VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Eight

 

On 24 June 1823, while "riding the circuit" in Lebanon, Ohio,  90 miles from his home, 40 year old Justice Charles Robert Sherman came down with a fever and died.  And because Charles was an honest man, and left no fortune behind, the world of his 9 year old  son William Tecumseh Sherman simply imploded. 

"Cump" Sherman's 14 siblings were scattered to adoptive families across Ohio. “Cump” and his brother was taken in by a Lancaster neighbor, a lawyer and soon to be U.S. Senator, Thomas Ewing. The tragedy left such deep abandonment issues that “Cump” never called his loving adoptive parents anything but Mister and Misses Ewing. And he never escaped the panic whenever it seemed his security might be swept away again. In May of 1863 Major General William Tecumseh Sherman had a re-occurrence of that panic when he first arrived on the Mississippi side of the Mississippi River.

On Saturday 9 May, “Cump” reached the Pipes-Bagnell house near Harkinson Ferry, expecting to be reunited with his friend Sam, only to discover that the day before General Ulysses Grant had moved on. Cump panicked, a little. He immediately wrote to Grant at Rocky Springs, “ Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road."

Grant promptly reassured his dear friend. “I do not calculate the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” he wrote. “What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.” With that rational explanation, and a few words of reassurance from Grant, Sherman was able to again pass along the confidence to his “tail-end Charlie”, General Francis Preston Blair, that, “Don't let the wagons get encumbered with trash. We will be in want of salt, bread, sugar, and coffee. We may safely trust to the country for meat."

With the arrival of the bulk of Sherman's XV corps, Grant now had in Central Mississippi about 45,000 men. And he had decided, while scouring his maps and cavalry reports over Mrs. Pipes-Bagnell's dinning room table, to strike first to the north, to cut the Vicksburg and Jackson Southern Railroad. 

By occupying that line he would be cutting Vicksburg off from reinforcement from the eastern Confederacy, just as he had cut Vicksburg off from the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy by occupying the Texas and Monroe railroad line to Desoto, Louisiana. And in typical Grant fashion, he chose to accomplish this in as devious a fashion as he could.

It was impossible to disguise the arrival of Sherman's Corps around Harkinson Ferry. So Grant used the noise and dust to his advantage. Sherman was instructed to ostentatiously prepare to assault the rebel lines along the Big Black River. 

The bridge captured by McClerand's men would never support a major advance, so scouts and staff officers were seen inspecting possible crossing points above and below it. With Vicksburg just 20 miles to the north, Pemberton would have had no choice but to assume Grant was preparing a “coupe de main” or “direct assault” on the city, and hold his divisions back to defend against it.

Meanwhile, McClernand's XIII Corps had moved to camps further up the road which hugged the

Big Black River.  Rebel observation posts could not help but see the dust from their marches and the smoke from their camp fires extending inland toward the Natchez Trace. This seemed to hint that Grant was moving further north toward the Big Black River Bridge, west of Edward's Depot. That larger structure, and the railroad bridge nearby, could support a major advance on Vicksburg. And Pemberton had been suspecting since the Port Gibson breakout, that this was Grant's real goal. 

But also on that Saturday, 9 May, the divisions of McPherson's XVII corps were marching northeast on the Natchez Trace, passing through the XIII corps camps. At the hamlet of Reganton they took the road east, camping 3 miles beyond Utica. Grant was now traveling with the XVII Corps and set his new headquarters outside of Cayuga.

The XVII corps was now Grant's right flank, threatening Clinton and tying down the slowly assembling Confederate force in the state capital of Jackson. Sherman was positioned in the middle, where he could march directly on Bolton, screened by McClernand, ands strike toward Edward's Depot to the north.  Grant's intention was to cut the Southern Railroad not once but in three, tripling his odds of severing the vital railroad.

Over the first two weeks in May of 1863, Grant showed he had indeed learned from Napoleon, who wrote, "When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success...”. Grant had done this by following the Emperor's twin guidelines. “Operations must be designed to surprise and confuse the enemy,” while rendering them helpless “through the severance of his lines of supply, communications, and retreat.”

