VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy – Four

Shortly after the battle of Plains Store, Lieutenant Colonel James Francis O'Brien sought to rally his hometown of Charlestown, Massachusetts to the suddenly unnerving cause of freedom. He began by denouncing the rebellion, “ which has caused thousands of our citizens to fill bloody graves.” And he had no doubt as to the cause of all this misery, identifying it as “the noxious institution of slavery”. 

However,  many in the north felt that fighting to defend the Union of the States was one thing, while fighting to free black skinned men, women and children was something else. The Irish in Boston were at the bottom of America's economic ladder, and saw ex-slaves as competition. But O'Brien wanted his fellow citizens to see the connection between their lives and freedom and the freedom of others.

He wrote, “Slave labor feeds our enemy in the field, digs his ditches, and builds his fortifications. Every slave liberated by our arms is a diminishment of rebel power. Every slave who wields a spade or musket in our cause is so much added to our strength.” Then James went further. “Now ...our blood is up, our armor is buckled on, the shield and sword are in our hands, and we are ready to stand on the blood sprinkled fields of our ancestors and swear in the presence of high heaven that this Union in which the happiness of unborn millions reposes, shall live.” In that one breathless appeal, an Irish immigrant had seen the yet unborn of African ancestry joined with the yet unborn of Irish descent as partners in any future America.

At 2:00 a.m., on Friday, 22 May, 1863, the men of 34 year old Brigadier General Cuvier Grover's division began landing at Bayou Sara. Often sited for bravery - he had even led a bayonet attack against “Stonewall” Jackson at Seven Pines – Grover was a courageous and smart commander. And he did not let a driving rain storm prevent his 4^th division from securing the crossings of Thompson's Creek before nightfall and meeting up with Yankee cavalry.  Immediately behind came the 3^rd Division of 37 year old curly haired Wisconsin lawyer, Brigadier General Halbert Eleazer Paine.

Also landing at Bayou Sara were 6 regiments of the Corps D'Afrique and the 4 regiments of the “Native Guards”, under 53 year old New York lawyer, Brigadier General Daniel Ullman (above). 

Ulman had approached Lincoln a year earlier, and urged him to allow black men to fight for their own freedom.  And now he was leading almost 5,000 of them into battle. The war was about to change in a very fundamental way.

Inside the trenches of Vicksburg, staunch rebel Emma Balfour was learning to face the transition into this new world. “If you see a shell burst above you,” she told her diary, “stand still, unless it is very high; if it be the sound of a Parrot, the shot has passed before you heard it...” 

She thought the Yankees lacked respect for the rebels, alleging they were firing at the city, “...thinking that they will wear out the women and children and sick, and Gen. Pemberton will be forced to surrender the place on that account, but they little know the spirit of Vicksburg’s women and children if they expect this. Rather than let them know they are causing us any suffering we would be content to suffer martyrdom.”

But Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman, facing the extreme right of the Vicksburg defenses, had something more aggressive in mind. Two rebel cannon threatened his sappers trying to dig an outflanking trench south of Mint Spring Bayou,  at the extreme end of the rebel line.  

Because of the swampy ground in the area, he could not place his own artillery to suppress their fire. He asked 59 year old Admiral David Dixon Porter for the use of a single ironclad boat to knock out the offending battery.

The problem, from Admiral Porter's viewpoint, was that any gunboat sent to deal with these two guns would have to pass within range of the Upper Water Battery, at the foot of Fort Hill – three 32 pound rifled cannons, one 32 pound smooth-bore cannon and a single 10” Columbiad. There was no ship in Porter's brown water navy which could stand up to that kind of point blank fire power in daylight. And the gunboat had to come down in daylight, and hug the eastern bank, to hit the 2 offending rebel guns. In short it was damn near suicidal. Still, Porter had never yet turned down a request for help from the army, and he had no intention of starting now.

Porter chose the USS Cincinnati  for the mission - a 512 ton, 175 feet long stern wheel ironclad, with a crew of 251 officers and men. She had just arrived from Cairo, having been rebuilt after being sunk in May of 1862, at Fort Pillow. And she was now steaming under the command of a great-great-grandson of Ben Franklin, 21 year old Lieutenant George Mifflin Bache, Jr. (above) 

The Cincinnati (above) could make 4 knots on her own, and steaming with the current south around the Desoto promontory she would be making almost 7 or 8 knots relative to the shore batteries, which gave her at least a chance of getting her four 32 pound port side rifles close enough to silence the offending cannon. In preparation they covered her deck in layers of green wood, and stacked hay around her boiler, intending to soak it in river water just before setting out.

