Grierson's Raid
Part of theAmerican Civil War
Col. Benjamin Grierson leading his 6th Illinois Cavalry
Date April 17, 1863 (1863-04-17) – May 2, 1863 (1863-05-02) Location Start:La Grange, Tennessee End:Baton Rouge, Louisiana Result Union victory
Belligerents
United States (Union)	CSA (Confederacy)
Commanders and leaders
Benjamin H. Grierson	W. Wirt Adams Robert V. Richardson and others
Strength
3 regiments	Unknown

Grierson's Raid was aUnion cavalry raid during theVicksburg Campaign of theAmerican Civil War. It ran from April 17 to May 2, 1863, as a diversion fromMaj. Gen.Ulysses S. Grant's main attack plan onVicksburg, Mississippi.^[1][2]

Early in 1863,Major General Charles Hamilton, the commander of the Corinth section of Grant's division, suggested what would eventually become Grierson's Raid. Subsequently, due to Hamilton's insistence on procuring a command that would garner him more glory, Hamilton offered his resignation. Grant quickly accepted.^[3]

In theWestern Theater of the American Civil War, Confederate cavalry raids under commanders such asLt. Gen.Nathan Bedford Forrest andBrig. Gen.John Hunt Morgan had harassed Union expeditions, namely at theBattle of Parker's Crossroads, where Forrest captured three hundred Union soldiers underBrig. Gen.Jeremiah C. Sullivan, but lost all of the artillery pieces belonging to his own command.^[4] The task of drawing the attention of Confederate raiders away from theSiege of Vicksburg fell toCol.Benjamin Grierson, a former music teacher who disliked horses after being kicked in the head by one as a child. Grierson's cavalrybrigade consisted of the6th and7th Illinois and2nd Iowa Cavalry regiments.

Grierson and his 1,700 horse troopers, some in Confederate uniforms serving as scouts for the main force, rode over 600 miles (970 km) through hostile territory (from southernTennessee, through the State ofMississippi and into Union-heldBaton Rouge, Louisiana), over routes no Union soldier had traveled before. They tore up railroads and burned crossties, freedslaves, burned Confederate storehouses, destroyed locomotives and commissary stores, ripped up bridges and trestles, burned buildings, and inflicted ten times the casualties they received, all while detachments of his troops made feints confusing the Confederates as to his actual whereabouts, intent and direction. Total casualties for Grierson's Brigade during the raid were three killed, seven wounded, and nine missing. Five sick and wounded men were left behind along the route, too ill to continue. Grierson reported to have killed and wounded 100 Confederates, captured 500, destroyed between 50 and 60 miles of railroad, destroyed over 3,000 stands of arms (a rifle plus all its accompanying kit^[5]), and captured 1,000 horses and mules.^[6]

Confederate States ArmyLt. Gen.John C. Pemberton (1814-1881), commander of theVicksburg garrison on the east bank of theMississippi River behind heavily fortified trenches, had few cavalry and could do nothing to stop Grierson from rampaging further east in the state's interior.

Around the same period, on April 21, 1863, Confederate cavalry commander Maj. Gen.Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877), had however pursued and captured another Union Army cavalry raider, Col.Abel Streight (1828-1892), further east inAlabama following a different poorly supplied and poorly planned raid (Streight's Raid) by the generally more powerful and well-suppliedUnion Army.

Although many other divergent Confederate Army cavalry units pursued Col. Grierson vigorously across the state (most notablyWirt Adams' Cavalry Regiment andRobert V. Richardson's Tennessee Cavalry), they were unsuccessful in stopping the raid driving southward.^[1] Grierson and his troopers, exhausted by days in the saddle, ultimately rode into Union-occupiedBaton Rouge, Louisiana, the capital of the state in early May.^[7] With an entire division of Pemberton's Southern soldiers tied up and dug-in defending the vital Vicksburg-Jackson east/west railroad from the evasive Grierson on mobile horseback, combined with Northern Maj. Gen.William T. Sherman's (1820-1891) feint to the northeast of Vicksburg (in theBattle of Snyder's Bluff), the beleaguered Confederates were unable to muster the forces necessary to oppose Gen. Grant's eventual bypassing landing below Vicksburg on the east side of the lower Mississippi atBruinsburg.

The 1956historical novelThe Horse Soldiers byHarold Sinclair, and the 1959film of the same name loosely based on it – directed byJohn Ford, and starringJohn Wayne,William Holden andConstance Towers – are somewhat fictionalized versions of Grierson's Raid and theBattle of Newton's Station.

• Battle of Newton's Station
• Clan Grierson

Notes

Further reading

• Laliki, Tom (2004).Grierson's Raid: A Daring Cavalry Strike Through the Heart of the Confederacy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.ISBN 0-374-32787-4.
• Lardas, Mark (2010).Roughshod Through Dixie – Grierson’s Raid 1863, Osprey Raid Series #12; Osprey Publishing.ISBN 978-1-84603-993-5

32°52′0″N88°49′13″W / 32.86667°N 88.82028°W /32.86667; -88.82028

• 1863 in the United States
• Vicksburg campaign
• Cavalry raids of the American Civil War
• 1863 in Tennessee
• 1863 in Louisiana
• Military operations of the American Civil War in Tennessee
• Military operations of the American Civil War in Louisiana
• April 1863
• May 1863

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