VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Eight

John Gregg (above) did not get along well with his father-in-law.  Gregg was a successful lawyer, with a practice in the east Texas flat lands of Fairfield County and a personal wealth of over a quarter of a million in today's dollars. Still it would have been odd if John had not felt a little self conscious about comparing what he had to offer his 1858  bride Mary Francis Garth, to what she giving up – her father's large plantation in north central Alabama, with almost 200 slaves toiling daily to provide for her care and comfort.

The Garth's were cousins to Patrick Henry, and , Jessie Winston Garth (above)  himself had spent time with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, and was a long time friend of the 10^th President of the United States, General John Tyler.  Jessie  himself had been a general in the Virginia Militia during the War of 1812.   After moving south to share in the lands bullied from native peoples, Jessie  Garth had helped found the town of Decatur, helped write the Alabama state constitution, was the first President of the state senate and had served in the state house as well. 

He was the first President of First National Bank  (above) in Decatur, and owned enough stock in the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, that the first steam engine to pull a train into Decatur was named after him. John would never measure up to Jessie Garth's social accomplishment. But there was an even more fundamental matter dividing John Gregg from his father-in-law.

Seventy year old slave owner Jessie Winston Garth was emphatic about the union. He would willing give up his slaves, he insisted, in order to save the union of the United States of America . But having never fought beside northerners, 34 year old John Gregg (above) felt no need to compromise or learn from the free labor of the north.   Lincoln observed before he took the oath of office that secessionist demanded Republicans not only promise to not touch slavery, they must somehow convince men like John Gregg they would not touch slavery.  And that was no longer possible. 

These were violent, ambitious men,  frontiersmen who were unwilling to admit their "peculiar institution" was both economically and morally bankrupt.  A civil war could only hasten the death of slavery, and yet men like John Gregg were driven to bring on the cataclysm.  

As was observed at the time, secession was a logical discordance which had gripped one third of the nation. Such periodic bouts of insanity seem to be the the price humans have to pay for the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation.

In the name of defending slavery, John Gregg became colonel of the 746 men from 9 east Texas counties who formed the 7^th Volunteer infantry regiment.  In the summer of 1861, after Mary Francis had been sent to the Garth's Alabama estates for safety,  John had joined his regiment at Hopkinsville, Tennessee, on the border with neutral Kentucky.  There, over six months, disease buried 130 of the men before they fired a shot in anger. 

Then, in February of 1862 another 20 were killed and 40 wounded at the battle at Fort Donelson. Almost all of the remainder, including John, were forced to surrender.

The 7^th Regiment was paroled and exchanged at Vicksburg in the fall of that year.   But with 1863 John was promoted a Brigadier General, and the Texas 7^th joined with the 3^rd, 10^th,, 41^st and 50^th Tennessee regiments into the 4,500 man 10^th Battalion or Gregg's Brigade. They were supported by Bledsoe's Missouri Battery, a smooth bore 6 pound bronze cannon called “Old Sacramento” and a pair of iron 6 pound cannon, all under Captain Hiram Bledsoe.

For the first 4 months of 1863, Gregg's Battalion was stationed 80 feet above the Mississippi river at Port Hudson (above), some 20 miles north of Federal lines at Natchez, Louisiana. Until Sunday,  3 May, 1863, that is - when a telegram arrived from Lieutenant General Pemberton in Vicksburg. Grant's breakout at Port Gibson had forced a desperate reshuffling of battle lines. Pemberton ordered Gregg and his men to move with all dispatch to Jackson, Mississippi, 200 miles away.

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So on Monday, 4 May, at Port Hudson (above) General Gregg loaded his men onto the 7 cars of the Port Hudson and Clinton Railroad, for the 20 mile trip inland to the seat of East Feliciana Parish.

Their top speed over the corroded line was no more than 5 miles an hour. And after a seemingly endless series of shuttles back and forth the brigade's trip terminated in Clinton, a town of 1,500 white souls. Gregg's 4,500 Tennesseans and Texans then began a 37 mile forced march in the heat and dust of a suddenly dry Mississippi spring.  Fifteen miles east of town they crossed the almost empty Amite river and then camped beside the trickle of the Tickfaw creek. Private W.J. Davidson of the 41st Tennessee remembered, ", Our rations gave out and the heat and dust was almost insufferable." The next day they reached Kents Mills. Here Gregg's Battalion boarded cars of the New Orleans and Jackson railroad, to continue their journey north.

