by Alan Huffman
The U.S. military operated its own central supply agency for replacing lost horses, and the cavalry stole others along the way. Harrison was issued nine hundred horses in the summer of 1863, but by the fall he was asking for more, and with the Confederate Army also commandeering private stock, horses and mules were increasingly hard for Southern civilians to come by. Abandoned, unhitched wagons and carriages were a common sight along rural southern roads.
Billings recalled one incident in which Rebels began shooting his army’s artillery horses, each bullet striking a horse’s flesh with a sound he described as similar to a pebble hurled into mud, yet seeming not to cause the animals much alarm. When a bullet struck a bone it made a hollow, snapping sound, and the horse promptly went down. “In cavalry service they knew their place as well as did their riders, and it was a frequent occurrence to see a horse, when his rider had been dismounted by some means, resume his place in line or column without him, seemingly not wishing to be left behind,” Billings wrote. As the eyes and ears of the army, cavalry soldiers developed specialized survival skills, and they usually had more information to work with than foot soldiers who were left in the dark between engagements and sometimes during them. But to utilize those skills, the rider and his horse had to work in concert and respond effectively to sudden changes.
Cavalrymen sometimes wore specialized boots of plain or elaborately stitched, enameled leather, which reached to the knee and were stylish and protected the riders’ legs as they rode through woods and brambles. But more often, the boots were eschewed for brogans, which were far more utilitarian on the ground. Most cavalrymen embellished their caps with the number or letter of their company and regiment, along with two crossed sabers, the cavalry emblem. New recruits wore “boiled” white cotton or loud, checked woolen shirts, leather gauntlets, and indigo jackets embellished with yellow piping, and wore an array of headgear, from floppy slouch hats to squat kepis.
Maddox and Tolbert were of average height and slight build, and perhaps fell short of the romanticized image of the lavishly costumed cavalryman, waving a sword from atop a rearing horse as the wind ruffled the plumes of his hat. Their duties, too, were usually more prosaic. Aside from random encounters with Rebels, they spent most of their time standing on picket duty, tearing up railroad tracks, and looting farms. On long marches they were more like human baggage than gallant equestrians; men sometimes fell asleep in the saddle, remaining upright only by instinctively squeezing their mounts between trembling, fatigued legs. Still, the threat of violence loomed around every curve of the road, and without warning the 8th became embroiled in one skirmish that continued for so long and with such intensity that the men ran out of ammunition, and the decision was made to charge the Confederate line rather than face capture. A Kentucky colonel who was there described it as “the most terrific, yet magnificent, charge ever witnessed.” The mounted men trampled the Confederate lines with few injuries, even though, as the officer noted, “The saber and the horses’ hooves were about our only weapon.”
As the 8th roamed rural Alabama and Georgia, the men knew little about the local geography or which enemy forces were nearby, which put them at a disadvantage even when they outnumbered the Rebels. Unlike foot soldiers, who typically fought over specific ground, or artillerymen, who operated from relatively distant, stationary positions, cavalrymen were free ranging. The last thing any of them wanted was to find himself alone, behind enemy lines, without his comrades or his horse.
SOUTH OF CHATTANOOGA, the Appalachian Mountains slowly dissolve into the red clay hills of northwest Georgia, a thin and rugged landscape that today is steadily disappearing beneath the hundred-mile sprawl of Atlanta. The landmarks of the past are falling by the wayside, and those that remain have a disenchanted look: Galleried mansions, many of them empty; forgotten cemeteries with tilting monuments and rusty, cast-iron gates; remnants of historic trace roads that no longer lead anywhere. A holdout like the Owl Rock Church, a simple clapboard structure with a mossy graveyard out back, is basically a footnote that few people read. The contemporary story is playing out across the highway from the church, where a blistering wound of cleared and flattened hills marks the beginning of yet another real-estate development.
