← Back to the front page

Weird Foods and Methods People Used to Survive During the Civil War

Khalid Elhassan July 21, 2021 36 min

Grierson's raiders terrified Civil War era Mississippi — Grierson’s raiders terrified Civil War era Mississippi. Amazon

7. The Civil War Cavalry Commander Who Hated Horses

Ironically, the commander of the Grierson Raid, Colonel Benjamin Grierson, was a former music teacher who happened to hate horses. It did not prevent his rise to command of a cavalry brigade. He and his cavalrymen traveled light. They packed only five days’ worth of rations for what planners envisioned would be a ten-day mission, 40 rounds of ammunition, and oats for their mounts. Preceded by scouts in enemy uniform, they rode for 600 miles through the heart of enemy territory that had never before seen enemy soldiers or felt the touch of war.

Grierson and his men saw to it that Mississippi now saw enemy soldiers and felt the touch of war, and the state went into a panic as a result. Union horsemen burned storehouses, tore up railroads and twisted them atop burning crossties, freed slaves, wrecked bridges, destroyed trains, and put Confederate commissaries to the torch. Throughout, in order to add to the Southerners’ confusion, Grierson peeled off detachments and sent them on feints to baffle and confuse the enemy about his actual whereabouts, intentions, and direction of march.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.