VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

The bulk of 43 year old General William Tecumseh Sherman's XVth. Corps began its march from Milliken's Bend, above Vicksburg, down the narrow twisting cordoryed road to Hard Times Landing,  on Saturday, 2 May, 1863 – the day after the battle of Port Gibson. The cork was out of the bottle and Grant now had room for  an additional 15,000 men on the Mississippi side of the river, and he wanted them with him as soon as possible.  Neither Sherman's staff officers nor the soldiers they commanded were green troops anymore. They had learned how to organize and execute a march.

One hundred and seventeen years after the American Civil War , then 58 year old Louisiana native and Commandant of the United States Marine Corps,  General Robert Hilliard Barrow,  would say, “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." The 70 mile long road to Hard Times now carried not only the 15,000 men and supplies of the XVth Corps, but also the ammunition and supplies for the rest of the Army of Tennessee – some 45,000 troops in all. With so much traffic, many  bizarre accidents and stupid mistakes were inevitable. But Sherman's staff officers kept the entire jumble moving more or less smoothly. It was a triumph of logistical planning and execution.

General Sherman will later calculate 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” - with working rifle, ammunition and powder, boots, uniform, blanket, tent and medicine. Other than the clothes on his back, this all had to be carried in horse or mule drawn wagons. In their wagons each regiment was also expected to carry 25% additional supplies for their teamsters and horses. Even though the Civil War has been labeled “the first railroad war”, its armies were always carried on the backs of horses and mules.

To support each 1,000 men in the field required 40 – 50 wagons (drawn by about 300 mules), to carry foodstuffs (for the 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 was required to carry 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 which reduced the number of wagons the army required. 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 - 6 horses to pull each 2,500 pound artillery piece, and 6 mules to pull each wagon. And that was in addition to the mounts for cavalry and officers – which meant that Grant’s army of 45,000 men required 14,000 horses and mules. 

The vast majority of animals in a Civil War army lived a short, brutal life, most no more than a few months long. But the war could not have been fought without them.

On the march to Hard Times Landing, when a wagon or gun carriage broke down the teamsters dragged it clear of the traffic lanes with minimal delay.  Pauses in the march were scheduled to allow reverse traffic. And commissary detachments bound for the Army of the Tennessee depot in Grand Gulf were allocated space within the column. The 70 mile march took 3 days – 23 miles a day. The troops arrived at Hard Times Landing fresh and ready for battle. It was the kind of complicated mass movement which the army could not have made even a year earlier.  And it added to the soldiers growing confidence in their officers and themselves.

Sherman (above) did not share that confidence. A week earlier, back on Sunday, 26 April, 1863,  he   had written about the approaching march to his brother John Penland,  “I feel in its success less confidence than in any similar undertaking of the war, but it is my duty to co-operate with zeal… Sixty thousand men (including teamsters) will thus be on a single road, narrow, crooked, and liable to become a quagmire on the occurrence of a single rain. We carry ten days ration with us…Now, if we can sustain the army it may do, but I know the materials or food, forage or ammunition cannot be conveyed on that single precarious road.”  He also admitted to his wife. concern about the "narrow difficult road, liable by a shower to become a quagmire"  adding, “I look upon the whole thing as one of the most hazardous and desperate moves of this or any war.” 

Sherman’s road to Vicksburg really began ten years earlier when he floated into San Francisco Bay (above) on the overturned hulk of a sinking lumber schooner. It was the beginning of a decade of failure. 

Sherman’s father had died when he was nine, and the boy known as Tecumseh had been adopted by Thomas Ewing, a powerful Whig senator from Ohio, who secured the boy an appointment at West Point. Sherman had graduated from “The Point” in 1840 and attained the rank of Captain (above). But he resigned from the army in 1853 when he was offered the presidency of a San Francisco bank. 

