General Stephen D. Lee's plan was based on practical West Point doctrine- when faced with overwhelming odds, withdraw into your interior lines and consolidate your forces; make your enemy extend his supply lines; then fight him on ground of your own choosing. This plan was related to his subordinate, Maj. General Nathan Beford Forrest in a conference at Booneville, Miss. on June 9, 1864. A strong Union force of 10,000 was rapidly approaching from the west. Forrest had 4500 men scattered along the railroad. Lee told him to delay the Federals with part of his command while the rest would move to Okolona. There, Lee would gather what other forces he could for a stand in the open prairie, "where we can get a good look at them". Forrest was also told to use his own discretion in delaying the Federals.

Forrest intended to use his own discretion- and more. As soon as his superior was on the train to Okolona, Forrest ordered his cavalry brigades into motion- not to withdraw to Okolona, but to intercept the Federal column at a road junction called Brice's Crossroads. Colonel William Rucker , whose small brigade included the 7^th Tennessee, was riding with his commander the next morning when Forrest disclosed his plan. Rucker later quoted him:

That was about what happened that day and the Federals were pursued so vigorously that they lost all of their wagons, artillery and organization. The Union commanders' reports showed that they never understood how they were defeated so completely. It was believed that their cavalry was ineffective because the wooded terrain limited mounted operations, suggesting that they still thought cavalry fought cavalry with sabers on horseback. Forrest had no intentions of playing that outdated game. To him, the horse was simply a rapid way to move a soldier to a critical point on the battlefield, where he would dismount relatively fresh to fight with a rifle. He was less of a target and his fire was more accurate. Forrest didn't come up with the idea, but he certainly moved it from a secondary role for the cavalry to the primary one.

When he did fight mounted, it was usually after he had gotten the "skeer" on his opponent. At Brice's Crossroads he turned what was considered a disadvantage in fighting dismounted into an advantage. Every fourth man would hold the horses of the other three when fighting on foot, which was thought to weaken a cavalry unit's strength by one fourth. (Three men firing on foot were still more effective than four men firing from horseback were) After the Federals were routed Forrest used the relatively fresh horse-holders to pursue them, allowing the others to rest. This was the closest thing to a reserve that he ever had, other than possibly his escort, which he always used at some critical point on the battlefield. By 1864, his escort company was armed with captured Spencer repeaters. Ammunition was forwarded to them from the rest of the cavalry corps' captures on the battlefield. The escort paid a heavy price for their conspicuous position, however. Once, when Forrest was visiting General Dabney Maury's headquarters at Meridian, Miss., Maury told him that his escort was "a fine body of men and horses". "Yes it is", replied Forrest, "and that captain is the eighth captain who has commanded it. The other seven have all been killed in battle."

Forrest's deployment of his horse artillery was most radical. During a crucial moment at Brice's Crossroads, when the Yankee resistance was stiffening, he ordered his chief of artillery, Captain John Morton, to charge the enemy with his guns. Morton's men rode to within sixty yards of the Union line, unlimbered under heavy fire and sent shot and shell into the horrified Federals at point blank range; breaking the back of the Union resistance.

That Bedford Forrest was an "untutored genius" is widely known, but the suggestion by some of his peers that a West Point education would have made him more formidable is unlikely. The fact that he had no preconceived notions about strategy and tactics made him unpredictable. His natural ability to quickly evaluate a situation and act decisively set him apart from the more predictable West Point graduates. He was not able to drill a company beyond the most basic commands and considered anything more "an unnecessary tax upon men and horses". An example of his "unorthodox" evaluation of a tactical situation occurred during Hood's retreat after the disastrous Nashville campaign. Forrest, in charge of the rear-guard, had decided to make a stand against the pursuing Federals at a place south of Pulaski, Tennessee called Anthony's Hill. Reports that his flanks had been turned had unnerved his officers and they were suggesting a withdrawal. When he was told that the enemy was in his rear, he snapped, " Well, that means I'm in their rear too!" Disgusted with his officers' timidity, he rode off muttering, "I always carry my rear around with me".

Forrest was the antithesis of the blue-blood autocrats that comprised most of the officer corps. Many of them considered him an "uncouth vulgarian" and his contempt for their snobbery manifested in several conflagrations. During the pursuit of the Federals after Brice's Crossroads, Forrest and some of his men came upon a group of burning supply wagons. After ordering his men to dismount and extinguish the fires, he noticed a lieutenant sitting on his horse and asked him why he didn't help. "I'm an officer," was the reply. "I'll officer you!" shouted Forrest and the lieutenant was involuntarily dismounted by his commanding general. On another occasion, an officer who had refused to help row a boat in Forrest's presence quickly found himself swimming for his life in the Tennessee River. Of course, Forrest pulled no punches with his superiors either and usually ran afoul of all of them; considering them as foolish as the enemy commanders he fought against. As a result, many of his most brilliant victories were achieved in theatres of little strategic importance. By the time Forrest was considered as more than a "raider", it was too late for a man of his talent to save the Confederacy.

What Bedford Forrest did save was the cavalry itself. By the Civil War, that branch of service, in its traditional sense, had become obsolete- developments in weapons technology had seen to that- though many commanders refused to realize it. By merging the mobility of the cavalry with the more concentrated firepower of the infantry, Forrest created a mobile rapid deployment force that would give the cavalry a new tactical purpose, and enable it to survive the elimination of the horse itself.

This page was created by Cris Malone and is the property of the 7^th Tennessee Cavalry, Company D