VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Eight

 

The pro – Union newspaper, the Memphis Evening Bulletin,  had only been publishing for a few weeks when the Civil War broke out. Editor Ralphael Semmes was hoping to build circulation with a series of articles investigating corruption surrounding Tennessee's Democratic Senator Andrew Johnson. Then, abruptly, Semmes was replaced by his business partner James Brewster Bingham, and the paper began supporting Johnson. The reason for the sudden editorial shift could be explained in two words – Andrew Johnson.

The 51 year old Democrat Andrew Johnson (above) was the only senator from a succeed state to remain in Washington after the war broke out. That made him a favorite of Republican President Lincoln. And first among the favors bestowed upon Johnson was the sudden retirement of Ralphael Semmes. The biggest problem was that Johnson's term in the senate was set to expire in January of 1863, which would limit his usefulness.  Before that happened, Nashville and Memphis were captured by Federal troops and in November of 1862, Johnson was named Tennessee's Military Governor. To further assist Johnson, Lincoln even exempted Tennessee from the Emancipation Proclamation.

But if he was to be effective at helping Lincoln hold the states together (above) Andrew Johnson needed to broaden his own base of support. And this was one of the reasons editor James Bingham decided on 10 June, 1863, that the Memphis Evening Standard would be one of the first newspapers to publish Illinois Democrat Major General John Alexander McClerand's General Order Number 72 – his version of the failed federal assaults of 22 May.  Bingham thought he was doing McClernand a political favor. In fact he was laying down the fuse to a bomb that would blow up McClernand's political dreams.

It was General Francis “Frank” Preston Blair junior who ignited that fuse. And Lincoln needed the powerful Blair family much more than he needed Andrew Johnson. Newspaper owner Francis Preston Blair (above)  had helped Lincoln win the Republican nomination in 1860. His eldest son Montgomery Blair was Lincoln's Postmaster General. Together with younger brother Frank, they had delivered Missouri solidly into the Union camp at the very outset of the war.

By the summer of 1863 General Frank Blair (above) was commander of the 2^nd division in William Tecumseh Sherman's XVth Corps, which was pressing the northern flank of Vicksburg. And on Tuesday, 16 June, 1863, Blair finally read McClernand's tortured version of the assault on the Railroad Redoubt as published by the Memphis Evening Standard. McClernand claimed not only to have captured the redoubt, he added, “...assistance was asked for...(which) would have probably insured success.”

McClernand's account made it seem Grant and the rest of the Union army had abandoned the XIII corps on the edge of victory.  But General Blair knew McClernand had not captured the redoubt. He knew McClernand's men had barely dented its defenses. And Blair was fully aware of his own men's sacrifices in supporting the already failed XIII corps assault. The Missourian immediately stormed into to Sherman's headquarters with a copy of the newspaper clenched in his tightly balled fist.

Sherman was just as outraged as his subordinate, but he wisely and somewhat uncharacteristically let his temper cool until Wednesday, 17 June, before dispatching the newspaper up the chain of command to General Grant.  And in a display of political legerdemain Sherman rarely possessed, he now pretended to doubt McClernand “ever published such an order officially to his corps. I know too well that the brave and intelligent soldiers and officers who compose that corps will not be humbugged by such....vain-glory and hypocrisy.”

That evening an almost carbon copy of Sherman's letter, this one allegedly written by XVII corps commander Major General James Birdseye McPherson (above), was delivered to  Grant's headquarters.  “I cannot help arriving at the conclusion,” wrote McPherson, that McClernand's offending missive, “...was written more to influence public sentiment....with the magnificent strategy, superior tactics, and brilliant deeds of [McClernand]...” McPherson then went on to add, “It little becomes Major General McClernand to complain of want of cooperation on the part of other Corps... when 1218 men of my command...fell... If General McClernand’s assaulting columns, were not immediately supported...it most assuredly was his own fault.”

Two letters, representing two thirds of his command staff, had now been filed, both questioning the motives and accuracy of McClernand's public version of events. Grant (above) immediately forwarded a copy of the Memphis Standard's article to General McClernand, along with a short note. “Enclosed I send you what purports to be your congratulatory address to the XIII Army Corps. I would respectfully ask if it is a true copy. If it is not a correct copy, furnish me one by bearer, as required both by regulations and existing orders of the Department.”

