VICKSBURG Chapter Forty - Two

Gazing down the gentle mile long slope toward Fourteen Mile Creek, the Federal skirmish line knew the rebels were hiding in the tangle along the water.  But the veterans kept coming, offering themselves as targets because this morning, Tuesday, 12 May 1863, that was their job. There were two quick shots from the rebel snipers. Then there was a long silence followed by four or five shots. Then the line stopped and was filled in by the forward regiments of the Federal 3^rd division.

The adjutant to Colonel Manning of the 20^th Ohio, 19 year old Henry Dwight, remembered the long and painful descent, “The trees and underbrush were covered with thorny vines which trailed in tangled chains from branch to branch. Great moss grown trunks of fallen trees had to be climbed over...After passing such an obstacle it was always some minutes before the line could could find itself again. Sometimes it could not find itself, and a halt had to be sounded....there would be a great expense of time, breath and strong language, in trying to get the ends of the broken line together.”

Shepherding the rebel's before them, the Federals reached the bottom of the hill and halted in a clearing near the creek, “...wiping the sweat off their faces as they stood fanning themselves in the shade." Dwight (above) continued,  "A staff officer was waiting...with the order to halt in the clearing and to rest for lunch...” The 20^th Ohio stacked their arms and, “...filled our canteens at the brook, or poured the cool water over our heated faces....

"The other regiments of the brigade came up," wrote Henry Dwight, "an Indiana regiment (in fact it was the 8^th Illinois) going into line along the edge of the woods on our right, and the 78th (Ohio) taking the place on our left, with the 68th (Ohio) near by (Captain Samuel) DeGolyer’s battery (8^th Michigan artillery)...(which) stopped in the road near the skirmish line...” Shortly after the Michigan gunners started to unlimber, “Bang cr r r r r rang! Bang cr r r r r r rang!” came the two shells from the peaceable country in front, bursting over the heads of the groups in the road.”

The canon fire was from Captain Hiram Miller Bledsoe's Missouri battery. It was answered almost immediately by DeGolyer's guns. Wrote adjunct Dwight, “...we hadn’t time to more than turn our heads when from out of the quiet woods on the other side of the brook there came a great yell, of thousands of voices, followed by such a crashing roar of musketry....some twenty or thirty were dead or wounded from that first volley....

"But quick as thought, all who could stand had taken their guns and plunged through the brook," recorded Dwight. "On the other side, not fifty yards distant, the enemy were crashing through the underbrush in a magnificent line determined to carry all before them.”

The rebels on the north side of Forty Mile Creek were the 305 men of the 7^th Texas infantry, under Colonel Hiram Grandbury, with the 348 men of the 3^rd Tennessee to their right. Luckily for the Buckeyes the rebel assault was not aimed at the 20^th Ohio, and instead slammed into the 8^th Illinois, shattering it, and  “...the whole regiment broke into inch bits, the boys making good time to the rear. This left the Johnnies a clear road to pass our flank...and putting bullets into the reverse of our line...At this moment", noted the veteran Dwight",  "the fate of the brigade...depended on the possibility of our holding those fellows at bay until the other brigades could be brought up.”

To 20 year old Osborn Hamline Ingham Oldroyd – so named so his initials spelled Ohio - newly elected 5^th sergeant of the 20^th Ohio, had advanced even farther forward - “...probably a hundred yards, when we came to a creek... down we slid, and wading through the water, which was up to our knees, dropped upon the opposite side and began firing at will...the enemy were but a hundred yards in front of us... Every man of us knew it would be sure death to all to retreat, for we had behind us a bank seven feet high, made slippery by the wading and climbing back of the wounded... For two hours the contest raged furiously...The creek was running red with precious blood spilt for our country." 

"My bunk- mate and I were kneeling side by side when a ball crashed through his brain, and he fell over with a mortal wound...The second lieutenant in command was wounded; the orderly sergeant dropped dead, and I find myself (fifth sergeant) in command of the handful remaining. In front of us was a reb in a red shirt, when one of our boys, raising his gun, remarked, "see me bring that red shirt down," while another cried out, "hold on, that is my man." Both fired, and the red shirt fell...the enemy charged, fighting hand to hand, being too close to fire, and using the butts of their guns.”