But they had barely resumed their progress when, shortly after crossing the Mississippi state border they had to disembark again. Two weeks earlier Grierson's Yankee raiders had destroyed many of the rails between Osyka and Brookhaven, Mississippi. So it was another 47 mile forced march, before Gregg's Battalion could board a third train for the 56 final miles into the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi. The Battalion had marched over 100 miles and traveled 100 miles by rail in 5 long exhausting days. They arrived in Jackson early on Saturday 9 May, 1863. That evening the weary rebels drank their fill from the cool waters of the upper Pearl River.

But the next day General Gregg received new orders from General Pemberton. And before dawn on Monday, 11 May, John Gregg would lead his weary battalion on yet another forced march of 27 miles to the southwest. That afternoon they were greeted by cheering crowds at the town of Raymond, happy to see so many Confederate soldiers after a week of apparent abandonment. Their joy was mitigated somewhat when after filing into a field just south of town, “…the brigade...were too tired to stand in line...and everyone dropped...as soon as we halted.” 

General Gregg, meanwhile was quickly seething with anger. The cavalry he expected to find guarding the roads south of Raymond (above) , were nowhere to be seen.

Pemberton was trying to form a ring to contain Grant's army, behind the Big Black River to the west, and its tributaries Fourteen Mile and Baker's creeks to the north and east. And the force he chose to stake out the positions south of Raymond until Gregg's men arrived, were the 500 troopers of Colonel Willaim “Wirt" Adams 1^st Mississippi cavalry regiment. And the reason they were not where they were supposed to be had to do with their hot headed commander.

Both 49 year old William "Wirt" Adams (above)  and his younger brother Daniel were violent southern gentlemen prone to spontaneous duels -slash -brawls to defend their “honor”. Younger brother Daniel had even been tried for the murder of a journalist, but the jury generously found he had been acting in self defense.  Colonel Adams would eventually die in a similar encounter on a street corner.  But that was 20 years in the future. On Friday, 8 May, the 1^st Mississippi cavalry were in Jackson, resting men and horses after futile and frustrating week spent chasing Gerierson's raiders across central Mississippi, with only a brief encounter at cannon range for the honor. 

Pemberton now ordered Colonel Adams to “picket” his men on the roads south of Raymond. But he also ordered Adams to ride to Edward's Depot, to assess the situation there.

Two weeks earlier Pemberton had been so desperate for cavalry to stop Colonel Gierson's raid, he had ordered 3 companies of the 20^th Mississippi Infantry at Jackson, Mississippi – about 400 men - to be put on horseback, and sent to Edward's Depot to guard the 300 muskets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition stored in Edward's Produce and Grocery. These guns were one of dozens of such arsenals through out Mississippi,  kept to deal with a feared uprising by the victims of the allegedly “benign” institution of slavery.

It was a 100 man scouting detachment of the transmogrified 20^th Mississippi horse-slash- infantry, out of Edwards Depot, which had been surprised along Bakers Creek by union cavalry on 6 May. And it was their capture which had so frightened editor and publisher George William Harper at Raymond, that he had inspired Pemberton's concern about the capabilities of the metamorphosed 20th Mississippi. 

And that was what Pemberton had asked Colonel Adams to do – ride the 25 miles from Jackson, through Bolton, and cross Bakers Creek to Edward's Depot. Once there he was to coolly observe and calmly report about the condition and combat readiness of the 20th regiment.  But cool and calm were not words usually associated with either of the Adams boys.

If Colonel Adams had caught up with Grierson's raiders, even for a brief struggle, he might have reacted differently to Pemberton's orders.  But the insult of  burned box cars and warehouses along the Grierson's route was seared into his mind. He had breathed in the stench of blackened wooden cross ties and bridges, felt the humiliating heat of smoldering and twisted bow tied iron rails. His honor demanded revenge. Revenge was something William Wirt Adams understood.

