VICKSBURG Chapter Forty - One

 

When 34 year old Brigadier General John Gregg (above) awoke on that Tuesday morning, he was bone weary.  His 4,500 man brigade had left Port Hudson  7 days earlier, on Tuesday, 5 May, 1863, and after a 200 mile long odyssey  - by foot and by rail -  they had staggered into Jackson, Mississippi, having lost perhaps 500 men through injury and 'straggling'.

After a day of rest, on Monday, 11 May, Gregg had been forced to urge his men another dusty 27 miles to the southwest, to the county seat of Raymond. The exhausted rebels found just six of Wirt Adam's cavalrymen in the town, leaving Gregg with little idea what was waiting just over his horizon.

He was forced to rely on guidance from his superior, 48 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton, who on 12 May was finally taking a journey of his own, 20 miles east of the Vicksburg entrenchments. Around the little village of Bovina Station (above, center), a mile west of the Big Black River, Pemberton was struggling to concentrate the 18,000 men of the divisions of Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, Major General John Stevens Bowen and – the biggest pebble in his shoe – the one armed Major General William Wing Loring. It seemed every order Pemberton issued inspired the vainglorious “Old Blizzards” to respond with at least 3 telegrams of protest, suggestion and or complaints.

Right now, the arrogant and rude Loring (above) was urging his commander to strike out toward the line of Baker's and Fourteen Mile creeks to force Grant into battle before he was ready. But forced into a straight jacket of passivity by Jefferson Davis's orders to defend Vicksburg and Port Hudson at all costs,  Pemberton had little choice but to wait for Grant to launch a direct assault via the Big Black River Bridge. Which is why he had his men digging entrenchments to defend the bridge and adjacent fords, instead of probing for the Yankees as Loring kept urging.

In fact most of Wirt Adam's cavalry was available for such a mission, just a few miles up the road at Edward's Depot. Except Wirt Adams never shared his new location with Pemberton Nor did anyone in Richmond think to inform Pemberton of the imminent arrival in Jackson of his superior, General Johnson. Not even Johnson. The infection of suspicion and mistrust in the Confederate command originated with Jefferson Davis, and fed a lack of discipline in Pemberton's junior officers.

So, struggling with the burdens of his first combat command, Pemberton vented his frustrations on General John Gregg and his 6 regiments, forty miles away on the other side of Grant's army. While the telegraph line to Jackson and Raymond was still working, Pemberton lectured the Texan. “Do not attack the enemy until he is engaged at Edwards or Big Black River Bridge. Be ready to fall on his rear or flank at any moment. Do not allow yourself to be flanked or taken in the rear. Be careful that you do not lose your command.”

However, this morning, 12 May, 1863,  General Gregg (above) learned from local militia of a Federal infantry brigade marching up the Utica Road, and decided to take the opportunity to stage a mini-Cannae. First he would tempt the Yankees into attacking the small bridge over the Fourteen Mile Creek, 2 miles south of Raymond. Once the Yankees had crossed the bridge, 1,500 Rebel infantry would sweep across the creek below the bridge, and then turning back, cut the Yankees off and crush them against Gregg's main body. To achieve that, however, Gregg would have to push his weary soldiers a little further.

Private Frank Herron of the 3^rd Tennessee infantry, remembered that morning. “Without breakfast, tired, hungry and with blistered feet, sadness was pictured on the faces of my companions as we were hastening on through the dust...But our sadness was suddenly relieved when we saw on a porch of a palatial home some beautiful girls waving the Bonnie Blue Flag. We gave the old and familiar yell in return and no sad faces were seen for awhile...”

Gregg's plan was perfectly reasonable, but for two things. First, with Pemberton's warnings ringing in his ears, and without cavalry to screen his flanks, Gregg was forced to assign the 400 soldiers of the 41^st Tennessee regiment, under 49 year old Scottish born Colonel Robert Farquarson, to control the road north to Bolton and Edward's Depot. He also assigned the 350 men of the 50^th Tennessee regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas W. Beaumont, to block the Auburn road. Together those assignments cut Gregg's offensive strength by almost a thousand men. And secondly, what was marching north from Utica was not a Federal brigade, but the 7,000 men of John Logan's 3^rd division, with two more divisions of 34 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's Corps, right behind them – over 17,000 soldiers in total.

