It was the afternoon of Friday, 25 June, 1863 - the 38th day of the siege of Vicksburg - and Sergeant Morris was the last man in the tunnel. He felt the cold brass fittings of the navel fuses (above) in the dark, making certain the squib was nestled deep among the rough grains of black powder - in the bottom bag of 20 bags of black powder stacked in the chamber. The Ohio Sergeant ran his fingers along the twin wires running from the squib, out of the bag and across the dirt floor of the left forward gallery. Feeling no break, and bent double, he struggled through the 4 foot high 3 foot wide passage for 15 feet toward the lantern.
The man in charge was a 25 year old captain of engineers, Andrew Hickenlooper (above). And in an organization obsessed with rank and seniority, the Corps of Engineers was the only part where brains and education might preceded either. Andrew had been born in August of 1837 in the east central Ohio coal town of Harding. It was also the home to Levi Coffin, unofficial “President of the Underground Railroad”, which after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 secretly shepherded desperate people north to Canada.
At the apex of “Y” junction, the sergeant turned into the dark again. In the pitch black right forward gallery he repeated his squib and fuse check on it's 500 pounds of black powder. Then backing slowly to the junction, he made certain the squib and fuses for the 700 pounds of powder stacked here were secure. And only then did he pick up the lantern and retreat, moving faster now that the roof was 5 feet high, running the 6 wires loosely through his palm until, 45 feet later, he stumbled into daylight.
In Dutch-German Hickenlooper meant a hedge-hopper or runner and carried the vague connotation of a thief. Andrew's father was honest and hard working but blessed with a lack of ambition. Looking for a more interesting job he moved his family to Cincinnati, where Andrew attended the Woodward Grammar School and Xavier College. The Jesuits who ran both instilled more than enough ambition in young Hickenlooper. At 19 he went to work for the city surveyor, and 3 years later was elected to the job himself. He married and quickly had two children
Exiting the tunnel in a trench labeled “Logan's Approach” (above), Sergeant Morris was greeted by Lieutenant Thomas Russel, from Missouri. He took the loose bundle of wires, all 6 cut to equal length, from Morris. A work gang under the sergeant immediately began refilling the tunnel – leaving a crevice for the fuse wires to pass through cleanly. As they did, the Missouri lieutenant carefully laid the wires along a wooden plank, and staked them firmly. Then the ends of the wires were stripped, and a musket cap placed upon the bare end of each wire. Lastly, a stick was tied down over all the caps.
On Sunday morning, 6 April, 1862, the 5th Ohio light artillery, a 6 gun battery recruited and commanded by Lieutenant Andrew Hickenlooper, was surprised and almost overrun while in camp northwest of the Quaker “Shiloh Meeting House”. The lieutenant managed to save all but 2 of his 6 pounders, and rushed them to support Union soldiers in what became known as “The Hornet's Nest” (above). “Then came the long triple lines of bristling steel,” Andrew wrote later, “whose stern face bearers...came pressing on, until our cannon's loud acceptance of their challenge...caused the assailants to hesitate, break in confusion and hastily retire". Over 8 hours Andrew and his 4 remaining cannon repelled as many as 8 attacks, until ordered to withdraw about 4:30 that afternoon.
Because of his courage and skill at Shiloh, Hickenlooper was promoted and made Chief Engineer for the XVII Corps. Under Grant's Special Order Number 140, issued on 25 May, Andrew was responsible for prosecuting the siege of Vicksburg to his front.
He described the topography and his plans this way. “The highest point between the (Louisiana redan) and the (Shirley) House (above) was selected...to locate a battery (named Battery Hickenlooper)..."
"....covering the extensions of the sap beyond that point. Two 8-inch naval guns located in battery(Archer) south-east of this point...(silenced) the guns of the Confederate fort; thus leaving the Union soldiers exposed only to the ever vigilant sharp-shooters of the enemy...."
"A favorite amusement of the soldiers was to place a cap on the end of a ramrod and to raise it just above the head-logs betting on the number of bullets which would pass through it within a given time.”
Then, on Monday, 21 June, Captain Hickenlooper put out a call for men experienced in mining. From those volunteers he picked 36 men, who he divided into a day and a night shift, with each shift broken into 3 “reliefs”. Andrew later explained, “ On the night of the 22d these men, properly equipped with drills, short-handled picks, shovels...(began) driving a gallery...” Lieutenant Russel pushed the first shift 12 feet into the hill beneath the Louisiana redan. “
Each relief worked an hour at a time, two picking, two shoveling, and two handing back the grain sacks filled with earth...The soil...(showed ) remarkable tenacity, (and was) easily cut and requiring but little bracing.”
During Thursday, 24 June, the miners pushed the tunnel another 40 feet under the Confederate position.
“The powder was brought up in barrels and kept in the main sap at a safe distance....and there opened and placed in grain-sacks....” By “...the morning of the 25th, the miners commenced depositing the powder,...” Captain Hickenlooper explained, “These were taken up on the backs of the miners, who made the run over the exposed ground...nearly one hundred trips with the dangerous loads, all were landed in the mine without a single accident.”
Informed that Hickenlooper expected everything to be ready by 3:00 p.m. that Friday, Grant ordered a powerful attack against the redan, lead by volunteers from the 31st and 45th Illinois volunteer regiments. But “follow on” regiments were not prepared. The attack, when it came, was to be of limited scope. However, Grant was there himself to witness the “remarkable” explosion. The entire army was in on the secret, and as 3:00 p.m. approached, the constant boom and snap of Federal artillery and sniper fire faded into an anticipatory silence.
At 3:15 p.m. Captain Hickenlooper gave the command. Lieutenant Russel slammed a hammer down on the board, and all six fuse lines crackled. A foot high plume of white smoke began to walk toward the wall of earth and rock which now blocked the tunnel's entrance. The crackling white smoke danced into the crevice and disappeared into hill side. And now, other than the anxious stares and nervous body language of 50,000 Yankees outside of Vicksburg, there was no indication of the catastrophe which was about to come.
The lines had been cut to a 15 minute fuse. But 3:25 came and went with the redan still impassively towering over the Yankee saps and trenches. Then 3:26. Whispers began to scurry about the Yankee lines. At 3:27, the miners began to ponder who was going to “volunteer” to crawl back into the dank tunnel, find the break in the fuses, repair and relight them. If we are to believe what Andrew Hickenlooper wrote years later, he had no doubts. “Every eye was riveted,” he wrote, “upon that huge redoubt standing high above...
"At the appointed moment it appeared as though the whole fort and connecting outworks commenced an upward movement, gradually breaking into fragments and growing less bulky in appearance, until it looked like an immense fountain of finely pulverized earth, mingled with flashes of fire and clouds of smoke, through which could occasionally be caught a glimpse of some dark objects,-men, gun-carriages, shelters, etc.”
The breech in the defenses of Vicksburg had been made. Or so it seemed.
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