Over the first 2 weeks in October of 1805 the core of Napoleon's Le Grand Armee marched 275 miles from the banks of the Rhine to the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. He thus placed his army between the 60,000 Austrians under General Mack von Leiberich, around Ulm, and the 80,000 Russians under Tzar Alexander I, just nearing the Austrian capital of Vienna. By the end of October, Napoleon had forced General Mack to surrender. And on 3 December in the startling victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon killed or captured half the Russian army. Those twin achievements inspired Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. What Grant was about to achieve at Vicksburg deserved an equally impressive artistic footnote, and more because it was not achieved merely to make one man an Emperor.

Back in February, shortly after arriving to dig the Lake Providence canal, Sergeant Cyrus F. Boyd, had gotten his first unvarnished look at the reality of human slavery.  Among the “contraband” who entered the 15^th Iowa lines that first day, Boyd spotted a young girl with dark skin, deep blue eyes and straight hair which hung down to her shoulders. 

The mother explained the girl had been fathered by her “master”, and said she had given birth to two other daughters by the same rapist. Upon hearing this, according to Boyd, an unnamed corn husker had exploded in anger at the injustice. “By God”, he shouted, “ I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on it.” Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had re-framed the war, from one for the survival of the United States, into one for the future of humanity.

Two days later, on 11 May, Grant's primary worry was a sudden shortage of water. The appearance of dry weather and the presence of 45,000 men and 100,000 horses, had left streams and and wells bone dry. Still Grant pushed his men forward. On this Monday, 54 year old General Frederick Steele's (above)  1st division of Sherman's XV Corps, marched to Five mile Creek, looking for a drink of water. 

Doing same,  29 year old James Madison Tuttle's (above)  3rd division of the same corps camped closer to Auburn. General McPherson's XVII Corps advance only 1 ½ miles, slowed by the search for water. That night Grant urged McPherson to press his men to take Raymond, saying, “We must fight before our rations fail”.

At 5:30am, Tuesday, 12 May, 1863, all three Yankee corps continued their advance from Five Mile Creek. General McClernand's (above) XIII corps were guarding the army's flank along the Big Black River.  

Sherman's (above)XV Corps was moving faster, determined to cut the Southern railroad at Bolton by nightfall. 

But 32 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's (above) XVII was so short of water their main thrust this day was toward Raymond, to capture and use the wells south that town.

As they set out, Grant sent a message via Grand Gulf, to General Halleck, Beginning now, the Army of the Tennessee would be out of communication until they had captured Vicksburg. Or been destroyed. What Grant was telling Lincoln, was that he was so confident of victory that he was marching  an entire Federal Army right off the map.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Three

 

The bulk of 43 year old General William Tecumseh Sherman's XVth. Corps began its march from Milliken's Bend, above Vicksburg, down the narrow twisting cordoryed road to Hard Times Landing,  on Saturday, 2 May, 1863 – the day after the battle of Port Gibson. The cork was out of the bottle and Grant now had room for  an additional 15,000 men on the Mississippi side of the river, and he wanted them with him as soon as possible.  Neither Sherman's staff officers nor the soldiers they commanded were green troops anymore. They had learned how to organize and execute a march.

One hundred and seventeen years after the American Civil War , then 58 year old Louisiana native and Commandant of the United States Marine Corps,  General Robert Hilliard Barrow,  would say, “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." The 70 mile long road to Hard Times now carried not only the 15,000 men and supplies of the XVth Corps, but also the ammunition and supplies for the rest of the Army of Tennessee – some 45,000 troops in all. With so much traffic, many  bizarre accidents and stupid mistakes were inevitable. But Sherman's staff officers kept the entire jumble moving more or less smoothly. It was a triumph of logistical planning and execution. 

General Sherman will later calculate that each Union soldier in the field required three pounds of food stuffs each day, in addition to the 13 pounds of “re-supply” required to keep him “effective” - with a working rifle, ammunition and powder, boots, uniform, blanket, tent and medicine. Other than the clothes on his back, this all had to be carried in horse or mule drawn wagons. In their wagons each regiment was also expected to carry 25% additional supplies for their teamsters and horses. Even though the Civil War has been labeled “the first railroad war”, its armies were always carried on the backs of horses and mules.

