J is for Johnsonville

"J" battles seemed rather difficult to find on my quest to do A-Z April Challenge about the Civil War.  I was thrilled when I came up with Johnsonville.  I actually knew a little about this battle from an American History Class I took in college. There is not a whole lot of information about this battle but what is there is interesting.  "In an effort to check the Union army’s advance through Georgia, Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led a 23-day raid culminating in an attack on the Yankee supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee. Swinging north from Corinth, Mississippi, toward the Kentucky border and temporarily blockading the Tennessee River at Fort Herman, Forrest then moved southward along the Tennessee River’s west bank, capturing several U.S. steamers and a gunboat which he later had to abandon. On November 4, Forrest began positioning his artillery across the river from the Federal supply base and landing at Johnsonville. The Union discovered the Confederates finishing their entrenchments and battery emplacements in the afternoon of the 4th. The Union gunboats and land batteries, across the river, engaged the Confederates in an artillery duel. The Rebel guns were well-positioned.   In fact, the Confederate artillery fire disabled the Union gunboats. Fearing that the Rebels might cross the river and capture the transports, the Union Army set fire to them. The wind then extended the fire to the piles of stores on the levee and to a warehouse loaded with supplies. Seeing the fire, the Confederates began firing on the steamboats, barges, and warehouses to prevent the Union soldiers from putting out the fire. An inferno illuminated Forrest’s night withdrawal, and he actually escaped Union clutches without serious loss. Damages totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.2 million. The next morning, on the 5th, some Confederate artillery bombarded the depot in the morning but then left. Although this brilliant victory further strengthened Forrest’s reputation and destroyed a great amount of Union materiel, it failed to stem the tide of Union success in Georgia. By this time, Forrest often harassed the Union Army, but, as this engagement demonstrated, he could not stop their operations."