Page:History of the Forty-eighth Regiment, M.V.M. during the Civil War (IA historyoffortyei00plumm).pdf/71

night alarm from the picket line when we would hastily fall in in the darkness and prepare to meet an enemy that did not come. Such was our life for two months. Its monotony was broken on the 2d of May when Grierson with his troopers dusty, haggard and wayworn, rode into Baton Rouge. The story of their coming and of their incredible adventures flew like wild fire through the camps and the excitement was at a high pitch. Nothing like it had been known before in the war. Seventeen hundred men had ridden through the entire length of the State of Mississippi from the northeast to the southwest corner, encountering every conceivable danger and hardship. Thousands of Confederates had been trying to find and intercept them. But with matchless skill Grierson had escaped them by circuits, outwitted them by ruses, and attacked and routed them with far inferior numbers. In this raid of 600 miles through a country swarming with foes they had cut two railroads, burned nine bridges, destroyed two locomotives and nearly 200 cars, broken up three rebel duty, guard duty, and drill, varied occasionally by a camps, destroyed more than $4,000,000 worth of Confederate government property, captured and parolled 1,000 prisoners and brought in with them 1,200 captured horses. Hundreds of dark-hued patriots accompanied them into Baton Rouge mounted on mules and horses they had borrowed from their late masters. Some idea of the pluck and endurance of the Westerners may be obtained from the fact that during the twenty-eight hours preceding their arrival at Baton Rouge they had marched more than sixty miles, had four fights and crossed the Comite River where it was necessary to swim their horses.