[Manuscript]: Eyewitness Account of The Second Battle of Memphis (August 21, 18 64), as Recorded by a Young Woman present on the Campus of the State Female College

[Memphis, Tennessee: circa 1877].

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Unbound. Manuscript account written in ink on the rectos of 16 sheets of 8” x 10” laid paper. The blank verso of the last sheet is lightly toned and with two small stains, otherwise the manuscript is near fine with two light horizontal folds. A neatly written memoir of approximately 2300 words describing Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s daring raid on Union-occupied Memphis and the ensuing battle that raged on and around the campus of the State Female College in August 1864. Although the work is unsigned, it presumably was written in 1877 or not long thereafter (several sheets have a watermark dated 1877). The author identifies herself at the time of the battle as: “a girl of sixteen, looking with eager eyes upon the living history daily enacted before her, [who] lived with her father, Rev. Charles Collins, formerly of Portland, in one of several large buildings located upon the college campus. This place was situated in this southern suberb [sic] between the picket line and the city, and was surrounded on all sides by camps of various regiments – almost deserted now – the able-bodied men being with Smith marching towards Oxford … .”

An expedition of Union troops under General A.J. Smith had just been sent south in an attempt to capture General Forrest, rumored to be quartered in Oxford, Mississippi. This left Memphis vulnerable, with, as she describes it, “only a few able-bodied men … left to guard camp, and one or two regiments of a hundred day men whose time was about expired.” General Forrest had managed to slip away from Oxford and attack Memphis, in an attempt to capture Union generals posted there and to liberate Confederate prisoners from the Irving Block Prison. Hannah Collins recounts the day of the battle in and around the grounds of the college in graphic detail: “For two hours the firing was incessant and fierce battle raged.” She and her family were ushered out of the back of a campus building, “we crept out, passing through long corridors, exposed to considerable danger from the bullets which came flying from the doorways and windows …” and were piloted, “as shells flew screaming and shrieking over our heads …” to a place of relative safety in the cottage of a nearby neighbor.

Union and Confederate troops continued to fight in the area, and Forrest’s attack on Irving Block Prison ultimately failed when Union troops stalled his men at the State Female College. Nonetheless, the battle resulted in a victory for Forrest, who withdrew taking 500 prisoners, supplies, and horses. “When the firing had entirely ceased,” and Hannah and her family made their way back to the college: “the sadness of the tragedy overpowered all other feeling. As we came to our front gate, behind each one of the giant oaks … lay the dead body of a poor grey clad soldier, most of them young men who had gone out from Memphis in the early years of the war … and this was their first home-coming … As we passed into the shelter of the house, we found the long corridor lined on either side with mattresses, and on each lay a wounded soldier, some moaning and sighing in pain and some silent from insensibility. Just at the door of my room at the head of the stairs a soldier lay dead, the blood from the wound in his temple making a deep crimson stain on the bare floor.”

Hannah also describes the Union dead: “Not so fortunate the poor boys in blue, ‘only privates’ alas! They were buried side by side in nameless graves so close to the dusty roadside that in a few – a very few – years the wagons passed over them, all signs of the spot obliterated, and now their graves no man knows.” In addition, she gives a vivid account of how the two Union Generals (Washburn and Hurlbut) managed to escape, thanks to the quick actions of Lieutenant Colonel Star, “whose regiment camped just back of the College campus.” She describes Star's death as “the saddest tragedy of that tragical morning.”

An apparently unpublished, compelling, and historically important eye-witness account by a Southern woman caught in the midst of a Civil War battle.


Item #408375

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Item #408375 [Manuscript]: Eyewitness Account of The Second Battle of Memphis (August 21, 18 64), as Recorded by a Young Woman present on the Campus of the State Female College. Hannah Elizabeth COLLINS.
[Manuscript]: Eyewitness Account of The Second Battle of Memphis (August 21, 18 64), as Recorded by a Young Woman present on the Campus of the State Female College
[Manuscript]: Eyewitness Account of The Second Battle of Memphis (August 21, 18 64), as Recorded by a Young Woman present on the Campus of the State Female College