At almost exactly 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, 22 May, 1863, the first 50 volunteers of The Forlorn Hope came running out of a ravine onto the Graveyard Road 500 yards in front of the Stockade Redoubt.
Leading the way in the first group was color bearer Private Howell Gilliam Trogden, from the 8th Missouri Infantry. William recalled being “...met by a terrific fire...so deadly that our little band was almost annihilated."
Not far behind was 22 year old Private Uriah Brown, of Company G of the 30th Ohio. Between him and his partner they carried an 8 foot log, lifting it by handles driven into its pulp. Almost immediately the Captain running to Uriah's left was shot down, dead. A few steps later, the face of the Lieutenant to his right was reduced to a scarlet mask. Uriah kept running,
As 22 year old German born Corporal William J. Archinal, from Company “I” of the 30th Ohio, approached the ditch, his “log” rear partner was shot down. The abrupt loss of lift threw William off balance. Momentum carried him and the log forward, across the ditch - where William hit his head on a rock and was knocked out.
As Private Brown reached the trench he and his partner threw their log across, only to discover it had been cut too short. While they tried to make sense of this, a spinning bit of metal creased William's temple. He also passed out and fell into the ditch, beneath the log he had carried.
In the second group was 23 year old Private Jacob Sanford, from the 55th Illinois Infantry. As he ran forward he could feel and hear the minnie balls zipping through the air around his head, and pulling at his clothes. He would later find 2 holes in his hat and nine through his army blouse. Just as the ditch came into sight a ricocheting piece of grape shot hit the board he was carrying, slammed it against his ankle, tripping him up and sending him tumbling, conscious, into the trench.
Private Howell Trogden struggled to force his way up the slope, the brown loam spilling over the tops of his shoes, the national flag seemingly pulling him up the slope. Then, “A canister struck the staff a few inches above my hand and cut it half in two.” The flag snapped and toppled. Howell grabbed the shortened staff and held it aloft for an instant. Then, he added, “...they depressed their guns and a cannon ball struck the folds and carried it half away, knocking it out of my hands." Trogden fell face down into the redoubt's wall, and slid back almost to the ditch – by now “strewn with mangled bodies, with heads and limbs blown off.”
All these men had come to the Forlorn Hope by individual paths, but perhaps none so odd as the trail of flag carrier Howell Trogden (above). He had been born along the Deep River, among the Separate Baptists, Quakers and Wesleyans in the Piedmont of Randolph County, Confederate North Carolina. Before Howell celebrated his 20th birthday, the staunch unionist moved north to Missouri and found work as a steamboat cabin boy. Shortly after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Howell joined Company “B”, of the American Zouaves, 8th Missouri infantry.
In June of 1862, Holwell volunteered to carry confidential messages between General William Tecumseh Sherman and his friend, fellow Union General Schuyler Hamilton - grandson of Alexander Hamilton. But in July, while trying to sneak through Ripley, Mississippi, Howell was captured by Confederate soldiers. Howell was tried and convicted as a spy and sentenced to death. His sentence was quickly commuted, and he spent 4 months in various prison camps before being paroled in November. By winter he had been exchanged and rejoined his Union regiment in Tennessee.
Watching the Forlorn Hope from behind the lines, General Sherman observed, “...about half of them were shot down.” “When the survivors reached the ditch,” wrote Sherman, “they were unable to construct the bridges as too many logs had been lost along the way when their bearers were shot down....For about two hours, we had a severe and bloody battle, but at every point we were repulsed...Of the storming party 85 % were either killed or dangerously wounded, and few of them escaped without a wound of some kind.’ Inside the fort, Sargent George Powell Clark of the 36th
Mississippi recalled the Yankee soldiers "fell like grass before the reaper."
Private William Trogden would later recall, “Only three of my comrades succeeded in reaching the fort with me: Sergeant Nagle who was killed on the spot and a private from 54th regiment...shared the same fate.” And now, with the rebel minnie balls screaming an inch over his head, he taunted the rebel soldiers just 10 feet away, ‘What flag are you fighting under today, Johnny?” His unseen enemy heard the words as sheer bravado and shouting back, “You'd better surrender, Yank.” But William was as stubborn as any other North Carolina native. “Oh, no, Johnny”, he replied. “You’ll surrender first.”
