Grierson's Raid

The improbable Civil War raid that led to the Siege of Vicksburg, recounted by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
 

For two weeks in the spring of 1862, Colonel Benjamin Grierson and 1,700 Union cavalry troopers conducted a raid from Tennessee to Louisiana. It was intended to divert Confederate attention from Ulysses S. Grant’s army crossing the Mississippi River, a maneuver that would set the stage for the Siege of Vicksburg. Led by a former music teacher whose role in the Union cavalry was belied by his hatred of horses, Grierson’s Raid was not only brilliant, but improbably successful. The cavalrymen ripped up railway track, destroyed storehouses, took prisoners, and freed slaves. Colonel Grierson lost only three men through the whole expedition.

 

Rich and detailed, Grierson’s Raid is the definitive work on one of the most astonishing missions of the Civil War’s early days.