VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Eight

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty - Five

 

Dora Miller, diarist and resident of Vicksburg, saw the remnants of the disaster about three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday, 17 May, 1863. “I shall never forget," she wrote. “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...followed by siege guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, and wagons in aimless confusion. At twilight two or three bands on the courthouse hill... began playing “Dixie,” “Bonnie Blue Flag,”....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 the 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, 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 ceremony did not delay the advance past 8:00 a.m.  Despite this 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 the 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.  McPherson'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 his men 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 the Oak Ridge Road.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Forty - Five

 

When 41 year old Major General Ulysses Grant (above) entered Jackson, Mississippi, there were warehouses full of Confederate supplies burning furiously. These fires had been set by Johnston's retreating men, to destroy military equipment they could not evacuate. But as yet Grant took little notice of the destruction. Instead, wrote Grant, “I rode immediately to the State House, where I was soon followed by Sherman.” 

About 4:00pm, Thursday, 14 May, 1863, Grant held a council of war with his 3 corps commanders. He ordered 43 year old Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above) to destroy everything of value to the Confederacy in the state capital, before returning it's burned out shell to the Confederates and marching his XV Corps west, toward Clinton.

Grant ordered 34 yea old Major General James Birdseye McPherson  (above) to halt his XVII Corps  on Jackson's west side, and in the morning, march them 30 miles back to Clinton, and then another 8 miles further west to Bolton. 

Grant's ordered 49 year old Major General John Alexander McClernand, whose XIII Corps was now centered around Raymond, to march toward Bolton as well. Grant was concentrating his army. He had been inspired by the first message from Johnston to Pemberton, and intercepted by Yankee cavalry patrols,  ordering Pemberton to advance on Clinton.

His work done, Grant and Sherman then took a tour of a nearby factory. Remembered Grant, “Our presence did not seem to attract the attention of either the manager, or of the operatives (most of whom were girls). We looked on awhile to see the tent-cloth which they were making roll out of the looms, with C. S. A. woven in each bolt. There was an immense amount of cotton in bales stacked outside. Finally I told Sherman I thought they had done work enough. The operatives were told they might leave and take with them what cloth they could carry. In a few minutes cotton and factory were in a blaze.”

Grant then checked into the Bowman House Hotel, across the street from the capital building. He received the room occupied the night before by his opponent, General Joseph Johnston. Scattered about the city in public and private houses were the 16,000 men of Sherman's corps. The 31^st Iowa was encamped in the state house chamber, and entertained themselves for an hour or so by holding a mock session to repeal Mississippi's 9 January 1861 Ordinance of Secession.

The 688 word long justification for Mississippi secession had referred to slavery either directly or indirectly 12 times. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery...a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization...” Complained the slave owners, northern hostility had deprived them, “...of more than half the vast territory acquired from France....dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico...(and) denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, (and) in the Territories...” (In fact the British Royal Navy had been choking off the transatlantic slave trade since 1807.) Further, said those who had built their wealth on the backs others, the Federal government, “...refuses the admission of new slave States....denying (slavery) the power of expansion...”

And what was Mississippi's justification for the lifelong bondage of 4 million human beings, the commonplace humiliation and rape of slave men, women and children, the beatings, the murders, the toil and early deaths demanded by a soul crushing life of servitude? It was because “...none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun...”. Light skinned people got sunburned, and they sweated. That was the justification. It was a laughable rational for moral bankruptcy in the state of Mississippi, and had been recognized as absurd since at least 1807.

In orders received from General Johnston on 13 May, 49 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above)  was to advance with his entire force from Bovina Station 40 miles east,  toward Clinton, Mississippi – the last reported position of Grant's army – and meet up with Johnston's gathering force.  

So on Thursday, 14 May the division of 45 year old Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson...

...and that of 32 year old Major General John Stevens Bowen  crossed the Big Black River and marched 20 miles to Edward's Depot. 

That evening Pemberton was joined by 44 year old Major General Willing Wing Loring (above), whose infantry division...

