Image Size: 17-3/4” x 28”
Limited edition print

In November of 1864, General William T. Sherman prepared to lead a powerful Northern army in a devastating “March to the Sea” across Georgia. In a desperate attempt to stall Sherman’s campaign, General John Bell Hood led his Confederate army from Georgia back into the heart of Tennessee. Southerners hoped that Hood’s advance would prevent Sherman from ravaging the Deep South – but it was not to be. Northern forces were strong enough to oppose Hood with other armies: Federal troops under General George H. Thomas and John M. Schofield. In late November, Hood attempted to envelop and destroy Schofield’s forces near Spring Hill, Tennessee. Leading the Confederate advance was General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry, which forded the Duck River on November 28, and spearheaded the attack. They moved their horses through the icy river, looking for battle.

Although unable to affect the campaign’s outcome, Forrest and his Confederate cavalry again set the standard for bold and courageous action. They aggressively engaged the Northern forces before them -- driving back the Northern cavalry, pressing the Federal infantry, and attacking Northern supply trains. Forrest’s success was typical of the fabled “Wizard of the Saddle.”

For untold ages, students of the War Between the States would marvel at Forrest’s tactics and triumphs. Decades after Southern flags were folded and rifles were stacked, former Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was asked to name the single most successful commander of the Civil War. It had to be Nathan Bedford Forrest, Johnston mused, concluding that had the self-trained Forrest possessed a West Point education, he would have been “the great central figure of the Civil War.”