McClernand replied immediately, and claimed to be blindsided. “The newspaper slip is a correct copy of my congratulatory order, No 72. I am prepared to maintain its statements. I regret that my adjutant did not send you a copy promptly, as he ought, and I thought he had.”

Whether the letters protesting General McClernand's boasting were ghost written or not was now beside the point. Months ago, Grant (above) had ordered all communications within the Army of the Tennessee must be presented to his headquarters before they were published by the corps commanders, and no orders were to be released to the public except by Army headquarters. And with the army now stationary outside of Vicksburg, with Grant's star supreme in the west, with permission to fire McClernand from General-in-Chief Henry Hallack, still in his pocket, and having maneuvered McClernand into a written admission he had violated orders, Grant was now ready to act.

About 1:00a.m. on Thursday, 18 June, 1863, Grant signed the order. “Major General John A. McClernand is hereby relieved of command of the XIII corps. He will proceed to any point he may select in the state of Illinois and report by letter to Headquarters of the Army – meaning Army of the Tennessee - for orders.” 

The words were those of Grant's chief of staff, Major John Aaron Rawlings (above).  Rawlings then gave the order to the 25 year old Inspector General of the Army, Lieutenant Colonel James Harrison Wilson, with instructions to deliver it first thing in the morning.

An historian has described the young James Wilson (above) as “....ambitious, impatient, outspoken...(and) a stranger to humility and self-doubt”.  In short, a younger version of McClernand. A West Point graduate, Wilson had briefly been an acolyte of General McClernand, but only used him to finagle his own way onto Grant's staff.  And Wilson urged that he be allowed to deliver the message immediately. Rawlings was a stickler for protocol and offered half- hearted resistance. But he also despised McClernand, and finally released the vengeful Wilson into the night. 

The colonel arrived at XIII corps headquarters about 3:00 a.m. Thursday morning, accompanied by a provost marshal and a squad of soldiers. He was told McClernand was asleep, but insisted the orderly awaken the general.

It must have been obvious to McClernand that he was in some trouble, because he took the time to put on his dress uniform. He received Wilson in his office, the room illuminated by a pair of tall candles and his sheathed sword symbolically lying across the table. Wilson saluted and informed McClernand, “General I have an important order for you which I am directed to deliver into your hands.” 

Wilson handed the envelope to McClernand, who dismissively tossed it unopened onto the desk. Wilson then added, ”I was to be certain you had read the order in my presence, that you understand it, and that you signify your immediate obedience to it.”

Troubled by Wilson's tone, McClernand put on his reading glasses, opened the order, and read it. The shock was immediate. Obviously it had never occurred to him that he was about to loose his command. 

And McClernand could not help but notice the second half of the order actually named his successor to command of the XIIIth Corps - Major General Edward Otho Cresap (O.C.) Ord.  He had been  recovering from a head wound, but the inclusion of his appointment made it clear Grant was not acting on an impulse. 

McClernand blurted out, “Well, sir! I am relieved!” Then seeing the smile on Wilson's face, McClernand said, “By God, sir, we are both relieved.!” McClernand then sat, and pugnaciously announced that he “very much doubted the authority of General Grant to relieve a general officer appointed by the President.”  It might have been a telling point in a legal debate. In the reality of the moment it was meaningless.

Later that morning McClernand expanded his opinion in writing. He told Grant, “Having been appointed by the President to command...under a definite act of Congress, I might justly challenge your authority...but forbear to do so at present.” Clearly over the intervening hours, it had been explained to McClernand that Grant would not have acted if he did not already hold all the cards. Grant ignored the latest missive, but did now respond to McClernand's General Order Number 72, saying it contained “...so many inaccuracies that to correct it...would require the rewriting of most of it. It is pretentious and egotistical..."

Then, since technically he was now in Mississippi illegally, Major General John Alexander McClerand rode through the stream of reinforcements pouring into the Vicksburg lines, and boarded one of the steamboats returning nearly empty to Memphis and points north.

