Forrest and Thomas

On today's date in 1864, Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry won the Battle of Sulphur Trestle, the day after their victory at Athens, Alabama. The next month Forrest launched a long northward raid into Tennessee, winding up in early November with a highly successful attack on Johnsonville, west of the Union base at Nashville. This latter coup prompted Sherman's famous rant about how "that devil Forrest must be hunted down and killed if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the federal treasury."

Major General George Thomas, in command at Nashville, sent John Schofield with a couple of brigades to Johnsonville in response. A month later, John Bell Hood's army was encamped south of Nashville, and he detached Forrest to Murfreesboro (as Bragg and Davis in 1863 had detached Longstreet to Knoxville). At the Third Battle of Murfreesboro on Dec. 5, the Confederates were bested by Union forces including a brigade under the ubiquitous Vladimir Krzyzanowski (a recurring character in The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant).

 Later in December, after Thomas' crushingly effective offensive at Nashville, Forrest ran an effective rearguard campaign for Hood's retreating army as it left Tennessee forever. He was appointed lieutenant general the next year, a higher rank than Thomas ever achieved, burnishing his legend (or, from another perspective, his notoriety). But Forrest had much less influence on the war than the Union-loyal Virginian who was in command of US forces in that Tennessee campaign.