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Fielding Jackson Hurst (born Claiborne County, Tennessee 1810, died McNairy County, Tennessee 1882) was a surveyor and planter who served as a colonel in the Union Army, commanding the 6th Regiment Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War. He later served as a Unionist member of the Tennessee Senate and as a judge. As a Southern Unionist and slaveholder, he remains a controversial figure.
Hurst was born in 1810. Around 1834, he and his wife Melocky moved to McNairy County. He worked as a surveyor and owned a plantation with several families of slaves.
In 1861, Tennessee voted to secede from the United States and join the fledgling Confederate States of America as its last state. Hurst remained steadfastly Unionist, and was imprisoned in Nashville along with many other prominent Unionist Tennesseans after the vote. After Tennessee was retaken by Union troops in 1862, Hurst was freed.
Hurst formed a unit of mounted scouts. They served as self-funded irregulars until Tennessee military governor Andrew Johnson commissioned Hurst as commander of the newly formed First West Tennessee Cavalry, later known as the 6th Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry. Hurst and his unit gained a reputation for harsh tactics, angering Confederates and even leading to his brief reimprisonment by Union officials.
However, recent scholarship has proven that Lt. Colonel William K.M. Breckenridge, the regiment's second-in-command, was largely responsible for the unit's formation and effective leadership through October 1863, when Breckenridge died on disease in Grand Junction, Tennessee. Unbeknownst until 2012, Breckenridge had maintained a diary that documented the regiment's history from formation through Breckenridge's death. That diary revealed new details pertaining to Hurst's unsavory wartime activities and his lack of actual leadership in the regiment's day to day activities. [1] The diary became the basis of In The Shadow of the Devil: William K.M. Breckenridge in Fielding Hurst's First West Tennessee U.S. Cavalry.
Breckenridge's diary further provided evidence that the ill reputation gained by the regiment was largely due to the actions of Hurst and his fellow officer, William Jay Smith, as well as a handful of their direct subordinates. Otherwise, the regiment appears now to have been composed of otherwise dedicated Unionists.
The First West Tennessee U.S. Cavalry/6th Tennessee U.S. Cavalry clashed several times with the forces of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Hurst resigned his commission in December 1864, citing poor health, but largely because of his humiliating defeat at the battle of Bolivar, Tennessee, which resulted largely from his acts of insubordination.
On March 4, 1865, he was elected as a Unionist [2] to represent District 21 of the Tennessee Senate, which at that time consisted of Hardeman, Hardin and McNairy counties. His first vote was to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. He resigned after the Senate session ended on June 12, 1865, to accept a position as circuit judge. The book, In the Shadow of the Devil, further details Hurst's colorful postwar career.
Hurst was a local leader of the Grand Army of the Republic. He died in poverty in 1882 and remained a hated figure among Confederate sympathizers.[ citation needed ]
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the American Civil War fought on April 6–7, 1862. The fighting took place in southwestern Tennessee, which was part of the war's Western Theater. The battlefield is located between a small, undistinguished church named Shiloh and Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Two Union armies combined to defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi. Major General Ulysses S. Grant was the Union commander, while General Albert Sidney Johnston was the Confederate commander until his battlefield death, when he was replaced by his second-in-command, General P. G. T. Beauregard.
George Eliphaz Spencer was an American politician and a U.S. senator from the state of Alabama who also served as an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Andrew Jackson Smith was a United States Army general during the American Civil War, rising to the command of a corps. He was most noted for his victory over Confederate General Stephen D. Lee at the Battle of Tupelo, Mississippi, on July 14, 1864.
The 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment, known as the Anderson Cavalry and the 160th Volunteers, was a three-year cavalry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was recruited and formed in the summer of 1862 by officers and men of the Anderson Troop, an independent company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers that had been mustered the previous November.
George Washington Bridges was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for the 3rd congressional district of Tennessee from 1861 to 1863. A Southern Unionist, he was arrested and jailed by Confederate authorities during the first few months of the Civil War in 1861. Though he eventually escaped, he did not take his seat in Congress until February 25, 1863, a few days before his term expired.
Kentucky was a southern border state of key importance in the American Civil War. It officially declared its neutrality at the beginning of the war, but after a failed attempt by Confederate General Leonidas Polk to take the state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, the legislature petitioned the Union Army for assistance. Though the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky early in the war, after early 1862 Kentucky came largely under U.S. control. In the historiography of the Civil War, Kentucky is treated primarily as a southern border state, with special attention to the social divisions during the secession crisis, invasions and raids, internal violence, sporadic guerrilla warfare, federal-state relations, the ending of slavery, and the return of Confederate veterans.
