Atlanta had fallen on September 2, and Forrest was hoping to draw Sherman away from that city to go after him. It didn't work. Sherman was getting ready for his March to the Sea and Savannah.
Forrest hated Sherman and Sherman hated him.
The Confederate general in charge of the Army of Tennessee, John Bell Hood, and Forrest did not get along at all. At one time Forrest supposedly threatened Hood, saying that if he were any more of a man, he'd take him. That was referring to Hood's loss of the use of one hand and loss of a leg in battle.
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The Blacks captured at the Battle of Athens were made up mostly of ex-slaves from around that town.
Forrest burned the Freedman's Camp at the John Brown plantation. John Brown, not the abolitionist at Harper's Ferry was a general in the Confederate Army and later Tennessee governor.
Blockhouses were made of wood.
Gene Salecker got interested in Forrest's1864 raid because many of the captured Union soldiers were aboard the ill-fated SS Sultana when it blew up and sank. He has written a book about the Sultana titled "Destruction of the Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History."
--Old Secesh
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