VICKSBURG Chapter Sixty - One

 

As of 20 May, 1863, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above)  estimated his 20,000 men could hold off the larger federal army for six months. His commissary stockpile held half a million pounds of salted pork and bacon, and similar quantities of salted beef, some 5,000 bushels of corn and 8,000 bushels of peas. But as it turned out, General Pemberton's estimates were full of beans. And badly cooked beans at that.

The specific legume in question was known as the common pea, was also known as the cow or goat pea, aka the black eyed pea. The Cherokee natives had served the first missionaries a bread baked from the little pale pomes, and the Christians raved about it.  They claimed it was the better than white bread.  But evidently the recipe was lost, perhaps when the native peoples were forcefully evicted. So the fall of the Gibraltar of the Confederacy came much sooner than 182 days, could be at least in part attributed to the revenge of the Cherokees. And maybe the slaves, too.

See, in the antebellum south, these tough little nuggets of fiber and protein were only fed to the live stock, animal and human. The reason was that the beans were encased in a hard shell of lectins – the chemical family which included the powerful poison riacin. While ungulates had no issue with most lectins, their presence in the human digestive tract produced powerful stomach cramps and a condition known as the bloody flux, the runs, the Tennessee trots, the Virginia quickstep, or just dysentery – defecating until you either wished you were dead, or you were dead.

During the civil war dysentery was the most common aliment in both armies, affecting 640 cases per year out of every 1,000 men. Only 20 of those 600 might become so dehydrated – losing 2.5 liters of fluid per hour - to cause death within three days. But the Tennessee trots directly and indirectly contributed to an estimated 88% of the 750,000 deaths during the war, mostly children and the old.  Of more immediate concern to the armies was the reduction in unit effectiveness. Those afflicted had to immediately begin treatment with opiates, which caused constipation. You could say dysentery was a constant drain on every unit, all the time.

The Confederate soldiers chocking down their ration of pea bread could have avoid that smelly fate by first covering the beans in water, bringing them to a boil and then rinsing them. That would remove the lectin shell. The beans are then simmered under a low heat until soft, and then ground into a mash. Add some starter yeast – aka fungus - and water, pound into a dough and then bake like any other bread.  However, being unfamiliar with the culinary practices of the people who worked on their farms and plantations, and who had to survive on black eye pea bread, that was not the approach the commissary officers in Pemberton's army took.

The commissary plan was to boil the beans for an hour. Then, without draining, they were ground into a mash. This toxic glutenous mass was then supplied to the regiments, where cooks tried mixing it with the more familiar corn meal. The final product was described as a “novel species of the hardest of ‘hard tack’, the novelty being that the bread was never “done”. The most persistent chiefs baked the loaves for up to 2 hours, but the result was always the same. The outside became hard enough “to knock down a full grown steer”, while the center was still raw pea meal. And eating that was an invitation to dance the Virginia Quickstep.

Civilians did not face this problem because the army  left them to their own devices.  A reasonable example was 44 year old Reverend William Wilberforce Lord (above)  and his family – his wife Margaret, son William junior and daughter Eliza, nicknamed Lydia. William was the Princeton trained minister of Vicksburg's towering Episcopal Church, padre to the 1^st Mississippi infantry and enough of a poet to have been “lightly praised by Wordsworth and “thumpingly” criticized by Edgar Allen Poe”. He sought safety for his family in the church's rectory. But that gave far too much credit to the gunner's ability to not hit what they were not aiming at.

According to Lydia (above), reality arrived when “...a bombshell burst into the very center of the dining room ... crushing the well-spread table like an eggshell, and making a great yawning hole in the floor, into which disappeared supper, china, furniture... and our stock of butter and eggs.” The Lords, along with the rest of Vicksburg, now disappeared underground.

The digging had started the year before when the city defied Farragut's ships. By the spring of 1863 the construction of caves had become standardized. Observed the wife of a Confederate officer, “Negroes who understood their business, hired themselves out to dig them, at from thirty to fifty dollars, according to the size.” Individual catacombs were let at $15.00 a month. 

Lydia Lord described the refuge she and her family called home. “The cave ran about twenty feet underground and communicated at right angles with a wing which opened on the front of the hill, giving us a free circulation of air. At the door was an arbor of branches, in which, on a pine table, we dined when shelling permitted. Near it were a dug-out fireplace and an open-air kitchen...”