And then the Cincinnati had a stroke of luck. Observers on the western shore reported that the guns of the Water Battery had disappeared. At least one was seen being manhandled out of the battery, so presumably they had all been shifted to strengthen the landward defenses. Lieutenant Bache was told his odds of surviving the mission had just improved substantially. Except they hadn't. Only 1 gun, the smooth-bore 32 pounder, had been moved. The other three 32 pound rifled cannon and the big Columbiad were still there, sitting low on their carriages and no longer visible from the western shore.

Leaving the guns recessed was the idea of battery commander, 20 year old baby faced Captain William Pratt “Buck” Parks (above), out of Little Rock, Arkansas. If he had not been plagued with reoccurring bouts of illness, “Buck” might have become a major by now. After his latest absence he was returned to duty as a quartermaster, and might have been at least partially responsible for the great Vicksburg pea bread disaster. Clearly his skill was as a line officer, which he displayed after being abruptly transferred to the Arkansas Battery, aka the Upper Water Battery.

On Tuesday, 26 May, 1863, the attentive Captain Parks read a coded message being flashed via Yankee semaphore flags down the west bank of the Mississippi. And he broke the code. A federal ironclad gun boat was coming down tomorrow morning to knock out two guns on the extreme right flank of the rebel line. Overnight Parks added piles of cut brush to camouflage the now raised guns. Amazingly not a single Yankee noticed, or if they did, did not bother to notify the Cincinnati.

At about 8:30 a.m., Wednesday, 27 May, 1863, the USS Cincinnati steamed around the tip of the DeSoto peninsula. Less than thirty minutes later it was all over. The first round fired by Park's guns was a 32 pound shot, at point blank range. It blasted through the Cincinnati's 2 ½ inch sloping armor like paper, plowed through the gun deck, penetrated the magazine and passed through the keel, breaking the gunboat's back. 

As the Mississippi began flooding into the ship, the second rebel shot sliced her tiller ropes, damaging her steering. The third shell passed through the pilot house, killing the helmsman and injuring several men next to him. Lieutenant Bache took the wheel. Standing now in the center of a sudden hell, he wrote, “ The enemy fired rapidly, and from all their batteries... hitting us almost every time. We were especially annoyed by plunging shots...(which) went entirely through our protection hay, woods, and iron. “

According to the correspondent for Harper's Weekly, “She went gallantly into action...and blazed away at the rebel batteries,.” But with a barrage of rifled shells cutting through the armor, Bache turned the Cincinnati back up stream. This immediately cut the ironclad's speed to a mere knot against the current, leaving her a sitting duck. “I ran her upstream,” Bache reported, “and as near the right-hand shore as our damaged steering apparatus would permit...we ran close in, got out a plank, and put the wounded ashore. We also got a hawser out to make fast to a tree to hold her until she sunk.”

In his report to Admiral Porter, Bach figured “...about 15 (men) were drowned and about 25 killed and wounded, and 1 probably taken prisoner.” The good news, according to the Lieutenant, was that, “ The boat sank in about 3 fathoms of water, lies level, and can easily be raised....” Also, “The vessel went down with her colors nailed to the mast, or rather the stump of one, all three having been shot away. Our fire until the magazine was drowned, was good, and I am satisfied did damage.”

The truth was the Cincinnati barely fired a round, and hit nothing. So after gambling a $90,000 vessel ($25 million in today's dollars), and a crew of 250 men, the government of the United States lost the boat and 50 men, and gained nothing except making it clear again to their enemy they would spare no expense in wealth or life to capture Vicksburg and destroy the rebellion.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Two

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.”

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 a 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.”

Dora and her little family kept a private cistern for water. A second 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 in a 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 let lose 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 Fifty-Eight

Dora Miller, diarist and resident of Vicksburg, saw the remnants of the disaster on the afternoon of Sunday, 17 May, 1863. “About three o'clock the rush began, “ she wrote. “I shall never forget that woeful sight of a beaten, demoralized army that came rushing back...” Another woman described that army as, “Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody—the men limped along, unarmed but followed by siege guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, and wagons in aimless confusion. At twilight two or three bands on the courthouse hill and other points began playing “Dixie,” “Bonnie Blue Flag,” and so on; and drums began to beat all about; I suppose they were rallying the scattered army.”