The Yankees were looking for water. It was the only essential which the Federal army could not bring along.  And while hungry men might march for a week, a thirsty army would begin to collapse within 72 hours. And after 12 straight days of sunny skies, and with all those thirsty federal soldiers drinking up every available drop, the entire state of Mississippi was drying up. Wells were beginning to run dry. Creeks were reduced to a trickle. The only reliable source of water in the area was Fourteen Mile Creek, fed by springs south of Raymond. That was McPherson's immediate goal, get to the creek and fill his canteens. And only after that, march on to Raymond.

But McPherson's Corps was not as blind as Gregg. The 6^th Missouri's raid on the Mobile and Ohio railroad the day before had revealed that a rebel brigade had passed through Crystal Springs on the way to Jackson. In addition the rails destroyed had prevented a second rebel battalion from reaching Jackson. Worse for the rebels, the roads out of Raymond had not been picketed. Civilians - and there were always random civilians – trickled out of Raymond and were captured by Yankee pickets on the Auburn and Utica roads. Each traveler, no matter their loyalties, carried confirmation that there were  rebel troops in Raymond.  The Yankees were not going to be surprised.

Gregg put the 548 men of the 7^th Texas infantry across the Utica Road, to hold the bridge. It's commander, the recently widowed 32 year old Colonel Hiram Bronson Granbury (above), sent skirmishers across Fortymile Creek, to hide among the brush on the south bank. 

In a support position a thousand yards behind the 7^th Texas, Gregg set the Irishmen of the composite 10^th and 30^th Tennessee regiments. He told their commander, 36 year old ex-Nashville mayor Colonel Randal William McGavock, to also be ready to also assist the 50^th Tennessee, a thousand yards to the west, at the Auburn Road.

As his strategic reserve, on high ground at the eastern end of his line, Gregg placed the 315 men of the 3^rd Tennessee Regiment, under 39 year old Colonel Doctor Calvin Harvey Walker. And to their west, on a knoll beside the Utica road, he placed Captain Bledsoe and his little 3 gun battery – two 12-pound Napoleons, one bronze and one iron, and a single Whitworth Rifle, with the 500 men of the 1^st Tennessee infantry battalion protecting the only artillery he had.

The timing was close. As Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Beaumont of the 50^th Tennessee noted after the battle, even before reaching his position astride the Auburn road, “...the battle was opened by the artillery, with occasional musketry.” Beaumont added, “It was not long before General Gregg rode up and ordered me to move...into a woods in rear of the enemy's battery, and attack...unless I should find it too strongly protected...”

The 50^th Tennessee, with the 10^th/30^th composite regiment in support, crossed Fortymile Creek, and quickly found themselves facing an entire line of Yankee infantry.  In setting his trap, Gregg had fed his own men into a trap.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Forty

 

The city of Vicksburg had been laid out on a series of 20 to 30 foot high steps along the Mississippi River, each marking a flood stage as the Wisconsin glaciers retreated over the previous 10,000 years. And along the crest of each of these benches ran a main north-south street. First there was Levee Street, created by the current river's high water mark, then Pearl Street, then Oak or Mulberry, then Washington Street, and along the final and highest step ran Cherry Street. 

Depot Street ran east-west, beginning at the Southern Railroad station on the levee and rose directly 30 vertical feet until it “T”ed into Washington Street. But most cross streets took advantage of the ravines which periodically eroded through the packed clay by either snaking through them - such as Madison Street a block north of Depot Street - or bridging them – as Bridge Street, a half block south, which angled across the ravine on stilts, making an easier step up to Cherry Street. It was on a north south side street, between Madison and Bridge, that the eccentric Colonel Thomas E. Robbins built the most unusual home in all of Vicksburg.

Thomas liked to be known as “Colonel” Robbins, but was best known as a Judge of the Warren County bankruptcy court, and a scavenger who took full advantage of his early notice of flotsam of local business failures and jetsam abandoned on the docks and in the warehouses. By 1840 “The Colonel” had acquired a shipment of hexagonal bricks supposedly fired in Britain, which inspired him to construct a monument to his unique business acumen.