On his way around South America, Sherman was shipwrecked twice, the last time just outside of the Golden Gate (above) . What followed were four relative good years. Then, in the panic of 1857, Sherman’s bank failed, leaving him broke and far from home. He struggled back to “the states”, eventually landing in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he failed as a lawyer.

And then, in 1859, he secured an appointment as Superintendent of the Louisiana State Military Academy. Just a year later, as secession broke out, Sherman famously wrote a Southern friend, “You are rushing to war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on earth...You are bound to fail.”  He had little respect for black Americans, and certainly did not support a war to free them, but he told the Louisiana Governor when he resigned, “On no account will I do any act or think any thought hostile…to the…United States.”

The coming of war seemed to offer Sherman opportunities. But at first they only led to more failure. He served as a colonel at First Battle of Bull Run (above), where he was wounded in the knee and shoulder trying to stem the panic.  As he recovered, he was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers and placed in command of the Department of the Cumberland, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.    But all he could see from his new post were shadows and threats.  In the fall of 1861 Sherman was relieved of duty, suffering a nervous collapse.  At his home in Ohio he contemplated suicide. He was saved when General Halleck offered Sherman the command of the Army of the Tennessee, Instead Sherman offered to serve as a division commander under Grant.

When they met, they liked each other immediately.  At Shiloh, on 6 April, 1862, a now overconfident Sherman saw his unprepared division overrun by Confederate troops. Sherman barely managed to prevent his men from being driven into the Tennessee River. It seemed yet another confirmation of his failure. But that night, when he reported to Grant’s command post, half expecting to be relieved, and confessed “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we”, Grant calmly replied, “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.” And with that stoic exchange Sherman’s luck changed. From that night forward, he might disagree with Grant, but he would always “...co-operate with zeal”.

But after being separated from his friend for several days, at such a crucial moment in the campaign, 
"Cump's " imagination was feeding deep doubts about Grant',  which he shared with the commander of his second division, 42 year old Kentucky political General, Francis Preston Blair Jr. (above).  Sherman wrote to Blair that, “...some other way must be found to feed this army."  He later told his 39 year old 3^rd Division commander, Brigadier General James Madison Tuttle, “I apprehend great difficulty in the matter of food." 

Despite these misgivings Sherman judged the march itself a success. He would write later, “Our route lay by Richmond (Louisiana)...and Roundabout Bayou, then following Bayou Vidal, we struck the Mississippi River at Perkins Plantation (we know as "Somerset"). Thence the route followed Lake St. Joseph to a plantation called "Hard Times"...about five miles above Grand Gulf.” And like any tourist, Sherman noted the celebrities he brushed against, such as the fantastic Franklin Plantation mansion of Doctor Allen T. Bowie, whom Cump noted was said to be “...a relative of Jim Bowie” of the Alamo fame.

Meanwhile, across the river, McClernand's and McPherson's Corps of Grant's army were resting on the east bank of the Big Black River, roughly between  Willow Springs  and Rocky Springs.  An officer noted they had been “Bivouacked near Hankinson's Ferry three days, giving the men ample time to rest and clean themselves....” The regimental history of the 48^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry recorded they put the time to good use. “Orders were therefore issued to subsist on the products of the country...and from that time...foraging parties, or perhaps better known as "bummers," were sent out...”

“They were a jolly, mischievous set....They slaughtered the pigs in the pens; the cattle and horses were driven from the fields; smokehouses and cellars were ransacked for flour, meal and bacon; the chickens and turkeys were captured in the yard; the mules were hitched to the family carriage, and the provisions stowed away in it,...Toward evening the foragers returned to camp, driving the cattle before them, followed by a long line of vehicles of every description, loaded with all kinds of provisions, which was equally distributed among the different regiments.” Of course, not all regiments were as inventive as the 48^th Ohio.  A worried lieutenant in another regiment in McClernand's corps wrote to his wife on Tuesday, 5 May, that the ten day's rations had about run out. “I have got one cracker left and some meat ..." he complained.