A diarist who only identified herself as Mrs. “V” captured the the ethos of the city. “We are utterly cut off from the world,” she wrote, “surrounded by a circle of fire. Would it be wise like the scorpion to sting ourselves to death? The fiery shower of shells goes on day and night...” Mrs. V was obviously a woman of some means, as 2 men spent a week excavating the cave she and her husband occupied. “It is well made in the hill that slopes just in the rear of the house, and well propped with thick posts, as they all are.... The hills are so honeycombed with caves that the streets look like avenues in a cemetery. The hill called the Sky Parlor has become quite a fashionable resort for the few upper-circle families left here”

She lamented how her world had shrunk. “People do nothing but eat what they can get, sleep when they can, and dodge the shells.” She noted. “There are three intervals when the shelling stops, either for the guns to cool or for the gunner's meals, I suppose...In that time we have both to prepare and eat ours. Clothing cannot be washed or anything else done....” Looking down upon her fellow residents from the Sky Parlor, Mrs. V saw, “people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors...As the first shell again flew they dived, and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed, or starved, we don’t see any more pitiful animals prowling around.”

It took 3 days before commissary officers stopped trying to poison their own soldiers. As a solution, the cooks were encouraged to bake the corn and pea bread separately, but even the adventurous quickly decided the disastrous peas were not worth the effort to chew them. Within another week there was no escaping the miscalculation in the military larder. As 29 year old Brigadier General Stephen Dill Hill  (above) noted, “After the tenth day of the siege, the men lived on about half rations...”. One hundred eighty-two days had become ninety-one. Further recalculations for the army's survival would follow.

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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 - Nine

 

As noon on Saturday, 16 May, 1863 approached, the 1^st brigade of General Hovey's 12^th Division,  had captured the low ridge overlooking the key cross roads atop Champion Hill. Immediately Brigadier General George Francis McGinnis ordered artillery up the hill to support the tenacious toe hold. As the path up the slope was narrow, only two guns were sent. It was a moment of high drama, captured by the official history of the 16^th Ohio Light Artillery battery.

“...Lieutenant (George) Murdoch was ordered up to the top of the Hill. Captain (James A.) Mitchell asking...to be permitted to go with it to place the guns. We galloped up the Hill. Cannoneers dismounted...Lieutenant Murdoch's horse was wounded, so that during the fight he was dismounted. A little distance beyond the summit of the Hill there was an open field to the left of the road, into which one of the guns, with Corporal Belmer as gunner, was pulled...

...while the other, with Corporal (Pomeroy) Mitchell (above)  as gunner,  went forward about fifty yards and found a good place just to the right of the road, near a log cabin and smoke house. Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Murdoch were with this gun.... the ground sloping down hill in front of them...by using solid shot (they) could fire over our own men...”

“...The gun by the cabin found our men, in front of it, in the way. The rebels were advancing, the bullets were coming fast. Then it was that the captain showed his bravery. He dashed down on his horse, right in the face of that leaden storm, and cried to our men: "Out of the way. boys, get out of the way and give the artillery a chancel" Our men rushed back and around the cabins, and as the Johnnies came on they got charge after charge of canister, all the 13 rounds of canister the gun carried.” 

This counter attack had been hastily thrown together by Brigadier General Stephen Dill Lee (above), whose 2^nd brigade was facing an attack by troops from Logan's division, coming up the wooded and ravine which into cut northern slope of Champion Hill.  But Lee knew the vital point was, in fact behind him. 

So around 1:00pm, Lee collected about 400 survivors of the 34^th Georgia regiment who had been thrown back by the first Yankee thrust, bolstered them with his own reserve, the 31^st Alabama regiment, and launched an immediate assault. 

This first counter-attack was quickly cut down by deadly accurate fire of the 45^th Illinois and 23^rd Indiana regiments, and flanking fire from the 24^th Indiana, but mostly because of the two cannon from the 16^th Ohio. As his troops fell back. Lee ordered a second assault, this time adding the 23^rd Alabama regiment drawn from his own front line, directed specifically to silence those Yankee guns.

The history of the 16^th Ohio notes the bravery of the rebel assault. “... though the slaughter was appalling, still on they came.....as fast as one line was shattered another took its place.” 