...and The Mississippi Cavalry regiment under 44 year old Colonel William Wirt Adams were added to his command - some 17,000 men in total. And that evening Pemberton also held a council of war.

Pemberton began by explaining his orders from Johnston. He had left 2 division in Vicksburg, because protecting the riverfront town was his primary duty, per his instructions from President Jefferson Davis.  But moving all his remaining men to Clinton might give Grant a chance to slip south and capture Vicksburg behind him. Pemberton was also concerned that marching on Clinton might leave his flank vulnerable to an attack by McClernand's XIII Corps, which Adams accurately reported was near Raymond. So the paper pusher, struggling with his first field command, asked his 4 subordinates for their opinions. Should he advance on Clinton? Or should the army stay were it was?

It seems obvious that none of the officers in that room had much respect for Pemberton. But was the fault actually Pemberton's or his disorderly officers? Perhaps the most objective estimation of Pemberton we have, comes from a man not in that room - Captain G. Campbell Brown (above).

The Captain was the son of Lizinka Campbell Brown. She was first cousin and the great love of Virginia born Army officer Richard Stoddard Ewell (above). Broken hearted when Lizinka was forced to marry Tennessee Lawyer and player, James Percy Brown in 1839, Ewell exiled himself on the western frontier. Then James Brown committed suicide in 1844, leaving Lizinka a widow with 2 children. But “the widow Brown” as Ewell ever after referred to her, proved a smart business woman, and increased her inheritance and property holdings. The outbreak of war brought Richard back east, where he renewed his love affair with Lizinka, and making her eldest son, G. Campbell Brown, his personal aide.

In that position, Captain Brown met most of the famous and infamous Confederate officers and politicians in the first two years of the war, and formed concise, vivid and accurate opinions of them. In August of 1862, at the Second Battle of Mannanass, a minie ball shattered Richard Ewell's right knee, and his leg had to be removed. While Ewell recovered, Captain Brown was transferred to Joe Johnston's staff in Tennessee, and came with him to Vicksburg. Now he found himself reading the telegrams and letters of John Clifford Pemberton. And it was Brown's firm belief that Pemberton was an idiot. The Captain wrote, “I never knew, in all my life, so provoking a stupidity as Pemberton’s.”

So the officers facing General Pemberton that 14 May evening were on the spot. What was this fool asking of them? Permission to disobey orders? And if the campaign led to disaster, lost the war and lost their men's lives. they would be blamed right along with the stupid fool Pemberton. Major General Stevenson and Major General Bowen did the equivalent of saying nothing. They advised Pemberton he should follow his orders from General Johnston. But the one armed Major General Loring was made of more aggressive metal.

Since 30,000 men were tied down in the Vicksburg trenches, explained Loring , an advance on Clinton would place 17,000 Confederate soldiers up against 45,000 Yankees. That was a battle they could not win. Johnston might be besieged in Jackson with 20 or 30,000 men. Or he could have only 10,000.  He had never told Pemberton exactly how many men he had. 

Advancing on Clinton was too risky. Staying in Edward's Depot meant waiting for Grant to destroy Johnston's force, before turning on them. Again, that was a battle they could not win. But, advised Major General Loring, there was third option.

Grant's army must still be drawing supplies from Grand Gulf. So, suggested Loring, put 17,000 rebels astride the roads between Grand Gulf and Raymond (above), and the Yankees would be forced to withdraw from Jackson to defend their supply line. That would give Johnston time to advance his new army to combine with theirs, giving them, perhaps 50,000 men total.

It was an aggressive approach, the kind of bold attack typical of Loring. When asked to comment, both Stevenson and Bowen agreed that it was bold move, and not something Grant would be expecting. General Pemberton took their non-committal statements for advocacy. And when Wirt Adams suggested they aim their attacks at Raymond, and the Natchez Trace, just south of 14 Mile Creek, because that was the last reported position of General Grant, Pemberton decided to follow Loring's advice.

Come the dawn, of 15 May, 1863, Pemberton's army of 17,000 men, would be advancing south, to cut Grant's supply line.  The only problem was, there was no supply line for Pemberton to cut.

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