VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Five

 

The first angry crack of muskets were fired by green Yankees – with barely a month of training, and largely armed with shoddily made weapons. But these 285 men of the 8^th Louisiana Infantry of African Descent, had literal “skin in the game”.   And in broad daylight of Saturday, 6 June, 1863, they had surprised the rebel pickets around the Tallulah depot of the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad. The Confederates did as the Yankees had done a week earlier at the Perkin's plantation. They retreated and reported.

However, the commander of the black Yankees, Swiss emigrant and lawyer Colonel Hermann Lieb (above) , had already achieved what he wanted. He had found the rebels and his men had drawn first blood. Now he quickly marched his under strength regiment back to the relative safety of Milliken's Bend, and set them and their companion regiments to work, building defensive positions along two levees. Lieb also called for assistance. His boss at Young's Point, Brigadier General Elias Smith Dennis, could provide only part of the remains of the battered and bloodied 23^rd Iowa Volunteers.

Three weeks earlier, in a single 3 minute charge at the Big Black River Bridge, these 200 buckeyes had charged the enemy line. Eleven enlisted men and 2 officers – including their Colonel, William Kinsman - were killed outright, and 3 officers and 85 enlisted men wounded - half of all Federal casualties in that battle. The shattered unit was sent to safe camps across the river to recover. The 130 survivors were now tapped to send 100 men to support the black recruits at Milliken's Bend.   Admiral Porter also promised one 1,000 pound rifle, three 9 inch smooth bore cannons and two 30 pound rifles carried by the stern wheel ironclad ram, the USS Choctaw. But the ram would not arrive until mid- morning. Colonel Lieb woke his men at 3:00 Sunday morning, and put them at the ready.

It was now obvious to the ranking rebel commander at Richmond, Louisiana, Major General Richard Scott Taylor, that the only Yankees remaining on the western shore were some “...convalescents and some negro troops.” But even if he captured Milliken's Bend and Young's Point and the entire De Soto Peninsula, he still would still not be able to directly aid Vicksburg. Lieutenant General Pemberton would not withdraw from that city. Taylor had no provisions with which to resupply the beleaguered garrison. And crossing Taylor's 4,500 men over to join Pemberton's 20,000, would merely advance the day the Vicksburg's defenders ran out of food. But Taylor had his orders, and he authorized General Walker to proceed with the assault.

Setting off at 6:00 p.m. on 6 June, Major General John George Walker pushed his division forward, re-capturing Tallulah after dark. A participant remembered the dramatic night time approach. “ In breathless silence...through dark and deep defiles marched the dense array of men, moving steadily forward; not a whisper was heard — no sound of clanking saber, or rattle of canteen and cup." 

By 2:00 a.m, on Wednesday, 7 June, the 1,000 plus man brigade of 39 year old Brigadier General James Morrison Hawes was approaching the Martin Van Buren hospital at Young's point, and General Henry McCulloch's 1,000 man brigade was within 2 miles of Milliken's Bend. Walker held Colonel Horace Randal's brigade in reserve at the Oak Grove Plantation.

The Yankee pickets, crouched behind a series of hedges, were methodically pushed back by the 19^th Texas infantry on the right, the 17^th regiment in the center, the 16^th cavalry dismounted on the left, The 16^th Texas infantry regiment followed in reserve.  Explained a Texan, "It was impossible for our troops to keep in line of battle, owing to the many hedges we had to encounter, which it was impossible to pass, except through a few gaps that had been used as gates or passageways."

Once through the last line of hedges, the rebels were facing the first cotton bale barricade. Behind it was the 8th, 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiments (African Descent), 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), and the 23d Iowa Infantry (white European descent), totaling 1,061 men. McCulloch drew his men into a line of battle just under a hundred yards from the Yankee line. As they did the Yankees unleashed a volley.  Ignoring the blast, McCulloch took the time to order his men, “No quarter for the officers! Kill the damned abolitionists!" With fixed bayonets, the Texans then charged.

