Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [149]
In the aftermath of Chickamauga, Forrest, losing confidence in the Confederacy’s chances of success and suspecting that he himself may soon be killed, frees a number of the forty-five slaves who have enlisted with him as teamsters.
October 13: General Bragg approves Forrest’s request for transfer to the Mississippi River region. Forrest goes to Okolona, Mississippi, with his sixty-five-man escort, four cannon, Morton’s sixty-seven artillerymen and part of Jeffrey Forrest’s regiment, bringing him to a strength of 350. Jeffrey, though reported killed in North Alabama, reappears as an exchanged prisoner.
November 25: As Bragg is driven from Chattanooga by Grant, Forrest goes raiding and recruiting in West Tennessee; ten days later he reports to General Johnston that he has 5,000 recruits and more coming in.
December 13: Forrest writes a letter of complaint to General Stephen Hurlbut, commander of Union-occupied Memphis, about the Union military’s mistreatment of Confederate sympathizers in West Tennessee.
December 24: Forrest has to withdraw from Jackson, Tennessee, with his 3,500 raw recruits, only 1,000 of them armed, but receives official word of his promotion to major general. He eludes pursuit and protects his considerable beef on the hoof and bacon supply by sending out many decoy detachments.
1864
January 2: Confederate General Patrick Cleburne proposes that the Confederacy offer to free any slaves willing to serve in its army. This idea is swiftly suppressed by President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government in Richmond.
January 12: Northern press reports: “Forrest, with less than four thousand men, has moved right through the Sixteenth Army Corps, has passed within nine miles of Memphis, carried off a hundred wagons, two hundred beef cattle, three thousand conscripts, and innumerable stores; torn up railroad tracks, destroyed telegraph wires, burned and sacked towns, ran over pickets with a single derringer pistol, and all in the face of ten thousand men.” Union Generals Grant and Sherman begin to take serious alarm at Forrest’s ability to carry out such operations behind their lines.
January 13: “Forrest’s Cavalry Department” established for North Mississippi and West Tennessee.
January 27: General Sherman writes orders for General William Sooy Smith to organize a two-pronged raid into the Deep South. Sherman intends to raid from Vicksburg to Meridian, Mississippi, while Sooy Smith moves out of Memphis through Okolona to join him at Meridian for a combined maneuver against Selma, Alabama, destroying Confederate communications and foraging and looting as much as possible along the way. This operation is a trial run for Sherman’s eventual march through Georgia; Sooy Smith’s maneuver is in part intended to divert Forrest from Sherman’s movement.
February 12: Forrest threatens to execute nineteen deserters at Oxford, Mississippi (all recent West Tennessee recruits). Forrest reports that Sooy Smith with 1,000 men has passed Holly Springs—he sends Jeffrey Forrest to engage Smith at West Point.
February 19: Smith begins wrecking railroad tracks near Okolona. Some 3,000 freed slaves in his train are burning fields, barns and houses so indiscriminately as to shock Smith himself.
February 20: Jeffrey Forrest, after a forty-five-mile march, interrupts Smith’s progress to Meridian at West Point. Smith eludes a trap set by the Forrest brothers and plans his retreat.
February 21: At Sakatonchee Creek, southwest of Okolona, Smith begins a diversionary battle with Jeffrey Forrest’s command. Bedford Forrest thrashes a Confederate trooper fleeing