VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy

 

The boys in butternut brown stood up just as their supporting cannon opened fire. The blasts caught the 48^th Massachusetts regiment just as they were staking tents and starting cook fires. 

And then, while the 110 Yankees were still reeling from that shock, the 400 veterans of 19^th Arkansas let fly a volley into the blue clad flank. 

Desperately Colonel Eben Francis Stone (above) struggled to get his still green companies into a battle line facing the new threat. But the Bay State boys wavered, and to buy time, Stone ordered a retreat of 100 yards. 

It was almost 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, 21 May, 1863. The battle for Port Hudson had just begun on a flood plain 3 miles to the east, in a clearing containing a general store run by a family named Young, with a Masonic Lodge on it's second floor.

Located on a sharp bend in the Mississippi River, 140 road miles below Vicksburg, the 80 foot high cliffs of Port Hudson were the penultimate thread connecting the productive Trans-Mississippi to the rest of the Confederacy. 

But on 7 May, 1863, when Federal Major General Nathanial Banks' 15,000 men captured Alexandria, Louisiana (above)  on the Red River, that thread had unraveled.   Confederate Western theater commander, General Joseph Johnston, thought the 7,000 men in Port Hudson could be put to better use relieving Vicksburg, the primary final connection to Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. His message to Gardner ordered him to "...evacuate Port Hudson forthwith... "  But Gardner resisted because Confederate President Jefferson Davis had forbid the now isolated fort's evacuation.

The garrison was reduced to relying on a rickety rail line that only ran as far east as Clinton, Louisiana. Food, ammunition and replacements were supposed to come down that line, but little did. Complained a hungry Tennessee gunner at Port Hudson, “We are living in a swamp and drinking water out of a mud hole.” The men suffered from typhoid, malaria, smallpox, and diarrhea. But their admiration for their commander, 40 year old New York born Brigadier General Franklin Kitchell Gardner, held the command together.

Gardner (above)  knew Federal Admiral David Farregut's blue water navy was now transporting Bank's 3 divisions down the Red to the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers to his north. 

With that many men and that much fire power on the big river, Gardner had to worry about an assault directly on Port Hudson. But he suspected Banks would instead land his 25,000 men 20 miles to his north at the once busy river port of Bayou Sara – which might offer Gardner an opportunity. 

Over looking Bayou Sara, atop a high narrow ridge, was St. Francisville (above) , “the town 2 miles long and 2 yards wide”.   If he waited until Banks had committed to the landing at Bayou Sara, Gardner might, by a forced march, capture St. Francisville first, and pound the more numerous Yankees into submission. It was a long shot, but...

...And then on 11 May Gardner learned that 25 miles to his south Federal soldiers – the ex-slaves of the 3^rd Louisiana Native Guards – were rebuilding a bridge just north of Baton Rouge.  And on 14 May,  he learned that 3 Yankee divisions had left Alexandria for Simmesport. Louisiana, on the Atchafalaya river.  A day's steaming up the Atchafalaya would bring Bank's men to the Mississippi, and another day would bring them to Bayou Sarah.  Even the long shot was now gone, and Gardner could feel the teeth of a blue vice closing in on him.  He dispatched men across the Mississippi to slow General Bank's advance, and  sent a portion of the 14^th Arkansas cavalry under Colonel Frank W. Powers, south, to slow any Yankee movement out of Baton Rouge.  In fact, the Yankees were not moving.

A week later, the Yankees finally moved. Coming by road were 14 regiments and 7 artillery batteries of the 1^st Division under 42 year old Brigadier General Christopher Columbus Augur (above)  – another of Grant's West Point classmates.   

Leading the way for Augur were the 3 cavalry regiments under 36 year old newly promoted Brigadier General Benjamin Henry Grierson (above).   

Following by riverboats from New Orleans was the 2^nd Division of 50 year old Rode Island born Brigadier General Thomas West “Tim” Sherman  (no relation to "Cump" Sherman) – with 12,000 men,  enough to handle  Gardner's 7,000 man garrison.

Since 2 May, when their 600 mile ride across Mississippi had ended with a parade into Baton Rouge (above)  Grierson's 1,700 troopers had been resting and rearming.  Starting well before dawn on Thursday, 21 May, the Yankee troopers easily pushed Colonel Power's horsemen, back.   By noon Grierson's men had reached the little cross roads and clearing called Plain's Store.