The veterans of the 23^rd Iowa might have had time for a second volley, but that broken regiment had no more to give. They scattered and ran for the last barricade on the final levee. The black soldiers could only muster a few scattered shots, either because they lacked the training with their weapons or the weapons failed.  General Lorenzo Thomas noted, "Both sides freely used the bayonet - a rare occurrence in warfare...two men lay side by side, each having the other's bayonet in his body. . . .A teenage cook, who had begged for a gun when the enemy was seen approaching, was badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. In one Negro company there were six broken bayonets." It would be the longest bayonet charge of the war.  Afterwards,  General McCulloch reported that of the wounds received by his men, 'more are severe and fewer slight than I have ever witnessed among the same number in my former military experience....This charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy's force with considerable obstinacy...” Some might have chosen another word, such as desperation, or even courage.

As the Confederates came over that barricade with bayonets and swinging their muskets as clubs, Yankee Lieutenant David Cornwell saw one of the Union soldiers, a “very large and strong-willed” Sergeant named “Big” Jack Jackson, charge forward “...like a rocket. With the fury of a tiger he sprang into that gang and crushed everything before him. There was nothing left of Jack's gun except the barrel and he was smashing everything he could reach. On the other side of the levee, they were yelling 'Shoot that big nigger!' Cornwell saw the Jack Jackson, “..daring the whole gang to come up and fight him. Then a bullet reached his head and he fell full on the levee.”

For over an hour the untrained Yankees struggled with the rebels, black and white skinned southerners murdering each other with abandon. Then the Yankees fell back through their own camp and toward the second levee and the second barricade. The Confederates followed , as Joseph Blessington of the 16^th Texas remembered, “bayoneting them by hundreds.”   As the Confederates gathered to storm the second barricade, the USS Choctaw steamed into view, big guns blazing.

General McCulloch ordered his men under cover behind the first levee. They looted the Yankee camp, searching for equipment and food they could not find in their own army, and they began killing any wounded black Yankees they found. It was alleged they also killed 2 white Yankee officers.  The murdering continued until McCulloch saw a second Yankee gun boat sailing up the river toward their position. Realizing he lacked the strength to crush these black men in blue uniforms, he ordered his entire brigade to pull back to the Oak Grove Plantation.

The rebel's limped back. Out of the  1,000 men present the Confederates had suffered 44 killed and 131 wounded and 10 missing. For the three under strength black Yankee regiments, it was a bloody disaster - 100 killed outright, 285 wounded, and 266 captured and murdered or returned to slavery.  Except those numbers deserve a closer look. Black Yankees, with barely a month of training and substandard equipment,  had not run. They had not melted away. They had stood and fought. They had inflicted almost 200 casualties on their foe, 20% of the attackers.  Given the worse of everything, they had given their best.

At Young's Point, the rebel's of Hawes' brigade drove in the Yankee pickets, but then finding themselves facing well armed and organized convalescing patients behind barricades, and three Federal gunboats providing covering fire, the Confederates withdrew without even launching an attack. For all the effort and sacrifice of men and material by Walker's "Greyhounds", General Taylor would later note “As foreseen, our movement resulted, and could result, in nothing.”

But there was a result, and even a victory.  In December of 1863, United States Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, (above) an early advocate of black soldiers, wrote a letter to Lincoln concerning the debate over their fighting ability. "Many persons believed, or pretended to believe..., that freed slaves would not make good soldiers,” he told his President. These faint hearts were worried the ex-slaves “...would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend (7 June, 1863), at the assault upon Port Hudson (27 May, 1863), and the storming of Fort Wagner (South Carolina, 18 July, 1863)."

The ground the Confederacy had stood upon had shifted. And although the lies and obfuscation used  to defend the myths about antebellum southern culture, would delay the triumph of the truth for almost another century, the fuse was at least and at last, lit.  It was already past due time for that to happen. 