So on Saturday morning 10 May,  even though ordered to  picket his men on the roads between Raymond and Forty-mile Creek,  Brigadier General William Wirt Adams had mounted his entire command and ridden the 25 miles to Edward's Depot.  He spent the next 48 hours in Edward's Depot, looking for a fight, unaware he had just missed the most important one in his life. 

Because, on the evening of 11 May,  Brigadier General John Gregg's 4,500 infantrymen were  left defending the three roads leading into the town of Raymond without the eyes and ears of cavalry to warn them of any approaching Yankee army.  And the Yankees were approaching,  In great numbers.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Seven

One of the things America lost with the end of the 19^th century, was a familiarity with death. Consider the life of one daughter of Mississippi, Mary Hynum. She was born in early April of 1805. In 1825 she became the third wife of Abner Pipes, who owned a plantation on the southern edge of the Chocktaw nation, 4 miles west of Rocky Springs, near the Harkinson's Ferry over the Big Black River. They had three children, first two sons, James born in 1827 and Isaac Newton Pipes, born in 1829. Six years later in 1835, the patriarch Abner Pipes died, just a few days before his and Mary's newborn son also died.

Even after the February 1839 passage of the Married Women's Property Act, women in Mississippi still could not sign legal documents. And with 2 minor sons, 34 year old widow Mary Hynum Pipes was in constant danger of losing the plantation. So in 1839 she married 49 year old Samuel Bagnell, 

He and Mary had 4 children – an infant who died shortly after birth, Ciaus, who died on 27 July, 1845, just 2 days short of his third birthday, 15 month old Emma who died 2 days after Ciaus, and William, who died at the age of 9 in the summer of 1846.  

Then, in August of 1847, at 54 years of age Samuel Bagnell, also died. That left Mary living in the house with only the two sons from her first marriage.  Two years later 20 year old Isaac Pipes married Ann Eliza Evans from Bastrop, Louisiana, and brought her home to Mississippi.

By the spring of 1863 both James and Isaac were serving as privates among the 200 or so members of the Fourth Mississippi cavalry “Battalion” called to the defense of their homes. The 4^th skirmished with Grant's army after the defeat at Port Gibson, and both sons would survive the war. But their service left now 58 year old Mary Hynum Pipes Bagnell and her daughter-in-law alone with the house servants, until Wednesday, 6 May, 1863 when Yankee Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant chose her home as his headquarters.

Camped around the Pipes Bagnell house were the 19,350 men of the XIII Corps, under 52 year old Lincoln doppelganger Major General John Alexander McClernand, with forward elements still holding the bridge over the Big Black River at Harkinson's Ferry.   Four miles to the east, around Willow Springs, was the XVII Corps, 17,390 men under 34 year old West Point graduate Major General James Birdseye McPherson. 

Left behind in Louisiana was the XV Corps, 15,975 men under 53 year old Major General William Tecumseh Sherman. The XV Corps was waiting while 2 million rations of hardtack and ammunition were ferried across to be stockpiled in Grand Gulf.

Quartermasters calculated that each Union soldier in the field required three pounds of food stuffs each day, in addition to the 13 pounds of “re-supply” required to keep him “effective” - armed with ammunition and powder, boots, uniform and medicine. The Civil War might be labeled “the first railroad war”, but before and after the railroad, all armies were carried on the backs of horses and mules.  And that added to the burden, because each regiment was expected to carry 25% additional supplies for their teamsters to transport all the other supplies.

To support each 1,000 men in the field required 40 to 50 wagons, drawn by about 300 mules, to carry foodstuffs for humans and animals - tents, blankets, cooking gear, ammunition, tack, horse and human shoes, and one or two ambulances. Each of the horses required 26 pounds of fodder per day and each mule required 24 pounds, half of which the army carried and half of which the animals were expected to find for themselves. When Grant proposed “living of the land” after leaving Port Gibson it was a literal proposal for the animals. Each 2-3,000 pound wagon load of supplies could cover about 20 miles in an eight hour day of marching. As the army marched the supplies would be used up, which would lighten the load a little, but the humans and the animals still had to eat.

