The Confederate guns fired first, barking out just after 8:30 a.m. that Sunday morning, 17 May, 1863. They could see the Yankee infantry impudently marching toward the right flank of their cotton fortifications. The gunfire drove the blue bellies to ground in the plowed fields. In response, more Yankees from Carr's division approached, and began to unlimber four big cannon, The battle was shaping up just as John Bowen anticipated it would.
In command of the rebel bridgehead on the eastern shore, Brigadier General John Stevens Bowen, (above) the 32 year old profession soldier from Georgia, was not happy. His 5,000 men were low on ammunition and bone tired when they stumbled into their positions after midnight, Once again, as the day before at Champion Hill, he was being forced to fight with a river at his back. He would have preferred to defend the west bank of the Big Black River, but his commander, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, held out hope that General Loring's 6,000 man division would reach their lines before the Yankee army.
So Bowen did the best he could. He sited 2 big cannon throwing 24 pound shells next to the makeshift boat/bridge over the Big Black river, to protect his men's line of retreat. And he stacked 18 more cannon on his left flank, south of the Edward's Depot road, to support Colonel Francis Cockrell's brigade, where the Yankees were most likely to attack. Major General Martin Green's brigade was defending the other end of the river bend, a mile to the north.
Holding the center were 3 regiments, the 60th, 61st and 62nd Tennessee, under 39 year old Brigadier General John Crawford Vaughn (above). Vaughn was far more ardent than able. He was an enthusiastic and brutal supporter of slavery and the Confederacy. Well know in his home state, his reputation helped recruit these volunteers from the “hollers” of east Tennessee - a region riddled by divided loyalties.
The volunteers were told they were signing up to protect their homes. But the Confederacy could not afford to keep that promise. And while Vaughn's Tennessee brigade helped repulse Sherman's assault on the Walnut Hills in January, letters from home chronicled the Jay Hawker guerrilla barn burnings and vendetta murders their families were suffering. The betrayal of that promise weakened the Tennesseans resolve and made them suspect in the eyes of Confederate officers. Which is why Bowen had placed them in the center, opposite a second growth wood, deemed too dense to allow an organized attack to be launch through the trees.
But the weariness of the men and officers lead to mistakes, such as sending the horse teams, responsible for moving those valuable cannon, over the railroad bridge to the west bank of the Big Black River for safety. Some how General Bowen never understood that had been done. And that was not the only mistake.
At some point in the night the regiment assigned to the very northern end Green's line, The First Missouri Cavalry (dismounted), under Colonel Elijah Gates, was ordered to pull back. So in the dark, the regiment was awakened and stumbled across the bridge. No one noticed it's absence until first light, at which point Bowen exploded in anger. Gate's weary men were shaken awake again, marched back across the bridge to return to their original position.
That belated movement drew the attention of Yankee Major General John Alexander McClernand (above). He had already sent Peter Osterhaus's 9th division into line between the Edward's Depot road and the dense wood. Brigadier General Theophilus Toulmin Garrard, a wealthy, half blind 50 year old Kentucky slave owner, commanded the 1st brigade. To their right was the 17th brigade under Colonel Daniel W. Lindsey. But seeing the movement close to the northern end of the rebel line, McClernand suspected the rebels might be preparing to launch an attack from there. So he dispatched his reserve, Brigadier General Eugene Asa Carr's 14th division, to anchor his left flank, north of the woods.
What changed the battle to come, was the commander of Carr's 2nd brigade, the big Illinois Irishman, General Micheal Kelly Lawler (above). He stood over 6 feet tall and weighed over 250 pounds. One of his soldiers observed that the farmer, merchant and lawyer, “Could only mount his horse with great difficulty, and when he was mounted it was difficult for the horse” Union observer Charles Dana would later describe Lawler as “…brave as a lion,…and has as much brains”, But Lawler was smart and an experienced soldier. He summed up his favorite strategy as, “If you see a head, hit it.” And he noticed an opportunity to play wack-a-mole on of this seemingly featureless terrain.
The Big Black River had once followed a straighter path, before some long forgotten floods had carved out the present westward bend. The new bend abandoned the old flood levees marking the old stream bed, which angled to within a hundred yards of the rebel cotton bale defenses. That old levee now offered chest high cover for attacking Yankees, starting on the north and ending opposite the center of the rebel line, held by the Tennessee Brigade. And because everybody on the southern side was so tired, nobody had noticed that old levee.
To be fair, the rebels were distracted. Not long after 8:00 a.m. General Osterhaus appeared, leading four 20 pound Parrott guns, which unlimbered at the south western edge of the wood and just 400 yards from the cotton bale fortifications. At what was point blank range for the big guns, they began to methodically dismantle the cotton bale fortifications. Colonel Cockrell's artillery tried to suppress the Wisconsin guns, and managed to hit one of the Union ammunition limbers, exploding it. The blast wounded an officer and 3 gunners, and it sent a chunk of shrapnel spinning, which clipped Peter Osterhaus' thigh, forcing him to withdraw for a short time. All that fire and fury drew attention away from what was about to happen in the center.
As a test, Lawler sent the 11th Wisconsin regiment charging up the old river bed, 200 yards to the relative safety of the levee. The sudden movement, almost perpendicular to their lines, caught General Green's rebels off guard. That success encouraged Lawler to send the 21st and 23rd Iowa after. They took a few causalities but arrived essentially intact.