Grierson did not pause here, continuing another 10 miles north to secure the crossings of Thompson's Creek. Ten miles beyond Thompson's Creek was St. Francisville. But more importantly, right behind Greierson's Midwest cavalry was Augur's 1^st Brigade, the 2^nd Louisiana, the 21^st Maine, the 48^th and 49^th Massachusetts and 116^th New York regiments, along with a battery of artillery. Meanwhile, Augur's 3^rd Brigade, 4 regiments under 37 year old Colonel Nathan Augustus Monroe Dudley, swung toward the river to secure a spot called Springfield Landing, to receive the division of Rhode Island native, General "Tim" Sherman.  

And that, as the saying goes, cut it, - the “it” being the supply and communication line to Clinton, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi and, Mobile, Alabama. Federal infantry and artillery astride the Plains Store crossroads was the knock out punch to the much feared artillery bastion high above the choke point on the Mississippi (above), Port Hudson.  Farregut's blue water battleships could not silence the place. But Port Hudson now became just another isolated fortification occupied by not enough men to hold it, but more men than the Confederacy could afford to lose defending it.

Still, like a punch drunk boxer, General Gardner reflexively counter punched. Learning of the arrival of the Yankee infantry, Gardner dispatched a battery of artillery and 400 men from the 32^nd Louisiana regiment – 7 infantry companies and 5 of cavalry known as Miles' Legion – under 47 year old wealthy slave owner and New Orleans lawyer, Colonel William Raphael Miles. Luckily for the rebels, Miles discovered the Yankees had made a mistake.

The mistake was made by an unnamed captain or lieutenant on General Augur's staff. It was the kind of mistake made by an army stagnant for too long. To be good at moving troops and posting them into defensive positions you need practice, and repetition. And Augur's staff had done little moving in the past year.   And so, after a forced march of 20 miles, this particular staff officer, charged with seeing the 48^th Massachusetts Infantry securely posted a quarter mile west of the crossroads, placed the regiment a hundred yards too far forward, beyond the protection of their supporting artillery, in the woods straddling the Port Hudson road.

Colonel Eben Francis Stone (above) , the 40 year old lawyer out of the fishing village of Newburyport,  may have had concerns about the position, but he never had time to express them. He placed half his men in the woods to the north of the Port Hudson road, and half to the south. 

And no sooner had Stone finished this task that rebel artillery began blasting straight down the road, between them. Alerted to the threat to their front, the 3 companies south of the road were caught when the Confederate infantry opened fire on their right flank. A few moments later Stone ordered his men to fall back.

The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Francis O’Brien, rushed forward when the artillery opened up and had took charge of the 3 companies north of the road. O'Brien had been born in  Tipperary, Ireland. But his immigrant home stood on Bunker's Hill above Boston harbor, and in the spirit of his adopted neighborhood, he ordered these men to stand where they were. Not being outflanked, they did.  

The right wing of the 48^th fell back to its new position in the clearing around the Plains Store, where the presence of their own artillery bolstered their confidence. And when the 19^th Arkansas emerged out of the woods – 400 strong against perhaps 40 Yankees - the New England boys stood firm. Just as the rebels prepared to fire upon the 48^th a second time, the 116th New York regiment, stationed to their right, charged into the rebel flank.  Following Captain John Higgins, the upstate New Yorkers drove the rebels to retreat. And that quickly the threat to the Yankee line was swept away.

The battle of Plains Store cost the Yankees 15 dead, 71 wounded and 14 captured. The rebels lost in total about 90 men., some 70 of those French Creoles who surrendered saying "Viva la Republic!"  But the battle  ended as it began – with Port Hudson cut off,  just like Vicksburg. The next day yet another message arrived from General Joe Johnston in Jackson. It again ordered General Gardner to destroy his guns and evacuate Port Hudson at once.  This time Gardner was inclined to obey. But it was a day late, as the saying goes, and a dollar short. 

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VICKSBURG Chapter Sixty - Nine

  

Inside the Louisiana Redan, 26 year old Sergeant William Henry Tunard, of “K” company – the Pelican Rifles – of the 3^rd Louisiana Tigers was keeping a diary. And on Monday, 25 May, 1863, he recorded that it was “Another clear and hot day...In the afternoon a flag of truce was sent into the lines, requesting a cessation of hostilities for the purpose of burying the dead. The effluvia from the putrefying bodies had become almost unbearable to friend an foe, and the request was granted, to continue for three hours.” Almost all the dead were Yankees.

