1ST TENNESSEE VOLUNTEER CALVARY

Colonel Josiah Patterson, Fourth Alabama Cavalry, has this to say of this engagement: "My regiment was often pitted against Jim Brownlow's famous First Tennessee Cavalry, and numerous interesting incidents were related in reference to these passages at arms.

In 1863, my regiment was stationed near Triune, and Brownlow's regiment was operating in the same locality at the same time. Both organizations were game and well equipped, and it was hard to tell which enjoyed a fight the most.

Colonel Brownlow once sent me word to meet his regiment at Rigg's Cross Roads, and he would whip my regiment like h--l. We did not meet at that place, but shortly after that my Lieutenant-Colonel took into his head to capture Brownlow's regiment, and for this purpose entered into a plan with two other regiments, which were to attack from the rear.

Luckily for Brownlow, he had an infantry support, which our men were ignorant of, and when my regiment attacked him from the rear, it got into a hornet's nest. Brownlow ordered a charge, and in less than no time my regiment was getting out of there in a hurrry, with the mountaineers whacking at them with their sabers right and left. About two hundred of my men were captured in this engagement."

Colonel Patterson is mistaken about an infantry support, as no other troops except the First Tennessee Cavalry were engaged at this place and time. This charge was made in a blinding snow-storm.