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

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As they pushed on through the early morning darkness toward the Comite River, the jaded cavalrymen began to drift off to sleep. Men by the score, and I think by fifties, were riding sound asleep in their saddles, Captain Forbes recalled. The horses, excessively tired and hungry, would stray out of the road and thrust their noses to the earth in hopes of finding something to eat. A handful of officers and enlisted men passed up and down the flanks of the ragged column, riding herd on straying men and mounts.

Daylight on May 2 found the Yankee raiders approaching Big Sandy Creek, seven miles east of the Comite River ford. As sleeping soldiers jerked stiffly upright in their saddles, the scouts spotted 150 tents dotting the opposite bank. A quick charge by two companies of the 6th secured the camp. Most of the men were off in Mississippi looking for Grierson’s raiders; of the 40 who had remained to guard the crossing, all but one fell into Yankee hands. While the 6th stayed behind to destroy tents and equipment, Grierson pressed on with the 7th toward the Comite.

Captured officers told Grierson of the Confederate guard at Roberts’ Ford on the Comite. Yankee scouts confirmed the presence of an encampment amidst a cluster of trees on the river’s eastern bank. The Rebels seemed oblivious to the approach of Yankee cavalry. On the morning of May 2, at about 9 a.m., I was surprised by a body of the enemy, under command of Colonel Grierson, numbering upward of 1,000 men, wrote Captain B.F. Bryan, the Confederate commander at Roberts’ Ford. They made a dash and surrounded me on all sides before I was aware that they were other than our own troops, their advanced guard being dressed in citizens’ garb.

A dozen shots from Yankee carbines transformed the tranquil grove into a scene of chaos. In the confusion, Bryan escaped by hiding in the moss-draped branches of a nearby tree. Most of my men being on picket, and having only about 30 of them immediately in camp, he reported, there was no possible chance of my making a stand. Few of his soldiers escaped; he assessed his loss at 38 men, 38 horses, 2 mules, 37 pistols, 2,000 rounds of cartridges, and our cooking utensils.

The Yankee raiders forded the swollen Comite half a mile upstream, and Grierson ordered them into bivouac four miles outside the Union lines at Baton Rouge. Sleep came easily to the exhausted troopers, but their commander, having come this far, felt he could hardly afford to relax his vigilance. After posting a guard, the former music teacher proceeded to a nearby house, where he astonished the occupants by sitting down and playing upon a piano which I found in the parlor, Grierson recalled. In that manner, I managed to stay awake, while my soldiers were enjoying themselves by relaxation, sleep, and quiet rest. A breathless orderly interrupted his recital with news of enemy skirmishers advancing from the direction of Baton Rouge. Confident that the enemy must be part of Major General Nathaniel Banks’s Federal command in that city, Grierson rose from his piano stool and rode out to meet his visitors.

Dismounting and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, the mud-spattered Grierson hailed Captain J. Franklin Godfrey and two companies of the Federal 1st Louisiana Cavalry. The raiders had reached Union-controlled territory.

At 3:00 p.m. on May 2, a cloud of dust rose over the Bayou Sara Road. Citizens and soldiers flocked to the streets of Baton Rouge, eager to catch the first view of the daring raiders. With sabers drawn, the dusty troopers of the 6th Illinois Cavalry rode four abreast through the crowd-lined avenues. Close behind, the four guns of Smith’s battery wobbled ludicrously on makeshift wheels that had been improvised to replace those broken during the expedition. A hundred or more morose prisoners trudged in the wake of the swaying artillery pieces and, behind them, 500 former slaves in every conceivable style of plantation dress and undress, each one mounted, and leading from two to three other horses, and many of them armed with shotguns and hunting rifles. Behind the contrabands (slaves who had fled from their owners to Union lines) lumbered a ragtag assortment of wheeled vehicles. Aboard were the sick and wounded, most suffering from painfully swollen legs caused by extended riding. Colonel Prince’s 7th Illinois, also in columns of fours and with drawn sabers, brought up the rear.

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

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