The bodies had lain in the Mississippi heat and humidity for 3 days. Any truce to remove the dead would involve burial parties from both sides.  And that would have provided the rebels with a better view of Grant's army - after throwing themselves against the rebel forts now reduced to barely 40,000 men.   The need to keep his weaknesses from prying rebel eyes drove Grant to refuse earlier offers from local rebel commanders.  Only when the First Parallel of Yankee fortifications had been completed, did Grant request a cease fire. By then any wounded who could not crawl to safety, had long since succumbed.

During the following week, the citizens of Vicksburg felt the Union hold on their city grow subtly tighter. That week General Pemberton cut the soldiers rations in half. On 28 May, Dora Richards recorded that she had heard that “expert swimmers were crossing the Mississippi on logs to communicate with the outside world. But she did not bother to record the news, if there was any. Her concerns like those of all prisoners, had shrunk to her immediate surroundings. She noted, “I am so tired of corn-bread...that I eat it with tears in my eyes. We are lucky to get a quart of milk daily from a family near who have a cow they hourly expect to be killed.”

Every morning Dora handed $5 to her slave cook Martha, before sending her to find food. Hours later the terrified woman would return with a shrinking piece of mule of horse meat for Dora's husband.   Being Yankee sympathizers, the couple had few friends they could ask for help.  “The shells seem to have many different names,” noted Dora.” I hear the soldiers say, “That’s a mortar shell. There goes a Parrot. That’s a rifle shell.” They are all equally terrible.”

The Richards were one of the shrinking number of residents who chose to remain above ground in their rented home.  One night, as Dora's husband was watching the glowing fuses of shells falling on the city, he suddenly shouted, “Run!” “I started through the back room”, wrote Dora, “...when the crash came that threw me to the floor. It was the most appalling sensation I’d ever known. … Shaken and deafened, I picked myself up....we found the entire side of the room torn out.” (above)

Dora and her little family kept a private cistern for water. A second water source they surrendered to soldiers, “My heart bleeds for them. They have nothing but spoiled, greasy bacon, and bread made of musty pea flour, and but little of that. The sick ones can’t bolt it. They come into the kitchen when Martha puts the pan of cornbread in the stove, and beg for the bowl she mixes it in....they look so ashamed of their poor clothes. I know we saved the lives of two by giving a few meals…”

Looters set a fire in Vicksburg's business district, to cover their crimes. Edward Sanford Gregory, a 20 year old resident, watched as the flames went out of control. “There was nothing to do except to remove the articles of value from the houses within its range. A great crowd collected, notwithstanding the concentration of the mortar fire; and yet there were no remembered casualties. The whole block was burned, of course; and the wonder is, only one.”

Then on at Midnight on Sunday, 30 May, 1863 the nature of the siege abruptly changed. Privileged daughter of the Confederacy, Emma Balfour (above), recorded the event. “At (midnight)... the guns all along the lines opened and the parrot shells flew as thick as hail around us!” 

Emma lived in a mansion (above) at the corner of Crawford and Adam's streets,  atop Vicksburg's highest ridge line, with her husband, physician and plantation and slave owner, Dr. William Balfour. The couple had hosted the Christmas eve ball in their residence. As befitting their social status, they had refused to occupy one of the 500 caves carved out of the loam, and were lying in their 2nd floor beds when the general bombardment suddenly commenced.

“We came down in the sitting room,” Emma wrote, “...we remained there till a shell struck in the garden against a tree...We got thoroughly worn out and disheartened and after looking to see the damage, went into the parlor and lay on the sofas there until morning, feeling that at any moment a mortar shell might crash through the roof....”

The Balfour's mansion stood next door to the Willis home (above),  taken over by General Pemberton as his headquarters. Looking out at her neighbor's home Emma noted, “People were running in every direction to find a place of safety. The shells fell literally like hail. Mrs. Willis’ House was struck twice and two horses in front of her door were killed. General Pemberton and his staff had to quit it.”

The shelling held Mrs. Balfour in dreadful fascination. The shells, she wrote, “...came rushing down like some infernal demon, seemed to me to be coming exactly on me...They come gradually making their way higher and higher, tracked by their firing fuse till they reach their greatest altitude—then with a rush and whiz they come down furiously...

"Then lookout, for if they explode before reaching the ground which they generally do, the pieces fly in all directions—the very least of which will kill one and most of them of sufficient weight to team through a house from top to bottom! The parrot shells come directly so one can feel somewhat protected from them by getting under a wall, but when both come at once and so fast that one has not time to see where one shell is going before another comes—it wears one out.”