At about the same time, Lawler was informed of the discovery of a hidden farmer's lane cleared through the woods to the center opposite the rebel lines. Lawler sent to six guns, from the 2nd Illinois Light and 22nd Iowa artillery, down that path. The charge of the Iowans drew rebel eyes away from sudden appearance of the guns. Within fifteen minutes Lawler could lay down direct fire on the Confederate center.
Lawler then galloped on horseback across the open space under heavy fire. Somehow he arrived uninjured. And while he stripped off his heavy jacket, and strapped his sword around his substantial chest, he ordered Iowa sharpshooters to lay down a musket fire on the unfortunate Tennesseans that was so heavy that one shot snapped the reigns of General Vaugnn's horse.
Crouching behind the cotton bales, the East Tennessee boys could sense if they could not see the vice closing in on them. A few began to drift away from the front line. And they were joined by some from Colonel Cockrell's brigade. These men had fought hard the day before. They were the troops farthest from the boat/bridge over the river. It was as if it slowly began to dawn on the entire Confederate line that they were about to suffer a repeat of yesterday's debacle. And atop the west bank of the Big Black, the engineer Major Lockett saw that realization begin to set in. He sent a messenger galloping the mile and a half back to Bovina, to urge General Pemberton to authorize the destruction of the boat'bridges over the river.
The only thing holding Lawler back was that he had no support should the attack fail. After 2 years of war even the amateur McClernand knew the foolishness of such an oversight. Since he had already committed his reserve, McClernand reached out to first available troops, which turned out to be a brigade from General A.J. Smith's division, part of Sherman's Corps. These men, marching from Jackson, had not turned right at Bolton. Rather they continued west to the ammunition wagons parked around the Champion House. They were now escorting those same wagons carrying the shot and shell for Sherman's entire Corps. They had intending on turning north at the Big Black. But McClernand diverted them. When they arrived the final regiment in Lawler's brigade, the 22nd Iowa, moved forward.
It turned out to be only a 20 minute delay -about the same time it took the messenger to gallop the 3 miles round trip between Bovina and the bridges. Receiving permission to fire the crossings, Major Lockett ordered both bridges soaked with turpentine. Soldiers with burning torches were ordered to fire the bridges before the first Yankee soldier began to cross. The hand full of deserters filtering toward the rear continued to grow. And then, just past 9:00 a.m. Lawler launched his assault.
A newspaper reporter called it “the most perilous and ludicrous charge”, but the battle that followed took no more than three minutes. The 23rd Iowa went over the levee first, 30 year old Colonel William Henry Kinsman (above), leading the way. He was a Canadian lawyer who had moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa 9 year earlier. His regiment was mustered in at Des Moines in September of 1862. Less than a year later, this charge was his idea. Before he had gone very far a rebel Minnie ball fired from a Missouri rife on the regiment's exposed left flank, knocked him down. He staggered back to his feet. He resumed the charge, urging his men forward. Then a shot thudded into his lung. And hour later William died, right where he had fallen. Just another of the 6 officers and 69 enlisted men killed, maimed and wounded as the 23rd Iowa crossed that 100 yards, a small part part of an army which came from all over the world to fight for the idea of a government of, by and for the people.
The 21st Iowa were right beside their fellow buckeyes. One participant wrote later, “To stop one instant was to die, and so onward they rushed, yelling, screaming madmen, wild with excitement, and shaking the gleaming bayonet.” The 21st regiment's Colonel, 40 year old Protestant tea-teetotaler and abolitionist Samuel Merrill, whom Grant called "eminently brilliant and daring”, also went down, shot through both hips. He survived but his military service was over.
The 290 men of the 23rd lost 13 killed in that charge, and 70 wounded. Clambering through the abatis, the 23rd's color bearer, Corporal John Boone was shot dead. The regimental flag was quickly recovered by Corporal John Shipman, who continued to lead the attack. As Colonel Lawler, mounted atop his horse, passed over the rebel line he saw the Tennessee regiments scattering before his men, and the panic infecting the entire Confederate line. Lawler turned and called for the 49th and 69th Indiana regiments to come up in support. In fact the entire Federal line began swelling forward, drawn by the scent of victory.
The Illinois 33rd, AKA, “the brain's” regiment was surged forward with everybody else. These were the men who had swept up the exhausted rebels from the road before dawn. And now, just after 9:00 a.m., Private James “Jimmy” Adkins jumped astride the barrel of one of the 14 cannon the 33rd captured that morning. It was a fine party until the exuberant private, “looking like a little bedraggled rooster” pulled the lanyard and the gun expectantly went off, throwing Adkins to the ground, and sending a shell out over the heads of his own regiment. Said the regimental historian, “It was the first time that Jimmy was known to be frightened.” That day the 33rd suffered 1 officer and 12 men wounded.
Some rebels escaped over the burning bridges. Some survived by swimming across the rain swollen river, while an unknown number drowned in the Big Black. In all another 18 cannon were captured by the Yankees, along with 1,400 rifled muskets, as well as 1,750 men killed, wounded and taken prisoner. In two short horrible days, out of a 17,000 man army, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton had lost 5, 000 men killed and captured, 39 cannon lost, and had another 6,000 man division that wander off in search of a better field commander.
Grant's reaction to the victory was to order McPherson's Corps to cross the Big Black upstream, at the tiny community of Amsterdam, midway to Sherman's crossing at Bridgeport. Ulysses had his eyes fixed firmly on the Yazooo Heights. And by 10:00 a.m. that Sunday, 17, May, 1863, it was almost in his hands.
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