VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirteen

During his 4 years at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Ulysses Simpson "Sam" Grant's (above) best friend was Missouri born Frederick Tracy Dent. And after graduation in 1843 Grant was posted to the Quartermaster's Corps, at Jefferson Barracks, in Saint Louis, where he fell in love with Fred's slightly cross-eyed sister, Julia Boggs Dent.

 Overcoming her affliction, Julia (above)  was quiet and determined. She played the piano pretty well, and like "Sam" she was a skilled rider. Although they were well matched and deeply in love, the Mexican-American War prevented the couple from marrying until 1848. Sam's father did not attend the wedding because Julia's family owned slaves.

Sam did not like military life very much, but Julia's presence made his postings to Detroit and then Sackett's Harbor, New York (above), on Lake Erie, more than bearable. But in 1854 Sam was assigned to Fort Humboldt in modern day Eureka, California. 

To get there he would have to cross the fever infested isthmus of Panama, and since Julia was pregnant, Sam made the dangerous, lengthy passage alone. Eighteen months later, and six months after arriving at Humboldt, the homesick Captain Grant was drunk so often, he was forced to resign.

Back in Missouri, he twice tried farming (above), once with slaves loaned by his father-in-law and once with a slave Julia had inherited. He was a failure both times. Unable to house or feed his wife and 4 children, Sam had only one object of value he could sell. The slave was worth some $1,500, a small fortune in 1858. But rather than sell the man, Sam gave him his freedom. His wife's in-laws clucked their tongues at his impracticality. His wife's cousins gave him a job as a bill collector. Sam was a failure at that, too. 

Then in 1860, Sam's father gave him a job running a "Grant and Perkins Leather Goods" shop (above) in Galena, Illinois. He might have been a failure at that, too. But a year later the Civil War broke out, and Grant would later say, "I never went into our leather store again."

Success now surrendered to Grant. By January of 1863, not as quickly as Pemberton but within 2 years, Grant rose from a Colonel of Volunteers to Lieutenant General, commanding the 103,000 men of the Army of The Tennessee . And if that makes it sound as if he should easily have smashed Pemberton's Army of 50,000, it is a gross over simplification.

In the western theater, all supplies - men and horses, wagons and shoes, hardtack and beef on the hoof, ammunition and nails - was fed into the funnels of Evansville, Indiana, Cairo, Illinois and Louisville, Kentucky. 

 From there, via the Louisville and Nashville railroads, the supplies were transported to the great warehouse of the western armies, Nashville, Tennessee (above). The city was surrounded by mushrooming repositories, depositories and warehouses that "covered whole blocks, with corrals and stables by the acres". And there were thousands of additional tons of overflow bounty, "..stored outdoors on raised, covered platforms." 

 From Nashville, the Federals were maintaining two separate armies invading the Confederacy. The objective given to General William Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland was Atlanta, and its supply line ran 152 miles southeast from Nashville to Chattanooga. The supply line for Grant's Army was divided in-two. The Nashville and Mississippi railroad ran 160 miles to Madea, Tennessee, on the Mississippi River, and from there by steamboat to Memphis.

With the lesson of Holly Springs fresh in his memory Grant felt required - and Washington insisted - he use half his strength to guard his supply line. There were 15 to 20,000 men, mostly "heavy" artillery units, in and around his supply base at Memphis. 

He had another 15 to 20,000 men, infantry and cavalry, on his left flank, protecting LaGrange, Tennessee. Another 5 to 6,000 men were in fortifications along the Mississippi to discourage attacks on his supply ships plying the river. 

While Grant could briefly call upon some of those 40 to 45,000 men to support his attacks, it reduced his "effectivies" - soldiers available for combat - to about 52,000 men, divided equally between McClernand's XVIII Corps, Sherman's XV Corps and McPherson's XVII Corps.

Pemberton's rebels, defending their own territory, had far shorter supply lines. .So on the battlefield the odds were almost even - about 50,000 rebels against 50,000 federals. To gain a temporary advantage in numbers, Grant had tried using the rivers, the Mississippi, the Yazoo, the Talihatichie, and the bayous of the delta to steal a march and outflank Pemberton's men. But using interior lines the rebels were always been able to block the Federal moves. In his frustration, Grant decided to reduce his ambitions.

The latest option presented by Grant's engineers was to dig a mile and a half long canal straight from a dock called Duckport Landing along Milliken's Bend. This canal would connect just southwest of Richmond, Louisiana, to the headwaters of a turgid bayou called Walnut. This creek was so contorted it confused even the locals who called some sections "Brushy Bayou". Walnut/Brushy Bayou meandered for 20 miles across the flood plain, covering only some ten miles in straight line, before joining the larger aptly named Roundabout Bayou, which generally turned southeastward until it connected with a smaller seep called Bayou Vidal.

Thirty-seven miles from the beginning at Brushy Bayou, this last narrow stream trickled into an oxbow aneurysm called Lake St. Joseph At its southern end, this body of water came within a few yards of touching the Mississippi at the 500 acre Hard Times Plantation owned by a Baltimore transplant, Dr, Jeremiah Yelloet Hollingsworth. The dock used for loading Dr. Hollingsworth's cotton harvests was called Hard Times Landing. I was just south  of the sunken village of New Carthage. And this tiny half sunken piece of Louisiana was now the target for Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant's entire army.

Significantly, Hard Times Landing was 5 miles south of the town of Grand Gulf, on the Mississippi side of the river. Once his gun boats and barrages loaded with troops had used the Duckport canal to pass the fearsome Vicksburg batteries, Grant could cross the river to Grand Gulf, and bring Pemberton's army to battle. At that point Grant and his men were certain they would defeat the rebels.

But the closer to New Carthage the tip of Grant's spear - the 600 Hoosiers of Colonel Bennet's (above) 49th Indiana - got, the stiffer the rebel resistance became.

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