Warner Lewis Underwood was an attorney, state legislator and U.S. Representative from Kentucky. Like his brother Joseph Rogers Underwood, he was a Unionist before the American Civil War, and during the war, he served as U.S. Consul in Glasgow, Scotland.
William Jay Smith was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for Tennessee's 8th congressional district.
The 13th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment was a cavalry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The regiment was originally designated 12th Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, but was changed by order of Governor Andrew Johnson on December 31, 1863.
The 6th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment was a cavalry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The regiment was also known as the 1st West Tennessee Cavalry; and was sometimes referred to as Hurst's Worst by their opponents.
The 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, also known as the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry after it was consolidated with the 21st Tennessee Cavalry (Wilson’s), was a cavalry unit of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, organized on June 12, 1862. The unit was originally commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Clark Russell Barteau, who was promoted from the rank of private on the day that he was placed in command of the new regiment. He was promoted to colonel a year later.
James Patton Brownlow was a Union Army officer during the American Civil War. Brownlow was the son of East Tennessee preacher and politician Parson Brownlow. James P. Brownlow served in several positions in the Union Army, finishing the war as colonel of the 1st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. He was noted for his courage and perceptiveness in battle and keen sense of military tactics. Union cavalry in Tennessee, in addition to participating in crucial organized battles of the war, "primarily meant almost endless skirmishing with partisans, guerrillas, and bushwackers, as well as with the Rebel raiders of John Hunt Morgan, Joseph Wheeler, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who frequently recruited and supplied themselves from behind enemy lines." Jim Brownlow's deft handling of these engagements left him with a reputation as "one of the greatest daredevils of the Civil War."
Middle Fork, alternately known as Middlefork, is an unincorporated community located in the southwestern portion of Henderson County, Tennessee, United States and was settled prior to the formation of the county in 1821. The first organized church in Henderson County was Middle Fork Primitive Baptist Church which was chartered in 1823.
Richard Mitchell Edwards was an American attorney, politician and soldier who served one term in the Tennessee House of Representatives (1861–1862). A Southern Unionist, he represented Bradley County at the East Tennessee Convention in 1861, and served as colonel of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry of the Union Army during the Civil War. He ran unsuccessfully for governor on the Greenback Party ticket in 1878 and 1880.
The 9th Texas Cavalry Regiment was a unit of mounted volunteers that fought in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. The regiment fought at Round Mountain and Bird Creek (Chusto-Talasah) in 1861, Pea Ridge, Siege of Corinth, Second Corinth, Hatchie's Bridge and the Holly Springs Raid in 1862, and in the Atlanta campaign, Franklin, and Murfreesboro in 1864. The unit fought dismounted at Second Corinth and Hatchie's Bridge before being remounted as cavalry for the remainder of the war. The regiment surrendered to Federal forces on 4 May 1865 and its remaining personnel were paroled.
The 6th Texas Cavalry Regiment was a unit of mounted volunteers that fought in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. The regiment fought at Chustenahlah in 1861. The following year the unit fought at Pea Ridge, First Corinth, Second Corinth, Hatchie's Bridge, and Holly Springs. The 6th Texas Cavalry participated in the fighting at Thompson's Station in 1863, the Atlanta campaign, and the Franklin–Nashville Campaign in 1864. The regiment formally surrendered to Union forces in May 1865 and its remaining soldiers were paroled.
The 24th and 25th Consolidated Texas Cavalry Regiment was a unit that originally consisted of two regiments of mounted volunteers that served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. However, by the time the two regiments were consolidated, they fought as infantry. Both regiments organized as cavalry near Hempstead, Texas in April 1862 and were dismounted to fight as infantry in July 1862. The two regiments served in the same brigade and were captured at the Battle of Arkansas Post in January 1863. After being sent to Northern prison camps, the soldiers were exchanged in April 1863. Assigned to the Army of Tennessee, the two regiments were consolidated with two additional Texas cavalry regiments and in 1863 fought as infantry at Liberty Gap, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Ringgold Gap. In 1864, the other two Texas regiments were detached and the consolidated 24th and 25th fought as a separate infantry unit in the Atlanta campaign, at Franklin, and at Nashville. For the Carolinas campaign, the 24th and 25th fought at Bentonville before being reconsolidated with other Texas regiments and surrendering in April 1865.
The 7th Alabama Infantry Regiment was a Confederate volunteer infantry regiment from Alabama during the American Civil War.
William Sugars McLemore (1830–1908) was a circuit judge for Tennessee and a colonel in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.