But the account also records the cost. “The brave Captain (James Mitchel) remained on his horse... A whole volley was fired at him by the enemy concealed in the ravine...near the house. As the horse was hit he sprang forward, throwing the Captain off backward...(James) rose from the ground, pressing his hand to his chest, the blood flowing freely from his wound. Lieutenant Murdock sent back for surgical aid, but the Captain insisted on sitting down with his back to a tree at the roadside near the command...”  In such a way the second assault was thrown back.

About 1:30pm, Lee's division commander, General Stevenson, sent word to Pemberton, asking for help. Not waiting for a reply, Lee launched troops on yet another attempt to retake the vital road junction, adding the 46^th Alabama regiment to his punch. Some of these troops were making their third charge that afternoon against the Yankee line. 

Out of canister shot, Corporal Belmer's gun was hitched to its horse team and sent racing back down the hill. The gun manned by Pomeroy Mitchel however, kept firing until Lieutenant Murdoch saw the rebels closing in. He waved his pistol and yelled, “Quick, boys, out of here!”

The 16^th not only saved both their own guns, they captured 2 cannon from The Botetourt battery, and spiked several of the guns abandoned by Waddell's battery. Meanwhile, the third rebel counterattack was thrown back, leaving the 46^th Alabama regiment embedded in the Yankee line. Exhausted and bloodied, the brave Alabamian fighters suddenly found themselves surrounded. When demanded, the Confederate regiment was forced to surrender.

It was now almost 2:00pm. The isolated battle for the crest of Champion Hill -  now called The Hill of Death - had been going on for almost 2 hours. The first brigade of General McGinnis, comprising the 11^th, 24^th, 34^th and 46^th Indiana Regiments and the 29^th Wisconsin regiment had suffered almost 90 dead – including Captain Mitchel - almost 500 wounded and 23 missing or captured. On the opposing line, Cummings shattered Georgia brigade had suffered 121 dead, 269 wounded and 605 captured, and Lee's Alabama battalion had sacrificed over 40 men killed, 140 wounded and 600 captured. The other causality was Grant's patience

At noon Grant had ordered an assault all along his line, but neither Osterhaus's 9^th division, nor Carr's 14^th division in the center had yet to move. It would later be determined that the messenger carrying the order to attack had gotten lost, and had just reached General McClernand's headquarters. Grant might have expected McClernand to have launched his assault on his own initiative, upon seeing Hovey's 12^th division desperately battling on the crest. But the midst of a battle was not the time to deal with McClernand. Grant was was assured the entire line would be advancing soon, along with more support for Hovey's brave men.

Meanwhile Pemberton was having his own command problems. His first choice to support Steven's hard pressed men was to call for one of Loring's 4 brigades. “Old Bizzards” was still trading long range skirmishing fire with Smith's approaching 12^th Division and Blair's 2^nd. But in response to Pemberton's orders, Loring pleaded that he was about to be attacked and could not spare even one of his brigades.  And no matter how many orders Pemberton issued, Loring simply ignored them.

That left only General John Stevens Bowen's smaller division, stretched out along the north/south Ratcliff Road, in between Steven's and Loring's divisions. They, at least, had the advantage of being closer.

The closest unit was Bowen's 1^st brigade under long dour faced 32 year old Brigadier General Seth Maxwell Barton (above).  Shortly after 2:00pm he sent 3 regiments against the flank of the weary federal troops, charging with the 40^th, 41^st and 43^rd Georgia Regiments, supported by the 4 guns of the Cherokee Georgia Artillery, under Captain Max van den Corput. 

Falling on the Yankee flank, they broke the line and pushed it off the vital crossroads, 300 yards back to the crest. But there the Yankees reformed. So Barton threw in his reserve, the 52^nd Georgia regiment against the vulnerable right flank of the new Federal line, crumpling it and at last sending the blue coats streaming for the rear.

And at that moment, after almost 3 hours of violence and bloodshed, the weary men of Barton's brigade were within 5 or 6 hundred yards of complete and total victory. Because at the bottom of that hill, gathered around the Champion home, were almost 200 Yankee wagons loaded with ammunition. It was the last supplies to come through from Port Gibson. And if those wagons and the ammunition they  carried, were captured Grant's campaign would come to an immediate collapse. 

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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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