The portrait on the left is of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a confederate cavalry commander whose military genius was so formidable that Rommel studied and applied his methods to desert tank warfare during WWII.When I was younger, I admired Forrest for his prowess and his prolific military strategies. Of course, that was before I became aware he is generally regarded as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
It was also before I learned that my own 2nd great-grandfather, John Harrison Simpson (the second photo) was captured by Forrest's raiders at a place called Sulphur Branch Trestle and subsequently remanded to Cahaba, one of the South's most notorious military prisons. This is his story-
John H. Simpson was born May 24, 1848 and died July 1, 1929 in Knox County, TN. On September 14, 1863, John enlisted in the Union Army at the age of fifteen. His daughter, Jessie Bloom, told me that he lied about his age in order to be allowed to muster in. He was assigned to Company I, 3rd Regiment of the Tennessee Cavalry. Two weeks later, John’s father, Green Simpson, also enlisted and was assigned to the same company and regiment. I suppose no one will ever know if Green’s enlistment resulted from inspiration at John’s courageous act of patriotism, or if he simply joined to be able to keep a watchful eye on his obviously headstrong son.
The following paragraph, which describes the events immediately preceding John Simpson's capture, is paraphrased from the book “The Sultana Tragedy” by Jerry O. Potter:
In September of 1864, as Sherman took Atlanta and prepared for his infamous “March to the Sea”, the Union 3rd Tennessee Cavalry was assigned to help safeguard a system of railroad lines at Sherman’s flank in Northern Alabama. These railroads were essential to the flow of supplies to the invading Union Army, and the two main fortifications guarding the lines were at Athens and Sulphur Branch trestle. John’s company was one of several that were ordered to guard Sulphur Branch trestle, which was defended by two formidable blockhouses manned with nearly 1,100 men. Confederate Lt. General Richard Taylor, commander of the departments of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana, dispatched a regiment of confederate cavalrymen to destroy these supply lines in an effort to slow Sherman’s forces. The confederate cavalry arrived in the area on the evening of September 23rd. Unfortunately for the Union soldiers involved, the commander of the confederate cavalry was General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Forrest moved first on the Union position at Athens, and quickly forced the surrender of nearly 600 union soldiers. This was done almost completely without bloodshed, as Forrest paraded his troops past the heavily fortified garrison, having them mount and dismount so as to give the appearance of having more men at his disposal than he actually did. The commander of the fort at Athens concluded that Forrest commanded a force of nearly 10,000 men, when the number was actually less than half that figure. Following the surrender of the troops at Athens, (as well as 700 more soldiers who were attempting to relieve the garrison), Forrest turned his attention on the Sulphur Branch trestle.
My great Uncle, John Alexander Moore, gives the following account of the capture of John H. Simpson (his grandfather) at Sulphur Branch trestle:
“John H. Simpson’s company was captured by confederate cavalry under Nathan B. Forrest while bivouacked around Chattanooga. My grandfather often spoke of the tense moments spent waiting for the confederate attack, and then suddenly hearing the awful “rebel yell” and seeing the confederate troops come charging in on their position with their sabers slashing. Before he had time to react, he was overrun by one of the charging horsemen. The horse stepped down and smashed his thigh and side. He was soon after captured and removed to the Cahaba prison for Union soldiers. When I was a boy, my grandfather still bore the terrible scars on his side and leg from this occasion.”
In all, Forrest captured around 2,300 union soldiers on September 24 and 25. While the officers from the captured garrisons were quickly paroled, the enlisted men were sent to the confederate prison camp at Cahaba, on the banks of the Alabama River near Selma. This camp, while not as widely recognized as its notorious counterpart, Andersonville, was nonetheless maintained under conditions so deplorable that its inmates soon died as surely as if they had been hit by cannon or bullet. Each man within the prison had an estimated six square feet of living space, and typhoid, scurvy, dysentery and malaria ran rampant throughout the camp.
