(Map of the encounter between the forces of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Samuel Davis Sturgis at Brice’s Crossroads, MS, on 10 June 1864. The position of the 72nd OVI is along the line of retreat at the upper left center. Map Civil War Preservation Trust).
I don’t necessarily disbelieve in co-incidence- but the battle that almost got my Great Great Grandfather and killed off his line was this day, 151 years ago. Let’s see: I was born on this day 64 years ago and my first squadron was VF-151, and that is the same proof I like my rum.
So bear with me as I tell you all those things got my attention. I do not think I had ever consciously thought about Brice’s Crossroads before I started examining the combat record of the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
As it turns out, nothing has changed there since the Crossroads erupted in flame that sultry Mississippi summer day in 1864, this day, in fact- the 10th of June- a Confederate force of less than 5,000 troopers met and destroyed a well-equipped Union expeditionary force of over 8,000 men. It is a personal affair to me, because my existence on the planet is connected to the actions of the two commanders on the field: Nathan Bedford Forrest, the man who Tecumseh Sherman called “The Devil,” and Union Brigadier Samuel Davis Sturgis.
Forrest was all about killing Yankees and had the ability to distill complex tactical situations to the simplest of terms. “War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” was his basic tenet, and he ensured that all of his soldiers understood it. When his force engaged you, he stayed engaged.
Here is the day, as described by historian Parker Hills: “THE MISSISSIPPI SUN LURKED behind a mask of emptied rain clouds in the early morning of June 10, 1864, and then temperamentally burned its gray-white shroud away. Now the sun blazed away like a white-hot disc, seeming stationary in the sky. Desperate soldiers and exhausted dray animals sweated, struggled and suffered in the knee-high cornfields and the chafing brush of the scrub-oak woods, With agonizing deliberation the sun crept across the heavens, and almost every living creature on the battlefield eagerly anticipated day’s end — almost. With eves blazing and temper raging, Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was too busy making history, and the demise of the sunlight meant less light for him to destroy his enemy.”
The 72nd OVI was toiling along as well. They had ben assigned to Sturgis for an abortive raid on Ripley in May, but Sherman was insistent that Forrest be brought to heel and the threat to the logistics supply line supporting Sherman’s operations in Georgia ended.
(Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest personally killed more than two dozen Yankee soldiers, most ever by an American General Officer).
To that, Nathan Bedford Forrest contributed a tactical gem of a battle plan that achieved the virtual annihilation of a better-equipped and supplied Union army that outnumbered his forces almost two to one.
Early on the night on June 9, Forrest was ordered to conduct a retrograde movement to the town of Okolona on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad and rendezvous with Buford’s Second and Chalmers’s First Division, concentrating Forrest’s Cavalry Corps as the center of mass of the force.
Later that night, Forrest called a council of war to discuss the latest intelligence on the intentions of the Yankees. He learned Sturgis’s entire command was at Stubbs Farm, en route Guntown via Brice’s Crossroads, and decided to attack. He planned to reach the high ground that loomed over Tishomingo Creek at the Crossroads before Sturgis got there and catch the Yankees as they trudged upward from the bottom. H-Hour was set for 0400.
While Forrest’s men were riding in the pre-dawn hours of what would eventually become my birthday, Sturgis‘s 3,300 cavalrymen didn’t saddle up until 0530, and were to precede the infantry by an hour and a half. The 72nd OVI moved out with the rest of the down the Ripley road until 0700. Despite the later departure, the Union cavalry had a much shorter distance to Brice’s Crossroads and arrived first. Forrest would have to improvise when he arrived, though his ISR assets had reported that the Sturgis was traveling in two detachments, and it would be possible to defeat them sequentially.
Two Union brigades passed he crossroads and dismounted to form a line of battle at Porter’s Field as they encountered the Confederate horsemen. Forrest rode down to the Guntown road and ordered Capt. H. A. Tyler’s squadron of Kentuckians, his escort of a hundred elite troopers, and Capt. Henry Gartrell’s Georgians to ride around the Union right to the enemy rear and keep the Yankees pinned in by a vigorous attack all along the front, and hit both flanks.
