In the early 1800’s the McBride family and Street family were
neighbors having settled along the Elk River in south central Tennessee to
pursue farming interests. Both families
had migrated westward at the close of the Revolutionary War; each originated
out of Virginia. The McBride family took
a northerly route through eastern Tennessee while the Streets had come by way
of Georgia. In 1819, third great grandfather,
John McBride (1800-1855), married his young neighbor, Louisa Street (1803-1857).
Both their fathers had served in the War
of 1812 as Tennessee Volunteers. Louisa’s
father, Joseph Street, died during his service in 1815 returning from the
Battle of New Orleans. She was eleven at
the time. At 16, she married John, the
oldest son of James McBride (1773-1850).
A couple years later (1823), The Street and McBride families
were joined again by the marriage of Louisa’s younger brother, Anderson Street
(1805-1888) to John’s younger sister Keziah “Kisey” Abigail McBride (1805-1866). As a result of that second union, John and
Louisa’s children were “double cousins” to Keziah and Anderson’s children
through their father and their mother--
and there were plenty of cousins.
My line comes through Rev. William McBride (1829-1895), the
sixth of eleven children by John and Louisa.
Keziah and Anderson Street had 15 children. This was the generation of the Civil
War. All of Anderson and Kisey’s seven boys
served during the Civil War. Three would
not survive it. Both families moved into
Mississippi in the 1830’s. Kisey, her
husband Anderson and a number of other Street relatives are buried in the
Antioch Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery in Ripley, Mississippi. Kisey and John’s father, James McBride is
likely buried there also. He had lived
near Kisey and Anderson in Tippah County the last 15 years of his life. Unfortunately no grave marker has been found for James.
By James McBride’s death in 1850 the John McBride family had
a well-established farm in Holmes County Mississippi near the town of Lexington. It was about this time some of the next
generation of McBride’s moved on into Louisiana to develop their own interests. My great-great grandfather was one of those
settling in Jackson Parish, Louisiana.
His Street family double first cousins had mainly remained in Tippah
County, Mississippi.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Street cousins were
plentiful in north Mississippi. They
made an impact on their community. One
cousin, Solomon Street, is a standout historically. He and I share both sets of his grandparents. Joseph Street & Nancy Lucinda Key and James McBride & Sarah Ann Brock were his grandparents and my 4th great grandparents making us 1st cousins 4 times removed (twice)!
The following is a somewhat lengthy account of my double first
cousin (4 times removed), Solomon G. Street’s activities during the war—It’s an
article by Andrew Brown as published in the Journal of Mississippi History,
Volume 21, Number 3, July 1959.
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By Andrew Brown
Solomon G. Street, or Sol Street, was the son of Anderson
Street, one of the pioneer settlers of Tippah County, Mississippi. The elder
Street's home was about ten miles northwest of Ripley, the county seat, and
about fifteen miles south of Saulsbury, Tennessee. Little is known of the early
life of his son, who was a small boy when the family moved to Mississippi,
beyond the facts that he was thirty years old in 1861, that he was married -
his wife's name was Rhoda - and that he was making a good living as a carpenter
when the Civil War broke out.
Sometime between March and May, 1861, he enlisted in the
Magnolia Guards, a volunteer company that had been organized at Ripley in late
1860 or early 1861. The Magnolia Guards assembled at Ripley on April 30,
marched to Saulsbury, and there took the cars for Corinth where they became
Company F of the Second Mississippi Infantry.
The Second Mississippi was sent almost immediately after its
organization to Lynchburg, Virginia, where on May 9 it was mustered into the
provisional army of the Confederate States. On the same day Street was made
third sergeant of his company and served in that capacity for more than a year.
He was a giant of a man, possessed of a booming voice that carried into the
farthest recesses of the regimental camp. After Sol Street had become a legend
in North Mississippi, a survivor of the regiment recalled Sergeant Street's
orders as he drilled his men: "Hold them heads up! Look fierce! Look mean!
Look like the devil Look like me!” How well he succeeded in making the men of
Company F look like the devil or Sol Street is not known, but it is a matter of
record that they were good soldiers.