On average a Civil War army required one horse for every three men - 20 horses to pull each artillery piece, and six mules to pull each wagon. And that was in addition to the mounts for cavalry and officers – which meant that Grant’s army of 42,000 men required 14,000 horses and mules. As mentioned earlier, each horse and mule lived a short, brutal life, even more so than the humans who controlled them.

Separated from Grant, Sherman's imagination of pending disaster for the entire army cut off in Mississippi, had once again gotten the better of him.  But on this Wednesday, 6 May, as the first of his men began the crossing from Hard Times Landing,  Sherman (above) dispatched a reassuring message to the commander of his 2^nd division, 42 year old Missourian Major General Francis Preston Blair. Sherman assured the tail end charlie of the Army of the Tennessee, “Grant reports plenty of meat and corn on the other side...”. That same morning, 60 wagons loaded with ammunition, left Grand Gulf for Willow Springs, guarded by 300 troopers of Federal cavalry.

As Major Mark S, Hurley observed in his 1992 paper, “Union Logistics in the Vicksburg Campaign”,

“Grant's original plan....(was to) detach McClernand's corps to General Banks to cooperate in the reduction of Port Hudson....(but then) he learned that Banks was moving up the Red River instead of up the Mississippi.”

So, with Banks tied down in southern Louisiana for at least the next 30 days, Grant decided to act alone. On 3 May, he notified his boss. 48 year old General-in-Chief, Henry Wagner Halleck  (above) that “The country will provide all the forage required for anything like an active campaign. Other supplies will have to be drawn from Milliken's Bend." The next morning, from Mary Pipes Bagnell's parlor,  he shifted that supply base to Grand Gulf.

That Wednesday, 6 May, he again telegraphed Halleck. “ I will move as soon as three days rations (are) received and send wagons back to the Gulf for more to follow.” But where would the army go next?  He might use the bridge at Harkinson's Ferry to strike directly at Vicksburg.  But, as Major Hurley notes, “...the broken nature of the ground favored the Confederates.”  And such an attack might give Pemberton's army an escape route north, into the Yazoo basin. However, “Skirting east of Vicksburg...could deny the Confederates access to supplies and reinforcements from Jackson....(and) the Confederates would not be able to easily tell whether Grant's main effort was against Jackson,...or Vicksburg. Furthermore, marching east gave Grant flexibility because he could easily turn either town into his main attack.”

On Thursday, 7 May, the first of Sherman's battalions left Grand Gulf and began marching the Rodney Road toward Willow Springs. At the same time the three brigades of 37 year old Major General John Alexander Logan's (above)  3^rd division, of McPherson's Corps, set out on a 3 mile march north along the Natchez Trace for Rocky Springs.  Grant was riding with General Logan, and for anyone aware of his phobia against retracing his steps, that was a highly significant journey. It was also important because Grant was no longer traveling with the troublesome General McClernand. He was close, but Grant felt the need for a wider view.

Rocky Springs (above) was a little village of 2,600 whites operating 3 stores and 13 shops. Within the surrounding Claiborne county were perhaps 300 more whites and some 2,000 slaves. None of the white residents of Rocky Springs lifted a hand against the Yankee infantry as they marched in, but they did not welcome the invaders, either. Still, despite the hate filled stares, said one Yankee soldier, “...we have good, cold spring water...”

On the same day, elements of John McClernand's XIII Corps marched further up the Rodney Road to Big Sand Creek, about 5 miles to the northeast. He was under strict orders to avoid a fight. The steps were small, but the army kept moving, both to keep the rebels uncertain about its exact location, and to keep moving to fresh territory for foraging.

Charles Anderson Dana (above), the Special Investigating Agent for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, was supposed to be keeping an eye on Grant, and had arrived in Rocky Springs with the general.  But after years of editing and managing Horace Greely's New York Tribune, and months spent knee deep in the political maze of Washington, D.C, the 42 year old Dana had “gone native”, and reverted to being a journalist. He liked Grant, and filed positive reports about him.

It was Dana's reports supporting Grant, and questioning McClernand's capabilities, which inspired the autocratic and occasionally hysterical Stanton (above) to send a 5 May telegram to Dana. “General Grant has full and absolute authority to enforce his own commands, and to remove any person who by ignorance, inaction or any other cause interferes with or delays his operations. He has the full confidence of the government, is expected to enforce his authority, and will be firmly and heartily supported, but he will be responsible for any failure to exert his powers. You may communicate this to him.” However, because Grant was moving, this note would not reach Dana until 10 May.