But among the landmarks that survive is a one-lane gravel road a few miles east of what was once the town of Campbellton, which parallels the Chattahoochee River, then passes through a narrow, deep gap carved by wagon wheels and hooves, and curves blindly into the wooded bluffs. This is the spot where Romulus Tolbert’s life took a momentous turn on September 10, 1864. Tolbert would probably still recognize the road, with its narrow bed and high banks edged by forests of oaks and beech trees, though a short distance beyond, it crosses a creek on an antiquated one-lane wooden bridge and comes up hard against a towering manmade hill of dirt, which resembles a landfill but is actually the site of another new development. For now, the site of Tolbert’s wartime capture remains intact, though it is hard to imagine that it will hold out for long.
Tolbert arrived here in the fall of 1864 after spending the summer traveling along a network of similar roads, all of which were far better known by the Rebels, who could discern the movements of Union troops using information from captured soldiers, stragglers, malingerers, and slaves. Sometimes the commanding officers of the various Union cavalries might try to throw off the Rebels by intentionally taking a wrong fork, but more often they were the ones who were confused and misled; they were a thousand miles from home, their maps were unreliable, and they tended to get bad directions.
Lieutenant Colonel Fielder Jones, who led the 8th for much of the summer either under Harrison or in his absence, lamented in one dispatch, “Owing to the extreme darkness and the carelessness of some person unknown, the column was broken and my command got lost; it was nearly daylight before we succeeded in extricating ourselves from the labyrinth of roads and reach Vining’s Station.” Brigadier General George Thomas, whose vast command of about sixty-five thousand men included two-thirds of the Union forces involved in the Atlanta campaign, wrote of traveling roads with countless unmarked intersections, through impenetrable woodlands that lent themselves to ambush. To make matters worse, Thomas wrote, he “could procure no suitable guides. All intelligent persons had left the country, or had been driven out by the enemy.”
The troops who participated in the marches carried little besides their guns. They had been required to leave their tents, blankets, and other personal possessions behind, for safekeeping and to lighten their loads, the assumption being that when supplies ran low they could steal food and forage from farms and towns along the way. For many, the summer’s forays proved to be the most grueling experience of the war, mixing the occasional rush of battle with the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of an endurance run.
The towns they passed through—places such as Vining’s Station, Smith’s Ferry, and Campbellton—were strange not only because the men were behind enemy lines but because most were eerily empty, the residents having evacuated in advance of the action. By then the South was starting to unravel, and the penetration of the Union Army so deep into Georgia, toward the rail and industrial center of Atlanta, sparked a frenzy of mass migrations. Over the course of the summer the troops torched cotton mills, depots, and foundries; they looted private homes and stores, occasionally bumping hard against the limits of wartime honor and sometimes running rough-shod over them. Literally and ethically, the raiders were all over the map. Some Union officers tried to restrain their men, to limit their pilfering to necessary supplies, but others tacitly endorsed outright theft. William Blufton Miller, the 75th Indiana infantryman who wrote of his pleasure in shooting captive Rebels, was among the thieves in the Union ranks and boasted of the jewelry he “foraged” from private homes.
But if the raids at times seemed reckless, they were deliberate. Their nexus was a June attack in which the troops of Union Major General Lovell Rousseau destroyed a mill producing Confederate contraband, after whic
h the employees, including many women, were sent north to prison. As a result of his success, Rousseau was ordered to Selma, Alabama, to raze the Confederate ironworks there, and he took along the 8th Indiana, under Harrison’s command. Again the mission was a success, so General Sherman ordered Rousseau to undertake a more ambitious campaign—a long raid through Georgia, with twenty-five hundred “good cavalry,” to destroy the Montgomery & West Point Railroad, one of the main supply lines to Atlanta. Rousseau had been impressed by the 8th on the Selma run and so decided to take them again. This time Harrison would command several regiments, and the 8th would be led, under his direction, by Fielder Jones.
According to historian David Evans, author of Sherman’s Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign, Rousseau was a self-taught soldier, a robust, charismatic man who exerted great personal influence over his troops. He was known to hoist his hat atop the tip of his sword while urging his men on during a fight. He rarely studied maps, and he usually galloped across the field on his thoroughbred to deliver his orders himself. He was just the sort of leader the soldiers would need on a long, exhausting, and occasionally terrifying raid.
