EXCERPTS: ONLY:
This Texas Unit was organized at Clarksville, Texas, during the summer of 1861. Composed primarily of Red River County men, it elected N. C. Gould of Clarksville as captain and set out for Tennessee with no more authority for its departure than the desire of its members to get into the was as quickly as possible. Crossing Arkansas and the backwash of McCulloch's and Price's armies then contending with federal forces in southern Missouri, the Texans arrived in Memphis to find the city filled with a confusion of partially organized companies, battalions and regiments.
Among those organizing commands was Nathan Bedford Forrest, recently commissioned by Tennessee Governor Isham G. Harris to raise a cavalry battalion. Forrest was arming and equipping his troops largely from his own pocket, and his energy was attracting favorable attention in Memphis. Gould and his Texans decided to join him becoming Company D of the Forrest Battalion of Mounted Rangers. They quickly became known as the Texas Cowboys.
After formal organization and acceptance to Confederate States service, the battalion departed in the first weeks of October for Fort Henry in Kentucky. Spending a few days at that place, they pushed north into the lower reaches of the Cumberland River. Part of the command reached the Ohio, capturing a transport, and at Canton the entire command engaged the Federal gunboat Conestoga, a battle without military significance on either side but one remembered by the Texans as bearing on the willingness of their commander to engage the enemy in whatever form they found him.
The Mounted Rangers went into winter quarters at Hopkinsville. Called out on December 28, 1861, to repel a reported enemy crossing the Green River, they rode hard and cleared Greenville, KY in a day. Proceeding toward Rumsay on the south bank of the river, that battalion found its quarry near the hamlet of Sacramento.
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12/14/1954
EXCERPT:
After locating the federals he pursued at Sacramento, KY, Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest went into action at once. (this was in December, 1861) Forrest quickly engaged the federal force, superior in numbers to his own, dismounting skirmishers, sending parties to both flanks and driving hard through the center.
Beset on all sides with unprecedented violence the Union troops broke and fled north of Sacramento, pursued for three miles and losing men every yard of the way. The Mounted Rangers from Texas returned to Hopkinsville vastly pleased with themselves and their commander.
Their stay at Hopkinsville was short. Six weeks later Fort Henry had fallen and Forrest's battalion found itself shut up in Fort Donelson along with the rest of the Confederate troops of the lower Cumberland and Tennessee River area.
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Gay