Private Uriah Brown recovered conciseness to the thud of musket balls slamming into the log he had carried. What he could see of the situation was a total disaster. There were no logs for the bridges, no steps for the men carrying scaling ladders to run across. The forlorn hope had done no more than deliver a few dozen, mostly wounded, Yankees to the foot of the strongest rebel fort in the entire Vicksburg defensive line. And now they were all pinned down.
Then the rebels began cutting the fuses of artillery shells and rolling them down the slope. Some brave Yankees tried catching them and throwing them back. Sometimes that worked. But most of the Forlorn Hope were slashing away at the slope with their bayonets, desperately struggling to create a vertical foxhole. Three times Uriah Brown paused while slashing his own cover to drag a wounded man into the shelter of the slope, and carving them a haven. Eventually an officer ordered him to stop that and concentrate on firing at the top of the slope, to keep the rebel's heads down. That helped a little.
The first of the “follow on” regiments was the 37th Ohio Volunteers. They had already provided six men for the Forlorn Hope group. But in the few yards the unit advanced 4 abreast, up the Graveyard Road they suffered enough casualties to convince them it was a useless assault. Sensibly they took what cover they could, and lay down on the road.
These men were no more cowards than any other soldiers, as proven when 20 year old Chillicothe native, Private Joseph Hanks of company E, spotted one of the Forlorn Hope wounded a few yards further up the road, begging for water. Under intense fire, Hanks crawled forward, shared his canteen, and then dragged the wounded man off the field, all the while under fire.
As following regiments tried to find a way around the roadblock of the 37th, they suffered casualties from flanking fire. None were able to approach the Stockade Redoubt. By 11:00 a.m., General Sherman had seen enough, stopped any further attacks and ordered the 37th to withdraw. Union artillery also began to cease firing, since they ran as much risk of hitting the remnants of the Forlorn Hope as the rebels.
Meanwhile, the fierce little fight on the slope of the Stockade Redan continued. Members of the 36th Mississippi managed to use their bayoneted muskets to extend their reach and topple the flag which Private Trogen had planted on the fort's slope. Now they were trying to use the same method to snare the flag and pull it into the fort for capture. Trogden attempted to borrow a musket and bayonet to fend them off. But the soldier he asked, Corporal Robert Cox of “K” company, of the 55th Illinois, “... concluded to try it myself. I raised my head again about as high as the safety of the case would permit, and pushed my gun across the intervening space...gave their bayonets a swipe with mine, and dodged down just in time to escape being riddled. I did not want any more of that kind of amusement,...”
It was about now that Corporal William J. Archinal recovered conciseness. He found himself, “...lying on my face with the log across my body and showers of bullets whistling through the air and dropping all around me....I could hear the bullets striking the log in dozens. Sometime during the afternoon one of our cannon balls struck the log close to my head; the log bounded in the air and fell a little way from me, but I crawled up to it again and hugged it close.”
Private David Jones, an 18 year old in Company “D” of the 57th Ohio, spent the afternoon under the hot Mississippi sun, deaf to the violence around him. His ears were bleeding from the explosion of a shell rolled down by the rebels. During the attack, 15 year old Private David F. Day, of Company “D” had been shot in the right wrist, and was unable to hold his musket. Yet he stayed, and used his bayonet to carve a shelter with his good hand. Corporal Robert Cox was so close to the rebels inside the fort they suggested the Yankees come on in, give up, and share dinner with with the garrison. According to Cox, “We positively declined...unless they would come out and give us a chance to see if the invitation were genuine. This they refused to do, but agreed to send a messenger. By and by it arrived in the shape of a shell, which went flying down the hill...”
At some point in the long hot close afternoon, Private Uriah Brown felt an “overwhelming desire to return” to the Federal lines. The 22 year old slid into the bloody ditch, and crawled across fifty yards of the open ground. Amazingly, the rebel snipers ignored him. Perhaps he was so covered in blood they assumed like a wounded dog, he was crawling away to die. At some point he found a little knoll which provided enough cover he could stop and catch his breath. He might have continued on to safety, but he heard 2 men moaning a few yards away. Uriah crawled from his sanctuary and one at a time, pulled the men to join him behind the knoll, dressed their wounds as best he could and gave them water from his own canteen. By his survival, Private Uriah Brown, named for the Hittite dispatched to the forefront of the hottest battle, had saved the lives of five wounded men that day.
Of the 150 men who had volunteered for The Forlorn Hope, 77 would later be presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor. Almost as many had been killed. And the day was not yet half over.
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