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Two

 

In mid May the new commander of the Trans-Mississippi – just 3 months on the job - 39 year old General Edmund Kirby “Seminole” Smith (above) , faced a mounting crises with shrinking resources. 

Two years before, in March, the Confederacy had lost its most populous city, New Orleans. In April of 1862 the Yankees of had driven the government of what had been the richest state in the Confederacy  from it's capital, Baton Rouge. In January of 1863  Smith had surrendered the new capital of  Oposlusa. And in early May, from it's 4th capital Alexandria,  on the Red River. Since March the government had been isolated 124 miles northwest of Alexandria, in the small town of Shreveport - half a mile to the east of Smith's headquarters at Fort Johnston, and just 40 miles from the Texas border.

The little capital of Shreveport (above) -   between hills and the Red River -  was jammed with about 6,000 whites and 3,000 slaves – almost double it's antebellum population. The Shreveport Arsenal, under Captain Frederick Peabody Leavenworth, was busily producing ammunition and repairing weapons, now with additional workers evacuated from the Arkadelphia, Arkansas Ordnance Works. But the only way to get that production to the armies was by horse drawn wagon. The Red River supply line was now blocked at Alexandria. The closest railroad to Shreveport was the line from Marshal, Texas - which stopped 5 miles short of town. The only other railroad came no nearer than Monroe, 100 miles to the east.

Almost 200,000 men from the Trans Mississippi were serving in Confederate armies - 60,000 from Arkansas, almost 60,000 from Texas, 50,000 from Louisiana, 30,000 from Missouri and 2,500 from New Mexico Territory. But by mid-May of 1863 all those men were beyond reach. Kirby Smith could muster barely 30,000 men in the Trans Mississippi. And those few were short of training, uniforms, food, ammunition and medicine because the “gray back” Confederate currency used to buy supplies was almost worthless. The view from Fort Johnson was so depressing, Smith began to consider resigning from the army and retreating into a Jesuit monastery.

Seventy miles southeast of Shreveport, at Natchitoches, commanding about 4,000 scattered men, was 36 year old Major General Richard Scott "Dick" Taylor. He had spent the spring being pushed up the Bayou Teche, even suffering the insult of having his own plantation burned to the ground. Even after Yankee Major General Nathaniel Banks withdrew 3 divisions down the Red River to attack Port Hudson, Taylor's army was still too small to confront the 10,000 Yankees as they backtracked down Teche Bayou to Brashear City, the western terminus of the railroad out of New Orleans. Never the less, the ex – President's son had a plan.

General Taylor would write after the war that as he re-entered Alexandria, he received word that, “...Major-General Walker, with a division of infantry (Walker's Greyhounds)...would reach me within the next few days”.  Taylor had no doubt how best to use 4,000 fresh soldiers. “I was confident that, with Walker's force, Brashear City could be captured...(And when) Banks's communication with New Orleans..._(was)threatened....(this) would raise such a storm as to bring General Banks from Port Hudson, the garrison of which could then unite with General Joseph Johnston in the rear of General Grant.”

Major General John George Walker (above)  was another of the qualified field officers in the Army of Northern Virginia who were transferred west in June of 1862, after Robert E. Lee took over in Virginia. So, in November, Walker took command of 12 Texas regiments in 3 training camps in Lonoke County, central Arkansas. The staging posts had originally been called Camp Hope, but in the fall 1862 measles and typhoid swept through the 20,000 recruits, killing 1,500 of them, including newly promoted Brigadier General Allison Nelson. Thereafter the soldiers referred to the place as Camp Death, but the War Department preferred Camp Nelson. Walker earned his men's respect by paying attention to camp hygiene, which cut the death rate by two thirds.

