Action, Sacramento

On December 28, 1861, Confederate and Union troops clashed at Sacramento, Kentucky in what became known as the Battle of Sacramento. Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest led a Confederate cavalry force of somewhere between 200 and 300 men in an assault that surrounded and ultimately crushed a Union contingent of 500 soldiers commanded by Major Eli H. Murray. Murray's men had crossed the bank of the Green River and were watering their horses south of town when the attack came. Accounts of the casualties differ depending on which side is telling the story, and no firm consensus exists on the numbers. What multiple witnesses did agree on, however, was Forrest's personal bravery during the fighting, a quality that earned him praise from his superiors afterward.

This clash marked one of the first engagements Forrest commanded as a cavalry leader, and it already displayed several signature elements that would define his approach to warfare throughout the war: splitting his forces, flanking and surrounding the enemy, using concealment to his advantage, and riding at the head of his own charges. The fight also holds a place in the early history of Brigadier-General Stovepipe Johnson, who served there simply as a private at the time. Murray's Union force suffered a complete and decisive defeat that day. The clash has since come to be remembered under the nickname "Forrest's First Fight," and local residents continue to stage a re-enactment of it every year.

Prelude

Kentucky found itself a recruiting and training ground for both sides, its people caught between competing loyalties as the war's opening months unfolded. Confederate forces under Major-General Leonidas Polk moved into Kentucky towns starting in September 1861, acting with Jefferson Davis's approval even though commanders Simon Bolivar Buckner and Leroy Walker had voiced their objections. On the Union side, Brigadier-General Ulysses S. Grant made his way up the Ohio River and set up a position at Paducah, coming face to face with the recently appointed Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston.

As October arrived, the two armies jockeyed for position and advantage. Forrest received orders sending his battalion from Memphis, Tennessee to Kentucky, where he would answer to Colonel Adolphus Heiman. Heiman, tasked with building both Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, had asked for cavalry support to assist in this effort.

Eight companies made up Forrest's command, drawn from Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas, trained for fighting at close range and mostly carrying shotguns rather than other weapons. He made his presence known in the area almost immediately, springing an ambush against a Union gunboat on November 20 that drove the vessel back. Throughout the rest of that month he kept clashing with gunboats, and on November 24 he seized a Union supply depot. During that action a sniper's shot missed him but killed his surgeon instead. His ranks then grew with the arrival of two fresh companies sent from Huntsville, Alabama.