Several of the weary soldiers confided to civilians they would desert before fighting another battle under Pemberton. “The stillness of the Sabbath night was broken...the blasphemous oaths of the soldier and the cry of the child, mingled...There were many gentlewomen and tender children torn from their homes by the advance of a ruthless foe, and compelled to fly to our lines for protection; and mixed up with them in one vast crowd were the gallant men who had left Vicksburg three short weeks before, in all the pride and confidence of a just cause, and returning to it a demoralized mob.”

Dora Miller was northern born and pro-union. But even Emma Balfour, matron of a wealthy and powerful pro slavery family, could not not ignore reality. She told her diary, “ My pen almost refuses to tell of our terrible defeat…What is to become of all the living things in this place when the boats begin shelling – God only knows. Shut up as in a trap, no ingress or egress – and thousands of women and children who have fled here for safety…” And about 18,000 soldiers.

Pemberton had finally ordered the army to begin seizing food stuffs in an around the city. The work did not began in earnest until 15, May. Over the next 48 hours the two division commanders in Vicksburg, Major Generals John Horace Forney and Martin Luther Smith, brought in half a million pounds of smoked pork and salted beef. In addition, every plantation within a day's ride was stripped of chickens, turkeys, beef and dairy cattle, sheep, hogs, mules and horses, all driven within the fortifications which now defined the eastern boundary of the last major Confederate hold on Mississippi River.

The ever judgmental Emma Balfour was not impressed. “From 12 o’clock until late in the night”, she noted, “the streets and roads were jammed with wagons, cannons, horses, men, mules, stock, sheep, everything you can imagine that appertains to an army...” But she also added, “Nothing like order prevailed.” The ever inefficient 40 year old John Clifford Pemberton was certain he had stockpiled more than enough food for the citizens and garrison to hold out until they were relieved by General Joe Johnston and his army, assembling in Jackson. Pemberton estimated he could hold out for about  six weeks.

Grant had a lot less time. Recalled one of his officers, “The gloomy report was circulated to the effect that our bread ration was exhausted or so nearly so that (after 20 May) the commissary could not furnish one hardtack apiece for all the men.” Forage, which had been abundant for the army on the march but was suddenly scarce when shared with an opposing army. Not only did the enemy presence restrict forage – the verb - it also forced men and horses to use their forage – the noun - faster. Early on in the war, Washington experts had calculated an army of 45,000 men on the march seeking forage in the Confederacy, would require 6 square miles of land for subsistence. But the closer Grant got to Vicksburg, the smaller was the square he had access to. With starvation now in the near future, Grant had to re-establish his supply line back to Memphis as soon as possible.

Eleven miles east of Vicksburg, Grant was delayed by the destroyed bridges over the Big Black river (above). But while the flames were still licking at the turpentine soaked beams, a 25 year old Buckeye genius, and a hero of the battle of Shiloh, Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, was building a replacement bridge. And he reused the improvisations of his confederate counterpart, Major Lockett. Felling trees from the dense wood which had so hindered the Yankee assault, Hickenlooper built a frame, which he then filled with 47 buoyant cotton bales from Lockett's defensive line. To convert the floating frame into a effective bridge, Hickenlooper dismantled a shoreline cotton gin to provide planks for the road bed and approaches. When finished not long after dawn on Monday, 18 May, the crossing was 110 feet long and 10 feet wide.

The new bridge was promptly put to use by the XIII corps – as soon as the bands could be assembled to play McClernand (above) and his men across. 

It was a typically dramatic flourish by the politician McClernand  but at least this time did not delay the advance past 8:00 a.m. Despite the Yankees would reach Vicksburg before noon. McClernand's orders were to close up to the rebel defenses and keep the enemy pinned in them.

General McPherson's Corps would not be following XIII corps, but had been redirected by Grant 2 miles to the north, where they were to cross the Big Black at the nearly abandoned village of Amsterdam. The little town had been almost wiped out in the 1830's by cholera and the nearby presence of Edward's Depot.  McPerson's (above) orders were to advance while guarding the right flank of General Sherman's Corps. It was Sherman's Corps which had the primary objective on this important day.

Major General Blair beat the XV corps to Bridgeport by a an hour or so, and were unloading the pontoons sections when Sherman marched in about noon on Sunday, 17 May. The few rebel militia were easily chased off the west bank, and the bridge (above) was assembled and in use by night fall. Blair's division crossed that evening, with Frederick Steele's 1^st division and James Tuttle's 3^rd division crossing on Monday morning, 18 May, 1863. Once on dry ground on the same side of the Big Black River as Vicksburg, Sherman released the 4^th Iowa cavalry regiment, with orders to capture the now vital crossroads of the Benton and Oak Ridge Road.

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