Built atop a 17 acre mound above Washington Street, a block south of the new Warren County Courthouse, Robbins' Castle boasted a moat – the better to incubate mosquitoes – and a surrounding hedge of Osage Orange trees – whose scent disguised the deflection of cooling breezes. I suspect it was his monument which sped poor Thomas Robbins on to his final reward not long after finishing his mansion in the early 1840's. And in 1859 his house was bought by another acquiring lawyer named Armistead Burwell Junior, as a home for himself and his wife, Mary.

Armistead had been named after his father, a Petersburg, Virginia (above) slave and plantation owner and a Colonel in the War of 1812.  Sometime in 1818, Colonel Burwell had taken to repeatedly rapping at least one of his 50 pieces of property, a house slave named Agness “Aggy” Hobbs. As a result she had given birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth Hobbs. 

When Elizabeth reach 14, she was subjected to repeated whippings and rapes by a white relative to “break her spirit”, before being “married” (i.e. rented) to Hillsborough, North Carolina slave owner Alexander Kirkland, who beat and rapped Elizabeth for 4 years, until she gave birth to a son. Luckily for Elizabeth, 18 months later, Alexander Kirkland died, and Elizabeth and her son were eventually returned to the Garland family.  It was upon a foundation of this kind of brutality that the gentile southern tradition of their "peculiar institution" of slavery, rested

Armistead Burwell Junior had moved to Vicksburg in 1859 and bought The Castle because he had been told it was a “healthy spot”. However, with the arrival of secession, he dared not stay. Like his father, Armistead was a pro-union man. A slave owner, but a union man. He wrote a friend, “I dare not go any place in the interior ((as I) would be hung or imprisoned if I did.” In fact, he was arrested in September of 1861, and held for several weeks. When finally released, Armistead left the castle behind and fled north. Being a supporter of slavery was no longer enough to remain in good standing in the city of Vicksburg.

“The Gibraltar of the Confederacy” had been the capitalist dream of a Methodist minister. Newitt Vick.  In 1805 the 39 year old, with his wife Elizabeth Clark Vick and their 7 children, moved to Church Hill, Mississippi Territory, about 20 miles north of Natchez. As the saying goes, they prospered and multiplied. After adding 3 more children, in 1811 Newitt was able to buy land for his own plantation in the Walnut Hills along the Yazoo River.

Newitt called his little empire “Open Woods”, and through the sweat and blood of 66 enslaved human beings - and after adding 3 more white children - in 1818, this compromised Christian bought 612 acres along the cliffs above the Mississippi River, and surveyed and plotted out a town site, roughly 17 blocks north to south by 14 blocks east to west. But the couple never lived to profit from their investment, because both Newitt and Elizabeth died in the 1819 yellow fever epidemic.

The executor of the estate sold off the lots in 1822, for the benefit of the 13 Vick children. And the town of 500 was named in Newitts honor. Thirty-five years after its founding, Vicksburg had a population of 4,500 whites and some 30 “free colored”. In the adjacent Warren County, the population was almost 3,500 whites, but they were surrounded by 13,763 human beings held in bondage. In the county the war to defend slavery had strong support – among the whites. But within the city limits that support might be as “squishy” as the Confederate economy.

In 1861 the newly printed Confederate “gray back” dollar was worth ninety cents of its Yankee “greenback” counterpart. By the end of that first year of war the Gray Back had already lost 30% of that value. Two years later the gray back was worth less than half of its Yankee counterpart. To continue to buy food, uniforms, blankets and ammunition, the Confederacy had simply printed more gray backs. By May of 1863, almost half of Richmond's budget was allocated to paying interest on the loans needed to pay the other half of the budget.

All Confederate states extended credit to the Richmond government, but never equally. On the front lines, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and now Mississippi, strained to feed and arm the men fighting on their soil. But other governors, such as 42 year old Joseph Emerson “Joe” Brown of Georgia (above),...

...and 33 year old Zebulon Baird Vance, of North Carolina (above), did everything they could to avoid releasing money or troops to serve Richmond. By 1863 it was obvious to even a stalwart like Jefferson Davis that the theory of the Confederacy was as much a failure as the Articles of Confederation had proven to be four score years earlier.

