VICKSBURG Chapter Ninety - One

 

The whistle on the approaching locomotive shrieked in desperation. Angry hands grabbed the big iron “harp switch”, (above, left) and forcefully slammed the flagged handle aside. With a ringing thud the lever shoved the twin iron rails 3 inches, opening the point.

A cheer rose from the men watching round the station. The 4 large drive wheels on the locomotive abruptly stopped turning, and white yellow sparks danced where the iron wheels now slid along the iron rails. One of the thin men shouted, “We are done walking, General!” The rabble cheered again. One of the rebel officers drew his Navy Colt revolver from his belt.

The trouble began after the Army of Mississippi reached the Southern Railroad 12 miles east of Jackson. They had been marching for a week, from Vicksburg to Edwards Depot, to Raymond, 3 more days to the Pearl River, 2 more days to be ferried across and to march north to Brandon. They had been promised that here they would board cars of the Southern Railroad for the 40 mile ride to Enterprise, and then a one day march south to new camps where they would be fed and rested while they waited to be exchanged for Yankee prisoners, and get back into this war.

These 30,000 sick, exhausted Confederate soldiers watched train after train disappear toward Enterprise, carrying everything from supplies to the Mississippi Governor and his state's records. Then, on Wednesday, 15 May the men were told there would be no trains for them. Discipline collapsed.

Private Epram McDowell Anderson, a 21 year old from the First Missouri Brigade, witnessed the riot of weary men. “Efforts were made,” he wrote a year after the war, “by moving the switch, to throw the trains...from the track...officers had to draw and threaten to use their side-arms before the mob could be subdued. (Later) One man got up in the plaza of Brandon and offered to...go and hang (General) Pemberton, the traitor.” And still the dispirited remnants of the Army of Mississippi had to complete their journey via “shank's mare” to the Chickasawhay River and Enterprise, 12 miles inside Alabama.

General “Old Joe” Johnston (above) had to stop the trains, to protect the locomotives. West of the still damaged Pearl River bridge some 90 steam engines had been or soon would be lost by the Confederacy. None of these could be replaced. 

And while the Confederacy did everything it could to keep the Yankees from learning of the Brandon riot, 32 year old William Nugent, one time lawyer and now Mississippi Inspector General admitted in a 28 July letter to his wife Eleanor that, “...after the fall of Vicksburg I entertained the most gloomy forebodings...The great demoralization produced in our army...was enough to make one dispirited.” He hoped, he said, that with time the officers could, “...reorganize and re-discipline our army...”. It was a desperate hope. But with the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederacy had little left but desperation.

Disaster followed upon disaster. On Thursday, 9 July the outpost of Port Hudson surrendered 6,500 men to General Nathaniel Banks. On Friday, 10 July Joseph 'Old Joe' Johnston and his Army of Relief retreated back inside the defenses of Jackson. 

But with the Pearl River Bridge still not repaired, his 28,000 men had no hope of defending the town against the 40,000 Yankees gathering outside its trenches. The weather was hot, General Sherman noted, adding that “...on the morning of July 17th the place was found evacuated. General Steele's division was sent in pursuit as far as Brandon...but General Johnston had carried his army safely off, and pursuit in that hot weather would have been fatal to my command.”

And with that anticlimax, the Vicksburg campaign came to an end. Confederate President Jefferson Davis (above) had no doubt who and what was to blame for the outcome. Vicksburg was lost, he insisted, because of a “want of provisions inside and a general outside who would not fight.” The latter, in Davis' opinion,  being the cranky and passive-aggressive Joe Johnston - whom Davis had appointed. 

But what about the general inside, the uninspired and uninspiring Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above)? He was also Davis' choice. And Davis had advised him not to follow Johnston's' advice. It seemed to be all of a piece, that and Davis' refusal to admit any personal culpability in the disaster, 

The Vicksburg Campaign began in December of 1862 and had lasted 7 months through July of 1863. It cost the Yankees 10,000 dead, wounded and missing, while the Confederacy suffered over 45,000 causalities. 

In just 7 months, Jefferson Davis' insistence on holding Vicksburg and Port Hudson, even after Grant had destroyed the Pearl River Bridge, had cost the Confederate government an entire field army, as well as all but a 12 mile eastern sliver of the state of Mississippi, some 48,500 square miles of sovereignty lost.