The impulsive counter attack by the Ohio boys had allowed the Michigan gunners to pull their artillery back up the slope to a new positions 600 yards above the creek. Here they were supported by the 78^th and 68^th Ohio infantry regiments, and the gunners worked the two 12-pound bronze howitzers and four 12 pound James rifles, furiously. 

These latter weapons had been developed by Rhode Island Democratic Senator and self taught engineer Charles Tillinghast James, as a way of giving longer range to obsolete smoothbore 6 pound cannon. 

But the rifling (above) in the soft bronze quickly wore down, and accumulating powder residue in the grooves made the guns increasingly inaccurate. In fact, just 7 months earlier, on 17 October, 1862, the inventor himself had been killed when a worker armed with a wrench attempted to remove a misfired round during a demonstration, and it went off, killing himself and the 57 year old inventor. 

 But this morning, the late Jame's invention proved more than adequate at blasting the 7^th Texas with grape and canister shot from close range, breaking up their attack.

About the same time General Logan arrived himself in the line, and “with the shriek of an eagle”, screamed at the soldiers of the broken 8^th Illinois, “For God’s sake men, don’t disgrace your country.” And it worked. Logan's horse was killed under him, but the shocked Yankees reformed just in time to blunt the assault by the 3^rd Tennessee on the 8^th Michigan artillery. Within ten minutes, the Tennesseans suffered 190 killed or wounded, including their commander, Colonel McGavock.

The insanity and ferocity of the fight was captured by Henry Dwight, with the 20^th Ohio, still defending the north bank of Forty Mile Creek. In amazement he watched while a rebel officer, “... not more than thirty feet from where I stood, quietly loaded up an old meerschaum, lit a match... and when he had got his pipe well a-going, he got hold of his pistol again and went on popping away at us as leisurely as if he had been shooting rats.” 

Like two prize fighters slugging it out in the center of the ring, the Ohio and Texas boys held their ground, just yards apart. Still, Dwight noted, “...we were left sticking out like a sore finger for the best part of another hour. There were only nine companies of us, and out of those about the number of one company had been killed or wounded.”

But they held. And Logan, now remounted, hurried forward new regiments, aided by General McPherson who ushered elements of Brigadier General John Smith's division forward to stabilize the Union right and regiments of Brigadier General John Stevenson's division to bolster the left. 

By about 1:00pm, the Confederate commander, John Gregg, realized he was facing more than a mere battalion. He pulled the 41^st Tennessee out of their position guarding the road to Bolton, and sent over 350 of them forward to slow the now advancing Yankee soldiers. And under cover of that counter assault the rebels began to withdraw.

Dwight noted, “Now we could stand up and stretch our legs and rinse the charcoal and saltpeter out of our mouths...I looked at my watch. We had been at work on those Texans near two hours and a half...We were a hard looking lot. The smoke had blackened our faces, our lips and throats so far down that it took a week to get the last of it out....

“Attention battalion, forward march,” came the order from Colonel Force again, and away we went with a shout, over the ghastly pile of Texans...Shortly we came out into a big cornfield beyond the woods, and the first thing I saw on the ground was the meerschaum which the Rebel officer had smoked in the fight. It was still warm as it lay where it had dropped from his mouth when he ran, and I picked it up and took my turn at smoking it.”

Tuesday, 12 May, 1863 was a tragic day for General John Gregg's brigade. A week before the ambitious Texan had left Grand Gulf with 7 regiments and a 3 gun battery. At Raymond the 3^rd Tennessee regiment had lost more than a third of its strength. 

The 7^th Texas had lost almost 50% of their members killed, wounded or missing. Bledsoe's 3 gun battery had lost crew members when one of its guns exploded. The wounded filtered back to the town of Raymond, where the citizens did they best to care fore the 100 killed, 270 wounded, and about another 300 captured or missing - or about 7% of General Gregg's entire force.