A failure on the macro and the micro scale as well. In December of 1860, while “susess” fever broke  across the region the pro-war Vicksburg Sun noted, “It has been but a very short time since a man was tarred and feathered here on account of his expressing too much confidence in Abe Lincoln.” By April, Fort Sumter had been fired upon and Lincoln was calling for 75,000 volunteers to defend Washington, 

Vicksburg resident Dr. Richard Pryor took out an ad in the Vicksburg Evening Citizen offering $50,000 for “the head of Abraham Lincoln”. Editor of the Citizen, James Swords even designed a badge promoting “Southern Rights – For this We Fight”, and suggesting if all true supporters of slavery wore them “We would then know when we met a friend.”

Such vehement sentiments had the desired effect, and the editor of the pro-union Vicksburg Daily Whig, Marmaduke Shannon, struggled to voice enough support for the war to avoid having his offices burned down. “It is enough for us to know that Mississippi...has taken its position”, he wrote. “We, too take our position by its side.” 

But as early as March of 1863, Alabamian General Edward Dorr Tracy  - who would die 2 months later in the battle of Port Gibson - had reported, “(in) this garrisoned town (above), upon which the hopes of a whole people are set...there is not now subsistence for one week. The meat ration has already been virtually discontinued, the quality being such that the men utterly refuse to eat it.” Even before Grant had crossed the river, hunger was stalking the troops and citizens of Vicksburg.

But an hour's ride out of town a seeming unlimited bounty could be found, if you could afford it. Molasses, which before the war had sold for less than 30 cents a gallon, was available for $7.00 a gallon. An 1861 $44 barrel of flour now cost more than $400.00. Salt cost $45 a bag. Turkeys were selling for $50 apiece. The fields were still filled with cotton, and the planters and the government they controlled refused to sacrifice that profit. Lieutenant General Pemberton might have simply requisitioned the supplies the city needed - as Grant was already doing -  but Pemberton felt a greater need for the goodwill of the plantation owners and bankers of Warren County.

One of the most lovely homes within the city, Wexford Lodge, sat atop that second ridge line at the eastern edge of Vicksburg, where the rebels had not extended their fortifications. For a decade it had been the home of 59 year old lawyer, “planter” and slave owner, New Hampshire born James Shirley, his 48 year old second wife from Massachusetts, Adeline Quincy and their three children - 20 year old Frederick Edward, 18 year old Alice Eugenia and 15 year old Robert. The Shirleys were well integrated into Mississippi society and economy before secession. But they remained loyal unionists.

As secession fever spread, James wrote his brother back in New Hampshire, “Our Governor....is ready and willing to tear this little, no-account, dirty Union to tatters.” Still, like General Tracy, James had noticed the citizens of Vicksburg were not enthusiastic about a war. “...banks are curtailing their discounts – drawing in their circulation....money has become scarce; capitalists have withdrawn their funds; all kinds of property has depreciated in value...” Young Fred had even proudly announced that he would rather serve Abraham Lincoln for 20 years than Jefferson Davis for 2 hours. The response of their neighbors was a viable threat of lynching. So Fred had been shipped north to Indiana for everyone's safety. But James stayed to protect his investment, part of which were his slaves.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum was 45 year old Emma Harrison Balfour. An ardent secessionist, Emma had been born in Virginia, come to Mississippi with her first husband, and after his death married Doctor William Balfours in 1847. 

They raised 5 children in their home, at 102 Crawford Street, at the corner of Cherry - 15 year old Louise, 12 year old Willie, 10 year old Alice, 8 year old Emma and 3 year old Annie. It was one of the finest residences in Vicksburg, where the Balfours hosted an 1862 Christmas Eve ball to celebrate the defeat of Grant's December invasion of Mississippi.

But that gay occasion had been interrupted by word of the Yankee Fleet entering the mouth of the Yazoo River, on their way to the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. Day after day Grant's noose around Vicksburg tightened. Now that disunion had been declared, now that blood had been shed, now that treason had been committed, it was no longer possible that slavery would be left alone.

During the later 1840's, still a slave, Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland had managed to establish a tiny enterprise as a seamstress and pattern cutter in Vicksburg. With her earnings she helped to support her oppressors, and then in 1852 Elizabeth  bought her and her son's freedom for $1,200 – worth $34,000.00 today.  

During the next decade she moved to Washington, D.C., and because of her skills and ambition, was eventually introduced to Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife. She made dresses for the First lady, and Lizzie and Mary became friends. And by her very existence Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland was living disproof of the lies, sins and horrors created to justify slavery and white supremacy.

