Grierson had his bridge, but the manner in which he captured it created other problems beyond what one Mississippi newspaper described as “some punishment” inflicted by the Confederates. The escaping Confederates were spreading the word of Grierson’s presence, so the Federal commander had to keep his men riding. However, he also had a dead trooper and five wounded men who needed attention as well as several Confederate dead and wounded. The small affair was the first serious combat most of these troopers had experienced since leaving Tennessee, the skirmishing at Union Church notwithstanding, and the heaviest losses Grierson had endured to date. He especially felt the loss of Blackburn. “I cannot speak too highly of the bravery of the men upon this occasion,” Grierson wrote, “and particularly of Lieutenant Colonel Blackburn, who, at the head of his men, charged upon the bridge, dashed over, and, by undaunted courage, dislodged the enemy from his strong position.”27
Grierson spent as little time as possible overseeing the wounded and the dead. The troopers of the 7th Illinois Cavalry buried Private Reinhold, a sad but relatively quick endeavor. The wounded presented more immediate and complex problems. Unable to care properly for them, Grierson had the injured of both sides transported to a nearby farmhouse owned by James M. Newman about a mile east of the river. The 28-year-old Newman lived in a modest but comfortable house with Caroline, his young wife of 22, and their three children ages three to six. It must have been a chaotic time for the small farmer’s family. Newman, whose net worth in real estate was only about $1,200, depended on his crops to survive. With the war now at his doorstep, everything was in jeopardy.28
Grierson faced a heartrending decision because he could not take the wounded with him, and leaving men behind to protect them was not a viable option. The seriously wounded Blackburn “could not ride,” explained a 7th Illinois trooper and would have to be left with the other wounded and hope for clemency from the enemy. Colonel Prince initially protested the decision to leave the men behind, arguing the column should simply camp there. His emotional plea soon saw the light of logic when Grierson explained that they had “three more rivers . . . yet to be crossed,” the enemy was “gathering thick and fast behind” them, and the column was “near their strongholds, and delay would have been fatal to success.” The Federal commander did all he could to ensure those he left were well cared for. The 2nd Iowa’s surgeon, Erastus D. Yule, who had remained with the column after Colonel Hatch’s regiment turned back, together with two nurses, Sgt. Maj. Augustus Leseure and Pvt. George W. Douglass, remained behind to care for the injured. “Everything possible was done for the comfort of those left behind,” explained Grierson, including changing Surby back into his Union uniform to keep the Confederates from hanging or shooting him as a spy. After threatening the farmer Newman with reprisals if any of his injured were ill-treated, Grierson bid Blackburn a final farewell, knowing he might never see him again. “We all deeply regretted the loss met with at the Tickfaw, which might have been avoided,” Grierson lamented. Ironically, it was a regret borne of Blackburn’s own hasty actions.29
Newman, who had assured Grierson he would help look after his wounded men, was good to his word and cared for Blackburn and the others despite his modest means. One account claims Newman “was a small farmer with a small but comfortable house. He and his wife gave their best bedroom and best bed to Col. Blackburn.” Blackburn appreciated the farmer’s efforts and later wrote out a note to protect him: “Newman Farm, Miss., May 5, 1863. This is to certify that I have been very kindly treated by Mr. J. M. Newman and family, and I desire all Union soldiers to respect his family and property. Said Newman has been a friend indeed. William D. Blackburn, Lieutenant Colonel, 7th Illinois Cavalry.”30