Street served with the Second Mississippi in the campaign of
first Manassas in 1861 and at the battle of Seven Pines and in the Seven Days
Battles around Richmond in 1862. While McClellan was being pushed away from the
Confederate capital by Lee, however, affairs took an opposite turn in the West.
On May 31, Beauregard evacuated Corinth, and within a month Federal troops were
ranging far and wide throughout Northeast Mississippi, the homeland of the Second
Mississippi. The news was not long in reaching Virginia; and in July a
considerable number of the men in the regiment took advantage of a provision of
the recently enacted conscription law, obtained substitutes, and returned to
their homes. Among those who took this step was Sol Street; he obtained his
discharge from the Army of Northern Virginia on July 28 and returned to Tippah
County in August. There he found conditions even worse than he had feared. Not
only was Union cavalry roaming throughout Northeast Mississippi almost at will,
but Confederate and State authorities were bickering over responsibility for
the defense of the region while neither was able to offer any effective
resistance to the invaders. In the meantime property was being destroyed,
slaves were being carried away and the lives of noncombatants were in imminent
danger. It became evident to Street within a matter of days after his arrival
that the citizens themselves must provide such protection as Northeast
Mississippi received.
The first step toward an adequate home defense was taken by
William C. Falkner, the first captain of Street's Company F and later colonel
of the Second Mississippi. Falkner had been defeated for the colonelcy at the
reorganization of April, 1862, and had returned to Ripley. There he recruited,
almost entirely from Tippah County, a regiment of cavalry containing about 750
men known subsequently as the First Mississippi Partisan Rangers. The Rangers
were mustered into Confederate service early in August and served creditably
until the middle of November, when the Conscription Bureau, taking advantage
of some irregularities in the regiment's organization, broke it up in a vain
attempt to obtain conscripts for the regular Confederate forces. Although
Falkner later reorganized the regiment, the result of the Conscription Bureau's
action was to leave Tippah and adjoining counties practically stripped of
defenders. It was at this black time that Sol Street reentered the picture.
Nothing is known of Street's activities from August through
November, 1862. He did not enlist in the First Mississippi Partisan Rangers.
Possibly he was making plans to organize a military unit of his own, and biding
his time until the moment came to strike. The breakup of the Rangers gave him
an opportunity, and he seized it instantly. Early in December he obtained
authority from Governor Pettus of Mississippi to recruit cavalry for home
defense, and almost entirely by his own efforts enlisted a company called the
Citizen Guards of Tippah County, of which he was chosen captain. On December
15, 1862, the Citizen Guards were mustered into the Army of Mississippi (not,
it should be emphasized, the Confederate Army) as Company A, Second Mississippi
(State) Cavalry. The commander of the Second Cavalry was Colonel J. F. Smith.
Smith's regiment was a paper organization that saw only
desultory fighting before it disbanded upon being ordered into Confederate
service on June 4, 1863. Early in January of that year, however, Captain
Street's company A, Captain W. H. Wilson's Company D (which had been recruited
largely by Street), and possibly another company were detached - one suspects
that Street detached them on his own initiative - for "service along the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad." Thus began the operations of that
irregular but highly effective group of fighters known as "Sol Street's
guerilla band," which for eighteen months was to be a thorn in the flesh
of Federal commanders from Corinth to the outskirts of Memphis, and from Tippah
County, Mississippi, to Hickman, Kentucky. To understand the nature of Street's
operations, and the peculiar situation that dictated his policies, it is
necessary to summarize conditions in Northeast Mississippi in the first part of
1863.
At the beginning of that year nearly all the Confederate
troops in Mississippi were in the vicinity of Vicksburg. In March, however,
Brigadier General James R. Chalmers was placed in command of the newly created
Fifth Military District of the state, which comprised the ten northern counties.
Following orders, Chalmers set up headquarters at Panola (now Batesville) near
the western edge of his district. The ostensible reason for the location was to
watch anticipated Union movements from Memphis toward Vicksburg; but another
and probably overriding objective was the breaking up of the increasing trade
between citizens of North Mississippi and the merchants of federally held
Memphis. The specific aim of the Richmond authorities was to prevent cotton
from reaching the Federal lines; and so strongly did they stress the cotton
angle that military objectives were often subordinated or even ignored. This
was certainly the case in the location of Chalmers' headquarters.