From its inception, the Confederacy was not only impractical and immoral, it was a cruel and inhumane fraud, perpetrated at the expense of both blacks and whites. And both races paid a heavy price for it even before the war.  And the price in the city of Vicksburg was about to go even higher.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Nine

The 200 blue clad troopers from the 6^th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry reached the New Orleans and Jackson railroad about a mile and a half north of Crystal Springs, Mississippi  - 30 miles south south east of Jackson - just after 9:00am on Monday, 11 May, 1863. They began their destructive work at once. 

Under orders from their commander, Colonel Thomas Clark Wright (above),  half stood guard while the other 100 stripped a mile and a half of telegraph wire from its poles and piled it atop bridges over Vaughn and Rhodes Creeks, which they then set ablaze. 

The Yankees also tore up 3 short sections of rails between the creeks. These were heated over their own burning cross ties and 125 bales of cotton, labeled “Property of the Confederate States of America”. The softened rails were warped enough to make them unusable.

Clark Wright's uncivil war – he preferred the name Clark - began just a week after Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter. In a coup on 20 April, 1861, on the border with “Bleeding Kansas”, pro-slavery militia had captured the Federal arsenal in Liberty, Missouri – also Jesse James' hometown. A similar attempt at the St. Louis arsenal was foiled, and pro-Federal forces quickly took control the state government, and its bank accounts. 

On 1 August, on the Iowa border, 500 pro-union militiamen, lead by 44 year old Colonel David Moore, “put the bayonet” to 2,000 poorly equipped pro-slavery men in Athens, Missouri. Two of the rebels sent running were Colonel Moore's own sons. A week later, Colonel Thomas Clark Wright participated in the Battle of Wilson's Creek (above), which proved emblematic for Missouri's entire war.  It was a bloody tactical defeat for the Federals and a bloody strategic defeat for the Confederates - in short, everybody lost.

The war in Missouri saw more fighting than any other states except Virginia and Tennessee, and more division than most. A year later, after the Federal victory in the 3 hour battle in the town square of Kirksville, in northeastern Missouri, Colonel John McNeil (above) ordered 15 surrendered rebels executed, and Lieutenant Colonel Frisby McCullough was shot as a “Bushwhacker”, even though he was wearing a Confederate uniform and had papers confirming his rank.

Peremptory violence such as this, and that of terrorists “Bloody Bill” Anderson and William Quantrill ate at discipline, until the war in Missouri descended into an endless series of raids, ambushes, torture, murders, kidnappings, lynchings, barn burnings, poisoned wells, rapes and robberies, more often criminal as militarily motivated. Often the perpetrators knew the victims. Often they were neighbors. Occasionally, they were even related.

Missouri's war would not end until 3 April, 1881, when Jesse James would be murdered in his St. Joseph parlor. Before then, perhaps 40,000 men, women and children would die – 27,000 from 1861 to 1865 alone. And Colonel Thomas Clark Wright rose from this moral swamp. As he finished his 11 May, 1863 raid on the New Orleans And Jackson railroad, Colonel Wright released 18 prisoners on parole. But 15 others were trussed up and and tied to mules, to suffer the bruising 25 mile ride back headquarters of the XVII Corps, north of Utica, Mississippi on the Old Port Gibson Road, at the Roach Plantation. Colonel Wright reported he believed it would take the rebels 5 or 6 days to repair all the damage his men had done to the railroad. But things in Mississippi were changing much faster than that.

Owner of the plantation he called Woodville was James P. Roach, banker and a partner in the firm of Wirt Adams and Company on Crawford Street in Vicksburg (above). James, his wife Loulie and their 6 children had lived on Depot street for a decade, 

To James his plantation and the human beings who toiled and suffered on it were an “investment property”, collateral for loans and a status symbol. But he did not live to see the war fought to defend his wealth. In 1860, after a long illness, James Roach had died at 50 years of age. He left behind an 18 year old son Tom, 15 year old Nora, 12 year old Mahala, 5 year old twins Sophy and John, and 4 year old Jim.

In 1860 Vicksburg had a population of 4,600 white souls. With the slowly closing Federal noose around the city, 3 years later it had swollen to perhaps 10,000. 

