Customer Reviews

Grierson's Raid: A Daring Cavalry Strike Through the Heart of the Confederacy

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I was excited when this book was reprinted. It was unavailable for quite awhile. I finished reading it and wasn't disappointed. I am amazed at how significant this raid was to the capture of Vicksburg, and yet a couple of large Civil War atlases that I own either make no mention of Grierson's raid or only show it as a squigly line on a map of the Vicksburg campaign. This raid even caught the attention of Hollywood who made a movie loosely based on the raid (Horse Soldiers, John Wayne).

Colonel Grierson's raid was nothing short of brilliant. Sort of a dress rehearsal for Sherman's march from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean and into North Carolina. In both the raid and during Sherman's "March to the Sea", head on attacks against fortified positions and large forces were avoided. Instead, like Sun Tsu's water following the path of least resistance, Grierson and Sherman avoided enemy strength and attacked weakness.

Like a fighter pilot, his speed was his armor. By foraging the countryside for food and horses, and using guile, deception and speed (including serious sleep deprivation for his men and horses), he avoided the disasters that befell other Union raids around the same time.

The book has a very good map at the beginning of the book and reads almost like a novel, using letters and memoirs of Grierson and some of his troops and officers to add situational awareness and authenticity.

Loved the book. Strongly recommend.

I bought this one on a whim, but am very glad I did. I knew very little about Grierson, or what he did for the war, and was very impressed, not only by the amount of research done by the author, but by the man himself. I would call Grierson the Patton of the Civil War.

Paul Buckner,

author of: "From Broke To Broker: Stories of Finding Financial Freedom"
and
"Gabriel Jennings and The Ferret Freedom Fighters."