Jefferson Davis' culpability in this disastrous campaign proved a damning indictment of his military skills. The President of the Confederacy had no business telling any general where to place his men. But he kept right on doing it.

David Dixon Porter (above),  the 53 year old Admiral of the Yankee brown water navy, had been accused of never praising a superior. And he was never a close friend of Grant's. But he had nothing but praise for the Yankee Major General. 

“No ordinary general could have taken Vicksburg” said Porter. “Some men would have given it up....some would have demanded half the resources of the Union; but Grant never wavered in his determination, or in his hopes of success."

Most important of all to Midwest farmers, a war which had seemed a stalemate 7 months earlier, was now clearly on the path to victory. As Lincoln put it, “The father of waters now ran un-vexed to the sea.”  And that was the achievement of Major General Ulysses Grant.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty - Four

 

When Captain William Yeger's company of cavalry slipped back into Jackson, Mississippi, late in the afternoon of 16 May, 1863, the town had been occupied by Yankees for less than 48 hours.  Still, Yeger discovered the Federal troops had destroyed the state arsenal and foundry, burned down a gun carriage factory and associated shops, including a tent maker, and – most importantly - burned the trestles of the long Vicksburg and Alabama railroad bridge over the Pearl River. It was Yankee General Sherman's opinion that as a military asset the city of Jackson would be out of business for 6 months.

General Joseph (“Old Joe”) Johnston (above), the Confederate commander for Tennessee and Mississippi, knew the Pearl River bridge must be his top priority, more important than even support of Pemberton's army in Vicksburg.   Without that bridge, he could not even comfortably supply his reoccupation of Jackson.

One hundred miles north of Jackson (above), beyond Yankee reach for the moment, in the town of Grenada, Johnston had ordered 400 locomotives and rail cars to be safely parked.  All that rolling stock was now trapped west of the Pearl River. The longer those locomotives sat in Grenada the greater the chance Yankee cavalry would destroy them all. It was the core of Jefferson Davis' fallacy that Vicksburg was a nail, a point to be defended. Or to put it another way, Vicksburg may have been Lincoln's key, but the Pearl River bridge was the lock. With the lock smashed, the key was meaningless.

So while in the Mississippi capital Governor John Jones Pettus fretted over stolen draperies, Johnston huddled with his Chief Quartermaster, 30 year old Major Livingston Mims, on how to replace the Pearl River bridge. While that was happening, Johnston struggled to assemble an army. He had less than 4,000 men, mostly Gregg's brigade. But within 48 hours, as expected, more troops arrived. First came the South Carolina brigade of General State's Rights Gist. 

With them came General William Henry Talbot Walker's (above) Georgia brigade. Johnston quickly recognized Walker's experience in the “old army” made him “the only officer in my command competent to lead a division” and on 23 May he promoted Walker to Major General and folded his and Gregg's and Gists brigades into a division.

Evander McNair's brigade of Tennessee regiments arrived soon after, along with 4 Texas regiments under 41 year old lawyer, General Mathew Duncan Ector. On 19 May, Brigadier General Samuel B. Maxey marched into Jackson with his troops, the last of the Port Hudson defenders to escape before the Yankees surrounded that place. None of these men had wagons, and they brought little artillery with them, but they were present and accounted for.  

These 6, 498 men formed a division under 44 year old Mississippi planter, Major General Samuel Gibbs French (above).   Johnston's newly named Army of Relief now numbered about 11,000 men.  And that afternoon the division of Major General William Wing Loring came stumbling in as well.

Separated - intentionally or not - from Pemberton's main force during the battle of Champion Hill on 16 May - - Loring (above)'s  men had 'force marched' 40 miles in 24 hours to escape.  His artillerymen spiked 12 of their own cannon and freed their horses. Many of the infantry dropped their muskets and ammunition to lighten their load while crossing rivers.  At 3:00 am on 17 May they had reached Dillon, where both Loring and Pemberton had expected to find Grant's supply trains. 

There were no Yankees in Dillon, but scouts soon found 500 Federal troops at Utica. Not looking for a fight, Loring forced marched his exhausted 6,000 men around the town. That evening they reached Crystal Springs, where they finally felt safe enough to collapse and sleep.

