VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty

 

It was two regiments from Indiana, the 11^th and the 48^th along with the Wisconsin 28^th , which did the final damage to the Rebel center.   General Hovey's 12^th division, 1^st brigade, commanded by 37 year old Brigadier General George Francis McGinness, went once again up the bloodied face of Champion Hill, to re-capture the cross roads. 

But this time, after brushing aside the rebel infantry, the Hoosiers and Badgers found the line held only by a single battery of 4 bronze six pound cannon. In the face of withering blasts of grape shot, the mid-westerners let loose killing volley after volley of musket fire, that butchered the gunners and their horses.

The story is told that when the white smoke cleared, only the 6 foot 3 inch dark haired, 41 year old Captain Samuel Jones Ridley (above) was still standing by a gun of Company A, of the 1^st Mississippi Light Artillery. The horses were all down, dead or screaming in agony, so the cannon were not going anywhere. And the human gunners had either been killed or wounded, or run to escape the same fate. But Captain Ridley continued to service the last gun by himself.

The Yankees saw him load double canister into the barrel and pull the lanyard. A century later a devotee of the Lost Cause would imagine the Yankee reaction. “For a moment perhaps, their eyes filled with admiration, but then the cannon roared its defiance ... they answered with a storm of lead. And in the next instant the lone figure vanished in the smoke.” Under that smoke the Captain had been hit by 6 musket balls. The batteries' second in command, Lieutenant Frank Johnston had a more prosaic vision. He wrote, “We went in there with 82 men and came out with 8”.

The shocked Yankees paid for the captured canon with their futures. There was little romance in such a grisly bargains. Before he had left Vicksburg, marching to his temporary grave on this hilltop, Sam Ridley, successful planter and slave owner, had predicted the Yankees would only capture Vicksburg through the “...bad management of the general in command.” 

Most of the Confederate soldiers knew who was responsible for the disaster on Champion Hill. Young surgeon John A. Leavy, of Missouri, wrote, “ "Today proved...General Pemberton is either a traitor or the most incompetent officer in the Confederacy. Indecision, indecision, indecision ... Our soldiers and officers are determined not to be sold (meaning sacrificed) if they can possibly help it." 

Referring to Pemberton's Pennsylvania birth, school teacher Sargent William Pitt Chambers was convinced, "...our Commanding General had been false to the flag under which he fought." Said one of Pemberton's officers, “He undoubtedly displayed bad generalship, and the day’s work may cost us Vicksburg.”

Pemberton had crossed Bakers Creek with some 17,000 men. Of the 38 guns which Pemberton had brought to the battle, some 11 cannon were captured.  He left 380 dead on the battlefield, and another 66 who would die within 48 hours. 

Over 1,000 were wounded, and almost 2,500 surrendered to the victorious Federals.  More importantly, the soul of the Army of Mississippi had been destroyed on that Hill of Death. Unit discipline, which had survived the day long slugging match, disintegrated while searching for an escape route.

What saved Pemberton's army from complete destruction was ingenuity, none of it from Pemberton. Arriving at Edward's Depot early on the morning of 16 May, 1863, 25 year old Major Samuel Henry Lockett, Chief Engineer for the army, was ordered by the Lieutenant General to concentrate on providing entrenchments for the battle line across Champion Hill. Almost as an after thought Lockett dispatched a Sergeant Vernon to use fifty men from Brigadier General Alfred Cumming's 3^rd Brigade, to replace the washed out Raymond Road bridge over Baker's Creek.

By 2:00 p.m. the water level had fallen enough that they had built a smaller replacement and were cutting away the 10 foot natural levees on either bank, to provide access. Without that bridge, inadequate as it was, the entire army would have been lost.  Excluding the 7,000 men who marched under General Lorring's division, Pemberton re-crossed Baker's Creek with perhaps 9,000 men.

But once across the creek the rebels discovered the Yankees had pushed Captain Samuel De Golyer's battery “H” of the 1^st Michigan Light Artillery across the Bolton Road bridge. After advancing as far as 2 miles west, the batteries' two 12 pound howitzers and three 6 pound rifles, began shelling the retreating Confederates, preventing them from reforming. 

Later General Pemberton (above) would share his self pity with Major Lockett. Watching the disaster he had engineered engulf the army, he said, “Just 30 years ago I began my military career...and today...that career ended in disaster and disgrace.”

