15
Central Tennessee was now under firm control of the Union army. The Mississippi River was in Union hands all the way down to just north of Memphis. Vital rail lines had been taken by the Yankees. But if the Federals thought that the war was nearly over (and many did) they were badly mistaken.
East Tennessee was a hotbed of pro-Union feelings, with civilians and soldiers alike prone to taking potshots at each other. Neighbor feuded with neighbor over the war, and as in other parts of the divided country, families would be forever split.
Jamie and his Marauders had made it through East Tennessee on the way west without incident. It was much different this time. The four companies of Marauders had been ambushed by civilians half a dozen times on their way to Chattanooga, and to a man, they were getting damn sick and tired of it. Just across the Tennessee border, Jamie received orders by wire to turn his Marauders around and ride back to northeast Alabama. The Yankees were burning civilian homes in retaliation for attacks on Union held railroad lines.
“Now that is evil,” Captain Jennrette said.
Jamie agreed. “We’ll see if we can’t do something about that.”
For a very brief period of time, the North had come up with its own version of the Marauders, a group of Union soldiers led by a spy named Andrews. They called themselves the Raiders. But they weren’t too successful at the guerrilla business. Early in April, they did manage to steal a Confederate train in Georgia and drive it to within about twenty-five miles of Chattanooga. There, their luck ran out. They were stopped and captured, and the leader of the Raiders and half a dozen of his men were hanged as spies.
The Union just didn’t quite have this business of guerrilla warfare down pat as yet.
But Jamie MacCallister did.
“This Yankee bastard come up to our house,” an elderly man told Jamie, pointing to the burned-out hulk of what had once been a modest house. “Said there had been an attack on a train. Said we was gonna have to suffer the consequences. The son of a bitch then kilt our cows and hogs and chickens, stole our horses, and then burnt down our home. He and his men been doing that all over this part of the country.”
“Does he have a name?” Jamie asked, feeling rage building deep within him. If the Yankees wanted to fight this war in such a despicable manner, Jamie would show them that both sides could play at this game.
“General Ormsby Mitchell and some foreign-talkin’ bastard named Turchin. We call him the Turd.”
Colonel John Turchin had been born in Russia and spoke heavily accented English.
“So they’re making war on civilians?” Jamie asked.
“You bet,” the old man replied. “And that ain’t all. Turd Turchin turned his men loose over in Athens, and the Damn Yankees looted the town and raped women. Now they’ve started hangin’ men.”
Jamie gave the old couple some food from the Marauders’ supply and led his men up the road for about a mile, then halted them.
“Sparks, take some men and find out if what that old man said is true. If it is, we’ve got a little score to settle.”
With a grin, Captain Sparks and a dozen men rode off.
“The Yankees had no call to do harm to that old man and woman,” Captain Dupree said, anger evident in his tone. “Just no call at all.”
“No,” Jamie replied. “But for every home they burn, we’ll kill ten Yankees. For every town they loot, we’ll kill fifty, for every man they hang, we’ll kill a hundred, and for every woman they rape, we’ll kill two hundred. And that is a promise.”
The next few weeks were going to be bloody ones in North Alabama.
* * *
Jamie sent a messenger to Beauregard, telling him of the atrocities committed against civilians. Beauregard was furious. He sent the messenger back with orders for Jamie to “Act as you see fit against the Yankees who are waging war against civilians in North Alabama.”
Captain Sparks had returned and verified that Union troops were indeed looting and burning and terrorizing and sometimes raping Southern women in retaliation for Rebel raids against the railroad.
Other men Jamie had sent out reported back that the commanding general of the Army of the Ohio, Major General Carlos Buell, knew nothing of the rapine and rape taking place by some of his troops.
“He will before long,” Jamie vowed. “When he starts finding shot, hanged, or horse-whipped Yankee soldiers.”
The words were spoken with such a cold hardness that the men close to Jamie had to suppress a shudder.
Jamie walked off, his back stiff with anger.
“He’s takin’ this right personal, ain’t he?” Sergeant Major Huske said.
“Rape has touched his family, I believe,” Captain Dupree said. “And his home has been raided more than once by renegades. Yes. He takes such things very personally.”
Beauregard’s message to Jamie concerning the unsoldierly like behavior of some Union troops, and Jamie’s disposition of the same, was one of the last orders he would give as commander of the Army of the Mississippi. Davis replaced him early that summer with General Bragg.
Jamie sent scouts out to locate the camps and the strength of those troops who seemed to take satisfaction in the looting of towns and the raping of women and the hanging of civilians. Two days later, he had the locations of ten camps, and the information checked and verified.
One camp was less than eight miles away from Jamie’s present location. His companies had been broken up into small units so they could better hide in the brush and timber. With his scouts back, he had gathered all his men together.
“What is the strength of this unit here?” Jamie asked, pointing at the map.
“Two companies, Colonel.”
Jamie was thoughtful for a moment. Then he smiled a very hard curving of the lips. “We’ll hit them late this afternoon. Just when they’re settling in for supper. We take everything we can, and what we can’t, we burn. Those left alive we strip naked and tie them in a line and put them on the road.”