Taking a day to recover, Loring's division reached Jackson on the evening of 19 May. He had lost “...our artillery, wagons, knapsacks, blankets, and everything we had.” They had also lost 3,000 stragglers. Most of those men would stumble in over the next week. But Loring's division of 6,049 men would not be an offensive force for weeks to come. 

Three days later a brigade from North Carolina arrived in Jackson, having been on the move since early May. It's commander was the brilliant tactician, foul mouthed and argumentative and often drunk General Nathan George “Shanks” Evens. This brigade was folded into French's division. Johnston's Army of relief now numbered about 23,000 men.

Adam's troopers gave Johnston a good idea of what he faced in trying to relieve Vicksburg. As early as 10 June, Grant had assigned General John Parke's IX Corps to defend his supply base at Snyder's Bluff. And he had pushed a division from Sherman's Corps eastward to defend the crossing at the Big Black River Bridge, and pushed a second division toward Sataritia, about half way to Yazoo City. As reinforcements continued to arrive in Jackson, Johnston countered by sending General Walker's division to Yazoo City, and Loring's division 6 miles behind at Benton, along the Southern Railroad to Vicksburg.

By 31 May, Major Mims had gathered “large numbers” of slaves and enough iron rails and cross ties, to begin replacing the tracks and short bridges immediately around Jackson. But the Pearl River bridge was a greater challenge. 

The river itself was only about 50 feet wide. But the the approach from Jackson first dropped 5 to 8 feet off the lip of of an escarpment – part of the Jackson Hills. Wooden trestles were the obvious solution there. However, a hundred yards or so on, the roadbed abruptly dropped over a 20 foot cliff, to the river itself. A pair of surviving stone towers could again carry rails across that muddy stream.

But on the eastern shore, the construction engineers had to deal with a quarter mile wide flood plain, with a water table inches below the surface. Trestles here had been mounted on broad stone bases until higher and firmer ground was reached (above, right center). But the Yankees had burned all those trestles. The charred wood and bent rails had to be cleared and the heat cracked stones replaced. It would not be until mid June before Major Mims could even begin rebuilding the long bridge.

On Friday, 29 May, Johnston (above) sent a dispatch rider to Lieutenant General Pemberton, 50 miles to the west. As usual it was a less than cheerful note. It began, “I am too weak to save Vicksburg. Can do no more than attempt to save you and your garrison. It will be impossible to extricate you, unless you co-operate, and we make mutually supporting movements. Communicate your plans and suggestions, if possible.”

That same day, 50 miles away in Vicksburg, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above) sent his own message to Johnston. “I have 18,000 men to man the lines and river front; no reserves. I do not think you should move with less than 30,000 or 35,000, and then, if possible, toward Snyder's Mill, (Chickasaw Bayou, after) giving me notice...My men are in good spirits, awaiting your arrival...You may depend on my holding the place as long as possible...”.

On Monday, 1 June, 43 year old Kentucky politician, General John Cabell Breckinridge (above)  arrived in Jackson from Chattanooga, with his 5,200 man division. Breckenridge was a friend of Johnston's, who  had suffered in Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg. And, finally, on Wednesday, 3 June, the 3,000 man cavalry division of 27 year old William Hicks “Red” Jackson rode in from Tennessee. All told, Johnston now had about 27,000 men. It was unlikely he would ever be stronger, as Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon (below), continually reminded Johnston.

Seddon (above)  offered to send him even more of Bragg's army, if Johnston would just attack. But Johnston cautioned, “To take from Bragg what is required to deal effectively with Grant will involve yielding Tennessee.” Johnston could almost hear Confederate President Jefferson Davis screaming in the background when Sedden replied on Tuesday, 16 June. “I rely on you” said Seddon/Davis, “to avert the loss. If better resources do not offer, you must attack.”

Davis (above) was arguing that it would be better to lose Tennessee, so the south could concentrate its full strength to save Vicksburg,  after which Tennessee  could be retaken. But he never said that explicitly.  As a politician, he couldn't. But Johnston never understood that subtly. The two men had argued this point for 3 years now, without either one understanding the other. They had now been reduced to using Seddon as a cut out, to avoid Johnston resigning or Davis firing him.