By Wednesday 23 June – 4 days later – and from Illinois - McClernand sent a telegram to his doppelganger,  President Abraham Lincoln. “I have been relieved for an omission of my adjutant. Hear me.” But it turned out that at the moment, with a 45,000 man rebel army invading the the state of Pennsylvania,  not even Lincoln, the ultimate politician, was interested in anything else that John McClernand had to say.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Seven

 

The citizens of Mexico City  (above) had been hearing echoes of the bugles from the approaching  Chasseurs de Vincinnes for a week.  It was their looming threat which drove the 12,000 defenders of the Mexican Republic to abandon their capital on the last day of May.   If the “Hunters of Vincinnes” had pushed, they could have sauntered into the capital that, Saturday, 1, June, 1863.  

Instead they took their time. The campaign had already been set back a year by recklessness and arrogance. This time French General Élie Frédéric Forey was taking nothing for granted. He judged it better for the residents of the Mexican capital to sniff the rot of anarchy first. After which the boot about to be applied to their necks, would seem a welcomed stability.

In the beginning it had all been about money. Having been forced to an expensive suppression of an 1860 rebellion by the wealthy and the church, the new reform President Benito Juarez, declared a 2 year moratorium on international debt payments. But the bankers in London, Madrid and Paris were not interested in the stability of Mexico. They dispatched ships and troops to seize the Gulf of Mexico port of Veracruz, to use as leverage.  The bankers wanted their money.

United States bankers had also made loans to the Juarez government, and the aggrieved Europeans offered to include American debt in their ransom for Veracruz. American Secretary of State William Seward (above) might have invoked the 40 year old Monroe Doctrine.  Mexico clearly fit its definition of a government, “...who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have... acknowledged...” In such cases the United States was supposed to see any foreign intervention “... for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling...their destiny...as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

Several other beneficiaries of the Monroe Doctrine - recently liberated colonies in south and central America – sought United States leadership in a unified resistance to the Mexican intervention. And the mind boggles at the possible future of the western hemisphere if that option had been explored. But such a course of action never had a chance of being taken. The slave states' bloody Götterdämmerung precluded such a gradual political evolution on anybody's part.

The United States was consumed by a civil war costing its 19 million northern citizens $2.5 million dollars - in 1863 -  and 133 lives on average, every day.   Given that distraction, Seward and Lincoln could only respond to the European offer with a “thanks, but no thanks”, and a bit of groveling. “The President does not feel himself at liberty to question, and he does not question, that the sovereigns....have the undoubted right to decide...whether they have sustained grievances, and to resort to war with Mexico for the redress thereof...”

Both Lincoln and Seward also seemed to understand that the 3 nation alliance was unlikely to hold together for long. And even before the shooting started in the Charleston harbor, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, aka Napoleon III Emperor of France, showed that he was more interested in empire building than in debt collecting.  The still young Queen Victoria was  driven to lecture her own foreign minister, “The conduct of the French is everywhere disgraceful. Let us only have nothing to do with them in future.”

It did not matter. When his allies pulled out of the alliance early in 1862, Napoleon carried on alone, pushing the 6,000 man army of the smug, certain Charles-Ferdinand Latrille, Comte de Lorencez (above) , up the 250 mile invasion route previously followed by Cortés. 

First he marched southwest to the town of Cotaxla on the Rio Jamapa. Then up that river to Cordoba. Another single days march took Lorencez's army to the Metlac River. 

Crossing this and turning southwest, brought him to the village of Orizaba, at the foot of the Acultzingo pass, squeezed between 10,000 foot summits. On 27 April, 1862, Lorencez pushed aside a Mexican force there, and gained access to the central “cold country”, where his men need no longer fear malaria.

By 5 May, 1862, Lorencez was facing the highland city of Peubla, founded by Franciscan monks. The local landowners and clergy assured the Comte that the city would eagerly surrender.  But the local peasants volunteered to defend their republic. Their commander, 33 year old General Ignacio Zaragoza, told his men, “Our enemies may be the world’s best soldiers, but you are the best sons of Mexico”.

Two times the French artillery pummeled the forts and three times the infantry attacked. And 3 times the Mexican peasant soldiers threw them back. 