On Wednesday, 6 May, 1863 Sherman's XVth Corps started crossing the river. As each unit came ashore at Grand Gulf, they were immediately pushed up the road toward Willow and Rocky Springs. It would take a few days, but soon all 45,000 men of the Army of the Tennessee would be just south of the Big Black River.  Vicksburg would be just 30 miles away. So near and so tempting. What would be Grant's next move?  And what would Pemberton do?

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VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

On Saturday, 9 May, 1863, 56 year old General Joseph Eggelston Johnson (above) received a telegram from the Confederate Secretary of War, 47 year old James Alexander Seddon. In classic Seddon double-talk, it read, “Proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief command of the forces there, giving to those in the field, as far as practicable, the encouragement and benefit of your personal direction. Arrange to take for temporary service with you, or to be followed without delay, three thousand good troops...now on their way to General Pemberton...and more may be expected.”

To Johnson's experienced eye the missive set him up to be blamed for the military disaster created by the arrogant meddlesome martinet, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ((above). And hidden in Seddon's verbosity were two ugly realities. There were no additional troops available, and Davis reserved the right to make things worse by interfering with Johnson's command at anytime. 

The unwelcome call to duty found Johnson still recovering from his 1862 wounds, almost bedridden in muddy little village of Tullahoma, Tennessee, watching the 45,000 hungry men of The Army of Tennessee slowly starving to death.  It was clear to Johnson, that his subordinate, 46 year old General Braxton Bragg, was going to be easy prey, as soon as the well fed 50,000 man Federal Army of the Cumberland,  under 42 year old Major General William Starke “Rosy” Rosecrans, decided to move against them.  But south of Bragg's precarious position was the vital railroad junction town of Chattanooga, Tennessee, through which food and arms from Alabama and Georgia were being  carried to the rebel Army of Northern Virginia.  Surprisingly little of that bounty reached Bragg's closer but slowly dwindling army.

Like the arrogant and annoying carbuncle Jefferson Davis thought him to be, Johnson replied promptly. He wrote, “ I shall go immediately, although unfit for field-service. I had been prevented, by the orders of the Administration, from giving my personal attention to military affairs in Mississippi at any time since the 22d of January. On the contrary, those orders had required my presence in Tennessee during the whole of that period.” You could almost hear Davis spit in reply across the humming telegraph wires.

Pausing in his whining, on Sunday morning, 10 May, 1863, Joseph Johnson boarded an express train headed south for Chattanooga. Arriving on the Tennessee River, he was less than 400 miles from his destination, via first the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, to Corinth, Mississippi, where he would previously have changed to the Mobile and Ohio rail line directly to Jackson. At 30 miles an hour the journey should have taken less than a day. But Corinth had been in Federal hands for a year, and that route was no longer available to Confederates.

So, from Chattanooga, General Johnson had to continue 140 miles south via the Western and Atlantic Railroad to Atlanta, Georgia. There he had to switch to the Atlanta and West Point Railroad to connect in that city with the Western Railway of Alabama, in order to reach Montgomery - another 160 miles of travel. It is famously only 50 miles from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, home in 1863 to the Ordnance and Naval Foundry complex at the head of navigation on the Alabama River. And it was only 50 miles further to Meridian, Mississippi, along the planned route of the Alabama and Mississippi Railroad. But the war had broken out before that line had reach much beyond Selma, and the final 50 mile gap would never be completely closed – a bridge over the Tombigbee River would not be built until the 1870's.

So, after reaching Selma, General Johnson had to shift to a spur of the Nashville and Louisville railroad, which traveled 176 miles south and west to Mobile Alabama. There he was able to transfer to the Mobile and Ohio railroad for the 150 mile trip almost due north to Meridian, Mississippi. Once there, the weary and wounded General could board a Southern Railroad express for the final 100 miles to the capital city - Jackson, Mississippi. The 400 mile original trip had been almost doubled and the travel time tripled. Johnson did not arrive in Jackson until Wednesday, 13 May, 1863 – a day late and a dollar short.