Yankee losses in the battle were 69 killed, 341 wounded and just 32 missing, or 442 causalities out of the 12,000 federals engaged, or 3.2% of McPherson's XVII Corps. But to Sergeant Oldroyd (above, 20 years after the war) that number 440 meant warm blooded living men. As the battle wound down, Oldroyd wrote, “I took the (company) roll-book from the pocket of our dead sergeant, and found that while we had gone in with thirty-two men, we came out with but sixteen - one-half of the brave little band, but a few hours before so full of hope and patriotism, either killed or wounded. Nearly all the survivors could show bullet marks in clothing or flesh, but no man left the field on account of wounds. When I told Colonel Force of our loss, I saw tears course down his cheeks...”

Seven miles away from the carnage Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant (above) was at the Dillon Farm, finishing a long day, and planning an assault on Edward's Depot, to be followed by the  crossing of the Big Black River bridge. And then the dispatches from General McPherson arrived. The news of a battle at Raymond, startled Grant. He had known Gregg's battalion was at Jackson, but so aggressive had the rebels been this day, that McPherson estimated their strength at double the 4,000 which had in fact attacked Logan's 7,000 man division. This engagement, taken together with the rumors that General Johnson was on his way from Tennessee to take charge of a gathering force at Jackson, convinced Grant he had best deal with this threat before he tried crossing the Big Black River and attacking Vicksburg. 

Grant's overworked staff now ground out new orders for the following day. McPherson was to move north, and take first Clinton, cutting the only rail line to Vicksburg, and then move on Jackson from the West. General Sherman was to advance up the Utica road to Raymond, and advance through Mississippi Springs to approach Jackson from the southwest. That would put the Mississippi capital in a vise between 35,000 Federal troops. General McClernand 's 17,000 men, once in the lead,  was now to screen the Federal army by blocking rebels around Edwards Depot and along Bakers Creek before pulling back to be available should they be needed in Jackson.

But there was an inescapable feeling among the Yankee troops, from Grant down to the lowest private, that things were now going to begin happening very fast.

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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 Thirty - Eight

 

On 24 June 1823, while "riding the circuit" in Lebanon, Ohio,  90 miles from his home, 40 year old Justice Charles Robert Sherman came down with a fever and died.  And because Charles was an honest man, and left no fortune behind, the world of his 9 year old  son William Tecumseh Sherman simply imploded. 

"Cump" Sherman's 14 siblings were scattered to adoptive families across Ohio. “Cump” and his brother was taken in by a Lancaster neighbor, a lawyer and soon to be U.S. Senator, Thomas Ewing. The tragedy left such deep abandonment issues that “Cump” never called his loving adoptive parents anything but Mister and Misses Ewing. And he never escaped the panic whenever it seemed his security might be swept away again. In May of 1863 Major General William Tecumseh Sherman had a re-occurrence of that panic when he first arrived on the Mississippi side of the Mississippi River.

On Saturday 9 May, “Cump” reached the Pipes-Bagnell house near Harkinson Ferry, expecting to be reunited with his friend Sam, only to discover that the day before General Ulysses Grant had moved on. Cump panicked, a little. He immediately wrote to Grant at Rocky Springs, “ Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road."

Grant promptly reassured his dear friend. “I do not calculate the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” he wrote. “What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.” With that rational explanation, and a few words of reassurance from Grant, Sherman was able to again pass along the confidence to his “tail-end Charlie”, General Francis Preston Blair, that, “Don't let the wagons get encumbered with trash. We will be in want of salt, bread, sugar, and coffee. We may safely trust to the country for meat."

With the arrival of the bulk of Sherman's XV corps, Grant now had in Central Mississippi about 45,000 men. And he had decided, while scouring his maps and cavalry reports over Mrs. Pipes-Bagnell's dinning room table, to strike first to the north, to cut the Vicksburg and Jackson Southern Railroad. 

By occupying that line he would be cutting Vicksburg off from reinforcement from the eastern Confederacy, just as he had cut Vicksburg off from the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy by occupying the Texas and Monroe railroad line to Desoto, Louisiana. And in typical Grant fashion, he chose to accomplish this in as devious a fashion as he could.

It was impossible to disguise the arrival of Sherman's Corps around Harkinson Ferry. So Grant used the noise and dust to his advantage. Sherman was instructed to ostentatiously prepare to assault the rebel lines along the Big Black River. 

The bridge captured by McClerand's men would never support a major advance, so scouts and staff officers were seen inspecting possible crossing points above and below it. With Vicksburg just 20 miles to the north, Pemberton would have had no choice but to assume Grant was preparing a “coupe de main” or “direct assault” on the city, and hold his divisions back to defend against it.