While in camp at Rocky Springs, Dana watched the forage parties dispatched each morning, returning with a bounty of pork, chicken and beef every night. The expedition had briefly assumed the air of a hunting trip, and Dana waxed romantic about the soldier's life. “Away yonder, in the edge of the woods, I hear the drumbeat that calls the soldiers to supper...Pretty soon after dark they are all asleep, lying in their blankets under the trees...Their guns are all ready by their sides, so that if they are suddenly called at night they can start in a moment. It is strange in the mornings before daylight to hear the bugle and drums sound the reveille, which calls the army to wake up."

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YOU ONLY LIVE TWO OR THREE TIMES

I can't prove who the two fishermen pulled out of the high tide off tiny Pilsey Island (above) on 9 June, 1957.  The corpse was probably the earthly remains of Commander Lionel “Buster” Crabb.  But the body had been in the water for so long,  that when they hefted the corpse into the boat, the head fell off and was lost in the mud flats.  The hands were already gone, whether by accident or design. Margaret Player, Lionel’s ex-wife, could not identity what was left,  and neither could his current girlfriend, Patricia Rose. At the inquest a diving partner, William McLanachan, identified a scar on the left knee as Lionel’s, but later recanted.

DNA technology was still a half century in the future, but still...The diving suit matched the two piece type Lionel had been wearing. The height of the corpse matched his. The body hair color matched. The clothing Lionel had been wearing under the suit, matched the clothes on the corpse. Even the “hammer toes” of the corpse matched photographs of Lionel Crabb’s crab feet. The coroner ruled that it was Lionel Crabb and that he had been dead for several days.  And the mystery should have ended right there, in the tidal flats of Chichester Harbor, 17 miles to the east of Plymouth Harbor.  But what if the body was claimed to be that of Commander James Bond, would you meekly accept the evidence, or suspect the super spy had pulled off yet another misdirection and double cross, all in the name of queen and country?.  Lionel Crabb didn’t look like the movie version of James Bond, but he was a dead ringer for the Bond from the books. He hated to exercise. He was a chain smoker, and an aficionado of “boilermakers” (whisky with a beer chaser). He distrusted academics and experts (he would have shot Q long ago). And Lionel couldn’t swim three lengths of a swimming pool without collapsing from exhaustion. Still, a friend described him as having, “…a singular ability to endure discomfort…His lack of fear was unquestioned….(a) curmudgeonly but kindly bantam cock,…a most pleasant and lively individual. (However) His penchant for alcohol remained undiminished.”Lionel Crabb started his adventures as a Merchant seaman. And when World War Two began he was already thirty years old, and thanks to his consumption of alcohol. already past his physical prime. He joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and eventually ended up as a bomb safety officer based on Gibraltar, a job requiring calm dedication and not for a dare devil. But that is where the legend of Commander “Buster” Crabb really begins.

Across the straights from Gibraltar, in Algeria, was a force of Italian divers who were skillfully planting limpet mines on British transports and warships in the anchorage of Gibraltar Harbor (above). Lionel became part of the team assigned to protect those ships.

He learned to dive in the war zone, wearing the bulky “Sladen Suits” (above), often referred to as “Clammy Death.".  On his missions, Lionel was using the ancestor of the aqualung, "re-breathers" invented by the American, Dr. Lambersten. The British team didn’t even have swim fins, until two Italian divers where machine gunned by a sentry one night and Lionel retrieved the fins and used them,  out of curiosity.Working often in the black of night,  Lionel slipped beneath the oily water of Gilbrater's harbor, to inspect a warship's hull for any sign of explosives, and if discovered to carefully remove them, bringing them to the surface and disarming them, which was the only part of the job he had actually been trained for.

For his work Lionel was awarded the St. George Medal in 1944. By that time he was commanding the entire unit, in part because he was one of the longest surviving members.  Lionel was a pioneer in the field, even teaching himself to disarm the new German magnetic mines. In August of 1945 he was assigned to disarm mines placed by Zionists terrorists on shipping in the port of Haifa. He received another medal for his role in disarming mines and explosives in Europe left over from World War II.

