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Special Feature: Scene of a severe battle in which Confederate cavalry was employed with extraordinary skill.

TO COMMEMORATE the remarkable incidents of the battle of Brices Cross Roads, Miss., fought on June 10, 1864, and to preserve the central portion of the field on which it occurred, the Federal Government in 1929 acquired an acre of ground there and named it Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site.

The natural features of the area surrounding this site have changed but little since the battle was fought there. Save for a few small clearings and cultivated fields, the country is covered with an almost impenetrable growth of blackjack oak and underbrush, with foliage so thick as to obscure all objects more than a few feet from the spectator. In such surroundings was fought one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War in proportion to the numbers engaged. It was a battle in which the troops on both sides displayed amazing fortitude under nearly intolerable conditions, and so strikingly illustrates the successful employment of dismounted cavalry in the role of infantry.

Early in May 1864 General Sherman opened his campaign against Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army in northern Georgia, beginning his operations simultaneously with those of Grant against Lee's army in Virginia. As he pushed southward toward Atlanta his line of communications grew constantly longer and more vulnerable to attacks by Confederate raiders. Toward the end of May he learned that Gen. Nathan B. Forrest was about to move from northern Mississippi into middle Tennessee with a strong mounted force to break the Federal line of supply. Accordingly he ordered General Washburn, in command at Memphis, Tenn., to send out an expedition to intercept Forrest. A force under Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis, consisting of about 4,800 infantry, 3,300 cavalry, 22 pieces of artillery, and a supply train of 250 wagons, left Memphis on June 1 and marched southeastward into Mississippi.

Forrest, who had about 4,800 troops, cavalry and mounted infantry, and 12 guns in his command, was in a position of readiness some miles north of Brices Cross Roads, where the highway from Memphis to Fulton crosses that running north and south between Corinth and Pontotoc.

The two forces met in desperate conflict on the morning of June 10, in the midst of the dense thickets of blackjack, on a day that was suffocatingly hot, and the roads were deep in mud as a result of heavy rains. There was charge and countercharge, men fighting with sabers, clubbed carbines and revolvers as the steaming air grew stifling with the fumes of powder smoke.

The issue hung in the balance until late in the afternoon, when Forrest, employing his usual shrewd tactics, sent Confederate columns to assail the Federal flanks and rear. This maneuver succeeded, and the Northern army was forced to retire. Then, in the excited efforts of the wagon train to make good its retreat, a vehicle was overturned on the bridge over Tishomingo Creek. Other wagons crashed into it, the bridge became choked, and the retreat became a rout, the whole Federal army pouring back in disorder through the night toward Memphis. They lost all their wagons and ambulances, 18 pieces of artillery, 5,000 stand of small arms, 500,000 rounds of ammunition, and all of their baggage and supplies. The combat losses were heavy on both sides. Though the Federal army suffered a severe defeat, in a sense it had accomplished its mission. Forrest was not destroyed, but he was effectually prevented, at this important juncture, from interfering with the communications of Sherman's army as it fought its way toward Atlanta.

In 1932 the War Department erected at Brices Cross Roads a simple, dignified memorial of granite, a fitting tribute to the notable event which occurred there.

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