VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Four

 

The Hoosier pickets were not the best the Federal army had to offer, merely average. But after 2 ½ years of war, the level of average had been raised. These members of the 60^th Indiana Volunteer regiment, were veterans of Shiloh and Champion Hill. And in the early morning dark of Sunday, 31 May, 1863, when Texans in overwhelming numbers waded across the Bayou Vidal, Louisiana (above), these Hoosiers did not panic. 

The pickets sent word back to their captain, and then picked their shots. They forced the rebels to take shelter, expend their ammunition and energy. And then the Yankees fell back a hundred yards or so, to repeat the exercise.

The Texans were brave, eager and well trained. But this was their first taste of real combat, and the man who had molded their corporate personality for 8 months was 46 year old Brigadier General Henry Eustace McCulloch. The McCulloch family were distant ancestors of George Washington's.  The revolutionary war had wiped out the McCulloch family fortune, leaving them, like most Americans along the frontier, constantly being herded west by creditors. 

In 1835, when Mexican General Santa Ana ordered slavery finally ended in the state of Tejas, Henry's older brother Ben had followed their Tennessee neighbor, David Crockett, south, to defend slavery.  Only a case of measles prevented Ben from dying romantically at the Alamo with his hero. But in 1837 both Ben and Henry McCulloch sought and found new lives and fortunes in the Lone Star state as supporters of first slavery and then succession.

General Ben McCulloch (above)  would die in March of 1862, at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. General Henry McCulloch was then given command of green troops dispatched to Arkansas. 

Not until November of 1862 did Henry (above)  relinquished the division to Major General Walker. Henry then resumed command of the division's 3^rd Brigade - 4 regiments of infantry and 1 of dismounted cavalry, supported by a 4 gun battery of light artillery, under Captain William Edgar. After some 700 miles of marching and steaming back and forth across Arkansas and Louisiana, these eager men were seeking to slice the jugular of Grant's army.

About a half mile behind the skirmish line, at a wooden dock called Somerset Landing, was a company detachment of the 60^th Indiana. They had been sent here in the tradition of Roman Legionaries, to listen and look for the enemy where the enemy were not supposed to be. Finding them the Yankees were to report and retreat. By circumstance the Yankees were also protecting some 300 runaway slaves, who had come into their lines seeking refuge. And a refugee was the third reincarnation of Somerset Landing in the last six weeks - since General Grant had made this stretch of Old Man River the fulcrum of the American Civil War.

People still called it Somerset Landing, even after it fell into the hands of Judge John Perkins, who already owned a plantation across the river from Natchez, Mississippi. With the addition of Somerset's 17,500 acres, and its 250 slaves, Perkins became one of the richest and most influential men in the slave states. His eldest son, John Perkins junior, eventually became a United States Congressman, and was the “oldest and best friend” of Jefferson Davis, eventually became the Confederate President, and whose plantation was just across the Mississippi. Then in 1858, Perkins junior was deeded Somerset by his then 68 year old father.

So it was no small sacrifice when John junior burned the mansion and buildings of Somerset, before they were captured by Grant's army.  Grant was then snaking his way down the levees of Tansas County, on his way to Hard Times Landing. He had no interest nor ability to confiscate any cotton. But that did not stop Perkins from burning 2,000 bales to spite the hated Yankees. Perkins also destroyed barns and out houses, denying their use to the abandoned human beings used as slaves who were now left to fend for themselves.

While advancing toward Somerset Landing that morning, one member of the rebel 3^rd Battalion recalled, “...we passed by farm after farm all deserted and the buildings going to decay.” Between the patriotic zeal of owners like John Perkins, and the careless destructiveness of the passing Yankees, by 31 May almost all the great river front plantation homes of Louisiana had been burned to the ground.

The country had been picked clean and would not support human life for at least another year.

Alerted by their pickets, the Yankees quickly abandoned their camp, retreating to the levee along the river. There, with the help of the liberated slaves, they hastily began a breastwork of scattered cotton bales. While the rebel infantry paused to loot the Yankee camp, rebel Captain Edgar brought forward his four 6 pound cannon and began to blast away at the barricade. But before Edgar's guns do do much damage there appeared on the river the USS Carondelet (above)  –a 512 ton twin stern wheel ironclad, 175 feet long, carrying seven 8 and 9 inch smooth bore cannon, crewed by 251 men, and ably commanded by 36 year old acting Naval Lieutenant John McLeod Murphy.

The Carondelet exchanged shots with the rebel cannon, killing McCulloch's staff officer Gallatin Smith, and forcing the rebels to take cover. And under that protective fire civilian ship's Captain C. Dan Conway ran his steamboat “The Forest Queen” up to the dock and evacuated the threatened slaves and soldiers. By 10:00 am, the prey had been snatched right out from under General McCulloch's nose. Within a few minutes, Generals Walker and Taylor arrived, with more troops, only to find their noose empty.

The engagement – such as it was – had cost the Yankees one soldier taken prisoner. Five abandoned slaves were also captured. It was enough to boost the confidence of the still green Texans. Captain Eljiah Petty, of the 17^th infantry wrote, “If this is all the fear, I don’t mind a battle.” But the Generals knew better. As one rebel had noted before the move across Bayou Vidal, “...there was supposed to be...(a) heavy force” -  at Somerset Landing. But there was not.

There were supposed to be long trains of wagons filled with food and ammunition, crawling along the levee - the supply line feeding Grant's 45,000 men in Mississippi. Instead there was only the desolation of burned out plantation houses and cotton fields going to weed. Walker and Taylor must have  realized what the lack of Yankees meant. There was no jugular vein on the Louisiana bank of the Mississippi River to cut. As Taylor had warned theater commander General Kirby Smith a week before, Grant had shifted his supply line. 

There should have been a system of mounted spies, gathering information of Yankee movements on the Louisiana shore. But so desperate was the Trans-Mississippi for men and horses, no such web of spies had ever been established. So General Walker's next move was into the dark - to strike north toward New Carthage. Perhaps in that town Grant would be vulnerable.

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