By 5:00pm, the only division with any coherence belonged to the one armed firebrand. Major General William Wing Loring (above).  “Give Em Blizzards” had saved his men by stubbornly refusing to feed them into Pemberton's meat grinder at the cross roads. But ultimately, what saved Loring's division was that Grant did not pursue them. Ulysses Grant was focused on the Yazoo Heights. If he could have been assured that Pemberton would march his entire army to Raymond, Grant would have gladly let them go unmolested.

Grant had about 32,000 men in action at Champion Hill, of whom over 400 were left dead on the field, another 100 or so would die of their wounds within days. Almost 2,000 were wounded, and nearly 200 were missing. The battle had reduced Grant's effectives by about 3,000 men. But the reappearance of Sherman's 2 divisions the next day, would make the Army of the Tennessee 10,000 men stronger.

Even as he easily fending off a cautious single brigade attack up the Raymond Road by Yankee Major General Andrew Jackson Smith's division, Loring chose to slide his men south, to avoid the near panic at the temporary bridge. 

Loring's only unit engaged holding off Smith's attack was the 1,500 men of his 1^st brigade, under the popular, dashing Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman. And it seemed the one time Railroad Engineer viewed the engagement as a summer's outing.  

About 5:30 p.m., a relaxed Tilghman paused in a casual discussion with some of his non-commissioned officers, to adjust the aim of a nearby 12 pound Napoleon cannon. Stepping back to observe the fall of his shot, the 47 year old was cut in half by Federal artillery shell. Stung by this personal loss,  Loring led his men south, away from the Yankee artillery, and away from the Yankee infantry. 

After fighting all day, Major General Carter Stevenson's division trudged 12 miles into the night, crossing the Big Black River before finally resting about 1:00 a.m. on the high ground south of the village of Bovina.  Major General John Bowen's division staggered closely behind, leaving troops on the east side of the Big Black, in the hope of welcoming Major General Loring's men.

But Loring's men were not coming.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Forty-Nine

In the afternoon of  Saturday, 16 May, 1863, the mountain boys were nervously waiting, just beyond the northern crest of Champion Hill  hill. They were a thousand miners from Lumpkin, Habersham, White, Town, Rabun, Union and Faninn counties. They could not directly see the gathering Yankee host. But they knew the enemy was coming. And they knew their bodies were going to receive the assault.   

They were the sons of  the 29'ers -  prospectors who had clawed a million dollars worth of gold dust from the gravels of the Chattahoochee, the Tallulah and Tugaloo rivers and some 500 hard rock mines across the Georgia Appalachians. 

That wealth had belonged to the Cherokee nation, but white lawyers and politicians engineered the speedy dispatch of those inconvenient natives down a trail of tears, in exchange for a share of the riches earned on the stolen lands.  

And now, atop the hill, their sons, the 52^nd Georgia infantry, were waiting to pay not only their own invoice but also the debt of their fathers.

At the bottom of the hill were the Union men of the 31^st Illinois regiment, and according to their diary, they had also begun the day, waiting. “About ten o'clock in the morning... the men spread their cartridges to dry in the sun, in an old field about five miles from Champion Hill.” It was not until late morning that musketry and cannon fire was heard, and 45 year old Lieutenant Colonel “Jack” Reese ordered his regiment into formation. “The men hastily gathered up their (dry) ammunition and seized their muskets, and the regiment followed the head of the column at double-quick...”

John “Jack” D. Reese was originally from the corn fields around Champlain. But in 1858 he and his wife, Marry, had moved south to Perry County, in little Egypt, where he was elected sheriff. When war broke out Jack was quick to volunteer, and was chosen Colonel of the regiment because of his experience in the Mexican war. He had seen no combat, but he had risen to the exshaulted rank of 2^nd Lieutenant.

The 1st Brigade of the  3^rd division's,  under General John Eugene Smith (above), included the 31^st Illinois, as well as the 20^th, 45^th and 124^th Illinois, and the 23^rd Indiana. It was placed on the far left of the union battle line, opposite the north face of Champion Hill.  

As soon as his artillery was ready, Black Jack Logan sent most of his men up the forested slope and ravines. But the men of the 1^st brigade, designated the division reserve, lay on their bellys, “...while the hostile shells whistled and shrieked and exploded above them.”