As Chalmers had only a handful of soldiers, many of whom
were none-too-reliable Partisan Rangers, he was obviously unable from Panola to
protect a district which extended 120 miles east and west and 60 miles north
and south. For assistance in the eastern part of his district he was forced to
depend on such help as he could get from Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles,
commanding the First Military District from headquarters at Columbus. Showing
an almost unbelievable lack of perception, Ruggles remained in that pleasant
little city, far removed from the Union armies, until someone in Richmond
noticed what Ruggles should have seen long before, that most Federal raids from
the Memphis and Charleston Railroad followed the Saulsbury-Ripley road. Ruggles
was thereupon ordered to move his headquarters to Tupelo. The incident is worth
noting as one of the few occasions when the judgment of the Richmond
authorities was better than that of the men in the field. But even after the
move to Tupelo, the important town of Ripley was fifty miles from Ruggles'
hodgepodge of state troops at Tupelo and even farther from Chalmers' little
force at Panola. Neither general was able to offer much opposition to the swift
Federal raids into Tippah County, with the result that such protection as the
citizens had was provided by Sol Street and his band.
The term "band" is used advisedly. Officially
Street was captain of one company, but usually he was reinforced by Captain
Wilson's Company and other irregulars. In fact, his organization at this time
was a most informal one, and he doubtless was accompanied by men who never
enlisted in any state or Confederate unit. Street located his headquarters in
the almost impenetrable bottom of North Tippah Creek probably near his boyhood
home. From this hideout Street staged his spectacular raids with a force that
on many occasions totaled no more than thirty handpicked men. The necessity
for using only men of known trustworthiness was vital, for the northern part of
Tippah County was a region of divided loyalties, and the danger of betrayal was
ever present. Street's intelligence system was simple and effective. News of
practically every Union foray was speedily brought to him by some enlisted or
un-enlisted "scout", and usually within a matter of hours the
invaders found Sol Street's band hanging on their flanks, taking advantage of
their knowledge of the country to do whatever damage they could.
Street's first recorded brush with the enemy was on January
5, 1863. On that day Major D. M. Emerson left Bolivar, Tennessee, with a
detachment of the First Tennessee Cavalry (Union) and independent companies of
"Tippah and Mississippi Rangers." His objective was Ripley. About
fifteen miles south of Bolivar, Street ambushed the raiders and killed one
Union soldier. Emerson later reported that some of the attackers were dressed
in Federal uniforms, which indicates that Street already had adopted a favored
mode of camouflage in the bush-whacking war in the west. Both sides used it. A
conspicuous example is supplied by the Union Colonel B. H. Grierson's famous
raid through Mississippi in the spring of 1863, when part of his force was
garbed in Confederate butternut.
After his first brush with Street, Emerson decided to leave
well enough alone and returned to Bolivar. Three days later, however, Colonel
Edward Prince of the Seventh Illinois Cavalry led a detachment from La Grange
to Ripley in search of the elusive partisan. Prince failed to locate Street,
but from the Union standpoint the raid was successful in that Lieutenant
Colonel Lawson B. Hovis of the First Mississippi Partisan Rangers was captured
at his home in Ripley.
By the middle of February harassed Union commanders had
learned that Street's band was likely to turn up anywhere between the Mobile
and Ohio and Mississippi Central Railroads, and anywhere between the
Ripley-Salem line and Bolivar. On February 25 it captured two privates and two
sergeants of the Seventh Illinois who had straggled behind their command. By
this time Federal commanders were taking a serious view of Street, whom they
consistently described as "the noted guerrilla." General Hamilton
managed to send a man whom he described as "one of my best spies" to
Street's camp. In due time this emissary returned with a report that the heavy
guns at Vicksburg were being dismantled and the place evacuated. As the report
was groundless, and as Street's men could have little knowledge of what was
going on at Vicksburg in any event, it is obvious that the
"guerillas" recognized Hamilton's "scout" for what he was
and sent him on his way rejoicing with plausible but erroneous information.