After two or three cannon blasts, the bugle sounded the advance and the Confederate line moved forward.
Four cannons also moved forward, part of Forrest’s deliberate strategy to us the cannons to engage, frustrate and frighten the Yankees, pushing the normally vulnerable guns as close as possible to fire and point blank range.
It worked. Union forces were driven back toward the Brice house, and the converging Confederate fires massed at the Crossroads. The confused Federals began to panic and most scrambled down the ridgeline toward the bridge over the Tishomingo Creek. As the Rebels emerged from the woods, six Union guns were captured and several were turned upon the fleeing Yanks. The retreat collided with the advancing infantry and caused several wagons to block the bridge: one overturned, and some had their teams killed.
Some of the Yanks rushed wildly into the creek, and as they emerged from the water on the opposite bank in an open field the Rebel artillery raked them from a range of a half mile, killing and disabling a large number of them.
See, it is difficult to read this stuff. If they had managed to nail Great Great Grandpa at the bridge, or with his tem, for blown him to pieces with one of the cannons at point blank range, this story and its curious number of coincidences would never have happened. If Nathan Bedford Forrest had got just a bit luckier- and he was a very lucky man indeed- this would not be written.
At least by me, anyway.
You can see on the map of the battlefield that Forrest’s pursuing troopers soon cleared the bridge by throwing the wagons- maybe Grandpa’s- into the stream, A section of each artillery battery was dragged across the bridge, supported by Forrest’s personal guard. They blasted away at Sturgis’s reserve brigade of USCTs, which was valiantly covering the retreat, including that of the 72nd OVI. See how isolated they were.
Union troops near Philips Branch observed Forrest’s intent to flank them after crossing the stream, and fell back across the Phillips Branch, but reformed to counter-attack. Confederate cannon fired volley after volley into the oncoming Yankees, who “got almost within handshaking distance of our guns,” Morton reported. At this critical moment, Col. Lyon’s men arrived and formed on Morton’s right, springing forward with loud cheers. Sturgis’s men were beaten back.
The sun was going down and rainclouds hung above Brice’s Crossroads. But here is the thing about Nathan Bedford Forrest: once he got engaged with you he stayed engaged. He pursued the retreating Federals five or six miles until it was too dark to continue, whereupon he allowed his men a respite. He continued on with a ten-man detachment to track the Yankees and harry them. At 0100 on the 11th, Forrest continued harassing Sturgis, driving the panicked Yankees through the village of Ripley, ultimately following them near fifty-five miles to the vicinity of the modern village of Ashland.
I told you Forrest ran his own Supply Corps. From Sturgis he appropriated: 16 cannon, 1,500 stands of small arms, 300,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 16 ambulances, 176 wagons, 161 mules, 23 horses, and all of the Federals’ baggage and supplies. The Federal casualties included 223 killed, 394 wounded, and 1,623 missing, for a total of 2,240. The Confederates lost 96 killed and 396 wounded, for a total of 492.
Those are impressive numbers, but the fact that union casualties are not 224, rather than 223, is of enormous importance to me. My cousin Harold and I have both looked at Grandfather’s service record. There is no notation of his being wounded, or captured, or otherwise occupied after one of the most humiliating defeats- literally being chased from the battlefield for half a hundred miles across the countryside.
It might have been Nathan Bedford Forrest’s greatest victory. I will take it as a victory in that Grandfather survived. A few hundred of the 72nd OVI were captured on the field, and were not offered parole. Instead, they would be held until exchanged for Southern prisoners. The rules had changed. The Union prisoners from this battle were going to be sent to a camp that had just opened three months before. It was a place called “Camp Sumpter,” but to everyone else it was known by the name of the little town nearest to it.
Folks just called it “Andersonville.”
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303