places.63
Pemberton was also justifiably concerned about the state of the vital Southern Railroad. On the last day of April, he expressed perhaps his greatest fear in a message to the president of the Southern Railroad at Jackson. “It is of the utmost importance that the break in your road should be repaired with the greatest expedition,” he urged, “and I hope that you will devote your energy and attention to the matter, and employ such a force on the work that the necessary repairs may be completed in the shortest possible time, as a great portion of the supplies for this command must now come over your road.”64
1“The Legislature,” Mississippi Free Trader, January 22, 1861; “Damage to the Southern Road,” Vicksburg Evening Citizen, January 17, 1861; Smith, Mississippi in the Civil War, 36. For more on the Southern Railroad and its rebuilding after the war, see Southern Rail Road Records, Auburn University.
2Arthur J. L. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863 (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1863), 127; Ben Wynne, Mississippi’s Civil War: A Narrative History (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006), 90-91; John K. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi: The People and Policies of a Cotton State in Wartime (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,1943), 142; John K. Bettersworth, ed., Mississippi in the Confederacy: As They Saw It (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), 263; Luther S. Baechtel, diary, May 7, 1863, in MDAH. For more on railroad accidents, see Bettersworth, ed., Mississippi in the Confederacy, 261-63.
3OR 24, pt. 1, 554; OR 23, pt. 1, 255, 287.
4OR 24, pt. 1, 531.
5Ibid., 531, 536; OR 24, pt. 3, 237, 789-90; Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 54-56; Hancock, Hancock’s Diary, 241; Company C, 2nd Iowa Cavalry, Muster Roll, RG 94, E 57, NARA; Orlando Davis, diary, April 25, 1863, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mscivilw/davis.htm.
6OR 24, pt. 1, 531, 536; OR 24, pt. 3, 237, 789-90; Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 54-56; Hancock, Hancock’s Diary, 241; Company C, 2nd Iowa Cavalry, Muster Roll, RG 94, E 57, NARA; Orlando Davis, diary, April 25, 1863, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mscivilw/davis.htm.
7John to Jennie, April 28, 1863, John Letter, in Filson Historical Society; Pierce, History of the Second Iowa Cavalry, 55.
8OR 24, pt. 1, 543-44, 552-53; Grabau, Ninety-Eight Days, 119.
9OR 24, pt. 1, 524.
10Ibid.
11Ibid.; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 696; Neshoba Springs Location, Historic Neshoba County Maps, Neshoba County Public Library; George Smith, “A History of Union, Mississippi,” n.d., 8; A. J. Brown, History of Newton County from 1834 to 1894 (Jackson: Clarion Ledger Company, 1894), 115; Keith Justice et al., Newton County and the Civil War (n.p.: Eseff Press, 1995), 247-51; Daniel E. Robbins to Brother, May 7, 1863.
12OR 24, pt. 1, 528.
13Surby, Grierson Raids, 45-46.
14Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 158; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 696; Surby, Grierson Raids, 45-46.
15Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 697.
16OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 158; Daniel E. Robbins to Parents, May 5, 1863; Freyburger, Letters to Ann, 44.
17OR 24, pt. 1, 524
; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 698; Surby, Grierson Raids, 48; Daniel E. Robbins to Parents, May 5, 1863.
18Simon, PUSG, vol. 6, 328.
19OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Grierson, A Just and Righteous Cause, 158; “The Grierson Raid,” Weekly Register (Canton, IL), September 7, 1863 ; “The Great Federal Raid,” Natchez Daily Courier, May 5, 1863.
20OR 24, pt. 3, 197.
21“The Grierson Raid,” Weekly Register (Canton, IL), September 7, 1863; Forbes, “Grierson’s Cavalry Raid,” 106; Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 698; Surby, Grierson Raids, 48.
22Nancy Catherine Williams, The History of Newton, Mississippi 1860-1988 (Newton: Newton Record, 1989), 3; Brown, History of Newton County, 338; “The Great Federal Raid,” Natchez Daily Courier, May 5, 1863.
23Woodward, “Grierson’s Raid,” 697-98.
24OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Surby, Grierson Raids, 49; Daniel E. Robbins to Brother, May 7, 1863.
25OR 24, pt. 1, 524; Surby, Grierson Raids, 49; Daniel E. Robbins to Brother, May 7, 1863.
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