March, 1863, was a busy month for Street's band. Being short
of almost every kind of equipment, they for some time had eyed hungrily the
provision and supply-laden trains that puffed heavily over the tracks of the
Memphis and Charleston and Mississippi Central Railroads. The Partisans knew
that every mile of track and every station on the Memphis and Charleston was
guarded so closely that it was out of the question for a small unit to do any
serious damage on that line. However, Private Archer N. Prewitt of Street's
Company A, a native Tennessean, learned that the Mississippi Central was not
guarded so closely, and that a pay train was scheduled to run from Bolivar to
Grand Junction on March 21. This chance to get good Yankee dollars was too good
for Street to miss. On the night of March 19 he took about 80 of his own and
Captain White's companies, and, after riding all night and crossing the Memphis
and Charleston near Saulsbury, hid in the woods all day of the 20th. After
nightfall Prewitt led the band to a deep cut on a curve about three and a half
miles north of Grand Junction. The men removed the rails on the outside of the
curve and hid in the bushes. Soon after sunrise of the 21st a southbound train
entered the cut, and before the engineer realized what was happening the
locomotive and five cars were piled up. Street's men emerged from cover, firing
as they came. About twenty or twenty-five Negro soldiers were aboard. These,
when they glimpsed the ragged Confederates charging toward them, stood not on
the order of their going but took helter-skelter to the woods, where some of
them were captured later.
Unfortunately for Street, the train wrecked in the cut was
not the pay train, but a construction train carrying a considerable amount of
supplies. When the pay train itself came into sight a few minutes later, its
engineer saw the wreck in time to stop and back up toward Bolivar. The Federal
paymaster, however, jumped when it appeared that his train would ram the
wreckage, and was captured.
After taking all the material they could use, Street's men
set fire to the cars and began a leisurely retreat toward Ripley with sixteen
white prisoners and "sixteen free Americans of African descent." Thus
did General Chalmers, in reporting the affair, pay his respects to the recently
promulgated Emancipation Proclamation. Among the prisoners was the paymaster.
He was mounted on a mule during the retirement, and not being accustomed to
such a mode of transportation over rough roads, suffered severely before he
reached the fastness in Tippah Bottom.
Street's capture of the train brought him into contact for
the first time with Colonel Fielding Hurst of the First Tennessee Cavalry
(Union), whom the Confederates designated "the notorious Colonel
Hurst." Though a native of Bethel, Tennessee, and a slaveholder -
throughout the war he was always accompanied by his two body servants Lloyd and
Sam - he had turned against the Confederacy early in the war, and had become
one of its most vindictive foes. Appointed colonel by Governor Andrew Johnson
of Tennessee, he recruited a body of "Troy" troops who, according to
both Federal and Confederate evidence, were notorious for their freebooting
proclivities. Hurst was far from unique in this respect. Many of the
"independent" companies, battalions, and regiments attached to both
the Union and Confederate forces held the same reputation. Street's band was no
exception. In fact, one alleged act of robbery on their leader's part led to
his violent death.
The acts of lawlessness with which the record of the war in
North Mississippi and West Tennessee is studded were due to the fact that
neither of the armies ever exercised firm control of the country, and that the
fighting was nearly always on a small scale. It was true guerrilla warfare,
which is a dirty, stealthy business under all conditions but especially under
such conditions as prevailed in the region in 1863. From the Confederate
viewpoint the situation was aggravated by stringent regulations against trading
with the enemy, joined with the close proximity of enemy-held Memphis. All
soldiers, regular and irregular, had orders to confiscate cotton going to
Memphis and merchandise coming out of Memphis, and to "bring it to
headquarters." Human nature being what it is, soldiers more often than not
failed to take the offending articles to headquarters.