As the sun rose on Tuesday, 12 May 1863, 19 year old regimental adjutant Henry Otis Dwight (above), was marching north out of Utica, Mississippi in the lead of 7,000 federal infantry. He recalled, “The weather was splendid, the roads were in fine condition and there was plenty to eat in the country.” He also noted, “...we were more conscientious about taking (about) what we wanted than where we were.”

Where they were was deep in the bowels of the Confederacy, without a safe line of retreat or a reliable line of supply. And yet they were supremely confident in themselves and their commanders - from 38 year old Colonel Manning Ferguson Force of the 20^th Ohio, all the way up to 37 year old commander of the 3^rd division, 37 year old Illinois native John “Jack” Alexander Logan.

He was born and raised in the southern tip of of the north which touched the slaves states of Missouri and Kentucky. The busy port of Cairo, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers,  along with the towns of Thebes, Goshen and Karnak, inspired the title usually given to the region - “Little Egypt”. In fact Cairo was further south than Richmond, Virginia. 

And although the 1847 state constitution made Illinois a “free state”, there were always slaves to be found in “Little Egypt”. And as a member of the state legislature in 1853, John Logan had authored the “Black Law”, which fined any free black man or woman $50 if they stayed in Illinois for longer than 10 days. It earned him the nickname, “Dirty Work Logan”. The fine was increased by $50 for each re-arrest. But even members of his own family, and his long time law partner condemned him for it, John Logan, as a Stephen Douglas Democrat,  spoke against secession. At the behest of Colonel Ulysses  Grant, he told a crowd of potential recruits, "There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots or traitors."

It was understandable then, if there were many who thought “Black” John Logan was a little crazy. He certainly looked it. Logan was “...not a large man, (but) his long black hair, piercing ebony eyes, and swarthy complexion gave (him)...an impressive presence.” He was also a political general, given a command because he could raise troops and inspire loyalty in a conflicted region. And he turned out to be a damn good field commander. Wounded three times at Fort Donaldson, and reported as dead on the casualty list, he kept his unit in the fight and held off the rebel attempt to break out. General Logan missed the battle of Shiloh while his wife nursed him back to health. But by the spring of 1863, he was back in the saddle, and in command of the 3^rd Division as it marched across Mississippi.

What John Logan saw of slavery in the flesh, in all of its ugly sexist brutality,  convinced this racist that Americans of black skin must be given their freedom, and the right to vote. No less a man than Frederick Douglas once said that if a man like “Black” Jack Logan could have a change of heart about race, then there was hope for everyone. And out in front of  Logan's hope, just after 10:00am this Tuesday morning, was Henry Dwight, and the men of the 20^th Ohio.

Dwight wrote later, “The road lay through woods and fields, passing few houses, and what there were were as still as a farmhouse in haying time...Sometimes an old negro woman would appear, bowing and smirking, and then when the first embarrassment had worn off like she would say: “Lord a masay! Be there any more men where you uns come from? ‘Pears like as if I nebber saw so many men since I’se been born.” At this, some one would be sure to give the regular answer in such cases made and provided: “Yes, aunty, we come from the place where they make men.

“After a while... we heard two pops, which we were able to recognize as gunshots, far on in front. “Hello, somebody is shooting squirrels,” said one of the boys. “Pop, pop, pop,” came three more shots in quick succession, but a little nearer. “The squirrels are shooting back,” growled a burly Irishman, “and sure it’s meself that don’t approve of that kind of squirrel shooting, not a bit of it.”

It was the beginning of the battle or Raymond. And within a few hours, the military situation in Mississippi would be very different.

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THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

I know we like to think our nation was founded by political geniuses armed only with the best of intentions. But the truth is, if the  founding fathers were to somehow magically reappear in today's political arena, they would probably be most comfortable as members of the Klu Klux Klan – sexists and white supremacists. 