Meanwhile, McClernand's XIII Corps had moved to camps further up the road which hugged the

Big Black River.  Rebel observation posts could not help but see the dust from their marches and the smoke from their camp fires extending inland toward the Natchez Trace. This seemed to hint that Grant was moving further north toward the Big Black River Bridge, west of Edward's Depot. That larger structure, and the railroad bridge nearby, could support a major advance on Vicksburg. And Pemberton had been suspecting since the Port Gibson breakout, that this was Grant's real goal. 

But also on that Saturday, 9 May, the divisions of McPherson's XVII corps were marching northeast on the Natchez Trace, passing through the XIII corps camps. At the hamlet of Reganton they took the road east, camping 3 miles beyond Utica. Grant was now traveling with the XVII Corps and set his new headquarters outside of Cayuga.

The XVII corps was now Grant's right flank, threatening Clinton and tying down the slowly assembling Confederate force in the state capital of Jackson. Sherman was positioned in the middle, where he could march directly on Bolton, screened by McClernand, ands strike toward Edward's Depot to the north.  Grant's intention was to cut the Southern Railroad not once but in three, tripling his odds of severing the vital railroad.

Over the first two weeks in May of 1863, Grant showed he had indeed learned from Napoleon, who wrote, "When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success...”. Grant had done this by following the Emperor's twin guidelines. “Operations must be designed to surprise and confuse the enemy,” while rendering them helpless “through the severance of his lines of supply, communications, and retreat.”

Over the first 2 weeks in October of 1805 the core of Napoleon's Le Grand Armee marched 275 miles from the banks of the Rhine to the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. He thus placed his army between the 60,000 Austrians under General Mack von Leiberich, around Ulm, and the 80,000 Russians under Tzar Alexander I, just nearing the Austrian capital of Vienna. By the end of October, Napoleon had forced General Mack to surrender. And on 3 December in the startling victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon killed or captured half the Russian army. Those twin achievements inspired Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. What Grant was about to achieve at Vicksburg deserved an equally impressive artistic footnote, and more because it was not achieved merely to make one man an Emperor.

Back in February, shortly after arriving to dig the Lake Providence canal, Sergeant Cyrus F. Boyd, had gotten his first unvarnished look at the reality of human slavery.  Among the “contraband” who entered the 15^th Iowa lines that first day, Boyd spotted a young girl with dark skin, deep blue eyes and straight hair which hung down to her shoulders. 

The mother explained the girl had been fathered by her “master”, and said she had given birth to two other daughters by the same rapist. Upon hearing this, according to Boyd, an unnamed corn husker had exploded in anger at the injustice. “By God”, he shouted, “ I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on it.” Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had re-framed the war, from one for the survival of the United States, into one for the future of humanity.

Two days later, on 11 May, Grant's primary worry was a sudden shortage of water. The appearance of dry weather and the presence of 45,000 men and 100,000 horses, had left streams and and wells bone dry. Still Grant pushed his men forward. On this Monday, 54 year old General Frederick Steele's (above)  1st division of Sherman's XV Corps, marched to Five mile Creek, looking for a drink of water. 

Doing same,  29 year old James Madison Tuttle's (above)  3rd division of the same corps camped closer to Auburn. General McPherson's XVII Corps advance only 1 ½ miles, slowed by the search for water. That night Grant urged McPherson to press his men to take Raymond, saying, “We must fight before our rations fail”.

At 5:30am, Tuesday, 12 May, 1863, all three Yankee corps continued their advance from Five Mile Creek. General McClernand's (above) XIII corps were guarding the army's flank along the Big Black River.  

Sherman's (above)XV Corps was moving faster, determined to cut the Southern railroad at Bolton by nightfall. 

But 32 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's (above) XVII was so short of water their main thrust this day was toward Raymond, to capture and use the wells south that town.

As they set out, Grant sent a message via Grand Gulf, to General Halleck, Beginning now, the Army of the Tennessee would be out of communication until they had captured Vicksburg. Or been destroyed. What Grant was telling Lincoln, was that he was so confident of victory that he was marching  an entire Federal Army right off the map.

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