A Civil War Raid That Shook the South
A former music teacher who hated horses, Colonel Grierson led his cavalrymen as they travelled light. They packed only five days’ worth of rations for what planners envisioned would be a ten-day mission, forty rounds of ammunition, and oats for their mounts. Preceded by scouts in enemy uniform, they rode for 600 miles through Confederate territory that had never before seen enemy soldiers or felt the touch of war. Mississippi felt it now, and panicked as Union horsemen burned storehouses, tore up railroads and twisted them atop burning crossties, freed slaves, wrecked bridges, destroyed trains, and put commissaries to the torch. Throughout, Grierson peeled off detachments and sent them on feints to baffle and confuse the enemy about his actual whereabouts, intentions, and direction of march. The raid was a smashing success, literally as well as figuratively.
Grierson’s cavalrymen greatly damaged Southern property and morale. Although vigorously pursued by Confederates, the Union cavalry eluded their pursuers while causing mayhem in the enemy’s heartland. In a fifteen-day-rampage behind enemy lines, Grierson’s men lost only three killed, seven wounded, and nine missing, before they crossed into the safety of Union lines near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In addition to its immediate impact, the raid demonstrated Union soldiers’ ability to live off the land within Confederate territory. That started the gears turning in the mind of General William Tecumseh Sherman about the vulnerability of the Confederacy’s interior, which he compared to soft innards surrounded by a brittle shell. A year and a half later, Sherman led to the destructive March Through Georgia, then the even more devastating March Through the Carolinas that sealed the Confederacy’s doom.