Still, Johnston tried one more time on Tuesday, 19 June. “You do not appreciate the difficulties in the course you direct,” - “that” being an all out attack on Grant - “nor the probability and consequence of failure. Grant's position, naturally strong, is entrenched...His reinforcements have been at least equal to my whole force. The Big Black covers him from attack, and would cut off our retreat if defeated. We cannot combine operations with Pemberton, from uncertain and slow communication. The defeat of this little army would at once open Mississippi and Alabama to Grant.”

Seddon/Davis' reply showed clearly that Davis was again on the verge of firing Johnston. And that would have done no one any good.  “Consequences realized,” Seddon/Davis bluntly responded.  “I take the responsibility, and leave you free to follow the most desperate course the occasion may demand. Rely upon it, the eyes and hopes of the whole Confederacy are upon you, with the full confidence that you will act, and with the sentiment that it is better to fail nobly daring, than, through prudence even, to be inactive. I rely upon you to save Vicksburg.'"

To Save Vicksburg. This was Johnston's new mission. How he was to achieve this Davis offered no advice.  Maybe there was no way to do what Davis insisted upon.  But Davis insisted it be tried. Whatever the cost.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Two

 

On Saturday, 9 May, 1863, 56 year old General Joseph Eggelston Johnson (above) received a telegram from the Confederate Secretary of War, 47 year old James Alexander Seddon. In classic Seddon double-talk, it read, “Proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief command of the forces there, giving to those in the field, as far as practicable, the encouragement and benefit of your personal direction. Arrange to take for temporary service with you, or to be followed without delay, three thousand good troops...now on their way to General Pemberton...and more may be expected.”

To Johnson's experienced eye the missive set him up to be blamed for the military disaster created by the arrogant meddlesome martinet, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ((above). And hidden in Seddon's verbosity were two ugly realities. There were no additional troops available, and Davis reserved the right to make things worse by interfering at any time with Johnson's command. 

The unwelcome call to duty found Johnson still recovering from his 1862 wounds, almost bedridden in muddy little village of Tullahoma, Tennessee, watching the 45,000 hungry men of The Army of Tennessee slowly starving to death.  It was clear to Johnson, that his subordinate, 46 year old General Braxton Bragg, was going to be easy prey, as soon as the well fed 50,000 man Federal Army of the Cumberland,  under 42 year old Major General William Starke “Rosy” Rosecrans, decided to move against them.  But south of Bragg's precarious position was the vital railroad junction town of Chattanooga, Tennessee, through which food and arms from Alabama and Georgia were being  carried to the rebel Army of Northern Virginia.  Surprisingly little of that bounty reached Bragg's much closer but slowly dwindling army.

Like the arrogant and annoying carbuncle Jefferson Davis thought him to be, Johnson replied promptly. He wrote, “ I shall go immediately, although unfit for field-service. I had been prevented, by the orders of the Administration, from giving my personal attention to military affairs in Mississippi at any time since the 22d of January. On the contrary, those orders had required my presence in Tennessee during the whole of that period.” You could almost hear Davis spit in reply across the humming telegraph wires.

Pausing in his whining, on Sunday morning, 10 May, 1863, Joseph Johnson boarded an express train headed south for Chattanooga. Arriving on the Tennessee River, he was less than 400 miles from his destination, via first the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, to Corinth, Mississippi, where he would previously have changed to the Mobile and Ohio rail line directly to Jackson. At 30 miles an hour the journey should have taken less than a day. But Corinth had been in Federal hands for a year, and that route was no longer available to Confederates.

So, from Chattanooga, General Johnson had to continue 140 miles south via the Western and Atlantic Railroad to Atlanta, Georgia. There he had to switch to the Atlanta and West Point Railroad to connect in that city with the Western Railway of Alabama, in order to reach Montgomery - another 160 miles of travel. It is famously only 50 miles from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, home in 1863 to the Ordnance and Naval Foundry complex at the head of navigation on the Alabama River. And it was only 50 miles further to Meridian, Mississippi, along the planned route of the Alabama and Mississippi Railroad. But the war had broken out before that line had reach much beyond Selma, and the final 50 mile gap would never be completely closed – a bridge over the Tombigbee River would not be built until the 1870's.