To support each 1,000 men in the field required 40 – 50 wagons (drawn by about 300 mules), to carry foodstuffs (for the humans and animals), tents, blankets, cooking gear, ammunition, tack, horse and human shoes, and one or two ambulances. Each of the horses required 26 pounds of fodder per day and each mule required 24 pounds, half of which the army was required to carry and half of which the animals were expected to find for themselves. 

When Grant proposed “living of the land” after leaving Port Gibson it was a literal proposal for the animals which reduced the number of wagons the army required. Each 2-3,000 pound wagon load of supplies could cover about 20 miles in an eight hour day of marching. As the army marched the supplies would be used up, which would lighten the load a little, but the humans and the animals still had to eat.

On average a Civil War army required one horse for every three men - 6 horses to pull each 2,500 pound artillery piece, and 6 mules to pull each wagon. And that was in addition to the mounts for cavalry and officers – which meant that Grant’s army of 45,000 men required 14,000 horses and mules. 

The vast majority of animals in a Civil War army lived a short, brutal life, most no more than a few months long. But the war could not have been fought without them.

On the march to Hard Times Landing, when a wagon or gun carriage broke down the teamsters dragged it clear of the traffic lanes with minimal delay.  Pauses in the march were scheduled to allow reverse traffic. And commissary detachments bound for the Army of the Tennessee depot in Grand Gulf were allocated space within the column. The 70 mile march took 3 days – 23 miles a day. The troops arrived at Hard Times Landing fresh and ready for battle. It was the kind of complicated mass movement which the army could not have made even a year earlier.  And it added to the soldiers growing confidence in their officers and themselves.

Sherman (above) did not share that confidence. A week earlier, back on Sunday, 26 April, 1863,  he   had written about the approaching march to his brother John Penland,  “I feel in its success less confidence than in any similar undertaking of the war, but it is my duty to co-operate with zeal… Sixty thousand men (including teamsters) will thus be on a single road, narrow, crooked, and liable to become a quagmire on the occurrence of a single rain. We carry ten days ration with us…Now, if we can sustain the army it may do, but I know the materials or food, forage or ammunition cannot be conveyed on that single precarious road.”  He also admitted to his wife. concern about the "narrow difficult road, liable by a shower to become a quagmire"  adding, “I look upon the whole thing as one of the most hazardous and desperate moves of this or any war.” 

Sherman’s road to Vicksburg really began ten years earlier when he floated into San Francisco Bay (above) on the overturned hulk of a sinking lumber schooner. It was the beginning of a decade of failure. 

Sherman’s father had died when he was nine, and the boy known as Tecumseh had been adopted by Thomas Ewing, a powerful Whig senator from Ohio, who secured the boy an appointment at West Point. Sherman had graduated from “The Point” in 1840 and attained the rank of Captain (above). But he resigned from the army in 1853 when he was offered the presidency of a San Francisco bank. 

On his way around South America, Sherman was shipwrecked twice, the last time just outside of the Golden Gate (above) . What followed were four relative good years. Then, in the panic of 1857, Sherman’s bank failed, leaving him broke and far from home. He struggled back to “the states”, eventually landing in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he failed as a lawyer.

And then, in 1859, he secured an appointment as Superintendent of the Louisiana State Military Academy. Just a year later, as secession broke out, Sherman famously wrote a Southern friend, “You are rushing to war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on earth...You are bound to fail.”  He had little respect for black Americans, and certainly did not support a war to free them, but he told the Louisiana Governor when he resigned, “On no account will I do any act or think any thought hostile…to the…United States.”

The coming of war seemed to offer Sherman opportunities. But at first they only led to more failure. He served as a colonel at First Battle of Bull Run (above), where he was wounded in the knee and shoulder trying to stem the panic.  As he recovered, he was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers and placed in command of the Department of the Cumberland, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.    But all he could see from his new post were shadows and threats.  In the fall of 1861 Sherman was relieved of duty, suffering a nervous collapse.  At his home in Ohio he contemplated suicide. He was saved when General Halleck offered Sherman the command of the Army of the Tennessee, Instead Sherman offered to serve as a division commander under Grant.

