7tncav

General Stephen D. Lee's plan was based on practical West Point
doctrine- when faced with overwhelming odds, withdraw into your
interior lines and consolidate your forces; make your enemy extend his
supply lines; then fight him on ground of your own choosing. This plan
was related to his subordinate, Maj. General Nathan Beford Forrest in
a conference at Booneville, Miss. on June 9, 1864. A strong Union
force of 10,000 was rapidly approaching from the west. Forrest had
4500 men scattered along the railroad. Lee told him to delay the
Federals with part of his command while the rest would move to
Okolona. There, Lee would gather what other forces he could for a
stand in the open prairie, "where we can get a good look at them".
Forrest was also told to use his own discretion in delaying the
Federals.

Forrest intended to use his own discretion- and more. As soon as his
superior was on the train to Okolona, Forrest ordered his cavalry
brigades into motion- not to withdraw to Okolona, but to intercept the
Federal column at a road junction called Brice's Crossroads. Colonel
William Rucker, whose small brigade included the 7th Tennessee, was
riding with his commander the next morning when Forrest disclosed
his plan. Rucker later quoted him:

I know they greatly outnumber the troops I have at hand, but the road
along which they will march is narrow and muddy; they will make slow
progress. The country is densely wooded and the undergrowth so heavy
that when we strike them they will not know how few men we have.
Their cavalry will move out ahead of their infantry and should reach
the crossroads three hours in advance. We can whip their cavalry in
that time. As soon as the fight opens they will send back to have the
infantry hurried up. It is going to be hot as hell, and coming on the run
for five or six miles, their infantry will be so tired out we will ride
right over them.

That was about what happened that day and the Federals were
pursued so vigorously that they lost all of their wagons, artillery and
organization. The Union commanders' reports showed that they never
understood how they were defeated so completely. It was believed that
their cavalry was ineffective because the wooded terrain limited
mounted operations, suggesting that they still thought cavalry fought
cavalry with sabers on horseback. Forrest had no intentions of playing
that outdated game. To him, the horse was simply a rapid way to move
a soldier to a critical point on the battlefield, where he would
dismount relatively fresh to fight with a rifle. He was less of a target
and his fire was more accurate. Forrest didn't come up with the idea,
but he certainly moved it from a secondary role for the cavalry to the
primary one.

When he did fight mounted, it was usually after he had gotten the
"skeer" on his opponent. At Brice's Crossroads he turned what was
considered a disadvantage in fighting dismounted into an advantage.
Every fourth man would hold the horses of the other three when
fighting on foot, which was thought to weaken a cavalry unit's strength
by one fourth. (Three men firing on foot were still more effective than
four men firing from horseback were.) After the Federals were routed
Forrest used the relatively fresh horse-holders to pursue them,
allowing the others to rest. This was the closest thing to a reserve that
he ever had, other than possibly his escort, which he always used at
some critical point on the battlefield. By 1864, his escort company
was armed with captured Spencer repeaters. Ammunition was
forwarded to them from the rest of the cavalry corps' captures on the
battlefield. The escort paid a heavy price for their conspicuous
position, however. Once, when Forrest was visiting General Dabney
Maury's headquarters at Meridian, Miss., Maury told him that his
escort was "a fine body of men and horses". "Yes it is", replied
Forrest, "and that captain is the eighth captain who has commanded
it. The other seven have all been killed in battle."

Forrest's deployment of his horse artillery was most radical. During a
crucial moment at Brice's Crossroads, when the Yankee resistance was
stiffening, he ordered his chief of artillery, Captain John Morton, to
charge the enemy with his guns. Morton's men rode to within sixty
yards of the Union line, unlimbered under heavy fire and sent shot
and shell into the horrified Federals at point blank range; breaking the
back of the Union resistance.

That Bedford Forrest was an "untutored genius" is widely known, but
the suggestion by some of his peers that a West Point education would
have made him more formidable is unlikely. The fact that he had no
preconceived notions about strategy and tactics made him
unpredictable. His natural ability to quickly evaluate a situation and
act decisively set him apart from the more predictable West Point
graduates. He was not able to drill a company beyond the most basic
commands and considered anything more "an unnecessary tax upon
men and horses". An example of his "unorthodox" evaluation of a
tactical situation occurred during Hood's retreat after the disastrous
Nashville campaign. Forrest, in charge of the rear-guard, had decided
to make a stand against the pursuing Federals at a place south of
Pulaski, Tennessee called Anthony's Hill. Reports that his flanks had
been turned had unnerved his officers and they were suggesting a
withdrawal. When he was told that the enemy was in his rear, he
snapped, "Well, that means I'm in their rear too!" Disgusted with his
officers' timidity, he rode off muttering, "I always carry my rear
around with me".

Forrest was the antithesis of the blue-blood autocrats that comprised
most of the officer corps. Many of them considered him an "uncouth
vulgarian" and his contempt for their snobbery manifested in several
conflagrations. During the pursuit of the Federals after Brice's
Crossroads, Forrest and some of his men came upon a group of
burning supply wagons. After ordering his men to dismount and
extinguish the fires, he noticed a lieutenant sitting on his horse and
asked him why he didn't help. "I'm an officer," was the reply. "I'll
officer you!" shouted Forrest and the lieutenant was involuntarily
dismounted by his commanding general. On another occasion, an
officer who had refused to help row a boat in Forrest's presence
quickly found himself swimming for his life in the Tennessee River. Of
course, Forrest pulled no punches with his superiors either and
usually ran afoul of all of them; considering them as foolish as the
enemy commanders he fought against. As a result, many of his most
brilliant victories were achieved in theatres of little strategic
importance. By the time Forrest was considered as more than a
"raider", it was too late for a man of his talent to save the
Confederacy.

What Bedford Forrest did save was the cavalry itself. By the Civil War,
that branch of service, in its traditional sense, had become obsolete-
developments in weapons technology had seen to that- though many
commanders refused to realize it. By merging the mobility of the
cavalry with the more concentrated firepower of the infantry, Forrest
created a mobile rapid deployment force that would give the cavalry a
new tactical purpose, and enable it to survive the elimination of the
horse itself.

Cris Malone