The men of the 52^nd Georgia often referred to themselves as The Fifth – so over sized was their regiment. They had been inducted into the Confederate Army in March of 1862. And in the 3^rd year of the war, their companies were still the size of regiments and bore romantic titles - The Habersham Guards, the Cleveland Volunteers, the Lumpkin Bodyguards, the Hiawassee Rangers, the Beauregard Braves, the Allegheny Rangers, and the Fannin Rifles. And their Colonel, 34 year old lawyer Charles Duval Phillips, was the second son of one of the wealthiest families in Marietta. In January he had led them in their spirited defense of Chickasaw Bayou. Their causalities that day had been light, and they were proud of their accomplishment, and certain of their ability to face down the Yankees.

It was somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00pm before Hoosier Brigadier General Marcellus Monroe Crocker (above)  finally got the order to send his 7th division forward. Remembering Grant's reprimand when McClernand had failed to issue ammunition before his men had crossed the Mississippi River, Major General James Birdseye McPherson, XVII corps commander, made certain his troops received their cartridges and caps from the wagons parked around the Champion house, before releasing them to the attack.

And then, at last it was the attack Grant had been seeking since 10:00a.m., with every unit pressing the rebel line at the same moment. The XVII corps' 3^rd Division under Logan, on the right flank. To their left was Hovey's battered 12^th division from McClernand's VIII Corps, advancing again on the Confederate line they had been battling all day. To their right, striking the rebel line in the elbow where it bent to the south, was another XVIII Corps division under Crocker. And striking the eastern slope of Champion Hill was Prussian Brigadier General Peter Joseph Osterhaus' 9^th division. By pressing everywhere, Pemberton's line must give somewhere. In fact it gave everywhere.

All day Pemberton had been feeding first General Stevensons battalion's and then General Bowen's men, piecemeal into the battle for the junction of the Ratliff and Clinton roads. 

This had been slowly sucking the balance of Pemberton's army north, toward its only safe escape route - the Baker's Creek bridge. Had General Loring thrown his division into the assault, the rebels might have held the Yankees back until nightfall. Or, the sacrifice of another 7,000 men, might have destroyed the only cohesive division the army had left.

Ignoring his commander's orders, and then his demands and then his pleas, “Give 'em Blizzards” Loring (above) refused to release a single regiment to retrieve Pemberton's honor. Instead, by 4:00p.m., two thirds of the army was weary, bloodied and outflanked. The battalions began to lose cohesion. It was a fighting retreat which threatened to become a rout. Only Loring's division held its formations and slowly began to slowly shuffle south, looking for an escape route over the swollen Bakers Creek.

The un-engaged Georgia 52^nd regiment stood firm, while a few hundred yards to their front a battery of five cannon appeared on their road. In limber were the four 6-pound bronze still smoking Napoleon cannon and a single iron rifled 6-pound gun of the “Cherokee Artillery”, under 39 year old French-Belgium Captain Maximilian Van Den Corput. Having been engaged moments earlier and been forced to withdraw, Captain Corput was resting his winded horses atop the hill, when a target presented itself to the gunners. And entire Yankee battalion appeared just beyond a ravine to their front. Corput ordered 2 guns to unlimber and open fire.

Clawing their way to the crest of Champion's Hill, the Yankees of John Smith's 1^st brigade had paused to reform, and found themselves suddenly under artillery fire from their right. Smith immediately saw the threat and the opportunity. Although his troops were the 3^rd Division's reserve, feeling the larger battle was already turning in Yankee favor, Smith ordered his men to angle right and charge the guns. 

Immediately their vanished into a ravine. As they reappeared within a few yards of the battery, the 2 guns fired a round of grapeshot. But it was badly timed and largely missed the blue coats. The Yankee battalion then fired a volley directly into Corput's battery, killing most of the horses, and almost half the gunners.

Corporal Wesley Connor, of Corput's battery, told his diary, “...many of the cannoneers (sic) had failed to stick to their guns, and the Yanks were close upon us, Captain Corput told his men to take care of themselves, and we were not long in putting the order into execution. I felt so mortified that I stopped once or twice to make sure that I was not the first to leave the guns.” Their division commander was kinder, noting the 42% casualty rate had proven the batteries devotion.