And in 1949 Lionel managed to produce underwater photographs of a British cruiser’s spinning propellers while the big ship plowed through the sea within feet of him. He explored a British submarine lost in the Thames estuary (above), and helped build the outflow system for a top secret nuclear weapons factory. Lionel had become the “go-to guy” on anything involving underwater espionage, and was famous for it, not because he was a genius at it but because he was the only person doing it. Lionel was retired from active service in 1953,  but remained in the reserves. And in October of 1955, when the new Soviet cruiser Sverdlov paid a “good will” visited to Portsmouth, Lionel and a friend, Sydney Knowles, made nighttime dives, examining and measuring the hull, in an attempt to explain the ship’s powerful maneuvering abilities. So both men seemed obvious picks to repeat that dive in April of 1956 when the Soviet Cruiser Ordzhonikidze (above) paid call to Portsmouth, while carrying, Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party Leader, Nikita Khrushchev on a state visit.Their dive might never have become public knowledge except,  after the visit of the  Ordzhonikidze  the Soviets filed an official protest, claiming a British diver was seen close to the Soviet cruiser on 19 April.   Lionel’s war record had made him the most famous diver in Britain, and the day after the Soviet protest was filed, a reporter spotted Lionel's name in the register of the Sally Port hotel in Old Portsmouth (above). for the date of 18 April  The day after his name was spotted, other reporters returned to find that page had been ripped out of the book,  and was now missing.  After that, Lionel could not be found.  He had disappeared.  The British navy eventually claimed that Lionel had been testing new diving equipment in the Solent,  to the West of Portsmouth, when he had disappeared and was presumed to have drowned.  But that story seemed so absurd it produced even more speculation.
It is speculated that the new British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden (above),  had hopes of reaching a rapprochement with the Soviet leadership, and had forbidden Lionel from making this second dive inside Portsmouth harbor.  But, the story went that  the CIA had encouraged Lionel to make the attempt even without official British endorsement.  What we do know as fact, is that after press speculation about Lionel's death,  Eden issued a public statement on 14 May saying   “It would not be in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Commander Crabb is presumed to have met his death. I think it necessary, in the special circumstances of this case, to make it clear that what was done,  was done without the authority or the knowledge of Her Majesty’s Ministers. Appropriate disciplinary steps are being taken.”  Shortly thereafter the head of MI6, Britain's intelligence agency, was relieved.
But from this point the stories and myths only multiply.  In 2007 Eduard Koltsov claimed he had been a diver aboard the Cruiser Ordzhonikidze when, while on underwater patrol under the Soviet Ship in Portsmouth harbor, he spotted Lionel fixing a mine,  and had cut the spy's throat. Lionel’s fiance claimed in 1974 that he had defected and was still alive, training Soviet frogmen in the Black Sea. Another version says Lionel suffered a heart attack while inspecting the Ordzhonikidze, had been rescued by Soviet divers,  but had later died from his injuries, perhaps under torture, and that the Soviets had dumped his body overboard after leaving the English port.What we now know for certain is that on 17 April, 1956, as the cold war was still heating up,  Lionel and another unknown man checked into the Sally Port Hotel, in Portsmouth. On the evening of 18 April, Lionel entered the water from The King’s Stairs Jetty (above), about 80 yards from where the Soviet warship was berthed.  Lionel returned to the surface just 20 minutes later, having gotten confused in the dark among the pier’s pilings. The decision was made to try again in daylight.

Lionel returned to the jetty just after 7 a.m on 18 April, in full daylight and re-entered the waters of Portsmouth harbor (above).  He came back up just 20 minutes later complaining of problem with his re-breathing equipment.  Repairs were made, and within a few minutes Lionel went down again for another try.

But this time he did not resurface, at least not until fourteen months later when his body was pulled from the shallow tidal inlet some seventeen miles further west down the coast. But was that really the body of Commander Lionel Crabb, or the other unknown man? We still don’t know for certain, and won’t until at least 2057, when the British government has promised to tell all they know.

Of course they had originally promised to do that in 1987, but then they changed their minds. They could do that again, too.  As they say, You Only Live Twice. 

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