Then, as the exhausted French retreated the last time, Zaragoza unleashed the young Porfirio Diaz and his 650 lancers. 

Without artillery support, the French were scattered and driven back in confusion. Only a sudden thunderstorm which turned the battlefield into mud, and an unexpected escarpment, blocking the Mexican cavalry, saved the French army.

The French admitted to 460 causalities, the Mexican's half that number. Cinco de Mayo became a Mexican national holiday, and the city was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza. The French retreated 90 miles back to the pass before Orizaba, where the Comte Lorencez contracted malaria. And then in September, reinforcements arrived from France, including the 59 year old professional General Forey. The fever stricken Comte Lorencez returned home.

This time Forey's army was 24,000 men strong. This time they were accompanied by 2,000 Mexican imperialist soldiers. This time the 22,000 Mexican Republicans defending Peubla were without the genius of General Zaragoza, who had died typhoid fever in February of 1863. And this time, in March, the French army surrounded the town. By 16 May, 1863 – just as Grant was grasping the city of Vicksburg in his hands - the defenders of Peubla were starved into surrender. They laid down their guns and went home. The next day, the Chasseurs de Vincinnes began a slow careful march on Mexico city.

First they turned northwest to Santa Rita, on the Rio Tlahuapan. Westward was the village of Rio Frio de Juarz , which sat at the eastern edge of the El Guardio pass, between Monte Taloc and the strato-volcano Iztaccihuati. In front of the hunters was now was the plain of Mexico City. But keeping the Cinco de Mayo of 1862 in mind, General Forey (above)  remained cautious. 

Not until 10 June, 1863, did the French army paraded through the streets of the Mexican capital. They crossed under an endless series of flowered triumphal arches, at almost every street corner. Bells rang from every cathedral and church. Priests and nuns were singing hosannas all along the parade route. The wealthy landowners and the professional businessmen were cheering. But the peasants continued to resist.

Secretary Seward was of the opinion that “...the destinies of the American continent are not to be permanently controlled by the political arrangements...in the capitals of Europe.” Moreover, he felt certain the Mexican people would never accept the imported younger brother of an Austrian Archduke as their Emperor, particularly when that choice was dictated by the Emperor of France (above). And America refused to recognize the French backed government of Ferdinand Maximilian. Worse, no European government was willing to finance the French intervention.

Meanwhile, Seward calculated the United States could prolong France's Mexican intervention through loans to the Mexican state, at least until America would “... be able to rise without great effort to the new duties which in that case will have devolved upon us.” In other words, just as soon as the rebellion of the slave states had been defeated.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Six

 

One Vicksburg woman remembered that June began with a “clear and unusually warm day. The men sought shelter from the sun's scorching rays beneath the shade of outstretched blankets and in small excavations and huts in the hill sides...” However she was also  forced to admit that it was not only the sun from which the besieged citizens sought protection. “We have slept scarcely none now for two days and two nights.” What was disturbing the lady's sleep were the 200 Federal artillery cannon arrayed against the city.

For Lida Lord (above), daughter of a minister, the siege meant sharing a large cave complex with up to 65 others, “packed in, black and white, like sardines in a box.” Forced underground by the Yankee guns the civilians suffered an endless lists of indignities. “We were...in hourly dread of snakes,” she wrote. “...A large rattlesnake was found one morning under a mattress on which some of us had slept all night.”

An 18 year old Confederate signal corpsman from Virginia, Edward Sanford Gregory, remembered, “...hardly any part of the city was outside the range of the enemy’s artillery. … Just across the Mississippi … mortars were put in position and trained directly on the homes of the people. … Twenty-four hours of each day....their deadly hail of iron dropped through roofs and tore up the deserted and denuded streets. …How many of them came and burst, nobody can have the least idea …”

In fact the Federal commissary had to account for every shell. On average each Yankee gun fired 14 rounds a day - an average one round every 2 minutes. But the guns moored across the river on rafts were not army weapons, but 6 ugly, brutal U.S. Navy 13 inch Seacoast mortars (above)  forged in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania. Their squat barrels alone weighed 17,250 pounds, the carriages another ton. These were not mobile artillery, but they were unusually accurate. And they weren't aimed at people's homes. They arched 200 pound projectiles from the DeSoto peninsula and precisely dropped them, half a mile away, at the corner of Washington and First Streets, along the Vicksburg waterfront.