When they met, they liked each other immediately.  At Shiloh, on 6 April, 1862, a now overconfident Sherman saw his unprepared division overrun by Confederate troops. Sherman barely managed to prevent his men from being driven into the Tennessee River. It seemed yet another confirmation of his failure. But that night, when he reported to Grant’s command post, half expecting to be relieved, and confessed “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we”, Grant calmly replied, “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.” And with that stoic exchange Sherman’s luck changed. From that night forward, he might disagree with Grant, but he would always “...co-operate with zeal”.

But after being separated from his friend for several days, at such a crucial moment in the campaign, 
"Cump's " imagination was feeding deep doubts about Grant,  which he shared with the commander of his second division, 42 year old Kentucky political General, Francis Preston Blair Jr. (above).  Sherman wrote to Blair that, “...some other way must be found to feed this army."  He later told his 39 year old 3^rd Division commander, Brigadier General James Madison Tuttle, “I apprehend great difficulty in the matter of food." 

Despite these misgivings Sherman judged the march itself a success. He would write later, “Our route lay by Richmond (Louisiana)...and Roundabout Bayou, then following Bayou Vidal, we struck the Mississippi River at Perkins Plantation...Thence the route followed Lake St. Joseph to a plantation called "Hard Times"...about five miles above Grand Gulf.” And like any tourist, Sherman noted the celebrities he brushed against, such as the fantastic Franklin Plantation mansion of Doctor Allen T. Bowie, whom Cump noted was said to be “...a relative of Jim Bowie” of the Alamo fame.

Meanwhile, across the river, McClernand's and McPherson's Corps of Grant's army were resting on the east bank of the Big Black River, roughly between Willow Springs  and Rocky Springs.  An officer noted they had been “Bivouacked near Hankinson's Ferry three days, giving the men ample time to rest and clean themselves....” The regimental history of the 48^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry recorded they put the time to good use. “Orders were therefore issued to subsist on the products of the country...and from that time...foraging parties, or perhaps better known as "bummers," were sent out...”

“They were a jolly, mischievous set....They slaughtered the pigs in the pens; the cattle and horses were driven from the fields; smokehouses and cellars were ransacked for flour, meal and bacon; the chickens and turkeys were captured in the yard; the mules were hitched to the family carriage, and the provisions stowed away in it,...Toward evening the foragers returned to camp, driving the cattle before them, followed by a long line of vehicles of every description, loaded with all kinds of provisions, which was equally distributed among the different regiments.” Of course, not all regiments were as inventive as the 48^th Ohio.  A worried lieutenant in another regiment in McClernand's corps wrote to his wife on Tuesday, 5 May, that the ten day's rations had about run out. “I have got one cracker left and some meat ..." he complained.

On Wednesday, 6 May, 1863 Sherman's XVth Corps started crossing the river. As each unit came ashore at Grand Gulf, they were immediately pushed up the road toward Willow and Rocky Springs. It would take a few days, but soon all 45,000 men of the Army of the Tennessee would be just south of the Big Black River.  Vicksburg would be just 30 miles away. So near and so tempting. What would be Grant's next move?  And what would Pemberton do to stop him?

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VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty - Eight

 

Brigadier General John Stevens Bowen  (above) knew what was coming next,  even as the tattered remnants of the 23rd Alabama fell back to the Foster Farm. They had bought with their lives and souls nothing more than a few precious minutes. And now it was up to the 32 year old Georgian to give their sacrifice meaning. He grabbed a fresh horse and raced back down the Rodney Road, looking for more men.

John Bowen knew what was coming up that road because he knew 41 year old Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant, personally. They had graduated West Point a decade apart, (Lt. Grant, above) but had briefly bonded in 1858 when Lieutenant Bowen and his new wife, Mary Kennerly, had been assigned to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. 

Grant (above) was then working for his Missouri in-laws, having just resigned from the army because it separated him from Julia. The couples' time together was brief, but long enough for John to witness Grant's stubbornness,  which contributed to his failure in business. 

