It was hot and muggy. Historians declare it was steamy . Such is Mississippi in the summertime. From the banks of the swollen Tishomingo River on June 10, 1864, Union soldiers jumped by the thousands to escape the fire of a burning, raging battle in the Northeastern corner of the Sovereign State of Mississippi, in a little community known as Brice's Cross Roads. Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest pulled out all the stops to pull off one of the fiercest and most strategic battles of the Civil War. He won that battle, hands down. Late spring rains caused the narrow stream of water to overflow its banks. Union troops by the thousands, under the command of Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis slogged the gently sloping hills, their wagon trains pulled by mules dotting the landscape like flies on molasses, covering miles and miles of muddy terrain, until that day, untouched except by a few farm houses, a Reformed Presbyterian church, and an old log house, all set beneat