By: Mike Bunn
The Battle of Chehaw Station is a largely forgotten conflict associated with the July 1864 cavalry raid through Alabama led by Union general Lovell Harrison Rousseau. Ordered by Gen. William T. Sherman, the raid aimed to disrupt Confederate operations in the area during the Atlanta Campaign. This skirmish holds a unique place in Alabama’s history primarily due to the heavy involvement of conscripted teenagers and University of Alabama cadets, for many of whom it was their first combat experience.
Chehaw Station, a stop on the Montgomery and West Point Railroad, connected Alabama’s capital to western Georgia—and, eventually, Atlanta. Near this station, Rousseau’s rugged cavalrymen encountered the largest Confederate force assembled to stop them from severing a vital section of the critical rail line. Rousseau’s men had met only minimal resistance as they carved a destructive path through eastern Alabama, reaching Loachapoka by sundown on July 17. Early the next morning, Rousseau divided his forces into four detachments, assigning each to destroy sections of the Montgomery and West Point Railroad in the area before advancing to join the Federal army near Atlanta. Key targets included Confederate facilities in nearby Auburn, home to the East Alabama Male College, the precursor of Auburn University.
Confederate authorities in Montgomery scrambled to meet the crisis as best they could, hastily cobbling together a meager force of perhaps 500 troops, most of whom were the untested teenagers of Lockhart’s Battalion. To supplement their numbers, Gov. Thomas Hill Watts called upon a small contingent of University of Alabama cadets (Alabama operated as a military school at the time), who happened to be staying in or passing through Montgomery at the time. Gen. Bryan M. Thomas was entrusted with the overall command of the little makeshift army and soon had it rattling along the tracks aboard a train to meet the invaders east of town.
The Confederate force approached Chehaw Station on the morning of Monday, July 18, 1864. About a mile past the station, they encountered a Federal force under Maj. Absalom Baird. The Yankees fired the first shot, striking a railcar near one of the troops. The boys were hastily deployed, and the fight ensued. The opposing lines clashed across a half-mile stretch of ground, with the Confederates anchored on a small ridge in a large field containing a gin house and the Federals positioned at the edge of a clearing a few hundred yards away. The two sides slogged away at each other intermittently for several hours as General Thomas directed the train to shuttle back and forth to the station, ringing its bell to create the illusion of reinforcements.
Major Baird
Public Domain
Already convinced he faced a force at least as large as his own, Major Baird sent a courier up the line to request reinforcements. When additional Union cavalry arrived, they stymied a tentative Confederate advance in the early afternoon. A Union detachment flanked the Confederate line under the cover of the railroad embankment, overwhelming the outnumbered and disorganized Southern troops. Thomas’s thin line soon broke. Despite their success, Baird, believing he would need even more men to advance farther down the rail line, decided to pull back.
In the aftermath of the battle, both sides claimed victory. The Union forces had clearly gotten the better of the fighting, but they had left Confederates in control of the battlefield as they departed to join up with Sherman’s army. Union casualties numbered about 15, while the Confederate losses ranged between 40 and 50. Among the Confederate casualties were two University of Alabama cadets, the first to be wounded in action during the war.
The Battle of Chehaw Station remains a significant yet lesser-known chapter in Alabama’s Civil War history, illustrating the challenges and sacrifices faced by those defending the Confederacy.