Assembling the troops proved to be a greater challenge than Rousseau expected, because so many men had fallen ill or lost their horses, but he managed to assemble more than twenty-five hundred, including Tolbert, Maddox, and about six hundred others from the 8th Indiana, in Decatur, Alabama, in early July 1864. The 8th had traveled from Nashville to Decatur by train, and the cars had been so crowded and hot that many had chosen to ride on their roofs, a decision they regretted when the clouds burst open with torrents of rain. Arriving across the Tennessee River from Decatur, the cavalrymen were subjected to typical army delays—the usual hurry-up-and-wait as Rousseau struggled to outfit and find enough horses for them. Some took the opportunity to cool off in the river. A day later they were at the depot vying for good horses and to be issued saddles, blankets, and reins. They were instructed to pack only two changes of clothes, five days of rations, minimal ammunition, and their rubberized blankets, sabers, and guns.
The actual departure from Decatur was disorganized. A herd of braying pack mules bolted and ran, and a short distance from town the column encountered Rebel bushwhackers, though everyone managed to escape uninjured. None of the enlisted men knew where they were headed. Rousseau’s adjutant, Captain Thomas Williams, later wrote that “all, however, felt that the expedition was of more than ordinary importance, and that it was intended to penetrate farther into the interior of the Confederacy than any similar expedition had reached. Hazardous it might be, but there was a smack of daring and dash about it, which was captivating, and gave to officers and men an inspiriting feeling different from that of an ordinary march.”
On their first night in camp, a private who had been given the unenviable task of leading a troublesome pack mule (and who had trouble keeping up with the column as a result) arrived late. The men heard him swearing at the mule, then call out, “Cap Boyer, what will I do with this mule?” Seeing an opening, a soldier called out a response that was later described as a suggestion for what he might do with the mule, to which the private answered in kind. Mule jokes were legion in the army, often a sort of verbal crotch grab, as in, I got your mule right here. After this particular exchange, laughter and cheers echoed through the darkness of the ridge. As one soldier recalled, “we just made those jack-oak bushes tremble with our noise.” Soon a regimental band played on the lawn of the plantation house where Rousseau made his headquarters, “Taps” was sounded, and the men bedded down beneath the stars.
At dawn the next day, Rousseau surveyed his troops and noticed that some had brought tents and blankets, despite his prohibition, and that the 8th Indiana was overburdened with ammunition. It was important to travel light on a raid; the Roman army had good reason for calling military gear impedimenta. Rousseau ordered his army’s extra baggage and munitions loaded into wagons and sent back to Decatur. The men began moving out at 5:30 a.m., with the 8th in the lead. The morning was quiet until about eight o’clock, when the column flushed out a few Rebel scouts, whom they fired upon but who got away. Soon the terrain grew steeper, and the going became rough. The soldiers, now powdered with dust, managed to confiscate a few horses, mules, and supplies of food from bewildered farmers along the way and to capture a Confederate soldier on furlough. Hearing of the capture, Rousseau rode up in a commandeered carriage and told the man he would be hanged as a spy, though he eventually let him go. The 8th captured a few more Rebel soldiers later that day in a mountaintop village, but they were released, too. Rousseau did not want to be slowed down by prisoners.
The first day’s march covered about fifteen miles; the second, thirty. If there had been any doubt, it was now obvious that the raid was going to be rigorous. Each morning the troops that led the column the previous day moved to the rear, giving everyone a chance to be first to encounter the enemy. At one point on the third day, Rousseau moved ahead to check on the advance guard of the column, and in his absence a group of soldiers began vandalizing farmhouses and hauling away valuable nonessential items. Coming upon one such scene, Fielder Jones, of the 8th, approached the farmer and his family, who were watching in dismay from their porch. An elderly woman was at that moment shouting at the looters, and Jones intervened and apologized for their behavior. When he mentioned that he was from Indiana, the woman told him she had a son there. In a strange coincidence, Jones knew the man, and so he offered to provide the family a letter so that they might receive provisions from the army in Decatur. The family politely declined, saying it would cause trouble with their neighbors.