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With the way open across the Tickfaw River and the dead and wounded taken care of, Grierson guided his column east some distance before turning south. The Federals made good time on the Greensburg Road and soon “crossed into Louisiana,” confirmed a hungry trooper in the 7th Illinois Cavalry. “Had nothing to eat all day.” Unfortunately for the raiders, scouts spotted Confederate riders east of the Tickfaw. The brigade was approaching the next crossing point at Edward’s bridge on the way to Greensburg when scouts spotted more Confederates riding hard to reach the span before they did. “The Johnnies were hard to keep back,” admitted a member of the rear guard. Grierson agreed: “We had a race with about fifty rebels, but our men got to the bridge first.” Stopping would only give the enemy more time to concentrate in larger numbers, so Grierson decided to make a running fight of it near Crittendon’s Creek as he moved toward and then across Edward’s bridge near Greensburg. “At this point, we met Garland’s rebel cavalry,” he reported, “and, with one battalion of the Sixth Illinois and two guns of the battery, engaged and drove them off without halting the column.” Major W. H. Garland of the Mississippi Battalion reported much the same when he informed his superior at Port Hudson that he was unable to stop the enemy. Locals, however, informed the Confederate officer that the Northern raiders were heading for Baton Rouge. Major Garland informed anyone who would listen that the enemy would cross the Amite River. He recommended troops be sent “to stop them at Williams’ Bridge,” which, he added, “is the last chance.”31
The battalion of Illinois cavalry easily drove the enemy away from Edward’s bridge, but some Federals ran into problems of their own. One group became embroiled in a small firefight in the creek bottom and eventually ended up in the creek itself. They were not overly concerned, explained one man, because it was likely “only malitia.” The squadron stopped at a nearby farmhouse for refreshments but ran into Confederates there—and another unexpected enemy. One of the Union troopers “left his pistol where he was drinking buttermilk,” recalled another Illinoisan, but when he made a run back to get it, “a woman beat him back to it; she began shooting at him and he whirled to run out.” Whether the trooper ever recovered his pistol was not reported.32
Larger issues than buttermilk and pistols were on Grierson’s mind. The climax of this stage of the raid was quickly approaching in the form of Williams’s bridge, the only place the column could cross the “wide, deep and rapid” Amite River. If it were blocked or destroyed—and there was a reasonable chance it was in enemy hands—the game was up. Word arrived that more Confederates were moving into the area. “We were in the vicinity of their stronghold,” wrote a worried Grierson, “and, from couriers and dispatches which we captured, it was evident that they were sending forces in all directions to intercept us.” The Confederates, he concluded, “were now on our track in earnest.” When Grierson made the decision to ride for Baton Rouge, we were “twice as far from the Amite River bridge as was Gardner at Port Hudson,” recalled Stephen Forbes of Company B. “The flying column sped on its way unmolested, and almost unseen, by its swarming enemies.” The column’s speed, observed Forbes, was set “at the highest pace which they [the horses] were likely to be able to keep to the end.”33
The Illinois troopers passed through Greensburg about sunset, capturing the county clerk who, Grierson noted, “armed with a shotgun, was waiting at the crossroads for a courier with information.” Scout Samuel Nelson, who had taken over for the wounded Surby, secured the clerk’s shotgun and explained he was “talking to a live Yankee,” though he also gave the stranger a slug of “Yankee whisky.” The scout turned the clerk over to other troopers as a prisoner, but not before the Southerner asked for “another nip of that Yankee whisky.” It was about this time that Lt. George W. Newell, a scout sent out earlier that morning to find horses and provisions, rejoined the column. Newell had stumbled upon the fight earlier in the day at Wall’s bridge, where he discovered his route blocked by a swarm of Confederates. His was a dashing escape from the enemy and a roundabout ride to get back to his comrades in blue.34
Thankfully, wrote one Illinois man, Grierson’s push west in an effort to escape the Confederates on his trail and reach Williams’s bridge was assisted by good roads, “level as a floor, beau
tifully shaded on both sides by tall forest pines, interspersed with a small growth of other kinds of timber, now and then passing a small plantation.” The looming valley of the Amite River, however, worried Grierson, who knew the only good crossing point was uncomfortably close to Port Hudson. Knowledge of his route would make it easy for the Confederates to send more than enough men to the choke point to stop him. If the Federals were trapped east of the Amite, deep in Rebel territory, there would be nowhere safe to go.35