After Pemberton left for his first field command, the man in charge of Vicksburg was 42 year old Alabamian, Major General Martin Luther Smith (above). Besides commanding the division which had withstood Sherman's January Chickasaw Bayou assault, he was generally considered the best engineer in the Confederacy. But Smith was also responsible for the river batteries Joe Johnston had criticized the previous December. And in the event, that criticism had been proven prophetic.

Beneath Smith was the 42 year old New Yorker Colonel Edward Higgins. He had spent half his life at sea, which seemingly made him the perfect commander for the 3,600 gunners who had up to this point had defended the Vicksburg river front. But Major Higgins had also commanded the guns of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, on the river below New Orleans. And those forts and guns had been “run”, and bypassed, much the same way the Vicksburg batteries had, just the month before. The delta forts held out until late April, 1862 when they and Higgins surrendered. While on parole, Higgins had been promoted to Colonel, and when officially exchanged in September, he had been assigned to Vicksburg.

Commanding a division beneath Major General Smith was 32 year old Major General Horace Forney (above).  An 1852 graduate of West Point, Forney had returned there in 1858 after the the Mormon Expectation, to teach tactics. He had resigned his commission when Alabama seceded. As the colonel of the 10^th Alabama regiment, he had been solely responsible for the defense of the Shenandoah Valley, while the rest of the Confederate army concentrated at Mananass Junction to defeat the first Yankee invasion of Virginia. Badly wounded in the arm at the skirmish at Dransville, he was promoted to first Brigadier General and then, in October 1862 to Major General, and given command of the District of the Gulf.

His rapid promotion was primarily politically and romantically inspired, since while recovering he had courted and married 22 year old Miss Septima Sexta Middleton Rutledge, great granddaughter of both Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton – both signers of the Declaration of Independence. Her politically powerful Alabama family insisted her husband be a great soldier. Finally sent to Vicksburg, his duties were limited to the garrisoning of a prepared position.

Smith's own division occupied a mile of artillery redoubts with connecting trenches behind the Military Road running from Fort Hill (above)  at the far left of the line,  to its junction with Graveyard Road on the right.  

From the Stockade Redoubt south to the Jackson Road was defended by Forney's division. From there the line bent inward to the Baldwin Ferry Road and the Southern Railroad line, to Hall's Ferry Road, and terminated at the South Fort, and the Mississippi River.

The troops intended to occupy the line south of the Jackson road to the River if need be, including the divisions of 45 year old Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, 32 year old Major General John Stevens Bowen, and 44 year old Major General William Wing Loring, At  that moment in early May they were all gathered 7miles to the east of Vicksburg, around the railroad stop of Bovina, under 49 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton, as an offensive force.

General Smith acknowledged that the defense line he had constructed might have been stronger, if it had occupied an equally high ridge some 600 yards further to the east. But that idea, “increasing as it did the length of the entire line of defense, was abandoned for want of sufficient force to occupy it.” In other words, the Gibraltar of the Confederacy was not the strongest position on the Mississippi River. It was the strongest position possible.

That evening, when Colonel Thomas Clark Wright's exhausted troopers fell into their sleeping bags on the Roach Plantation, Wright's day was not yet done,  He had to write out his report to his superiors - , the damage to the rail line and the prisoners he had taken. And then he added that he had been told a brigade of Confederate infantry had passed down the railroad to Jackson a few hours before his arrival. And, he added,  there were reports of a second rebel brigade which was supposed to be passing on to Jackson in a few hours. 

The first Brigade had been Greeg's 4,600 men. The Yankees now knew they would be waiting for them in Jackson or Raymond.  But the following brigade , under 38 year old Brigadier General Samuel Bell Maxey (above), was south of the break Wright's men had made in the New Orleans and Jackson rail line.  Delayed because of that break, those 4,000 men were ordered to return to Port Hudson. Thus Wright's cavalry raid handed McPherson's Corps the victory at on 12 May, before a shot was even fired.

But there was also another effect of the raid. Later in the month, while acknowledging  that Colonel Wright had always been following his orders,  Lieutenant General Grant would suggest to subordinates, that the Missourian's actions with regard to taking and treating of prisoners was excessive.  And before the month of June was over, before Vicksburg had surrendered, Colonel Thomas Clark Wright would quietly resign his position in the Federal army.   This was a war for the future soul of the nation. And the leadership of the Federal Army agreed there must be limits to the actions of the winners, else what was won would prove not worth the price that was paid. 

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