Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [152]
July 13: Reconnoitering Smith’s positions on the Pontotoc–Tupelo Road with Lieutenant Sam Donelson, Forrest narrowly escapes capture.
July 14: Participating, under Lee’s command, in a full frontal assault on A. J. Smith at Harrisburg, Forrest is painfully wounded in the foot, but remounts and rides to the front again to reassure his men he has not been killed. At the end of this costly and futile engagement, Forrest is reported to have snapped at Stephen Lee, “If I knew as much about West Point tactics as you, the Yankees would whip hell out of me every day.”
August 7: Based on inaccurate reports of the outcome at Harrisburg, Sherman anxiously inquires of General Washburn, “Is Forrest surely dead?”
August 8: A. J. Smith, advancing from Memphis again with another large force, crosses the Tallahatchie River to threaten Oxford, Mississippi.
August 10: Forrest arrives in Oxford.
August 11: Washburn to Sherman—“General Forrest is not dead, but was in Pontotoc four days ago.”
August 19: Forrest eludes Smith in Mississippi and races north to raid Memphis.
August 21: Forrest’s men storm into Memphis at 4 a.m., occupying the city for just a few hours. Although they fail to capture any of the three Union generals who were targets of the raid, they take 600 prisoners and force General Smith to abandon his second Mississippi invasion and return to his Memphis base.
September 2: Atlanta falls to Sherman; Forrest’s planned movement against Sherman’s supply lines has been delayed too long. Nevertheless Forrest is ordered back into Tennessee with the object of wrecking the railroads supplying Sherman. Despite reducing a number of small Union forts at railway stations in Middle Tennessee, Forrest is unable to reach the principal Nashville–Chattanooga line.
October 5: Forrest is forced to retreat across the Tennessee River. Again he begins to regroup, but due to recent losses and the attrition of four years of war he now must depend more than ever on recent and comparatively unreliable conscripts, and to deal with persistent shortages of men, horses and munitions. He writes to General Richard Taylor: “I have been constantly in the field since 1861, and have spent half the entire time in the saddle. I have never asked for a furlough for over ten days to rest—and except when wounded and unable to leave my bed have had no respite from duty.” Nevertheless he agrees to start another expedition into West Tennessee.
Mid-October: Forrest reestablishes his headquarters in Jackson, Tennessee.
October 26: General Taylor orders Forrest to report to General John Hood in Middle Tennessee as soon as his current mission has been completed. Retreating northward from the loss of Atlanta, Hood now intends to recapture Nashville and make a junction with the army commanded by General Robert E. Lee in Virginia.
October 29: Forrest’s men destroy the Federal steamboat Mazeppa at Fort Heiman on the Tennessee River.
October 30: Forrest’s men capture another federal transport ship on the Tennessee, along with a gunboat, the Undine, and use these boats for an assault on the Union depot at Johnsonville.
November 2: After losing an engagement with two Union gunboats, Forrest’s men burn the Undine and desist from further naval activity.
November 4: Attacking Johnsonville by land, Forrest destroys a vast amount of supplies ultimately destined for Sherman in Georgia.
November 8: Lincoln wins reelection as U.S. president, putting an end to faint Southern hopes that a Democrat president might be inclined to reconcile with the Confederacy.
Mid-November: Forrest joins Hood at Florence, and makes an energetic speech predicting a Confederate success in Nashville.
November 19–24: Moving his cavalry in advance of Hood’s main body, Forrest fights daily engagements with 2,800 Union troops commanded by John Schofield, attempting to retreat northward toward their Nashville base.
November 28: Forrest gets one of his divisions across the Duck River near Columbia,