Come the dawn, the artillery continued their heavy work. And under their cover the sap lines began reaching out from the First Parallel for the rebel forts. John Alexander McClernand (above), being a natural born politician and a Major General by convenience, could not pass up the opportunity to raise the moral of his XIII Corps soldiers with a message he titled General Order 72. It was not an order. It was a prolonged pretentious platitudinous palaver filled promulgation of meadow muffins. As political speak it was harmless enough. As a military order it was suicide.

It began, “Comrades, As your commander, I am proud to congratulate you upon your constancy, valor, and successes. History affords no more brilliant example of soldierly qualities. Your victories have followed in such rapid succession that their echoes have not yet reached the country. They will challenge its grateful and enthusiastic applause. Yourselves striking out a new path, your comrades of the Army of the Tennessee followed, and a way was thus opened for them to redeem previous disappointments.”

The rest of the Army of the Tennessee followed the path blazed by the XIII Corps? What about Chickasaw Bayou? Where was the XIII Corps at Chickasaw Bayou? And where was the XIII Corps for four hours at Champion's Hill?  Beyond that, a  reasonable argument could be made that the bloodletting of 22 May had been brought on by the delay of XIII Corps in destroying the rebel left at Champion's Hill. And half of the horror of that day, caused by McClernand's childish seeking of glory.

Continued General McClernand's praise for his men, “...you were the first to...plant our colors in the State of Mississippi....you came up to the enemy near Port Gibson...by vigorously pressing him at all points drove him from his position, taking a large number of prisoners and small arms and five pieces of cannon. General Logan’s DIVISION came up in time to gallantly share in consummating the most valuable victory won since the capture of Fort Donelson.”

According to the verbose Major General, the victories at Raymond and Jackson were the result of the heroic actions of the XIII corps, with a little help from the rest of the army. And at Champion's Hill? Said McClernand, “... after a sanguinary and obstinate battle, with the assistance of General McPherson’s corps, beat and routed him, taking many prisoners and small arms and several pieces of cannon.” With the assistance of XVII Corps? In fact the attack failed to obliterate the rebel army because XIII Corps delayed their assault for 3 to 4 hours.

The boast too far was yet to come, but McClernand made it in the very next paragraph. “On the 22^nd... you assaulted the enemy’s defenses in front at 10 a. m., and within thirty minutes had made a lodgement and planted your colors upon two of his bastions....only gained by a bloody and protracted struggle....the largest success achieved anywhere along the whole line of our army. For nearly eight hours, under a scorching sun and destructive fire, you firmly held your footing... 

"How and why the general assault failed, it would be useless now to explain. The Thirteenth Army Corps, acknowledging the good intentions of all, would scorn indulgence in weak regrets and idle recriminations. According justice to all, it would only defend itself.  If, while the enemy was massing to crush it, assistance was asked for by a diversion at other points, or by re-enforcement, it only asked what in one case Major-General Grant had specifically and peremptorily ordered, namely, simultaneous and persistent attack all along our lines until the enemy’s outer works should be carried, and what, in the other, by massing a strong force in time upon a weakened point, would have probably insured success.”

And there it was. The attack on 22 May had failed because General Grant  (above) had delayed in supporting McClernand's assaults. McClernand had not actually said that, but he implied it. And in politics, implication is conviction. And what was the effect of Grant's lack of support for the brave and noble soldiers of McClenand's XIII Corps? “The enemy’s odious defenses still block your access to Vicksburg. Treason still rules that rebellious city, and closes the Mississippi River against rightful use by the Illinois who inhabit its sources and the great Northwest. "

And then he signed the knife sticking out of Grant's back, just in case anyone doubted who had placed it there - Abraham Lincoln's good friend, "JOHN A. McClernand, Major-General, Commanding. (above)”

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VICKSBURG Chapter Sixty - Eight

 

For the past six months the Federal primary supply depots were operating at Milliklen's Bend, eleven  river above Vicksburg. But with the capture of Haine's Buff these could now to be bypassed, and a new depot established just 6 miles behind the Yankee front lines -  up the Yazoo River at the Johnson plantation on Chickasaw Bayou. 

The regiments protecting those warehouses were transferred as well. But that left Grant with the same problem he had in December at Holly Springs. There were still depots at The Milliken's Bend, and 5 miles closer to Vicksburg, new hospitals (above)  which had sprung up at the scene of that previous winter's pestilence and disease, at Young's Point - opposite the mouth of the Yazoo River.