Late in the afternoon the column began threading its way through a mountain gap, and night fell before they emerged on the other side. As they pressed on under a sliver of moon they found the road descending so steeply that at times they had to dismount and lead their horses. The wagon brakes squealed. The guns were unlimbered and belayed down the slope. At 11 p.m. they finally halted and fell asleep on the ground without unsaddling their horses. They were under way again at 6 a.m., stiff and sore, riding into a valley that glistened with dew, and continued on until they reached the town of Ashville, where Rousseau stopped to have the horses’ shoes inspected. As the farriers did their work some of the soldiers ate or dozed. Others looted the local post office and freed prisoners from the jail. Rousseau accompanied a group that broke into the newspaper office, where they printed general orders for conduct of the march, instructing the men to take good care of their horses and prohibiting them from straggling or entering private houses. They then set about altering the news for the next day’s paper, which had already been typeset. The front page article now carried the headline “Distinguished Arrival” and reported, “Maj. Gen. L.H. Rousseau of U.S. Army, paid our town the honor of a visit this morning, accompanied by many of his friends and admirers. The General looks well and hearty. It is not known at present how long he will sojourn in our midst.”
The troops rode out of Ashville in the early afternoon and by sundown had reached the Coosa River at Greensport, where they saw two steamboats chugging upstream, just out of range of their guns. Crossing the river, which was deep and about three hundred yards wide, turned out to be one of the major challenges of Rousseau’s raid. While the 8th Indiana waited on the bank, Confederate guerillas attacked the far end of the column and shot two men, one of whom, Captain William Curl of Princeton, Indiana, was the first Union cavalryman killed on the raid. While waiting to cross, Rousseau concluded that three hundred or so of his horses were no longer fit for service, and he organized a group of sick or injured men to be diverted to the Union garrison at Claysville, forty miles to the north.
As night fell the men watered their horses, cooked supper, and prepared to camp. Some picked blackberries in the moonlight. At about 10 p.m., Major Thomas Graham, whose forces included the 8th, was ordered to cross the now-darkened river with plans to camp on the other side and, after daylight, move four miles do
wnstream to cover the crossing of the rest of the command at the Ten Islands ford. Tolbert and Maddox, along with four companies of the 8th, saddled up. At the landing they met an officer and two soaked scouts, who had retrieved a ferry boat from the far bank. The remainder of Rousseau’s raiders, including the other companies of the 8th, then led by Fielder Jones, moved on to the Ten Islands ford.
The ferry could carry only ten or twelve men and horses at a time, and the first group to reach the far side learned from scouts that the Rebels were already close by. The four companies of the 8th took cover near a group of cotton warehouses while the rest crossed with the wagons and mules. Once everyone was across, they settled in for a nervous night. There were no fires, and the men spoke in whispers, listening to the rustling of cornstalks for any indication that the Rebels were on the move. They slept on their arms.
Lying in wait were two hundred Alabama cavalrymen under the command of Brigadier General James Holt Clanton, who had received word of Rousseau’s advance from Ashville that afternoon. Clanton, a tall, muscular man who had served in the Mexican War and in the Alabama legislature, was variously described as gallant, rash, and “a perfect demon in appearance when aroused.” Though his men were dramatically outnumbered, he decided to attack at dawn.
At 5 a.m., Graham led his four companies of the 8th down the road from the ferry crossing, and soon those who had been left behind heard the crackle of gunfire and scrambled onto their horses. Clanton’s men had attacked the 8th about half a mile from the river, with the Rebel general himself charging around a curve of the road, pistol in hand, leading the 6th Alabama on foot. Clanton’s clothes were riddled by bullets from the Yankee guns, but he somehow escaped injury. His men were not so fortunate, and they proved no match for the 8th Indiana’s repeating rifles. Those who were not shot soon broke and ran. Several were captured, including one who lingered, kneeling over the body of a friend. It was an almost bloodless triumph for the 8th, with the only serious casualty a private named John Matz, of Tolbert’s company. He had foolishly worn a Confederate hat that he had pilfered the day before and was shot in the face by not-so-friendly fire.