Under the first constitution for South Carolina (signed in 1778) Catholics were not allowed to vote. Delaware's first constitution denied the vote to Jews, and Maryland did not permit the sons of Abraham to cast a ballot until 1828. And, of course, women and both sexes of African-Americans either were already or shortly would be arrested if they tried to vote.  But the most fundamental bigotry in America was and is not racial or religious. It is monetary. The most disenfranchised group in America has always been anyone who was “not rich”.

In ten of the 13 original United States you had to own at least 50 acres of land or $250 in property before you were judged qualified to vote. The official price for uncleared land along the frontier was set at just ten cents an acre, but was sold by the government in lots no smaller than a section of 640 acres. So a section of land cost $640. At the same time the average yearly income for a laborer in the north was about $90.  Few working people could ever hope to save enough to afford a section of land. 

Thus the land speculators stepped in. They already owned property (land and slaves) which they could use as collateral. This gave them access to credit, which they used to leverage hundreds of sections of land at a time, which they could then survey, subdivide and resell in plots which slowly shrank sale by sale down to 40 acres - generally considered the optimum size for a single family farm. It was a system rife with legal and illegal corruption. The speculators' profit margins tripled or quadrupled the price per acre to the yeoman farmers who usually borrowed to buy the land. One bad crop meant they could not make the payments and had to return the land to the speculators and were forced to move even further west to try again, still without the right to vote on the legality of such monetary rules.  This economic vice, and not wanderlust, was why Daniel Boone kept moving his entire life, as did Abraham Lincoln's father.

This explains why, forty years after the revolution, only half a million out of the ten million Americans could qualify to vote, and why, in the election of 1824, less than 360,000 actually cast a ballot.  The debacle of the 1824 presidential election being thrown into the House of Representatives, resolved by the so called “corrupt bargain” between Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, lead to the realization that the first objective of fair elections must be to keep the powerful from limiting the right to vote.  That was why, beginning in the new states beyond the Appalachian crest, the wealth restrictions on voting were dropped. And slowly this influenced the politics back in the original 13 states.  Very slowly, of course.

On 7 October, 1825, with John Quincy Adams ensconced in the White House for less than 8 months, Senator Andrew Jackson (above) rose in the Senate chamber. Nominally he was to comment on a proposed constitutional amendment to prevent another “corrupt bargain” from ever happening again. But, “I could not”, Jackson assured his fellow politicians, “consent either to urge or to encourage a change which might wear the appearance of being ...a desire to advance my own views” (He meant unlike Henry Clay, and President Adams, of course.)  And "reluctantly" he added, “I hasten therefore to tender this my resignation.”   

It wasn't that Jackson (above) was clearing his schedule for the upcoming 1828 rematch. Oh, no. He was resigning so “my friends do not, and my enemies can not, charge me with...intriguing for the Presidential chair.” As he walked out of the Capital that afternoon, it's a wonder his trousers did not burst into flames. The proposed amendment, which was unlikely to pass in any case,  was then quietly allowed to die. Besides, Jackson knew he might have to avail himself of the same deal making in 3 short years.  And he did.

On the same day, on the west fork of the Stones river, meeting in St. Paul's Episcopal Church on East Vine Street in Murfreesboro,  the Tennessee state legislature unanimously nominated Andrew Jackson to be the next President of the United States – three years hence. What a happy coincidence of timing, with those two events occurred a thousand miles apart, and on the same day – proof positive that no one could accuse Andrew “Jackass” of “intriguing” for the Presidency. And if any of you reading this are offended by modern pundits theorizing about the next election almost before the last one is completed, welcome to the brave new world of 1825

Of course, if you were looking for more hard evidence of intrigue you might journey to the 9th Congressional District of Virginia, tucked away in the south-western corner of the Old Dominion. The two term representative for this last gasp of the Shenandoah Valley and its encroaching mountains was a transplanted Pennsylvanian, a graduate of William and Mary named Andrew Stevenson (above).  He had been the Speaker of the House of Burgess, where he was considered a member of the “Richmond Junta” which ran Virginia politics. And now the dapper Congressman had tied his horse to Andrew Jackson's cart. So why would a member of the Richmond Junta decide to join forces with a Yankee from the Albany Regency, to support Andrew Jackson from Nashville, Tennessee, for President?

