8. The Civil War’s Most Successful Cavalry Raid
Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson led a cavalry brigade of 1700 horsemen out of La Grange, Tennessee, on April 17, 1863. Their mission was to create a diversion from General Ulysses S. Grant’s plan to attack Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grierson and his men were to plunge southward deep into Mississippi in a raid that would traverse the length of that state, then reemerge at the other side and cross into the safety of Union lines in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. En route, the raiders sought to do all they could discomfit the enemy and disrupt his communications.
The Union cavalrymen were to tear up railroad tracks, destroy bridges, wreck and demolish Confederate installations and facilities, and otherwise wreak havoc and sow confusion throughout Mississippi. Until then, Confederate cavalry had been markedly superior to that of the Union, and literally rode circles around them. An additional motive for Grierson and his men was to demonstrate what federal horsemen could do with an exploit of their own to match the headline-grabbing ones of Confederate cavalrymen such as J.E.B. Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest.
