Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865 277
the Confederate position and pointed out the four hundred troopers without horses as
the vanguard of a nonexistent infantry force. He arranged the horses of other cavalrymen
who were then in the firing line, fighting on foot, to suggest the presence of another
four thousand horsemen beside those he had already committed to battle. While
Campbell was viewing the horses, Forrest’s two batteries changed ground, convincing
the federal commander that he confronted a force nearly as large and with even more
artillery as the one his prisoner had spoken of the night before. After viewing Forrest’s
display, Campbell concluded that he faced an enemy force of at least eight thousand
men and told his officers, according to their account, “The jig is up; pull down the flag.”
While the estimate was double Forrest’s actual strength, it was similar to figures offered
that week by other federal commanders, who reported anywhere from six thousand to
eight thousand Confederate raiders in northern Alabama. At 11:00, Campbell surrendered
the fort and its garrison of 571, including twenty-nine officers and 418 enlisted
men of the 106th, 110th, and 111th USCIs. “It is reported that the captured Colored
Troops were marched South to be given back to their owners,” Colonel Mussey wrote
a week later, when the news reached Nashville. “I do not think they were butchered by
Forrest.” 44
Mussey was partly right. There was no massacre of the surrendered troops. After
the surrender, the Confederates separated captive officers from enlisted men. The officers
headed west toward Memphis, parole, and eventual exchange. The men marched
south. Rather than languish in one of the South’s notorious prison camps, they traveled
to Mobile, where most of them labored on the city’s fortifications. Some worked as
blacksmiths, like Pvt. Dick Brown of the 110th USCI, or hospital nurses, like Pvt. Simon
Rhodes of the 111th. Others, sick or injured, spent time in Confederate hospitals,
as did Sgt. Anthony Redus and Cpl. William Redus, both of the 110th. 45
Most of the captured enlisted men remained with the Confederates until the spring
of 1865, but some escaped. Pvt. John Young of the 111th, who had been hit in the head
by a shell fragment, noticed that there was no guard on the wounded prisoners and simply
walked away while en route to Mobile. He rejoined the remains of his regiment by
mid-October. The men who filled the ranks of the 106th, 110th, and 111th came mostly
from the country between Decatur, Alabama, and Pulaski, Tennessee. Their knowledge
of local geography must have helped a number of them to escape. 46
Local connections could help in other ways, too. William Rann had left
home when Union occupiers withdrew from northern Alabama late in 1862 and
had worked as an officer’s servant before joining the 110th USCI. As the prisoners
moved through Tuscumbia, some forty miles west of Athens, “my old master
44 Ibid., pp. 505–06, 523–24 (“The jig is up,” p. 524); Capt R. D. Mussey to 1st Lt C. P. Brown, 3
Oct 1864 (“It is reported”), 110th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; Thomas Jordan and J[ohn] P. Pryor,
The Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. N. B. Forrest, and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New York: Da Capo Press,
1996 [1868]), pp. 562–63. In the preface (p. xiv), the biographers quote a letter in which Forrest said
that he provided them with “all the facts and papers in my possession or available to me. . . . For the
greater part of the statements of the narrative I am responsible.”
45 Deposition, William Redus, 19 Mar 1891, in Pension File SC569893, Dick Brown; Deposition,
Simon Rhodes, 12 May 1888, in Pension File SC404448, Henry Everly; Deposition, Anthony Redus,
3 Sep 1883, in Pension File SC253310, Anthony Redus; Deposition, William Redus, 12 Mar 1903, in
Pension File WC905951, William Redus; all in Civil War Pension Application Files (CWPAF), RG
15, Rcds of the Dept of Veterans Affairs, NA.
46 Proof of Incurrence of Disability, 20 Nov 1900, in Pension File SC615667, John Young,
CWPAF; Deposition, Jesse Phillips, 12 May 1888, in Pension File SC404448, Everly.