On the day after the affair near Grand Junction Hurst led
about one hundred of his Federals from Pocahontas to Ripley, ostensibly to
catch the train-wrecker. When he could not find Street, his trip turned into a
horse and cottonstealing expedition. The only military result of the raid was
the killing of Colonel John H. Miller, whom Governor Pettus had sent to Tippah
County to organize scattered small units in that area into regiments. Street
was informed of Hurst's raid, and assumed that he would remain in Ripley that
night. He therefore led his force of Partisans to the town after dark,
intending to capture the Union pickets and possibly retrieve some of Hurst's
booty. When Street learned that the Tennesseean had retired toward Pocahontas,
however, he followed immediately, and by taking a side road through the bottom
of Muddy Creek reached Jonesboro ahead of the enemy. On a steep hill about a
mile south of Jonesboro part of the Mississippians ambushed and captured
Hurst's rear guard of eight men, and the prisoners were taken to Ripley by a
detail commanded by R. J. Thurmond. In the meantime Street with the remainder
of his men took another side road, got in front of Hurst about a mile and a
half south of Pocahontas, and charged the enemy recklessly. When the attack
failed because of wet powder and inferior numbers, Street retired toward
Ripley. Remarkably enough, not one of his men was killed in the skirmish; only
one was wounded and two captured. The Federal loss, other than the eight men
captured, is not known. Hurst reported to his superiors at Memphis that Street
had been desperately wounded. This was not the first nor the last time that the
guerrilla was erroneously reported disabled.
After the fighting near Jonesboro and Pocahontas, Colonel
Hurst announced that he would not grant the rights of prisoners of war to the
captured members of Street's band. This threat, Street realized, was one that
had to be countered by higher authority than his own. Although he had been
operating independently with little or no regard to the wishes or plans of
General Chalmers, he was forced to take the matter to Panola. Chalmers immediately wrote "Col. Hurst,
U. S. A." that Street commanded a regular organization of State troops
turned over to Confederate service," and that his men were therefore
entitled to be treated as prisoners of war. Chalmers closed his letter with the
warning that "in case of a persistent refusal to extend them such
courtesies, the Genl. will retaliate upon your command, some of whom are now
prisoners in our hands."
Chalmers now made the first of many efforts to bring
Street's band of irregulars into formal Confederate service. The organization,
as Chalmers wrote Hurst, had been turned over to Confederate service, but only
on paper. On April 2 - the same day he wrote Hurst - Chalmers addressed an
order to "Captain Solomon G. Street, commanding Citizen Guards of Tippah
County" to assemble his company at New Albany. Instructions were also
given to assemble all other independent companies in the vicinity at the same
place for the purpose of organizing them into a battalion or regiment. The
wording of the order shows that Street was the recognized leader of all state
troops in Tippah County. The captain did not obey the order, if indeed he ever
received it. Instead, he remained in state service for another four months,
although on occasion he did cooperate with General Chalmers. On May 21 his band
was part of about 300 Confederates who beat off a Federal attack at Salem. In
that skirmish six of Street's men were captured.
Late in May the bitter enmity between the Union troops and
Street's band came to a head. On May 27 Major General William Sooy Smith,
commanding the Union cavalry at Memphis, charged that two of Street's men,
named Kesterson and Robinson, had murdered two Union prisoners in cold blood,
adding that "their excuse that the prisoners were trying to escape is so
notoriously false that your own men heaped upon them the execration they so
richly deserved." Smith threatened to place in irons and shoot four
prisoners from Street's command if Kesterson and Robinson were not turned over
to him. This time Street turned the matter over to General Ruggles, saying only
that the prisoners had actually been shot while attempting to escape. Ruggles
wrote Smith that he was having the matter investigated, and in the meantime was
having four prisoners of Smith's placed in irons. There the matter stood for a
time.
Late in July, Street took his company to Okolona. From that
town, on July 29, he wrote the War Department at Richmond, stating that he
"had power over" three companies and asking authority to recruit a
battalion of cavalry for Confederate service. As Confederate authorities took a
dim view of the enlistment of additional cavalry units, Street received no
answer. A few days later his command received pay for the period December 15,
1862, to April 15, 1863. The muster roll made at the time, however, includes
the names of all men who joined the company up to August 1. The total number of
names on the muster roll - the only one of Company A in existence - is 113 rank
and file, of whom 82 had enlisted when the company was originally mustered into
state service. Of these, 38 were at that time present for service; 41 were
absent without leave; four were on detached service; eight had been
"claimed" (as deserters) by Confederate, units; one had died in camp
and twelve had been captured. The roll shows none killed, though some of the
men listed as captured are known to have died of wounds. In all probability the
maker of the roll simply omitted the names of the men killed in action.
