VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Nine

William Tecumseh Sherman was a member of a well off family of 11 children.  Then, in June of 1829, when “Cump” was just nine years old, his universe imploded.  While “riding the circuit” 90 miles from home, his larger-than-life father, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Charles Robert Sherman, had suddenly come down with a fever and died within a week.  And because Charles had been an honest man, he left no fortune behind. Without warning, William's family and security simply evaporated, like water left absently boiling on a hot stove.

William's older male siblings were apprenticed out, and the girls and younger boys were scattered to adoptive families across Ohio. “Cump” was taken in by a Lancaster neighbor, a lawyer and soon to be U.S. Senator, Thomas Ewing. The tragedy left such deep abandonment issues that “Cump” never called his loving adoptive parents anything but Mister and Misses Ewing. And he never escaped the panic whenever it seemed his security might be swept away again. In May of 1863 Major General William Tecumseh Sherman had a re-occurrence of that panic when he first arrived on the Mississippi side of the Mississippi.

On Saturday 9 May, “Cump” reached the Pipes-Bagnell house near Harkinson Ferry, expecting to be reunited with his friend Sam, only to discover that the day before General Ulysses Simpsons Grant had moved on. Cump panicked, a little. He immediately wrote to Grant at Rocky Springs, “ Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road."

Grant promptly reassured his dear friend. “I do not calculate the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” he wrote. “What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.” With that rational explanation, and a few words of reassurance from Grant, Sherman was able to again pass along the confidence to his “tail-end Charlie”, General Francis Preston Blair, that, “Don't let the wagons get encumbered with trash. We will be in want of salt, bread, sugar, and coffee. We may safely trust to the country for meat."

With the arrival of the bulk of Sherman's XV corps, Grant now had in Central Mississippi about 52,700 men. And he had decided, while scouring his maps and cavalry reports over Mrs. Pipes-Bagnell's dinning room table, to strike first for the Vicksburg and Jackson Southern Railroad. 

By occupying that line he would be cutting Vicksburg off from reinforcement from the eastern Confederacy, just as he had cut Vicksburg off from the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy by occupying the Texas and Monroe railroad line to Desoto, Louisiana. And in typical Grant fashion, he chose to accomplish this in as devious a fashion as he could.

It was impossible to disguise the arrival of Sherman's Corps around Harkinson Ferry. So Grant used the noise and dust to his advantage. Sherman was instructed to ostentatiously prepare to assault the rebel lines along the Big Black River. 

The bridge captured by McClerand's men would never support a major advance, so scouts and staff officers were seen inspecting possible crossing points above and below it. With Vicksburg just 20 miles to the north, Pemberton would have had no choice but to assume Grant was preparing a “coupe de main” or “direct assault” on the city, and hold his divisions back to defend against it.

Meanwhile, McClernand's XIII Corps had moved to camps further up the road which hugged the

Big Black River.  Rebel observation posts could not help but see the dust from their marches and the smoke from their camp fires extending inland toward the Natchez Trace. This seemed to hint that Grant was moving further north toward the Big Black River Bridge, west of Edward's Depot. That larger structure, and the railroad bridge nearby, could support a major advance on Vicksburg. And Pemberton had been suspecting since the Port Gibson breakout, that this was Grant's real goal.

But also on that Saturday, 9 May, the divisions of McPherson's XVII corps were marching northeast on the Natchez Trace, passing through the XIII corps camps. At the hamlet of Reganton they took the road east, camping 3 miles beyond Utica. Grant was traveling with James McPherson, and set his new headquarters outside of Cayuga.

The XVII corps was now Grant's right flank, threatening Clinton and tying down Pemberton's slowly assembling force in the state capital of Jackson. Sherman was positioned in the middle, where he could march directly on Bolton, leaving McClernand guarding the left flank at the 2 Big Black River bridges and threatening Edward's Depot. Grant's intention was to cut the Southern Railroad not once but in three, tripling his odds of severing the vital railroad.

Over the first two weeks in May of 1863, Grant showed he had indeed learned from Napoleon, who wrote, "When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success...”. Grant had done this by following the Emperor's twin guidelines. “Operations must be designed to surprise and confuse the enemy,” while rendering them helpless “through the severance of his lines of supply, communications, and retreat.”

Over the first 2 weeks in October of 1805 the core of Napoleon's Le Grand Armee marched 275 miles from the banks of the Rhine to the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. He thus placed his army between the 60,000 Austrians under General Mack von Leiberich, around Ulm, and the 80,000 Russians under Tzar Alexander I, just nearing the Austrian capital of Vienna. By the end of October, Napoleon had forced General Mack to surrender. And on 3 December in the startling victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon killed or captured half the Russian army. Those twin achievements inspired Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

What Grant was about to achieve at Vicksburg deserved an equally impressive artistic footnote, and more because it was not achieved merely to make one man an Emperor. Back in February, shortly after arriving to dig the Lake Providence canal, Sergeant Cyrus F. Boyd, had gotten his first unvarnished look at the reality of human slavery.  Among the “contraband” who entered the 15^th Iowa lines that first day, Boyd spotted a young girl with deep blue eyes and straight hair which hung down to her shoulders. 

The mother explained the girl had been fathered by her “master”, and said she had given birth to two other daughters by the same rapist. Upon hearing this, according to Boyd, an unnamed corn husker had exploded in anger at the injustice. “By God”, he shouted, “ I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on it.” Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had re-framed the war, from one for the survival of the United States, into one for the future of humanity.

Two days later, on 11 May, Grant's primary worry was a sudden shortage of water. The appearance of dry weather and the presence of 55,000 men and 100,000 horses, had left streams and and wells bone dry. Still Grant pushed his men forward. On this Monday, 54 year old General Frederick Steele's (above)  1st division of Sherman's XV Corps, marched to Five mile Creek,. 

And 29 year old James Madison Tuttle's (above)  3rd division of the same corps camped closer to Auburn. General McPherson's XVII Corps advance only 1 ½ miles, slowed by the search for water. That night Grant urged McPerson to press his men to take Raymond, saying, “We must fight before our rations fail”.

At 5:30am, Tuesday, 12 May, 1863, all three Yankee corps began their advance from Five Mile Creek. General McClernand's (above) XIII corps were aiming at Edward's Depot, but had to guard their flank along the Big Black River, which would slow their movement. 

Sherman's (above)XV Corps was moving faster, determined to cut the Southern railroad at Bolton by nightfall. 

But 32 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's (above) XVII was so short of water their main thrust this day was toward Raymond, to capture and use the wells south that town.

As they set out, Grant sent a message via Grand Gulf, to General Halleck, Beginning now, the Army of the Tennessee would be out of communication until they had captured Vicksburg. Or been destroyed. For the first time in this war, an entire Federal Army was marching off the map.

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