A brigade of the Texas Division, under Brigadier General Thomas J. Churchill, was detached to occupy Fort Hindman at the Arkansas Post in January of 1863, but was lost when that position was captured by Major General John Alexander McClernand. Until late April, Walker's men remained in central Arkansas, in case the Yankees made another strike toward the capital of Little Rock. But once General Smith could confirm that Grant had crossed the Mississippi to attack Vicksburg, he decided he could risk 6,000 of Walker's men to cut the Yankee supply line.

They set out on foot the morning of Friday, 24 April, 1863. Eight days and 78 miles later they crossed the border into Louisiana. They made 16 miles on Saturday, 2 May, and another 16 on Sunday, 3 May, camping that night on the banks of Bayou Bartholomew. Following that tributary south for 2 more days, and 15 miles, brought Walker's division to Washita, Arkansas, where they were met by a dozen steam boats, which carried them to the town of Trenton, opposite the town of Monroe, western terminus of the Vicksburg railroad. The 6,000 rebels camped that night, 2 miles south of Trenton. That night they informed General Smith they had finally arrived in the theater of operations.

While General Smith considered what to do with Walker's Texas division, local commander, and Texan, 44 year old Brigadier General Paul Octave Hébert, tried to pilfer a brigade for his own needs. But Walker was able to fall back on his orders from General Smith, to keep his division together.

Eventually, Smith decided it would be better to send the Texans back to Arkansas, where they would be safe from both the Yankees and sticky fingered Confederate generals. So at 8:00 a.m., on Saturday, 9 May, the 6,000 Texas soldiers re-boarded transports (above)  for a return voyage to Washita. But as the boats headed north, General Taylor would re-direct Walker and his men to his join his southern assault on Brashear City.

The Texans waited until Friday, 15 May, for their supply wagons to arrive from Washita. The next day, Saturday, 16 May, as Grant's Yankees were driving Pemberton's rebels back behind the forts at Vicksburg, the Texas Division retraced their steps 17 miles southward. Over the next 8 days General Walker's Greyhounds marched 150 miles, finally reaching Alexandria, on Wednesday 27 May –which is when General Smith in Shreveport finally learned of Taylor's revival of his proposed advance down Bayou Teche.

Taylor would claim that both Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon and President Jefferson Davis had approved his fantastic, almost fantasy, plan to threaten New Orleans. But Taylor's boss, General Kirby Smith (above), did not.  As they retreated from Alexandria, the Yankees had burned and destroyed everything in Cajun Country which might support an advancing rebel army.  So Taylor's plan depended upon capturing Yankee supply depots to feed and arm his now 8,000 men, and that, in the opinion of General Smith, was not likely to happen. And even if it did, it would leave half of the Trans Mississippi army isolated in the far south west corner of the theater. Besides, Smith had been receiving an almost endless stream of orders from President Davis to do something directly to rescue Vicksburg – under cutting the claim Davis supported Taylor's fantasy.

General Taylor (above) whined, “ I was informed that...public opinion would condemn us if we did not try to do something.” So Smith's original orders stood. On Thursday, 28 May the Texans changed their line of march, now heading 40 miles over 3 days toward the port called Little River. There they prepared 2 day's rations before again boarding steamboats, this time heading north up the Tenas River.

Taylor and Walker were to advance toward Richmond, Louisiana, on the Shreveport and Vicksburg railroad, and strike from there to capture Young's Point and Milliken’s Bend, thus cutting Grant's supply line down the western bank of the Mississippi. Taylor remained skeptical. “The problem was to withdraw the garrison (of Vicksburg), not to re- enforce it”, he wrote.  But in all fairness, that was not Smith's plan, either. He wanted to force Grant to withdraw from his positions in central Mississippi, by cutting his supply line. 