The men named on the muster roll of Company A were not all
of Street's band. A list prepared by a survivor and published in 1895 contains
69 names, 17 of whom are not on the roll. His account of the fight with Hurst
at Poncahontas adds another name, that of R. J. Thurmond. Granted that some of
the men named were members of Captain Wilson's company, it is most likely that
others on this list never enlisted, but joined Street temporarily for one or
more of his skirmishes.
Street's last fight as captain of Company A took place late
in August, when he attacked a Union forage train between Pocahontas and Ripley.
On this occasion, with the Kesterson-Robinson affair fresh in their minds, the
Federal soldiers squared accounts in a brutal manner. Two of Street's privates,
John Carraway and Moses Crisp, were captured and without further ado taken to a
bridge over Muddy Creek and shot. Ruggles promptly held two Federal prisoners
as hostages, but as in the original case there is no record of the final
disposition of the case. In all probability the accounts were simply allowed to
stand as balanced.
After the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, large
numbers of Federal troops based at Memphis and in West Tennessee were shifted
to the vicinity of Chattanooga. An immediate result was that Confederates in
West Tennessee were able to operate more freely than had been possible before,
and some of them took advantage of the relaxed pressure to move into North
Mississippi, where they had some hope of obtaining arms and equipment.
Conditions in Mississippi also improved. In August, Major General Stephen D.
Lee was placed in command of all cavalry in Mississippi, and soon brought a
semblance of order into the harried Fifth Military District. He brought many
state troops into Confederate service and augmented them with units from
Tennessee. One of the largest of these Tennessee units, about a thousand
strong, was brought to Orizaba (about seven miles south of Ripley) late in July
by Colonel R. V. Richardson. Within a matter of weeks Richardson had
accumulated an even larger command, and was signing himself "Col.
commanding NE Miss."
Richardson, a daring and successful partisan fighter, had
had his share of troubles with both sides. In March, 1863, Joe Johnston, who
had no use for guerrilla fighting, charged him with "great
oppressions" and recommended that his authority to recruit be withdrawn.
To keep the score even, on March 15 the Union commander sent Colonel Benjamin
H. Grierson after him, saying of his men, "I am assured by high
Confederate authority that they act without and against orders and are simply
robbers to be treated as such. The gang must be exterminated and the sooner the
better." Grierson's expedition came to nothing. In fact, when he made his
famous raid to Baton Rouge a few weeks later, he had to fight Richardson all
the way to Central Mississippi.
In Richardson, Street found a kindred spirit. Moreover, he
was given no choice but to attach himself to the regular organization. On
September 1 the partisan leader resigned his Mississippi commission and
transferred his men to the Confederate army. They were not incorporated into a
regiment, but fought as "Street's Battalion" under Richardson's
command. This battalion participated in Chalmers' attack on Collierville in
October, the first offensive movement in that area on the part of the
Confederates since the battle of Corinth a year before. About this time Street
abandoned the hideout in Tippah bottom and shifted his base to Orizaba.
In November, Street, probably at Richardson's suggestion,
took his battalion on a raid into West Tennessee. He stopped first at
Whiteville, where he rested for two days before moving to Cageville (now
Alamo). He then moved through Dyersburg and after crossing the Obion River
killed a well-known Unionist whom he described as "the notorious Tory Jim
Dixon, who lost his life by refusing to surrender." He continued north to
Hickman, Kentucky, where he killed one Union soldier and captured nine men and
40 horses before moving into-Madrid Bend. There he continued his recruiting -
actually conscripting - activities with some success and then started south. At
Meriwether's Ferry on the Obion River his rear guard was driven in by a
detachment of the Second Illinois Cavalry. Two Confederates were killed, and
Street himself and 29 of his command were captured. The Union commander lost no
time in reporting his trophy: "I attacked the devils at Meriwether's Ferry
at noon yesterday. I whipped them and killed eleven men and also took Sol
Street and 55 men, also one wagon load of arms and some horses."