Five hundred yards to the rear, Colonel Charles Philips witnessed the loss of the battery and impulsively decided to take it back. He sent his thousand men charging at the double quick forward, into the 20^th, 31^st, 45^th and 124^th Illinois and the 23^rd Indiana regiments.

The Yankees had time to prepare for their arrival. Said the diary of the 31^st, “...there was crossing of bayonets and fighting hand to hand. Sergeant Wick, of Company B, used his bayonet upon his foe, and Sergeant Hendrickson, of Company C, clubbed his musket in a duel with one of the men in gray.”

A Iowa soldier summed up the situation  all along the battle line, when he said, “We killed each other as fast as we could."

Colonel Phillips was leading the charge, but after a few minutes he was shot in the head and hands. He collapsed into the desperate mass, and it was several minutes before his second in command, Major John Jay Moore was even informed. The major then tried to issue an order to retreat, but the melee continued.  

The entire fight lasted for less than half an hour, during which time at least 750 officers and men of the 52^nd Georgia regiment were killed, wounded or captured. The few survivors would continue to appear on the rolls of the Confederate army as the 52^nd Georgia regiment. But during that half hour their bravado ceased to exist.

The Yankees of Smith's brigade also paid a price. The 20^th Illinois suffered 22 killed, 107 wounded and 7 missing. The 124^th Illinois lost 63 men killed and wounded. The 23^rd Indiana had 4 officers and 14 men killed. The 45^th Illinois suffered 5 dead – in total approximately 140 dead men in blue.

One unnamed member of the staff of the 52^nd Georgia survived the disaster, and spurred his horse to escape. “At least a dozen dead battery horses had to be leaped in that lane. Suddenly the lane turned at left-angles, and stretched a half-mile down towards Baker's Creek. Down this lane with race-horse speed the rider flew, while minnie-balls whizzed around too close to the ear to be musical, and raising the dust on the ground before the rider. But thanks to good fortune both rider and horse escaped."

As the army began to collapse around him, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton turned to the small cabal of staff officers and said, “I call upon you gentlemen to witness that I am not responsible for this battle. I am but obeying the orders of General Johnston.”

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VICKSBURG Chapter Forty-Eight

 

In the center of the Federal line, General Alvin Hovey's 12^th division was in trouble. By about 2:30pm on Saturday, 16 May, 1863, his 1^st brigade had been badly mauled during their three hour fight atop Champion Hill.  With them now driven off the crest, Hovey threw his 2nd^rd brigade, under the nearsighted 30 year old Colonel George Boardman Boomer, back up the hill, to breakup the enemy assault down the hill,  he was certain would follow. 

Pomeroy Martin remembered how , “Gallantly they went up the Hill.” And behind them Hovey lined up the bloodied 1^st brigade survivors and every cannon he had - the 16th Ohio light, the 2nd Ohio and Battery A of the 1st Missouri Light – 18 guns in total. At the moment, they held their fire, fearful of injuring Boardman's troops. But for a few long minutes those guns and the exhausted 1^st battalion were the only protection for the vital federal wagon supply train parked around the Champion house.

Years later the 2nd brigade's second in command, 36 year old dentist Colonel Benjamin Devor Dean, of the 26^th Missouri, recalled, “...the 10th Iowa and 93rd Illinois immediately engaged the enemy... Colonel Boomer...seeing the enemy approaching on our right flank, ordered the 26th Missouri to meet them, which it did on the double quick... getting possession of a deep ravine which the enemy was trying to secure.” For ten minutes or so the 26^th stood up against a larger 52^nd Georgia regiment. But the engagement cost the 26^th Missouri 2 officers and 16 enlisted killed, and 3 officers and 66 enlisted men wounded.

Watching from the the bottom around the Champion house, gunner Pomeroy Martin saw that “...the whole line... was pressed back slowly, as the rebels were massing all their forces to crush us here. But now...batteries reached further around to the right, poured in an enfilading fire, which was so terrific as to check effectually the rebel advance, and they gave way and fled in confusion.” The cannon to the right, were from General Logan's division.

At the same time, rebel General Seth Barton (above), in command of the 1^st brigade, on the extreme left flank of the rebel line atop Champion Hill, perceived a need for action. He could see Logan's division stumbling up the slope toward him, and decided it would be better to strike the Yankees while they were discombobulated than to passively wait for them to slam into his men. 