The only combat unit at hand to prevent the rebels from cutting the Mississippi river to Grant's rear was the heavily abused 23^rd Iowa Infantry regiment.  After sacrificing themselves at the battles of Port Gibson, Champion Hill and the Big Black River Bridge, there were only 160 Iowa boys left -  barely enough to guard Confederate prisoners captured at the Big Black. The need for more soldiers was so desperate that Grant had been forced to bolster the weary corn huskers were 1,410 black volunteers.

A few short weeks before they had been plantations slaves. Touching a gun would have gotten them shot dead or lynched.  Now they wore blue coats with brass buttons stamped “U.S.” And they carried muskets, produced so haphazardly some of them would not fire.  They were still largely untrained, and  their white officers were usually not the best officers.  These green soldiers had been roughly formed into the 9^th and 11^th Louisiana and 1^st Mississippi regiments, referred to as the African Brigade.  In no way could they yet be considered an effective combat force, but they were determined to fight rather than become slaves again.

But that was a drop in the bucket to what Grant needed. He begged General Hallack and the War Department to send new units to free up the XVI Corps, under 45 year old Minnesota businessman, Brigadier General Cadwallader Colden Washburn. These divisions under William Sooy Smith, Greenville Dodge, Nathan Kimball and Jacob Lauman, and been garrisoning Memphis and LaGrange Tennessee and Corinth, Mississippi.  It would take a week, but by the first of June the amazing northern railroad network and the United States Military Rail Road and the brown water navy had these green soldiers moving to occupy central Tennessee, freeing those 15,000 veterans to fill the southern trenches of McClernand's lines, closing the ring around Vicksburg.

With those men, Grant's strength would top 55,000. But if Joe Johnson's army, gathering around Jackson, Mississippi, could advance quickly enough, he might force an escape route for Pemberton's trapped 20,000 soldiers in Vicksburg. Grant (above) needed even more men. And, amazingly, he found them, thanks to the worst disaster suffered by the Union Army in the entire war.

Said a Yankee participant in the bloody fiasco of Saturday, 13 December 1862, “If ever men in this war were slaughtered blindly, it was there.” A federal General observing the battle recalled that rank after rank of blue clad soldiers melted “...like snow coming down on warm ground”. Still, they came on, 47 brigades, one brigade at a time, one after the other, thrown against  entrenched rebels. John L. Smith, of the 118^th Pennsylvania volunteers described the attacks as “...simply murder.” The returning wounded warned the fresh brigades they were “marching into an abattoir.” And still they marched on. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin told Lincoln to his face, “It was not a battle, it was a butchery.”

In this single disaster 1,284 union soldiers were killed, twice as many as were wounded. Almost another thousand were captured or walked away from the war in horror and disgust. Federal losses were 8 times those of the rebel defenders. Lincoln said later that another battle like this might destroy the army. And the sole man responsible for this catastrophe was the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Major General Ambrose Everett Burnside, for ever after known as the “Butcher of Fredricksburg”.

Like a Shakespearean character, command of the Army of the Potomac would be offered Ambrose Burnside (above) three times. Twice he had shown the good sense to reject it, assuring Lincoln, “I am not competent to command such a large army as this." But every time another of his peers failed, his political masters came back to Burnside. 

He was a graduate of West Point. He had invented his own carbine, 55,000 of which were in use. He was a solid Republican, and a popular Rhode Island politician. He was a successful businessman. In 1861 his IX Corps had cleared 80% of the North Carolina coast, and at South Mountain in mid 1862 by itself it had pinned down the rebel army, forcing it to fight for its life at Antietam. So Lincoln offered him the crown for a third time. And as ultimate proof of his incompetence, Burnside accepted.

In many armies, after a disaster like Fredricksburg,  Burnside would have been tried for incompetence, and shot by a firing squad.  In the American Army he was exiled to headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. He requested his old IX corps to join him there. And as a sop to his battered ego, in March of 1863, stripped of one division, the 8,000 men were returned to Burnside and took over occupation duties in Kentucky.

And that is why, in late May of 1863, a frantic War Department found two full divisions of damn good soldiers sitting on their behinds in Kentucky. The 1^st Division of 39 year old Pennsylvania canal boat operator Brigadier General Thomas Welsh, and the 2^nd Division of 33 year old Schenectady lawyer Brigadier General Robert Brown Potter, were transferred to Grant's command and told to quickly move south. Needless to say, General Burnside was ordered not to accompany them.

The IX Brigade was transported to Haine's Bluff, to defend the new supply depot. With their arrival Grant's army numbered about 75,000 men. More troops would follow, with time. The rule of reinforcing success was now working for Grant.

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