"Colonel" Street, however, was not one to remain long in durance.
After being a prisoner for about twelve hours he made his escape and overtook
his command near Whiteville, where he learned that some of his horses had
escaped near Reelfoot Lake. Immediately he retraced his steps to Madrid Bend,
drove off a Union force engaged in conscription duty, retrieved most of his
lost horses, and then settled down to a conscription campaign of his own.
While Street was fighting Yankees and conscripting men and
horses in Kentucky and West Tennessee, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest was
at Okolona creating an army with which to invade his home state of Tennessee.
He had been led to believe that Richardson would bring about a thousand men to
his colors; but that hope proved illusory as Richardson's men, Street among
them, were scattered far and wide. The indefatigable Forrest, however, did not
let the absence of Richardson's men deter him. On December 3 he crossed the
state line near Saulsbury, while Chalmers and Lee made an opening for him by
diversionary attacks at Moscow and Ripley. Once inside Tennessee, Forrest and
his 450 men began an intensive recruiting and conscription campaign, and when
they slipped back into Mississippi on the night of December 27, the command
numbered more than three thousand men. Many of them were untrained, more had no
arms, many were unwilling conscripts; but they were the material from which
their commander forged one of the greatest cavalry organizations in the long
history of war. Street's battalion, and the men and horses he had gathered in
Madrid Bend, were among the troops that poured across the state line that wintry
night.
On January 25, 1864, Forrest formally organized his newly
created "Forrest's Cavalry Department" which included all cavalry
commands in North Mississippi and West Tennessee. General Order no. 2, dated
the same day, grouped his scattered units into four small brigades. Street's
battalion, with Marshall's regiment, Catlin's command, and the Twelfth,
Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Tennessee formed the First Brigade,
commanded by Brigadier General R. V. Richardson. On February 4 the Fifteenth
and Sixteenth regiments and Street's battalion were combined to form the
Fifteenth Tennessee, commanded by Colonel F. M. Stewart. On the same day Street
was appointed Major.
Until he came under the command of Forrest, Street had been
a daring and, in his own sphere, a brilliantly successful leader, but he had
never been a good subordinate. He changed almost instantly, and from a reckless
individualist was transformed into a "good hand" even by the exacting
Forrest standard. One result of the transformation was that his name dropped
from the records. No longer was he Sol Street, the famous guerrilla, but now he
was Major Street of the Fifteenth Tennessee. He did not participate in the Sooy
Smith campaign of February, 1864, having been left in Central Mississippi; but
under the command of Colonel J. J. Neely, who succeeded Richardson as brigade
commander on March 9, he took part in Forrest's campaign in West Tennessee and
Kentucky in March and April, the campaign was high-lighted by the capture of
Fort Pillow. At the conclusion of that campaign his career came to a sudden end
near the scene of some of his greatest triumphs.
On May 2 Forrest closed his headquarters at Jackson,
Tennessee, sent his long trains southward to Corinth, and moved with most of
his command, including Street's men, to Bolivar. There he skirmished with an
expedition sent from Memphis under the command of General Samuel D. Sturgis,
and bivouacked a few miles south of the town. While Street was riding into the
camp, a young soldier named Robert Galloway shot him, inflicting a mortal
wound. Years later Galloway related that Street's band had killed his father
for the purpose of robbing him, but had been frightened away before they found
his money; another version, told by members of the Street family, is that
Street had burned Galloway's cotton to keep it from falling into Federal hands.
But whatever the facts were, young Galloway - he was only sixteen years old -
enlisted in the Confederate army and when Street was pointed out to him by a friend
during the fighting at Bolivar, lost no time in taking his revenge. He escaped
after the shooting, but was captured and taken before Forrest, who in a
towering rage told him that a drumhead court martial would see that he was shot
at sunrise. He managed, however, to escape during the night and made his way to
the Union lines at Memphis. After the war he moved to Illinois.
So ended the career of Sol Street, who operated on a small
scale and in a comparatively obscure theatre of war, but who was yet one of the
most successful and most feared of the Confederate partisan commanders.
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by Andrew Brown as published in the Journal of
Mississippi History, Volume 21, Number 3, July 1959