The problem was that the week earlier,  Grant had shifted his supply base to the Yazoo River at Chickasaw Bayou and Snyder's Bluff. So after a month's worth of exhausting marching and counter-marching, General Smith's plan had failed before it had ever been launched.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Three

 

The first angry crack of muskets were fired by green Yankees – with barely a month of training, and largely armed with shoddily made weapons. But these 285 men of the 8^th Louisiana Infantry of African Descent, had literal “skin in the game”.   And in broad daylight of Saturday, 6 June, 1863, they had surprised the rebel pickets around the Tallulah depot of the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad. The Confederates did as the Yankees had done a week earlier at the Perkin's plantation. They retreated and reported.

However, the commander of the black Yankees, Swiss emigrant and lawyer Colonel Hermann Lieb (above) , had already achieved what he wanted. He had found the rebels and his men had drawn first blood. Now he quickly marched his under strength regiment back to the relative safety of Milliken's Bend, and set them and their companion regiments to work, building defensive positions along two levees. Lieb also called for assistance. His boss at Young's Point, Brigadier General Elias Smith Dennis, could provide only part of the remains of the battered and bloodied 23^rd Iowa Volunteers.

Three weeks earlier, in a single 3 minute charge at the Big Black River Bridge, these 200 buckeyes had l1 charged the enemy line. Eleven enlisted men and 2 officers – including their Colonel, William Kinsman - killed outright, and 3 officers and 85 enlisted men wounded - half of all Federal casualties in that battle. The shattered unit was sent to safe camps across the river to recover. The 130 survivors were now tapped to send 100 men to support the black recruits at Milliken's Bend.   Admiral Porter also promised one 1,000 pound rifle, three 9 inch smooth bore cannons and two 30 pound rifles carried by the stern wheel ironclad ram, the USS Choctaw. But the ram would not arrived until mid- morning. Colonel Lieb woke his men at 3:00 Sunday morning, and put them at the ready.

It was now obvious to the ranking rebel commander at Richmond, Louisiana, Major General Richard Scott Taylor, that the only Yankees remaining on the western shore were some “...convalescents and some negro troops.” But even if he captured Milliken's Bend and Young's Point and the entire De Soto Peninsula, he still would still not be able to directly aid Vicksburg. Lieutenant General Pemberton would not withdraw from that city. Taylor had no provisions with which to resupply the beleaguered garrison. And crossing Taylor's 4,500 men over to join Pemberton's 20,000, would merely advance the day the Vicksburg's defenders ran out of food. But Taylor had his orders, and he authorized General Walker to proceed with the assault.

Setting off at 6:00 p.m. on 6 June, Major General John George Walker pushed his division forward, re-capturing Tallulah after dark. A participant remembered the dramatic night time approach. “ In breathless silence...through dark and deep defiles marched the dense array of men, moving steadily forward; not a whisper was heard — no sound of clanking saber, or rattle of canteen and cup." 

By 2:00 a.m, on Wednesday, 7 June, the 1,000 plus man brigade of 39 year old Brigadier General James Morrison Hawes was approaching the Martin Van Buren hospital at Young's point, and General Henry McCulloch's 1,000 man brigade was within 2 miles of Milliken's Bend. Walker held Colonel Horace Randal's brigade in reserve at the Oak Grove Plantation.

The Yankee pickets, crouched behind a series of hedges, were methodically pushed back by the 19^th Texas infantry on the right, the 17^th regiment in the center, the 16^th cavalry dismounted on the left, The 16^th Texas infantry regiment followed in reserve.  Explained a Texan, "It was impossible for our troops to keep in line of battle, owing to the many hedges we had to encounter, which it was impossible to pass, except through a few gaps that had been used as gates or passageways."

Once through the last line of hedges, the rebels were facing the first cotton bale barricade. Behind it was the 8th, 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiments (African Descent), 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), and the 23d Iowa Infantry (white European descent), totaling 1,061 men. McCulloch drew his men into a line of battle just under a hundred yards from the Yankee line. As they did the Yankees unleashed a volley.  Ignoring the blast, McCulloch took the time to order his men, “No quarter for the officers! Kill the damned abolitionists!" With fixed bayonets, the Texans then charged.

