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Work for Giants

The Campaign and Battle of Tupelo/Harrisburg, Mississippi, June-July 1864

Audiobooks, Civil War Era, Civil War Soldiers and Strategies, History, Military History, Understanding Civil War History

DescriptionDuring the summer of 1864 a Union column, commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith, set out from Tennessee with a goal that had proven impossible in all prior attempts—to find and defeat the cavalry under the command of Confederate major general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest’s cavalry was the greatest threat to the long supply line feeding Sherman’s armies as they advanced on Atlanta.

Smith marched at the head of his “gorillas,” veteran soldiers who were fresh from the Red River Campaign. Aside from diverting Confederate attention away from Sherman, Smith’s orders were to destroy Southern railroads and confront Forrest in Mississippi. Just weeks earlier, a similar Union expedition had met with disaster at the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, perhaps the greatest victory of Forrest’s military career.

Joined by reinforcements led by Lt. Gen. Stephen Dill Lee, Forrest and his men were confident and their morale had never been higher. However, for two weeks, Smith outmarched, outfought, and outmaneuvered the team of Lee and Forrest. In three days of bitter fighting, culminating in the battle at Harrisburg, the Confederates suffered a staggering defeat. Forrest’s corps was devastated. He and his men would recover but would never regain their earlier strength, nor would they ever again prove a serious threat to veteran Union infantry.

Work for Giants focuses on the details of this overlooked campaign and the efforts, postbattle and postwar, to minimize the outcome and consequences of an important Union victory. Parson draws heavily from previously untapped diaries, letters and journals, and eyewitness accounts, bringing to life the oppressive heat, cruel depredations, and brutal combat the soldiers encountered, and the stoic humor they used to endure them.

AuthorThomas E. Parson is a park ranger at the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center, a unit of Shiloh National Military Park. His research focuses on the military activities in North Mississippi during the Civil War. He is the author of Bear Flag and Bay State in the Civil War: The Californians of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, and several feature articles in Blue & Gray Magazine.

Praise

Work for Giants stands out as a model work of well-written, well-researched military history. Parson takes readers through the Tupelo Campaign’s inception, conduct, and execution with a thorough study of the battles and skirmishes and concludes with an authoritative analysis of the results and how participants and historians have remembered and argued over it. He also offers rich personalized descriptions of the key players on each side, giving life to the common soldiers’ experiences in their own words.”Civil War Monitor

Work for Giants fills an important historiographical gap in our understanding of the Civil War in the West and the broader context of the Atlanta campaign. In setting the record straight about this little-remembered episode in Civil War history, Parson has provided an invaluable contribution to the literature.”Journal of Southern History