Grierson’s Raid was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1954. The book recounts one of the most audacious cavalry operations of the Civil War: Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s seventeen-day, six-hundred-mile ride through the heart of Mississippi with 1,700 horsemen in April 1863.
Grierson — an Illinois music teacher before the war who reportedly disliked horses — led his brigade south from La Grange, Tennessee, through the entire length of Mississippi to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, destroying railroad tracks, telegraph lines, supply depots, and Confederate morale along the way. The raid was designed by Grant as a diversion: while Pemberton’s Confederate forces chased Grierson through the interior of their own state, Grant crossed the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, beginning the campaign that would give the Union control of the entire river.
Brown reconstructs the raid day by day, using regimental records, personal diaries, and local accounts. The narrative captures both the strategic brilliance of the operation — Grierson repeatedly split his force and used feints to confuse his pursuers — and the physical reality of cavalry warfare: exhausted horses, terrified civilians, running fights at river crossings, and the constant threat of being cut off and destroyed.
Collecting Grierson’s Raid
First edition (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1954): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $40–$100
- Very good/very good: $15–$40