America’s Civil War: Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s Cavalry Raid in 1863

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The pair pressed their luck, though, when they decided to take a meal at the hotel. As they approached the square, a prisoner who had been captured and released by the raiders on the previous day suddenly appeared brandishing a sword and a pistol, and shouting for help in stopping them d—-d Yankees. With revolvers drawn, the unmasked scouts wheeled in their tracks and spurred their mounts into a blind dash out of town. Collecting the rest of Surby’s Butternuts, they raced back through a torrential midday downpour to the Hazelhurst depot, only to discover its occupants had scattered, taking the telegraph key with them. In their haste, however, the Confederates had neglected to countermand the forged dispatch.

Following closely behind Surby, Prince’s vanguard thundered down the empty streets. In a familiar movement, the blue-coated troopers fanned out to seal escape routes. At that moment, the southbound Jackson train chugged slowly into the outskirts of Hazelhurst. The conductor sounded the alarm at his first glimpse of a blue-clad picket posted at the bridge north of town. Brakes screeched and the engineer brought the locomotive to an abrupt halt and reversed its course. Prince watched in agonized frustration as the train backed rapidly up the tracks, carrying its cargo to safety–a cargo that included seventeen commissioned officers and eight millions in Confederate money, which was en route to pay off troops in Louisiana and Texas.

After discharging ineffectual shots at the fast-retreating train, Prince’s men turned to matters close at hand. Gathering together commissary and quartermaster stores, along with four carloads of powder and ammunition, the Yankee raiders ran their captured booty a safe distance out of town and ignited it. Other squads of Federal soldiers raced north and south along the tracks tearing up rails, demolishing trestlework, and disrupting telegraph wires.

The thud of captured artillery shells exploding in the bonfire startled Grierson as he approached Hazelhurst from the east. With orders to trot, gallop, march echoing down the column, the horsemen flew to the aid of their comrades, only to discover they had been sold again. Sharing a good laugh, Grierson’s troopers broke ranks and retired to the hotel, where they partook of a banquet of captured food. With full bellies, they remounted and rode westward out of town, toward the river. All evening they fended off Rebel vedettes who harassed the front and flanks of their column.

That night and the following morning, Confederate forces converged on the Yankee horsemen from the north and west. Learning of Grierson’s appearance at Hazelhurst, Pemberton threw his forces into action. He most feared that the enemy would swing back to the northwest, cross the Big Black River, and strike again at the Southern Railroad, interrupting communications between Jackson and Vicksburg. Unable to second-guess the elusive Grierson, he restlessly maneuvered far-flung cavalry in a fruitless effort to defend all possible targets at once. He dispatched a battalion of cavalry under Captain W.W. Porter south from Jackson along the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad. He ordered Colonel Wirt Adams’s cavalry at Grand Gulf to move eastward to cut the Federals off from Port Gibson. Until Adams arrived on the scene, Colonel R.V. Richardson, the unorthodox leader of the 1st Tennessee Partisan Rangers, would hold overall command of the operation. Another courier carried orders to Barteau at Prairie Mound to move without delay to Hazelhurst.

With Confederates closing in, Grierson broke camp at 6:00 a.m. on the 28th. Dry, hard roadbeds were a welcome change from the muddy quagmires of the past several days. Near mid-morning, he sent Captain George W. Trafton and four companies of the 7th east to strike the railroad at Bahala. Trafton’s detachment returned before dawn on April 29, bringing Grierson the dismaying news that he was poised in the jaws of a Rebel trap. Its mission of destruction at Bahala completed, the battalion was approaching the Federal camp at Union Church around 1:00 a.m. when Sergeant Surby and Private George Steadman stumbled upon Rebel pickets belonging to old Wirt Adams’ cavalry. The soldiers revealed that when reinforcements arrived in the morning, Adams intended to give the ‘Yanks’ h—-l between Union Church and Fayette, a few miles to the west.

Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts

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