Later, when transferred to Texas, John Bowen also resigned from the Army because he missed his wife. Afterward, he returned to St. Louis, as Grant had done. And in 1861 Bowen had been part of the failed effort to carry Missouri firmly into the Confederacy.  But at Shiloh in April of 1862, the Confederate General Bowen had seen how that same streak of stubbornness now contributed to General Grant's  (above) growing success.

Bowen had no doubt that the Illinois native would throw every soldier and gun he could lay his hands on at the Confederate line blocking his way to Port Gibson and across the south fork of Bayou Pierre. Port Gibson was the cork in the bottle. If the rebels could hold that cork in place, the Yankees would be trapped against the Mississippi flood plain. But to do that, Bowen needed more men, and he needed them right now.

Almost the instant Bowen galloped off in search of reinforcements,  at about 10:00am, Friday morning, 1 May, 1863, 10,000 men of the 10th Division under 48 year old Brigadier General of Volunteers Andrew Jackson Smith, and the 12th Division, Hovey's Babies, under 41 year old Indiana pro-union democratic lawyer Brigadier General Alvin Peterson Hovey. slammed into General Green's exhausted brigade. The Federal assault (above), with about 7 men per yard, simply swamped the rebel defenders of one man every 2 yards, sending them running for the rear. They Yankees captured 200 prisoners, 2 cannon, 3 caissons and 3 ammunition wagons. It took them less than 30 minutes.

Political glory hound, 50 year old Union Major General John Alexander McClernand (above) called a halt after sweeping the rebels from the Foster House ridge, ostensibly to reorganize. But like a bad actor genuflecting for his audience's approval - and with an impressionable visitor in 48 year old Illinois Governor Richard Yates standing next to him - McClernand could nor resist launching an extended bandiloquent blovoiation.  Luckily for the Federal cause Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant, also a Yates favorite, was keeping a close eye and ear on McClernand. After listening to the smug supercilious sycophancy spewing from his subaltern, Grant pointedly suggested the rebels were not beaten but merely retreating to stronger lines. He then pointedly ordered McClernand to push his men forward, toward Port Gibson and the vital bridge over the south fork of Bayou Pierre.

But after advancing less then 2 miles, at about noon, the Yankees ran into the 1,000 man brigade of 35 year old Columbus Mississippi bookstore owner, Brigadier General William Edwin Baldwin. 

Having learned from the demoralizing Federal cannon fire the  mistake of fighting on the ridge tops, Bowen sheltered Baldwin's men in the maze of the 8 foot tall canebrake (above) along the bottoms of Willow Creek.  On their right were the 1,500 men of Colonel Francis Marion Cockrell's Missouri brigade, having forced marched from Grand Gulf.  Bowen was stronger at this moment than he had been at any time before - with more than 6,500 men and 16 cannon in line of battle. But they were still facing more than 24,000 Federal troops, with more still arriving every hour.

The Yankee's advance would be slowed by the canebrake, but General Bowen had no doubt Grant would keep pushing. He sent a telegraph to General Pemberton, expected to arrive shortly in Vicksburg. It read in part, "We have been engaged in a furious battle ever since daylight; losses very heavy...the odds are overpowering." 

And as if to confirm this, at about 2:00pm, on the Brunisburg road, 3 divisions of Grant's XVII corps under the popular 34 year old Union Major General James Birdseye McPherson begin pounding the Alabama brigade, now commanded after Colonel Edward Tracy's death, by 46 year old Colonel Isham Warren Garott, The new commander asked General Martin Edwin Green for instructions, but received a confusing mish-mash of language in return. Garott had no choice but to begin a grudging slow retreat, forcing Green's entire command to follow his lead. The Rebel left collapsed.

At the same time McClernand was extending his line eastward. Just 1,200 yards through the woods was the rough road of the old Natchez Trace, leading around the rebel left. Colonel Cockrell threw the 3rd and 5th Missouri regiments at the Yankees, trying to force them to consolidate.  But there were too many Yankees, and about 5:30pm General Bowen was forced to send a final message from the Port Gibson telegraph office. "I am falling back across Bayou Pierre.  I will endeavor to hold that position until reinforcements arrive.…"  He then sent the bitter message to the gunners still defending Grand Gulf to prepare to spike their guns and destroy the ammunition magazines before withdrawing to Warrenton.