First, the south had something that New York Democrat Martin Van Buren (above) wanted – electoral votes. The institution of slavery was indeed peculiar because although those humans were treated as property with no rights, each slave did count as 3/5ths of a person for determining congressional districts and votes in the electoral collage.  The census of 1820 thus gave the south 22 additional congressional districts – and 22 additional electoral votes – which their white male population did not entitle them too. This was the deal with Satan the founding fathers from New England had been forced to make in order to form a “more perfect union.” Those 22 electoral votes were more than enough to throw an election in whatever direction Martin Van Buren, and the New York banking interests he represented,  wanted .

What Stevenson and other Southerners wanted in exchange for their votes, was a guarantee that the economy of the south, meaning slavery,  would be protected from the growing power of the North. Practically this meant low tariffs. The slave states produced few of the machines that were increasingly vital to modern life,  largely because slaves had no incentive to invent or invest of themselves more than was required.

Meanwhile, a little over two weeks after Jackson's resignation from the Senate, the Erie Canal (above) officially opened, cheaply connecting the produce of  Ohio to the markets of New York City.  It was visible evidence of the economic giant the free workers and consumers of the "Free States" were becoming.  But in a nation without an income or a sales tax, a tax levied on imported goods, or a tariff, was the only way to support projects like the canal, or a national highway, then approaching the eastern Indiana border.

The Bank of the United States was a vital part of the infrastructure which Federalists were  advocating for financing the National Road and canals connecting the great lakes with the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.  But what Adams saw as government preforming the unprofitable investment in infrastructure so that business could use it as a base for their future profits, Stevenson and Van Buren saw “Big Government”, supported by tariffs, as a multi-head snake (above), big enough to regulate business and tangentially a threat to slave state economics.  And they were right.

In 1831 (six years hence) a young French official, Alexis de Tocqueville, would journey to America to observe the young nation.  And in perhaps his most famous passage he touched upon the effect of slavery on the south.  “The State of Ohio”, wrote de Tocquville,”is separated from Kentucky just by one river; on either side of it the soil is equally fertile, and the situation equally favorable, and yet everything is different...(In Ohio the population is) devoured by feverish activity, trying every means to make its fortune...There (in Kentucky) are people who make others work for them...a people without energy, mettle or the spirit of enterprise...These differences cannot be attributed to any other cause but slavery. It degrades the black population and... (saps the energy of) the white.”

So, a hundred years before the Republican Party adopted its infamous “Southern strategy” to convert segregationist “boil weevel” "Dixie-crats"  into a southern Republican voting block, the Democrats, at very the moment of their party's birth, made a much more vile  bargain – agreeing to protect real slavery in all its foul existence,  in exchange for gaining national power to protect the money interests of Wall Street.  

Jackson's  only real interest in seeking the Presidency in 1828 was in defeating those who had “cheated” him out of his victory in 1824.  Jackson was a slave owner, and his natural inclination was to support slavery.  But he needed the "moneyed classes" to win,  and  he also opposed the national bank, and Adam's program of “big government” investments.  The hard work of forming the party which would carry him to victory he left to men like Van Buren and Stevenson, who were binding Southern ruling elite to Northern ruling elite. And that accommodation between racism and greed would be the foundation of the new Democratic Party for the next 100 years. After that it would be adopted by the Republican Party as a way of holding on to power.  And both times, racism and white supremacy  was the devil the voters knew, and which was enshrined when Jackson took the oath as President in March of 1829.

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