VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty-Six

 

As his flotilla broke through the last of the rafts moored across the Yazoo River at Liverpool Landing,  28 year old Lieutenant Commander John Grimes Walker (above) was pleased to see white smoke rising above the tree line.  He could not yet hear explosions from the Yazoo City dockyards 15 miles upstream, but he knew he soon would - if not before his 3 ironclads and infantry filled transports arrived, then shortly there after. 

Once ashore, Walker was to destroy the three warships under construction in Yazoo City (above) dockyards, and all the equipment used to build them. But the smoke meant  the rebel engineers had started Walker's job for him. It also seemed likely the rebel gunners on the heights above the town would be spiking and abandoning their guns.

The man who had dispatched Walker on this mission was 49 year old Acting Real Admiral David Dixon Porter (above). Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had promoted Porter over many other officers because his ambition made him “...fertile in resources (and)...great (in) energy...” But that energy and ambition almost got Porter sidelined before the shooting had actually begun. Late in March of 1861, then naval Lieutenant Porter received an unusual invitation from the new Secretary of State, William Seward. Who, I should point out, he did not work for.

Porter knew what the New York politician wanted to talk about; “The Forts” – Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens (above), at the entrance to Pensacola Bay, Florida.  Both brick fortifications were isolated and were under siege, but neither rebel nor Federal officer wanted to shoot first. 

But when Seward asked, “ Can you tell me how we can save Fort Pickens?”, the ambitious Porter could not restrain himself. He immediately answered, “I can, sir.” He then set to work, secretly drawing up a plan to fulfill his hasty promise.

At some point during the next few days it occurred to Porter that his hubris had put him far out on a limb which his boss, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, was likely to cut off. Still, a week later he assured President Lincoln and Secretary Seward that all he needed was the 16 gun steam frigate USS Powatan  (above) and “...a good-sized steamer and six or seven companies of soldiers...and the fort would soon be made impregnable.”

It was the amateur Lincoln who asked the key question. “Is this not a most irregular mode of proceeding? What will Uncle Gideon (above)  say?” Porter warned that disloyal clerks in the Navy Department would betray the expedition. “But if you will issue all the orders from the Executive Mansion,” Porter told Lincoln, “I will guarantee their prompt execution to the letter.” Lieutenant Porter then handed Lincoln four orders to sign. And one of those orders was so curious, Lincoln told Seward, “See that I don't burn my fingers.”

Two of the orders turned the USS Powhatan over to Porter and relieved the current captain. A third instructed the New York Navy Yard (above) – under Commander Andrew Hull Foote - to secretly fit out the Powhatan and not tell the Navy Department about doing it or when it sailed. 

But the fourth order relieved the commander of the Naval Bureau of Detail, the service's personal office, replacing him with 53 year old Virginian, Captain Samuel Barron (above).  Barron was a curious choice, certain to draw Gideon's attention. Barron was so pro-secession he would soon be named Secretary of the Confederate Navy.  The rest of Porter's little fleet sailed in secret on the last day of March, 1861 - the frigate USS Sabine, the steam sloop USS Brooklyn carrying 200 infantry, and the sloop USS St. Louis. But all four orders were delivered to Secretary Welles along with a stack of routine paperwork, late on the afternoon of April Fools Day, 1861.

When the diligent “Uncle Gideon” read the order on the Bureau of Detail, he was furious. His anger was so great that when Wells stormed into the White House, President Lincoln innocently inquired, “What have I done wrong?” Welles launched into a tirade about Barron, but then added that Porter's intervention had left his transport, “The Star of the West”, which had already sailed to resupply Fort Sumter,  without the support of the USS Powhatan.  After an hour's discussion, Lincoln agreed to reverse the order concerning Barron. But by then it was too late to repair any other damage. 

While Fort Pickens was reinforced even before The Powhatan arrived, Porter's political maneuvering had left “The Star Of The West” as an impotent threat trapped outside of Charleston Harbor. But that ships appearance inspired the rebel forces surrounding Sumter to demand it's immediate surrender. When the fort's commander , Captain Anderson,  refused, the rebel's opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on Friday, 12 April, 1861, and the American Civil War began in earnest. 

Porter (above) could claim he had tried to warn Welles about Secretary Seward's conspiracy. But Welles was not fooled. He could have treated Porter as a possible double agent for the Confederate states. Or he could have simply refused to advance him. But Welles was enough of a patriot that he found a way to overlook the ambitious Lieutenant's machinations. At least, Uncle Gideon told his diary, “Mr. Seward...committed (Porter) at once, and decisively, to the Union cause.” And Gideon Welles still felt comfortable jumping Porter several ranks to an Acting Rear Admiral, and putting him in charge of Grant's “Brown Water Navy” after it's first commander, Andrew Foote, was promoted. And because of that, Vicksburg was doomed.

