The first angry crack of muskets were fired by green Yankees – with barely a month of training, and largely armed with shoddily made weapons. But these 285 men of the 8th Louisiana Infantry of African Descent, had literal “skin in the game”. And in broad daylight of Saturday, 6 June, 1863, they had surprised the rebel pickets around the Tallulah depot of the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad. The Confederates did as the Yankees had done a week earlier at the Perkin's plantation. They retreated and reported.
However, the commander of the black Yankees, Swiss emigrant and lawyer Colonel Hermann Lieb (above) , had already achieved what he wanted. He had found the rebels and his men had drawn first blood. Now he quickly marched his under strength regiment back to the relative safety of Milliken's Bend, and set them and their companion regiments to work, building defensive positions along two levees. Lieb also called for assistance. His boss at Young's Point, Brigadier General Elias Smith Dennis, could provide only part of the remains of the battered and bloodied 23rd Iowa Volunteers.
Three weeks earlier, in a single 3 minute charge at the Big Black River Bridge, these 200 buckeyes had charged the enemy line. Eleven enlisted men and 2 officers – including their Colonel, William Kinsman - were killed outright, and 3 officers and 85 enlisted men wounded - half of all Federal casualties in that battle. The shattered unit was sent to safe camps across the river to recover. The 130 survivors were now tapped to send 100 men to support the black recruits at Milliken's Bend. Admiral Porter also promised one 1,000 pound rifle, three 9 inch smooth bore cannons and two 30 pound rifles carried by the stern wheel ironclad ram, the USS Choctaw. But the ram would not arrive until mid- morning. Colonel Lieb woke his men at 3:00 Sunday morning, and put them at the ready.
It was now obvious to the ranking rebel commander at Richmond, Louisiana, Major General Richard Scott Taylor, that the only Yankees remaining on the western shore were some “...convalescents and some negro troops.” But even if he captured Milliken's Bend and Young's Point and the entire De Soto Peninsula, he still would still not be able to directly aid Vicksburg. Lieutenant General Pemberton would not withdraw from that city. Taylor had no provisions with which to resupply the beleaguered garrison. And crossing Taylor's 4,500 men over to join Pemberton's 20,000, would merely advance the day the Vicksburg's defenders ran out of food. But Taylor had his orders, and he authorized General Walker to proceed with the assault.
Setting off at 6:00 p.m. on 6 June, Major General John George Walker pushed his division forward, re-capturing Tallulah after dark. A participant remembered the dramatic night time approach. “ In breathless silence...through dark and deep defiles marched the dense array of men, moving steadily forward; not a whisper was heard — no sound of clanking saber, or rattle of canteen and cup."
By 2:00 a.m, on Wednesday, 7 June, the 1,000 plus man brigade of 39 year old Brigadier General James Morrison Hawes was approaching the Martin Van Buren hospital at Young's point, and General Henry McCulloch's 1,000 man brigade was within 2 miles of Milliken's Bend. Walker held Colonel Horace Randal's brigade in reserve at the Oak Grove Plantation.
The Yankee pickets, crouched behind a series of hedges, were methodically pushed back by the 19th Texas infantry on the right, the 17th regiment in the center, the 16th cavalry dismounted on the left, The 16th Texas infantry regiment followed in reserve. Explained a Texan, "It was impossible for our troops to keep in line of battle, owing to the many hedges we had to encounter, which it was impossible to pass, except through a few gaps that had been used as gates or passageways."
Once through the last line of hedges, the rebels were facing the first cotton bale barricade. Behind it was the 8th, 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiments (African Descent), 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), and the 23d Iowa Infantry (white European descent), totaling 1,061 men. McCulloch drew his men into a line of battle just under a hundred yards from the Yankee line. As they did the Yankees unleashed a volley. Ignoring the blast, McCulloch took the time to order his men, “No quarter for the officers! Kill the damned abolitionists!" With fixed bayonets, the Texans then charged.
The veterans of the 23rd Iowa might have had time for a second volley, but that broken regiment had no more to give. They scattered and ran for the last barricade on the final levee. The black soldiers could only muster a few scattered shots, either because they lacked the training with their weapons or the weapons failed. General Lorenzo Thomas noted, "Both sides freely used the bayonet - a rare occurrence in warfare...two men lay side by side, each having the other's bayonet in his body. . . .A teenage cook, who had begged for a gun when the enemy was seen approaching, was badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. In one Negro company there were six broken bayonets." It would be the longest bayonet charge of the war. Afterwards, General McCulloch reported that of the wounds received by his men, 'more are severe and fewer slight than I have ever witnessed among the same number in my former military experience....This charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy's force with considerable obstinacy...” Some might have chosen another word, such as desperation, or even courage.
As the Confederates came over that barricade with bayonets and swinging their muskets as clubs, Yankee Lieutenant David Cornwell saw one of the Union soldiers, a “very large and strong-willed” Sergeant named “Big” Jack Jackson, charge forward “...like a rocket. With the fury of a tiger he sprang into that gang and crushed everything before him. There was nothing left of Jack's gun except the barrel and he was smashing everything he could reach. On the other side of the levee, they were yelling 'Shoot that big nigger!' Cornwell saw the Jack Jackson, “..daring the whole gang to come up and fight him. Then a bullet reached his head and he fell full on the levee.”
For over an hour the untrained Yankees struggled with the rebels, black and white skinned southerners murdering each other with abandon. Then the Yankees fell back through their own camp and toward the second levee and the second barricade. The Confederates followed , as Joseph Blessington of the 16th Texas remembered, “bayoneting them by hundreds.” As the Confederates gathered to storm the second barricade, the USS Choctaw steamed into view, big guns blazing.
General McCulloch ordered his men under cover behind the first levee. They looted the Yankee camp, searching for equipment and food they could not find in their own army, and they began killing any wounded black Yankees they found. It was alleged they also killed 2 white Yankee officers. The murdering continued until McCulloch saw a second Yankee gun boat sailing up the river toward their position. Realizing he lacked the strength to crush these black men in blue uniforms, he ordered his entire brigade to pull back to the Oak Grove Plantation.
The rebel's limped back. Out of the 1,000 men present the Confederates had suffered 44 killed and 131 wounded and 10 missing. For the three under strength black Yankee regiments, it was a bloody disaster - 100 killed outright, 285 wounded, and 266 captured and murdered or returned to slavery. Except those numbers deserve a closer look. Black Yankees, with barely a month of training and substandard equipment, had not run. They had not melted away. They had stood and fought. They had inflicted almost 200 casualties on their foe, 20% of the attackers. Given the worse of everything, they had given their best.
At Young's Point, the rebel's of Hawes' brigade drove in the Yankee pickets, but then finding themselves facing well armed and organized convalescing patients behind barricades, and three Federal gunboats providing covering fire, the Confederates withdrew without even launching an attack. For all the effort and sacrifice of men and material by Walker's "Greyhounds", General Taylor would later note “As foreseen, our movement resulted, and could result, in nothing.”
But there was a result, and even a victory. In December of 1863, United States Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, (above) an early advocate of black soldiers, wrote a letter to Lincoln concerning the debate over their fighting ability. "Many persons believed, or pretended to believe..., that freed slaves would not make good soldiers,” he told his President. These faint hearts were worried the ex-slaves “...would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend (7 June, 1863), at the assault upon Port Hudson (27 May, 1863), and the storming of Fort Wagner (South Carolina, 18 July, 1863)."
The ground the Confederacy had stood upon had shifted. And although the lies and obfuscation used to defend the myths about antebellum southern culture, would delay the triumph of the truth for almost another century, the fuse was at least and at last, lit. It was already past due time for that to happen.
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