So, after reaching Selma, General Johnson had to shift to a spur of the Nashville and Louisville railroad, which traveled 176 miles south and west to Mobile Alabama. There he was able to transfer to the Mobile and Ohio railroad for the 150 mile trip almost due north to Meridian, Mississippi. Once there, the weary and wounded General could board a Southern Railroad express for the final 100 miles to the capital city - Jackson, Mississippi. The 400 mile original trip had been almost doubled and the travel time tripled. Johnson did not arrive in Jackson until Wednesday, 13 May, 1863 – a day late and a far more than a dollar short.

As the sun rose on Tuesday, 12 May 1863, 19 year old regimental adjutant Henry Otis Dwight (above), was marching north out of Utica, Mississippi in the lead of 7,000 federal infantry. He recalled, “The weather was splendid, the roads were in fine condition and there was plenty to eat in the country.” He also noted, “...we were more conscientious about taking (about) what we wanted than where we were.”

Where they were was deep in the bowels of the Confederacy, without a safe line of retreat or a reliable line of supply. And yet they were supremely confident in themselves and their commanders - from 38 year old Colonel Manning Ferguson Force of the 20^th Ohio, all the way up to 37 year old commander of the 3^rd division, 37 year old Illinois native John “Jack” Alexander Logan.

Logan had been born and raised in the southern tip of of the north which touched the slaves states of Missouri and Kentucky. The busy port of Cairo, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers,  along with the towns of Thebes, Goshen and Karnak, inspired the title usually given to the region - “Little Egypt”. In fact Cairo, Illinois was further south than Richmond, Virginia. 

And although the 1847 state constitution made Illinois a “free state”, there were always slaves to be found in “Little Egypt”. And as a member of the state legislature in 1853, John Logan had authored the “Black Law”, which fined any free black man or woman $50 if they stayed in Illinois for longer than 10 days. It earned him the nickname, “Dirty Work Logan”. The fine was increased by $50 for each re-arrest. But even as members of his own family, and his long time law partner condemned him for the law and his support for slavery, John Logan, as a Stephen Douglas Democrat,  spoke against secession. At the behest of then Colonel Ulysses  Grant, he told a crowd of potential recruits, "There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots or traitors."

It was understandable then, if there were many who thought “Black” John Logan was a little crazy. He certainly looked it. Logan was “...not a large man, (but) his long black hair, piercing ebony eyes, and swarthy complexion gave (him)...an impressive presence.” He was also a political general, given a command because he could raise troops and inspire loyalty in a conflicted region. And he turned out to be a damn good field commander. Wounded three times at Fort Donaldson, and reported as dead on the casualty list, he kept his unit in the fight and held off the rebel attempt to break out. General Logan missed the battle of Shiloh while his wife nursed him back to health. But by the spring of 1863, he was back in the saddle, and in command of the 3^rd Division as it marched across Mississippi.

What John Logan saw of slavery in the flesh, in all of its ugly sexist brutality,  convinced this racist that Americans of black skin must be given their freedom, and the right to vote. No less a man than Frederick Douglas once said that if a man like “Black” Jack Logan could have a change of heart about race, then there was hope for everyone. And out in front of  Logan's hope, just after 10:00am this Tuesday morning, was Henry Dwight, and the men of the 20^th Ohio.

Dwight wrote later, “The road lay through woods and fields, passing few houses, and what there were were as still as a farmhouse in haying time...Sometimes an old negro woman would appear, bowing and smirking, and then when the first embarrassment had worn off like she would say: “Lord a masay! Be there any more men where you uns come from? ‘Pears like as if I nebber saw so many men since I’se been born.” At this, some one would be sure to give the regular answer in such cases made and provided: “Yes, aunty, we come from the place where they make men.

“After a while... we heard two pops, which we were able to recognize as gunshots, far on in front. “Hello, somebody is shooting squirrels,” said one of the boys. “Pop, pop, pop,” came three more shots in quick succession, but a little nearer. “The squirrels are shooting back,” growled a burly Irishman, “and sure it’s meself that don’t approve of that kind of squirrel shooting, not a bit of it.”

It was the beginning of the battle or Raymond. And within a few hours, the military situation in Mississippi would be very different.

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