Captain Jennrette chuckled. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Just as the sun was beginning to set over the horizon, Jamie and his Marauders had walked their horses to within easy striking distance of the Union camp. This particular bunch of Yankee renegades were so confident their guards were careless and not very alert. They were standing at their posts, rifles on the ground, eating supper.
The Marauders hit the unfortunate camp from four sides, screaming like banshees and striking hard. The Federals must have thought the devil had unleashed his demons from hell; for many of them, that was their last thought as the Marauders shot and cut and slashed their way through the camp.
These troops were accustomed to ordering unarmed civilians about; they were used to taking what they wanted by brute force. Up to now, they had seen no real combat. The survivors would know the horror of it and remember it for the rest of their lives—as well as the humiliation that was about to follow.
The attack had been so sudden and so completely unexpected, Jamie’s companies suffered only four wounds, and they were minor. The two companies of Federals sustained more than fifty dead and at least that many wounded, some of whom would not last out the night.
When the Federals saw the battle flag of the Marauders, a few of them became so frightened they dropped to their knees and began praying.
The battle—if it could be called that—lasted for less than two minutes.
Jamie’s men worked swiftly. They loaded up the supplies on pack horses, tore down the tents, and threw the blankets and spare clothing onto the growing pile.
Jamie faced the line of prisoners. “Strip,” he told them. “Right down to the buff.”
“I’ll do no such thing!” an officer blurted, his face red from anger and embarrassment.
Jamie hit him in the mouth with the butt of a Sharps rifle with such force several teeth were knocked out and the officer hit the ground, unconscious.
“Strip!” Jamie roared, and the troops quickly began peeling out of their uniforms.
The Marauders had brought hundreds of feet of rope with them, and it was quite a sight: a hundred men buck naked right down to the soles of their feet, all in a line, hands tied behind their backs, their ankles hobbled so they could only take very short steps. Another rope was lashed tightly around each waist, then running to the next man, until they were all tied together, from the front of the line to the rear.
Using the Yankee’s own meager medical supplies, the doctor and his assistant assigned to the Marauders did what they could for the wounded.
Then Jamie repeated what he had told his own men several days before. “Tell your commanding officer this,” he told the line of naked men. “For every home you burn, I’ll kill ten Yankee soldiers. For every town you loot, there will be fifty dead Yankees. For every Southern man you hang, we’ll kill a hundred of you bastards, and for every woman raped, there will be two hundred dead Union soldiers. Now get the hell moving!”
The long line of troops silently began shuffling off up the road.
“I wish we could give these tents to the people whose homes were destroyed,” Captain Malone said.
“No,” Jamie told him. “If they’re found with Yankee property, that would be grounds for imprisonment. Burn everything.”
The out-of-uniform Yankee soldiers were found by a Union patrol just after dark and quickly taken to the nearest encampment.
Colonel John Turchin was livid with rage when he was awakened later on that evening and informed of the events.
“I’ll not have my loyal troops humiliated in such a manner,” he said. “I want this goddamned Jamie MacCallister. Dead or alive.” He moved to a map and pointed to a tiny settlement located in the northeast corner of the state. “Burn this town to the ground,” he ordered.
The settlement was wiped from the face of the map the next morning.
The next day, Jamie and his Marauders struck a Union camp, and the few soldiers who were left alive staggered wild-eyed into Turchin’s camp in a near hysterical state.
Turchin was taken to the battle site and stood stunned for a moment: dead troops lay all about, at least a hundred of them. But the wounded had been taken care of as best they could be in the field.
“What manner of man is this Colonel MacCallister?” he murmured.
“He’s a devil!” one of the surviving officers of the attack said. “And so is every man who rides with him.”
Turchin said nothing in reply to the frightened officer. Back at his headquarters—a nice home that he had commandeered, throwing the owner and his wife out into the road—Turchin ordered the looting and burning to continue and an all-out search for the capture of Jamie and his Marauders.
Before those orders could be carried out, Major General Don Carlos Buell came in and took command. He ordered the looting and burning to stop and vowed to hang any Union soldier who engaged in rape or pillage of civilians. He very quickly had Colonel Turchin arrested and court-martialed and drummed out of the service. But not for long, however. President Lincoln earned the everlasting hatred of many Southerners when he personally intervened and ordered not only that Turchin be returned to active duty, but promoted to general. It was one of Lincoln’s major blunders.
The looting and sacking and raping and burning in North Alabama ceased—for a time, anyway. But for several weeks during the summer of 1862, Jamie and his Marauders left their mark forever in the minds of those Union soldiers who served in North Alabama.
Their orders completed, Jamie and his men took a different route to the border of Tennessee, crossing without incident, and rode on toward Chattanooga.
Except for a few minor skirmishes, Union and Confederate forces had spent the first few weeks of summer rebuilding their armies, for Bull Run and Shiloh had taken a terrible toll on both sides.
Now they were ready to bloody each other again.