Mississippi Operations
Union control of the Mississippi River had split the South in half. But large Confederate forces under
generals Richard Taylor and Sterling Price guarded the lands to the west of the river, while to
the east cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest posed a constant threat to Northern troops.
BEFORE
After the Union captures of New Orleans
❮❮ 96–97, Memphis ❮❮ 100–101, and
Vicksburg ❮❮ 190–93, the North controlled
the Mississippi River, but the Confederates
were still active in the river’s hinterland.
CONFEDERATE COMMANDS
Southern forces held most of Mississippi—the
state’s black prairie region was an important
granary, and General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s
feared horsemen roamed the pinewoods.
West of the Mississippi River, Confederate
General Kirby Smith was based in Shreveport,
Louisiana. General Sterling Price, the victor at
Wilson’s Creek in 1861 ❮❮ 70–71, faced Union
forces in southern Arkansas.
UNION STRATEGY
In his grand strategy for 1864, General Ulysses
S. Grant planned for General Sherman to
advance on Atlanta, leaving detachments in
Tennessee to patrol his long supply lines against
Forrest’s raiders. Grant hoped that General
Nathaniel Banks in New Orleans might
advance on Mobile, Alabama. But President
Lincoln wanted Banks, in conjunction with
Admiral David D. Porter’s river fleet, to attack
Shreveport via Louisiana’s Red River.
He hoped to isolate Texas and thwart any
Confederate alliance with the French in Mexico.
William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson
The most notorious of the Missouri “bushwhackers”
(Confederate guerrillas), Anderson led a gang that
included Frank and Jesse James. His atrocities ranged from
murder to scalping and even disemboweling his victims.
GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864F
or Union general William T.
Sherman, the Red River Campaign
of March–May 1864 was one
“damn blunder from beginning to end.”
General Nathaniel Banks’s target was
Shreveport, Louisiana, the Confederate
headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi
West, standing on the Red River, a
tributary of the Mississippi. But he was
routed by Richard Taylor at the Battle
of Mansfield on April 8. Although
Banks rallied the next day to fend off
Taylor at Pleasant Hill, Union
reinforcements from Arkansas were
also defeated, spelling doom for the
expedition. On the campaign’s naval
front, Admiral David D. Porter’s
gunboats were stranded upriver by
low water. They only escaped after the
herculean efforts of the 10,000 men
who built wing dams, which stemmed
the current enough to refloat the ships.The “Wizard of the Saddle”
In Mississippi, meanwhile, the Union’s
woes could be summed up in three
words: Nathan Bedford Forrest. The
fearsome Confederate cavalryman—
nicknamed the “Wizard of the Saddle”—
had for years been wreaking havoc in
Union-held Kentucky and Tennessee. He
also triggered outrage across the North
when, on April 12, 1864, while sackingFort Pillow to the north of Memphis,
he appeared to condone the massacre
of many of its black soldiers.
As spring turned to summer, the
Confederate forces in Mississippi,
guarding the western approaches to
the South’s vital Selma Arsenal in
Alabama, were increasingly needed in
the campaign against Sherman, who
had begun to move on Atlanta. Forrest
spurred northward to raid Sherman’s
long supply line, which snaked backthrough the hills of Tennessee. Sherman
dispatched General Samuel Sturgis from
Union-held Memphis to stop Forrest.
With only 4,800 troopers in his
command, Forrest lured Sturgis and his
8,500 men ever deeper down the rutted
Mississippi lanes. Then, on June 10, at
Brice’s Crossroads, Forrest sprang his
trap. Sturgis’s long columns, nearly
prostrated by unseasonable heat,
were bogged in mud and enclosed by
thickets. In a series of masterful frontal
and flank attacks, Forrest pushed the
Union soldiers back against the
rain-swollen Tishomingo Creek,
rolled his artillery forward, and
broke their line. His troopers chased
the Northerners nearly back to
Memphis. Having destroyed aBattle of Pleasant Hill
Readers of the May 14, 1864 edition of Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper could
study this depiction of General
Nathaniel Banks’s repulse
of Confederate forces
during his ill-starred
Red River expedition.force twice his size, Forrest captured
wagons, cannons, ammunition cases,
provisions, and prisoners.
Sherman then dispatched an entire
corps under General Andrew J. Smith,
who reached as far south as Tupelo,
Mississippi, before deciding to dig in.
On July 14–15, Forrest, reinforced with
infantry, threw charge after charge
against Smith’s earthworks, but each
was repulsed, and Smith managed to
withdraw in good order. Forrest had
been kept from attacking Sherman’s
supply line, and the Union commanders
in Memphis, protected by 6,000 troops,
could congratulate themselves on a
victory. Yet on August 21, the “Wizard”materialized in their midst, with 1,500
troopers galloping through the Memphis
streets seeking prisoners, supplies, and
horses, and chasing the Union district
commander, General Cadwallader
Washburn, out of his bed clad only in
a nightshirt. After that, more Union
troops, who would have been better
employed elsewhere, had to be pulled
back into the city.Raiding Missouri
A week later, in Arkansas, Confederate
General Sterling Price and 12,000 ragtag
cavalrymen trotted north on a raid into
Missouri, where Price had once been
governor. They hoped to take that state
for the Confederacy, or at least cause a
defeat that would harm Lincoln’s“There will never be peace
in Tennessee until Forrest
is dead!”
GENERAL SHERMAN IN A LETTER TO WAR SECRETARY EDWIN STANTON, JUNE 15, 1864