The veterans of the 23^rd Iowa might have had time for a second volley, but that broken regiment had no more to give,. They scattered and ran for the last barricade on the final levee. The black soldiers could only muster a few scattered shots, either because they lacked the training with their weapons or the weapons failed.  General Lorenzo Thomas noted, "Both sides freely used the bayonet - a rare occurrence in warfare...two men lay side by side, each having the other's bayonet in his body. . . .A teenage cook, who had begged for a gun when the enemy was seen approaching, was badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. In one Negro company there were six broken bayonets." It would be the longest bayonet charge of the war.  Afterwards,  General McCulloch reported that of the wounds received by his men, 'more are severe and fewer slight than I have ever witnessed among the same number in my former military experience....This charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy's force with considerable obstinacy...” Some might have chosen another word, such as desperation, or even courage.

As the Confederates came over that barricade with bayonets and swinging their muskets as clubs, Yankee Lieutenant David Cornwell saw one of the Union soldiers, a “very large and strong-willed” Sergeant named “Big” Jack Jackson, charge forward “...like a rocket. With the fury of a tiger he sprang into that gang and crushed everything before him. There was nothing left of Jack's gun except the barrel and he was smashing everything he could reach. On the other side of the levee, they were yelling 'Shoot that big nigger!' Cornwell saw the Jack Jackson, “..daring the whole gang to come up and fight him. Then a bullet reached his head and he fell full on the levee.”

For over an hour the untrained Yankees struggled with the rebels, black and white skinned southerners murdering each other with abandon. Then the Yankees fell back through their own camp and toward the second levee and the second barricade. The Confederates followed , as Joseph Blessington of the 16^th Texas remembered, “bayoneting them by hundreds.”   As the Confederates gathered to storm the second barricade, the USS Choctaw steamed into view, big guns blazing.

General McCulloch ordered his men under cover behind the first levee. They looted the Yankee camp, searching for equipment and food they could not find in their own army, and they began killing any wounded black Yankees they found. It was alleged they also killed 2 white Yankee officers.  The murdering continued until McCulloch saw a second Yankee gun boat sailing up the river toward their position. Realizing he lacked the strength to crush these black men in blue uniforms, he ordered his entire brigade to pull back to the Oak Grove Plantation.

The rebel's limped back. Out of the  1,000 men present the Confederates had suffered 44 killed and 131 wounded and 10 missing. For the three under strength black Yankee regiments, it was a bloody disaster - 100 killed outright, 285 wounded, and 266 captured and murdered or returned to slavery.  Except those numbers deserve a closer look. Black Yankees, with barely a month of training and substandard equipment,  had not run. They had not melted away. They had stood and fought. They had inflicted almost 200 casualties on their foe, 20% of the attackers.  Given the worse of everything, they had given their best.

At Young's Point, the rebel's of Hawes' brigade drove in the Yankee pickets, but then finding themselves facing well armed and organized convalescing patients behind barricades, and three Federal gunboats providing covering fire, the Confederates withdrew without even launching an attack. For all the effort and sacrifice of men and material by Walker's "Greyhounds", General Taylor would later note “As foreseen, our movement resulted, and could result, in nothing.”

But there was a result, and even a victory.  In December of 1863, United States Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, (above) an early advocate of black soldiers, wrote a letter to Lincoln concerning the debate over their fighting ability. "Many persons believed, or pretended to believe..., that freed slaves would not make good soldiers,” he told his President. These faint hearts were worried the ex-slaves “...would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend (7 June, 1863), at the assault upon Port Hudson (27 May, 1863), and the storming of Fort Wagner (South Carolina, 18 July, 1863)."

The ground the Confederacy had stood upon had shifted. And although the lies and obfuscation used  to defend the myths about antebellum southern culture, would delay the triumph of the truth for almost another century, the fuse was at least lit.  It was already past due time for that to happen. 

- 30 -