By Monday, 4 May, 1863, after the port of Grand Gulf, Mississippi had been secured and Sherman's Corps had begun ferrying across the river. Porter was finally free to press his advantage. One ironclad, the Mound City, was sent north to close off the Mississippi just below Vicksburg. Meanwhile Porter steamed south with the rest of his  fleet - The ironclads USS Benton and USS Pittsburg, the side wheel ram the USS Lafayette, the wooden gun boat USS General Price, the river boat USS Switzerland and the tug, USS Ivy. On Thursday, 7 May, these ships had rendezvoused with Admiral Farragut's blue water ships at the mouth of the Red River.

Loading coal and ammunition, Porter's flotilla then steamed up the Red River to Alexandria, Louisiana. Here they made contact with Major General Nathaniel Bank's Army of the Gulf, (above) finally returning to the Mississippi River after his Bayou Teeche adventure. Farragut could now provide shipping to transfer Bank's men to Port Hudson, which had been Bank's original assignment.

Beginning on Friday, 8 May a Union mortar flotilla, supported by the sloop USS Richmond, began a 2 day bombardment of the other remaining Confederate hold out on the Mississippi River, Port Hudson. The shelling was largely ineffective, but gave the garrison a taste for of things to come. Meanwhile, by Friday, 15 May, Porter himself had rejoined his fleet anchored in the mouth of the Yazoo River above Vicksburg.

The very next day sailors reported hearing cannon fire off to the west. Unaware this was the distant echoes of the battle of Champion Hill, and not knowing the outcome of that battle, Admiral Porter ordered a tug to steam up the Yazoo River, looking for Grant's army. Finally, after making contact with the Iowa Cavalry on 18 May, Porter ordered marines to occupy Snyder's Bluff.

He also instructed the transports at Milliken's Bend to make steam, and begin landing food and ammunition at the Johnson Plantation a mile east of Chickasaw Bayou.

Grant and Sherman reached Snyder's Bluff on that Tuesday afternoon of 19 May. It had been 52 days since McClernand's corps had begun building the road south from Young's Point. Seeing that rations were already being landed, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above) admitted that until this moment he had doubted Grant's plan would work.  In fact, Sherman's XV Corps marching toward Vicksburg behind him would that evening consume the last of their rations. Had Snyder's bluff held out for even a few days, Grant's army might have been forced to retreat into the interior to seek food. The nearest ammunition depot was back in Grand Gulf. But after Champion Hill the army did not have enough reserve to supply a single battle. But now Sherman had no doubts. 

He told Grant this was “one of the greatest campaigns in history.” Grant accepted the compliment, and announced his intention to attack Vicksburg in the morning.

In fact, the Federal supply problem was not solved – not completely. On Wednesday, 20 May, two Missouri units, companies of Major William Tweeddale's Engineer Regiment of the West, and Captain Herman Klosterman's Pioneer Company from Sherman's XV Corps, set 432 men to work rebuilding the road from Johnson's plantation, up onto the bluffs, and then 6 miles beyond to the rear of the new Federal army hemming in Vicksburg.  

Although the first wagons moved off that morning, full rations of food and ammunition would not be supplied until 24 May.  But improvements to the supply continued to be made until the end of the siege,  including over 500 feet of bridges, first pontoons and then more permanent structures.

On the afternoon of Thursday, 21 May, the federal ironclads Baron DeKalb and Chocktaw, the tinclads Forest Rose, Linden and Petel, dropped anchor in the Yazoo River, off Yazoo city.  Under their powerful guns, Lieutenant Command John Grimes Walker landed troops. 

They found the burned out hulks of the rebel ironclad rams which Admiral Porter had been so concerned about for so long - the Mobile, and the Republic, as well as the remains of a 3^rd even larger vessel, as yet unnamed.

The dockyard's 5 carpenter and blacksmith shops had also been burned down by the rebels before their retreat.  It seemed obvious that 45 year old Confederate Naval Lieutenant Isaac Newton Brown, in charge of the construction of the rams, had received little or no warning of Pemberton's decision to abandon Snyder's Bluff.   The federal tinclads spent the next day prowling up the river for a few miles, burning buildings, boats and bridges. The shore crews destroyed a sawmill and lumberyard north of Yazoo City. 

All public property in Yazoo City itself was burned down, but leaving the  private businesses along main street (above) untouched.  One hundred fifteen military patients at a hospital in town were given paroles  And on Saturday, 23 May, 1863, Lieutenant Commander Grimes steamed his little fleet back to the mouth of the Yazoo River.  All this damage was merely the first blow the Confederacy was to receive because of Lieutenant General Pemberton's  abandonment of Snyder's bluff.

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