It was at just this moment that General Bowen was superseded by the arrival of the disruptive and profane one armed Floridian, the 5 foot 9 inch tall Brigadier General William Wing "Old Blizzards" Loring (above).   Dispatched from Edward's Station, the one armed argumentative general arrived as the troops were retreating back across the Bayou, and quickly came to the conclusion that this time he was too late. 

Port Gibson could not be defended. Loss of Port Gibson meant the line of the south fork of Bayou Pierre could not be held.  Loring knew from personal observation, that the north fork of the stream would be easily breached. After that Grand Gulf would be taken in the rear. The only militarily rational choice was to abandon Grand Gulf and Port Gibson and the entire Bayou Pierre line, and pull back through Willow Springs 30 miles to Harkinson's Ferry over the Big Black River.  And that is what Loring ordered the bloodied troops under General Bowen to do, burning the bridge over the south fork of Bayou Pierre behind them. There they would meet his own over strength division, marching south. 

The Yankee's delaying action at Port Gibson had cost Bowen's little army about 70 killed, more than 350 wounded and 384 captured - or almost 17% of his original force engaged.  Yankee losses were about the same, but suffered by a much larger force.  Grant did not press the rebels too hard, now that he had forced the cork out of the bottle  He was just pleased to have escaped the malaria and mud of the Mississippi floodplain. As McClernand's  men worked overnight, dismantling buildings in Port Gibson, to rebuild the burned bridge, McPherson prepared his men to ford the \south fork of Bayou Pierre upstream of the town.

Come the dawn, Saturday 2 May, 1863, two thirds of Grant's army would be across the south fork of Bayou Pierre, and when Sherman's Corps - the remaining third of Grant's army - arrived, they would be able to transfer directly across the Mississippi to Port Gibson, saving them a 2 day march.   

The only positive for the Confederacy on that Friday evening, 1 May, 1863, was that the Commander of the Army of Mississippi,  Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton (above), had finally transferred his headquarters to Vicksburg (below).  But that change of perspective, which once might have salvaged the campaign for the rebels, had been converted by time and events into a recipe for disaster.

The nature of that disaster threw its first shadow across the strong point of Port Hudson, 200 river miles south of Vicksburg. This narrow choke point in the Mississippi, had been bypassed by Grant's capture of Grand Gulf and Port Gibson.. So General Pemberton wired the commander of Port Hudson, 41 year old New Yorker,  Major General Franklin Kitchell Gardner, to bring his 2,000 man garrison  to Vicksburg, as quickly as possible.  It was the militarily sensible choice. With Vicksburg directly threatened, every man and gun would be needed to defend that vital point.

But a thousand miles away in Richmond, Virginia, 64 year old Confederate President, Jefferson Finis Davis (above), countermanded that order. He reminded  Pemberton, "To hold both Vicksburg and Port Hudson is necessary to a connection with the Trans-Mississippi."  Gardner and his 2,000 men would remain right where they were. Davis was right, of course. The South needed both points to stitch the Confederacy together. 

But it was also insanity.  The 2,000 man garrison was not strong enough to hold Port Hudson by themselves. But 2,000 more men might have made the difference at the upcoming battle of Champion's Hill (above).  Over the next 2 weeks President Davis would frantically jam another 5,000 men into the trenches around Port Hudson.  If those 7,000 men had gone to Vicksburg, they might have held the place, freeing the rest of Pemberton's army to remain mobile, and block a siege. The conundrum has given birth to an endless game of what if's, which would keep armchair generals busy for the next 200 years.

But the core of the issue is that Port Hudson (above) could not stand on its own.  If Port Hudson fell, a fortified Vicksburg, with a mobile field army to ward off a siege, might remain standing, even if isolated.  But if Vicksburg fell, Port Hudson was doomed. Pemberton knew that. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, now supposedly Pemberton's immediate superior, knew it. But by the time anyone had time to do anything about Port Hudson in May of 1863, it was too damn late. 

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