18641776 Club
Forrest's 3,500 men rout Sturgis and 8,100 at Brice's Cross Roads; 16 Union guns taken
A Federal column sent into Mississippi to stop Forrest comes apart: 2,612 Union casualties, more than 1,600 prisoners, and Sherman's railroad still under threat.
Sherman's Atlanta Campaign ran on a single thread of railroad — the Nashville and Chattanooga line — and Nathan Bedford Forrest kept threatening to cut it. In early June 1864, Brigadier-General Samuel D. Sturgis led 8,100 men into northern Mississippi specifically to neutralize him. On June 10, near Baldwyn, Forrest's 3,500 cavalry met Sturgis at Brice's Cross Roads and turned a Federal expedition into a rout, inflicting 2,612 Union casualties while suffering 493 of his own — and walking away with 16 artillery pieces and more than 1,600 prisoners…