Their target was the foundry operated by Adam Breach Reading and his brother, C.A.. Antebellum the firm had serviced the steamboat trade, and repaired the occasional locomotive (above). 

Once the war broke out they began producing 6 and 12 pound bronze cannon. Their production was only about 2 a month and perhaps 40 in all were cast before the supply of copper was cut off. But day and night the big mortars kept pounding the site, 7,000 shells in all. Occasionally they overshot, in the process destroying the offices of “The Vicksburg Whig” newspaper, and some private homes. Such insults fell into the category of collateral damage.

And these were not the only Naval guns belching fire upon the city. In the original run passed the Vicksburg batteries on the night of 16 April, 1863, the charge had been led by the ironclad USS Benton (above).  She suffered damage that night, and a more serious injury on 29 April during the ironclad duel with rebel guns at Grand Gulf.  Over the last month the Benton had been tied up along the Mississippi shore while her engines were being repaired. But Admiral Porter was never one to let a gun grow cold.

Two 1 ton 42 pound rifled cannons from the USS Benton were off-loaded at the abandoned port town of Warrenton, 2 miles south of Vicksburg. They were manhandled to within range of the South Fort (above), where they were operated by a detachment from the 34^th Iowa Infantry, and commanded by a Missouri artillery lieutenant named Joseph Atwater,   Battery Benton began to methodically pound the South Fort into silence. 

At the opposite end of the 5 mile long Federal line was Battery Selfridge, whose weapons were navy owned and operated – operated in this case by the very brave and the often sunk, Thomas Oliver Selfridge.

The outbreak of the civil war found the 26 year old naval lieutenant, and son of a Naval Captain, Thomas Selfridge (above),  in command of the 6 gun forward battery aboard the 50 gun frigate the USS Cumberland. 

On Saturday, 8 March, 1862, the Cumberland was rammed and sunk by the Confederate Ironclad CSS Virginia. Thomas did not allow his men to abandon their guns until ordered to do so, despite their shots failing to penetrate the iron skin of the rebel ship. 

As reward for his bravery, Thomas was then given command of the first Yankee submarine, the 47 foot long USS Alligator. She broke down on a test cruise up the Potomac, and had to be towed back to the naval yard by a passing schooner (above). Disgusted with the sub, and having lost his place in the promotion line for the blue water navy, Thomas now begged a transfer to the brown water navy.

In November he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and given command of the city class ironclad the USS Cairo, with a crew of 215 men and officers. On Thursday, 11 December, 1862, the USS Cairo was steaming up the rain swollen Yazoo river,  following 2 tin-clad gun boats, the USS Marmora and the Signal. When they suspected trouble and slowed, the impatient Lieutenant Commander Selfridge steamed ahead and ran into two torpedoes (above). The ironclad went down in  only 12 minutes, luckily without any loss of life. The "Oft Sunk" Thomas was then transferred to gun boats in less exposed positions. But he still kept pushing to get in the fight.

On 27 May of 1863, the ironclad USS Cincinnati had been sunk in 18 feet of water just north of the Vicksburg lines. Naval engineers were able to quickly raise three 9,200 pound 8 inch Columbiad cannons from the wreck. The first week in June these were mounted atop Steele's Hill, in “Battery Selfridge” (above), manned by crewmen from the USS Cairo, and commanded by its namesake. At least on land the "oft sunk" Lieutenant could not be sunk so easily.

On Saturday, 6 June, 1863, one of the Navy's mortar shells punctured the roof of the 4 story tall Washington Hotel (above, at the corner of Washington and China Street hill). Luckily the shell exploded on contact, only destroying three adjacent storage rooms. The hotel had been converted into a hospital, and as yet did not have many patients. So the only person injured was a surgeon whose leg was so mangled it had to be amputated. But the round also destroyed most the rebel morphine and quinine supplies.  The siege had not begun well for the rebel forces.

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