November 4, 1864: Battle of Johnsonville Begins

 

Next Johnsonville attracted his attention, where Sherman had collected his stores, and the gunboats once terrible conniption floated grandly and proudly at its doors, but Forrest’s artillery battalion, Morton, Rice and Waltham and Thrall, set fire to Sherman’s gunboats and transports, nor ceased till they had burned them all.

Line from Confederate song celebrating the victories of General Nathan Bedford Forrest

 The handwriting was on the wall by the beginning of November 1864 that the Confederacy was going down to defeat, but that did not stop General Nathan Bedford Forrest from staging perhaps his greatest raid.  The Union had established a huge supply depot at Johnsonville, Tennessee on the Tennessee River and that was Forrest’s target.  On October 29-30 with artillery he placed at Fort Heiman, Forrest captured three Union gunboats.  Repairing two of them he used them for his attack on Johnsonville.  With his artillery and his tiny flotilla, Forrest closed river traffic to Johnsonville, beat off Union gunboats, and got close enough to Johnsonville to bombard it.  28 Union steamboats and barges were lost, either sunk by Forrest’s artillery, or burned by the Union commander who feared that Forrest would capture them.  Seeing the depot ablaze, Forrest withdrew, his mission accomplished.  Forrest destroyed millions of dollars worth of Union supplies and destroyed 4 gunboats, 14 transports, 20 barges, 26 pieces of artillery.  This raid crippled Sherman’s supply line, and  made Grant nervous about Sherman’s planned March to the Sea with a raider of the caliber of Forrest left free to devastate Union supply lines.  Here is Forrest’s report on the raid: