Colonel Fielding Hurst of the 6th Tennessee (U.S.) Cavalry, had been plundering throughout southwestern Tennessee, perpetrating ‘wanton destruction of property’ and demanding–and getting–a sum of $5,139.25 from the residents of Jackson in return for not burning the town to the ground. (The sum was exactly, to the penny, the amount of a legal judgment made against Hurst by Federal authorities in Memphis on behalf of a female resident of Jackson whose property had been destroyed by the colonel’s raiders.)