Barton posted a fragment of the 52^nd Georgia regiment with the 4 Parrott rifled cannon of Corput's battery to defend the only bridge over Baker's Creek (above). Certain these men could hold the vital position, Barton then drove the 40th, 41st, and 43rd Georgia regiments down the slope, hoping to fall unexpectedly on the Yankee's.

The initial wave, masked by the forested slopes until they were almost on top of the Yankees, drove in the first blue line, but “...enforced by (the Yankee) second and third lines”, wrote Barton later, “my farther advance was checked..” The troops Barton was hitting were part of Logan's 3^rd Brigade, under 42 year old Brigadier General John Dunlap Stevens - the 8^th and 81st Illinois, and the 20^th and 32nd Ohio regiments. The Federals outnumbered Barton's Georgia soldiers, and were able to bring flanking fire on their attack, forcing the Georgians to to pull back. Under fire, Barton adjusted his line and threw his troops forward again.

Sergeant Osborn Oldroyd, in the 20^th Ohio, remembered the rebels “succeeded in driving us a short distance” But then the Buckeyes made their own adjustments, stopped the Georgians a second time and forced them to pull back a few yards into the trees for safety.

When first ordered to advance up the heavily wooded slopes of Champion Hill, Grant had asked Logan if he needed more men. The 37 year old “Black Jack” John Alexander Logan (above) assured his commander, “There are not rebels enough outside of hell to drive back the 3^rd division!” In later generations the epithet “Black Jack” would be a demeaning title, indicating the bearer had “stooped” to command African-American troops. But this “Black Jack” - perhaps the original – was a term of familiarity and fondness, which described Logan's jet black hair and blazing black eyes as well as his dark fury in battle. It was a term of respect. He was that rarity in this most political of all America's wars, one of President Lincoln's political generals who was also one of his most respected combat commanders.

Shortly after Logan's division began moving up the northern face of Champion hill, General Hovey, having committed his 2^nd brigade in the bitter fight on the same hill, asked for regiments to stabilize his position. But although Logan directed artillery to lay fire on the rebel's attacking Hovey's men, he sent no troops. Logan's reason for being parsimonious with his support was that he could read a map, and his map indicated that his 3^rd division was being offered the opportunity to destroy the entire rebel army.

It has been an axiomatic that you should not fight with a river at your back since 12 August 490 B.C. E, when Athenian hoplites butchered the larger Persian army in the surf at Marathon beach. A decade even earlier, the Chinese general Sun Tzu had warned “After crossing a river, you should get far away from it”. 

But on Friday, 15 May, 1863, when faced with the rain swollen ford of Baker's Creek, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above) had persevered and counter marched his army to the only bridge over that same creek. A day later, this determination was about to be revealed as a deadly mistake, and there was some irony in that the revelation would be made by the 1^st brigade of General Logan's division.

They were the 20^th, 31^st 45^th and 124^th Illinois regiments along with the 23^rd Indiana. Most were men from the Cairo region of the Prairie state, the district called Little Egypt. The Hoosiers were from the adjoining sympathetic section of Indiana. Hoosier 1^st Lieutenant Shadrach Hooper, could have been speaking for the entire brigade when he said, “...it was a case of brother contending against brother, father against son and chum against schoolmate.” The region was strongly pro-slavery with Confederate sympathies. But these regiments had answered the call to duty because of loyalty and faith in Black Jack Logan, who had been their congressman before the war. And now they were going to deliver Vicksburg over to the the abolitionist north.

The brigade general was a 46 year old jeweler named John Eugene Smith (above). His father, John Banler Smith, of Bern, Switzerland, had served in Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign. After the defeat at Waterloo, the Smith family had emigrated to Philadelphia along with their 1 year old son. In 1834, that son, John Eugene, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to apprentice in a jewelry store. There he met is wife, Aimee A. Massot, and they were married in 1836. 

In the 1840's, the growing family had moved to the northern Illinois, Mississippi river town of Gelena (above),  

There John operated a Main Street jewelry and watch shop, and had become a friend to the half owner of a leather shop, Orvil Grant  (above, center) - younger brother of Ulysses Grant.

These were the men, like most humans, of divided loyalties, struggling in a divided nation,  But in a brief spasm of horrible violence, these men were about to seal the fate of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the entire Confederacy.

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