Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865 219
time,” Lieutenant Buswell recorded in his diary. “Smith gave Forrest the roughest
handling he has had for a long time,” 1st Lt. Samuel Evans of the 59th USCI
told his father. An interesting feature of Confederate accounts of the fighting is
that only one report mentions the presence of “negroes” in the Union ranks. The
reason cannot have been the effectiveness of Bouton’s troops’ concealment in their
ambushes, for they were in plain sight earlier in the day. They had not been the
object of the main attacks on 14 July, which most Confederate reports emphasized.
After the battle, the Union force withdrew with its 559 wounded (48 in Bouton’s
brigade), and only 38 federal soldiers were missing (16 from the 61st USCI), so
incidents of killing the wounded and returning prisoners to slavery, or setting them
to work on fortifications did not occur and require explanation. Perhaps, too, the
Confederate commanders had other matters on their minds after the battle: for instance,
the necessity of explaining away their lack of success against a Union force
in which one-seventh of the soldiers were black. 80
No sooner were General Smith’s regiments back in Memphis, properly fed
and with their stock of ammunition replenished, than General Washburn ordered
them after Forrest again. Smith’s force, including Bouton’s brigade, returned to La
Grange by rail and set out for Holly Springs, Mississippi, on 4 August. Sherman’s
instruction was to “take freely of all food and forage,” and the command helped
itself to whatever still grew in northern Mississippi after more than two years of
warfare: corn, potatoes, and fruit. The troops endured much rain but little fighting.
On 22 August, the day Bouton’s brigade reached Oxford, Smith learned the reason
he had not found many Confederates: Forrest, with two thousand men, had raided
Memphis the day before, intending to kill or capture Union commanders there. He
did not succeed but left town with more than one hundred other prisoners. Smith’s
expedition turned north, hoping to block Forrest’s retreat. Bouton’s brigade was
back in Memphis on 1 September, having covered fifty miles in the previous two
days—“some tall marching,” as Lieutenant Evans told his father. 81
The Oxford expedition marked the end of major infantry operations in which
U.S. Colored Troops from the Mississippi River garrisons took part. In Georgia,
Sherman’s army occupied Atlanta at the beginning of September. Preparations for
the March to the Sea—no one yet knew whether it would end at Mobile, Pensacola,
or Savannah—took up the next two months. Confederate raiders, Forrest among
them, busied themselves meanwhile in northern Alabama and Mississippi and in
Tennessee. Sherman, who had overall direction of Union armies from the Appalachians
to the Mississippi, issued instructions at the end of October. “Don’t be
concerned on the river,” he wrote from northern Georgia to Maj. Gen. Napoleon
J. T. Dana at Memphis. The enemy “cannot make a lodgment on the Mississippi.
. . . He cannot afford to attack forts or men entrenched, for ammunition is scarce
with him, and all supplies. . . . He will be dependent on the Mobile and Ohio [Rail]
road, which should be threatened on its whole length. . . . Give these ideas to all
80 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 255–56, 330; Buswell Jnls, 16 Jul 1864; S. Evans to Dear Father,
24 Jul 1864, Evans Family Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
81 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 471, and pt. 2, pp. 201, 221, 233 (“take freely”); Buswell Jnls, 9–22
Aug 1864; S. Evans to Dear Father, 1 Sep 1864, Evans Family Papers.