Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 9.djvu/101

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CHAPTER IX.

CONFEDERATE CAVALRY—THE TWO GREAT LEADERS—JOHN HUNT MORGAN, ORIGINATOR OF THE RAID —SKETCH OF HIS LIFE—HIS ENTRANCE UPON DUTY AND EARLY EXPLOITS-RAPID GROWTH OF HIS COMMAND—HIS DASHING RAIDS— NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST—HIS STRIKING CHARACTERISTICS AND VALUABLE SERVICE—GENERAL BUELL'S EMBARRASSMENTS—HOW HE WAS HARASSED BY THESE TWO COMMANDERS-MORGAN’S FIRST GREAT RAID THROUGH KENTUCKY— HIS FULL REPORTS OF SAME— EFFECT OF HIS BRILLIANT MOVEMENT—THE CONSTERNATION CREATED BY IT—CAPTURE OF MURFREESBORO BY GENERAL FORREST WITH 1,400 PRISONERS—GENERAL BUELL'S COMMENTS ON SAME—HIS MOVEMENTS PARALYZED BY THESE RAIDS—CAPTURE OF GALLATIN, TENN., WITH MANY PRISONERS, BY GENERAL MORGAN IN BUELL'S REAR—DESTRUCTION OF HIS LINES OF COMMUNICATION—DEFEAT OF BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHNSON AT HARTSVILLE, AND HIS CAPTURE BY GENERAL MORGAN-MORGAN'S ADDRESS TO HIS COMMAND.

UP to this time cavalry had played an unimportant part in the operations of either army. With no reflection upon the merits of other commanders of cavalry, as Forrest and Wheeler in the West and J. E. B. Stuart and Hampton in the East, who afterwards became conspicuous for their great achievements, the man who first demonstrated in the Confederate war the value of cavalry as an adjunct to the infantry, and who above all others was the originator during the war of that system of effective warfare known as the raid, was John H. Morgan. His was not the cavalry known before his time, as the compact, slow-moving, heavily accoutered horsemen, who moved with infantry and were used upon the

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