Fortunately for the Federals, Grierson believed he was “ahead of information.” In order to remain so, he did something he had done only twice before during the long raid: Push his men in a forced march through the entire night. He later explained that he “calculated the time” it would take for a courier to reach Port Hudson and for a column to organize and reach Williams’s bridge, and that if he kept moving through the night he might just make it. “That a large force would be sent there was very evident to my mind,” Grierson reported, “and we must reach that important point before them.” By this stage, the troopers were close enough to a safe harbor that a third forced march would not overly tax them. They could rest once they reached Baton Rouge or they would rest when they reached a Confederate prison camp. The stark choice made the strenuous riding a bit more bearable and increased endurance. Grierson had ordered his first forced march on April 23 when he had pushed ahead all night to reach and destroy Newton Station, and his second was three nights later, on April 26, when he had to cross the Pearl River at Georgetown, the other substantial watercourse that could have hemmed them in.36
Making another all-night run this late in the raid, however, was more problematic than the prior two. The men were fresher and better able to endure such hardships earlier in the raid. By this date Grierson’s troopers had been in the saddle for 15 days. Every man and most of the mounts were exhausted and sore. Another grueling night ride and lack of sleep would be harder to recover from, and more riding would be needed thereafter to reach Baton Rouge.37 Fortunately for the raiders, the moon made a stunning appearance about 11:00 p.m. The Mississippi River city of Baton Rouge was only 40 miles from Greensburg as the crow flies, and a handful of miles more along the route the cavalry would ride. “On, then,” Grierson recounted, “by moonlight over the level roads and through the beautiful pine forests, when the enemy was sleeping and tarrying by the way.”38
Grierson rode west intent on securing Williams’s bridge at Grangeville “before I halted,” his trusty scouts out front doing their work. He had confidence in Nelson, but he may well have wished Surby was still in charge now that the climax of the raid was upon them. After a 12-mile ride, the column slowed as it entered the river valley, where the roads turned “very muddy and rough” in the dark bottomland. The scouts delivered the news Grierson needed: There was only a company of Confederates near the bridge, and they were inexplicably camped a mile away. A detachment of just 10 men guarded the bridge during the day, a paltry number reduced to just 2 men at night. The news surely surprised the brigade leader. Only 2 Confederates were guarding what was arguably the most important bridge in Louisiana at that time?39
The scouts cautiously approached the span by quietly announcing to the pair of pickets that they were couriers on the way to Port Hudson. Once upon them, “a cocked revolver [was] quickly placed at the heads of the guards. No words were spoken above a whisper, and both Confederates were readily captured.” No other enemy soldiers were in sight. The satisfying realization that the Federals had beaten the Port Hudson defenders to the bridge swept down the length of the Union column. A satisfied Grierson recalled the “welcome sound of our horses’ hooves . . . reverberating as we went gaily marching on over the raging torrent.” Years later he was still amazed about how his men were able to ride across the long bridge at midnight while its “watchers were sleeping a half mile and mile away.”40
William’s Bridge. The Amite River was the last major obstacle Grierson had to cross to reach safety. He did so at Williams’ Bridge, somewhere in the vicinity of the modern view shown here. Author
The aggressive Grierson could not resist breaking up the nearby enemy camp once his column was safely across the river. Once the bulk of his command moved on, he sent a company of the 6th Illinois Cavalry “to fire into the camp of the bridge guard.” The safer (and perhaps wiser) choice would have been to move on and put six or eight hours between his men and the Confederates before they realized the bridge had been crossed. The company nevertheless hit the camp without warning, scattering the enemy in every direction. “If an earthquake had occurred, or lightening struck them from the cloudless, starlight heaven above,” he boasted, “they could not have been more surprised or more bewildered.” Grierson joked that “those who could get away, it was thought, never would stop running.” The company of Illinois cavalry captured a few Rebels and killed a few others before returning to the westward-riding column.41
Grierson’s decision to ride all night allowed him to cross the Amite River a few hours before a large force of Confederates dispatched from Port Hudson reached the bridge. In addition to sending cavalry to find Grierson, General Gardner had also sent infantry and artillery, including the 55th Tennessee, 4th Louisiana, and Fenner’s Louisiana Battery, all under the command of Col. Alexander J. Brown of the 55th Tennessee. By the time they reached the general area, Grierson was long gone. Brown reported back to Gardner at 9:30 a.m. that he was still six miles from the bridge, but he had already received word the Federal raiders had passed over it during the night. “Starting at the late hour we did,” lamented the colonel, “it was impossible to have intercepted the enemy at William’s Bridge.” There was more to the story than Colonel Brown was willing to admit. The Confederates were passing through Clinton, Louisiana, on the way to reach the bridge when the town’s citizens “tendered a complimentary dance to the officers of the rebel command.” According to Capt. Henry Forbes, “The [Confederate] officers had carefully estimated the time of our possible arrival near the bridge, and accepted the complement as an incident too pleasant to be needlessly rejected. . . . [W]hile, therefore, we were stretching our legs for the bridge [by riding all night] these gentlemen who had been sent to catch us were stretching theirs in the cotillion.” One of the embarrassed soldiers of the 55th Tennessee summed up the situation by writing, “We made a forced march from Port Hudson to intercept Grierson at Williams’ bridge on Amite River, but were an hour or so late and missed our game.”42
Grierson moved his men through the balance of the night toward Baton Rouge, the 6th Illinois Cavalry in the advance, confident after having made it across the last major obstacle. There were additional waterways to cross, mostly small tributaries of the Amite River, including Sandy Creek and the Comite River, but they could be easily waded across almost anywhere. A quiet wave of excitement infused the exhausted Federals as they plunged along through the moonlight.43
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Once Grierson passed Williams’s bridge, there was little if anything the Confederates who had flooded the area east of the Amite River could do, and they realized it. Wirt Adams’s Mississippi Cavalry pursued the raiders southward nearly to Greensburg and eventually linked up with Gantt’s Tennesseans and the force under Colonel Wilbourn. None of them could catch the elusive Federals. Several Confederate units passed the scene of the fighting at Wall’s bridge and interrogated the wounded Lieutenant Colonel Blackburn, who lied when he told them Grierson’s target was Natchez, but that the “check they received at Union Church” changed their plans. Adams was doubly chagrined when he heard the enemy had escaped the closing gray noose. Not only had he been unable to catch them himself, but the force he had sent out under Lt. W. S. Wren to destroy Williams’s bridge failed to make it there in time. “I marched over 50 miles per day, and moved during day and night,” wrote the disgusted Confederate colonel, “yet the distance I had to traverse from west to east to reach the line of their march, and owing to their use of the most skillful guides and unfrequented roads, I fo
und it impossible, to my great mortification and regret, to overhaul them.”44
Colonel Richardson’s three mounted Mississippi infantry companies also found it impossible to nab Grierson. Richardson had maintained contact with the parallel-riding Adams by courier and reached Osyka, where he learned “the enemy had not approached Osyka nearer than Wall’s Bridge.” At Osyka, Richardson joined his command with De Braun’s troops, fresh from Wall’s bridge, a company of the 1st Mississippi Cavalry under Capt. G. Herren and 30 men provided by Osyka’s local commander. With this conglomeration of troops, Richardson moved south toward Greensburg, which he reached on the morning of May 2 only to find that the enemy had passed through hours earlier on the way to Williams’s bridge. Realizing the futility of the chase, Richardson called off the pursuit and returned to his previous post.45
With most of the Confederate cavalry now east of the Amite River, there were few Confederates operating west of the waterway to stop Grierson, and none of them had any idea they were within miles of a much larger Union force. In fact, most were spread out in company-sized detachments and guarding fords and other crossing points. Their attention was mainly focused to the south and west toward the Federals along the Mississippi River and Baton Rouge than north and east in the direction from which Grierson was approaching. Grierson had threaded the needle of Confederate forces aiming to capture him.46
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