Grierson's Raid

Grierson's Raid was a Union cavalry raid during the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. It ran from April 17, to May 2, 1863, as a diversion from Ulysses S. Grant's main attack plan on Vicksburg, Mississippi.Up until this time in the war, Confederate cavalry commanders such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, John Hunt Morgan, and J.E.B. Stuart had ridden circles around the Union (literally, in Stuart's case; see the Peninsula Campaign), and it was time to out-do the Confederates in cavalry expeditions. The task fell to Colonel Benjamin Grierson, a former music teacher who, oddly, hated horses after being kicked in the head by one as a child. Grierson's cavalry brigade consisted of the 6th and 7th Illinois and 2nd Iowa Cavalry regiments.
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