John managed to survive the horrible conditions at the camp, and on March 20, 1865, he and other soldiers from the prison were assembled as part of an exchange initiative to be executed between several northern and southern prison camps. The soldiers were transported to Camp Fisk, near Vicksburg, Mississippi to await transportation north to Camp Chase, Ohio and Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. On the night of April 24, 1865, the men were loaded onto the steamer Sultana, one of several large steam ships contracted by the U.S. government for the transport of northbound union soldiers. The Sultana’s legal carrying capacity was 376, but by the time the steamer left Memphis, Tennessee on April 27th, there were over 2400 people on board, the vast majority of whom were union soldiers. The owners of the boat saw this as nothing more than a lucrative business venture, and the men were subsequently packed like sardines onto the outer decks. At 2:00 AM on the night of the 27th, the Sultana’s recently repaired boilers, under duress from the sheer number of passengers on board, exploded in a firestorm that sent men by the hundreds hurtling through the air and into the frigid waters of the Mississippi. Many of those that had not been killed outright by the blast were soon consumed by the cold, dark waters of the river. Some who were fortunate enough to find buoyant debris in the water were either able to make the shore or were soon rescued by the throngs of civilian boats that arrived shortly after the blast was heard. John managed to paddle to the shoreline, where he was eventually located and transported back to Memphis for treatment of his wounds. He was fortunate. His cousin, Joseph Simpson, was not.
Of the nearly 2400 men on the boat that evening, 1800 perished in the river, making the Sultana the single worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. How bitterly ironic that these men who had bravely endured battle, capture and deprivation in the prison camps, would
meet such a senseless end.
John would eventually end up in Nashville, where he mustered out of the army on June 10, 1865. His father, Green Simpson, had made it on to Camp Chase, Ohio, and mustered out a short time later.
John soon came home to Knoxville, and on October 24, 1869, he married Margaret Issabella Flenniken in Knox County. Margaret was a member of the prominent Flenniken family that resided along Maryville Pike near the Mt. Olive section of South Knoxville. John and Margaret reportedly inherited land from the Flennikens, and established a farm near the old Maryville Turnpike. John and Margaret sold several acres of land over the next few years, and in March of 1892, John bought a right of way for a road and five acres of land on Maryville Pike in the 13th district. Lois Haddox Bell, a granddaughter of John H. Simpson, told me that the old Simpson farm was located on the left of Maryville Pike (going toward town), where present day Woodson Road turns off. She said that the Simpson house was up on a hill set back off the road and that it burned long ago. Several houses are reportedly located on the site now. John and Margaret clearly became members of Mt. Olive Baptist Church at some point, but the records of Mt. Olive Church currently on microfilm at the McClung collection do not give a clear indication of exactly what year they transferred. The record indicates that John and Margaret joined by letter on February 7, but the year is illegible. The burial of at least two infant children of John and Margaret at the Island Home Baptist Cemetery indicates that the family may have been members at that church prior to their transfer to Mt. Olive.
In 1880, John H. Simpson and a group of his East Tennessee comrades from the Sultana formed the Sultana Survivors’ Association. The group met on April 27th of every year for over fifty years, to commemorate the tragedy and to celebrate the fortune and courage that were required to survive such an ordeal. As the United States Congress refused to appropriate funds for the commission of a memorial to the Sultana tragedy, John Simpson became instrumental in commissioning and dedicating a beautiful stone memorial in Mt. Olive Cemetery, beside the church where the reunions were often held. The ranks of the survivors diminished year by year. John was the second to the last survivor when he passed away in 1929.
John H. Simpson died on July 1, 1929. His wife, Margaret, died fourteen days later. Both are buried at the Mt. Olive Baptist Cemetery in South Knoxville, just a short distance down Maryville Pike from where they had made their home. I have in my possession several photographs of John and Margaret Simpson, and it’s evident by John’s countenance in each photo that he had a genuine passion for life. From the brash teenager who lied about his age in order to enlist in the Union Army to the tenacious old man who would not let his country forget the tragic events surrounding the Sultana’s ill-fated journey, John H. Simpson lived his life to the fullest, and in all likelihood looked upon death as nothing more than the next great adventure.
