VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - One

 

As sunlight first touched Chancellorsville, Virginia on Monday, 4 May, 1863, both armies were staggering back from a disaster. The 133,000 man Federal Army of the Potomac under Joe Hooker had literally been worse than decimated, losing some 17,000 men - 1,600 dead, 9,800 wounded and almost 6,000 captured or missing. - almost 13% of their total strength.   But the 60,000 man rebel Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee had suffered some 13,000 causalities - 1,700 dead, 9,000 wounded and over 2,000 captured or missing – or over 20% of their strength. 

General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker,  although still in command,  rightly bore most of the blame for the Federal failure.  He was mocked in the press both south (above) and north.  However, although few could see it at the time, the tragedy was a tactical victory for the Confederates, but a strategic defeat.

Two advantages helped disguise the scale of the disaster for General Lee's army.  First and foremost, General Longstreet's corps had not been present at Chancellorsville.  Lee (above) had been forced to disperse one third of his army,  some  30,000 men , to southern tidewater Virginia, so they could be fed.  They would now be rejoining Lee -  combat veterans, fresh and not blunted by a wasting battle.   And secondly, Lee had won a clear psychological victory over Hooker.  Lee, it seemed,  always won his battles with the Army of the Potomac. But Lee knew better.

The only shadow which seemed to darken this victory was that Lee's right hand man,  the  religiously fanatical General “Stonewall” Jackson,  had lost his left arm at Chancellorsville.  He was bedridden now, and would not be available to General Lee on his invasion of Pennsylvania. And Lee must invade. His army would never be stronger.  And only in the north would the Confederacy find the surpluses to feed, clothe and arm their soldiers.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, most of the 42,000 men under Lieutenant General John Pemberton were

marching to realign after Grant's attack around the rebel right flank. There were now about 33,000 men in and around Vicksburg, another 6,000 in and around Jackson, with perhaps 2,000 men in Port Hudson on the Mississippi, just above Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Pemberton's first impulse had been to abandon Port Hudson and call the garrison back to Vicksburg,  but Confederate President Jefferson Davis had countermanded that order.  In fact, over the next few weeks Davis would feed another 10,000 reinforcements into the isolated post, while commanders elsewhere in the state would be starved for men.

One of the most powerful Confederate regiments was on a forced march to Grand Gulf that morning - the 400 plus men of the 26^th Mississippi Infantry.   In April they had repelled the Federals at Fort Pemberton.  Now, they were ordered to Grand Gulf. They might have used the Southern Railroad to save time and energy, but after the raid on Newton Station, that line was no longer available.  The only way to get from the Yazoo delta to Grand Gulf was on foot.  And for two and a half days they had been marching under their colonel, A.E. Reynolds.  But they only got as far as Bayou Pierre before running into the Federals, who were marching north to meet them.

Their commander, the acquisitive Arthur Exum Reynolds,  was a big man in Tishomingo County - he was rich, he was politically powerful and he was fat. The 300 pound lawyer (above, evidently holding in his gut)  had moved to the north eastern corner of Mississippi in the early 1840's, once the Chickasaw native peoples had been forced out.  After the Presidential election of 1860, as a wealthy state representative "A.E." was a natural choice to represent his county at the secession convention. He agreed with the majority that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery",  but like 16 others he voted to wait until other states had joined the rebellion before taking the ultimate step.

When they did, "A.E." raised his own 400 man regiment. He was unanimously elected Colonel of the 26^th.  They arrived at Fort Donaldson, Tennessee in February of 1862 (above) - just in time to suffer 12 dead and 69 wounded in their and General Grant's first major battle.  During that engagement, "A.E."'s horse was killed, and the substantial Colonel, while uninjured, lacked the wind to keep up with his unit under his own power. So he led from the rear. The entire regiment, including A.E., were forced to surrender. They were paroled and reformed in September at Jackson, Mississippi. The 46 year old A.E. was again in command as they skirmished with Grant's army during his December 1862 advance to and January 1863 retreat from Grenada, Mississippi.  And now under orders from the profane General Loring, A.E. wisely offered only token resistance to the advancing Yankees.

Captain Patterson's  engineers worked all night to repair the bridge over the North Fork of Bayou Pierre, and at 5:30 the morning of Monday, 4 May, 1863, General Smith's division crossed the bridge and continued up the Port Gibson road toward Willow Springs. As they approached the tiny community a battery of rebel artillery from the Mississippi 26th made a show of firing a few rounds, but retreated before Federal artillery could return the favor. And with that the valuable fresh water of Willow Springs fell into Union hands.

While the Yankees were refilling their canteens a civilian plantation owner appeared riding a mule and demanding to speak with the officer in charge. The General's soldiers, the outraged plantation owner complained, had stolen everything in his larder - pigs and cows and horses. 

The man demanded his property be returned and the thieves punished. The craggy General Smith calmly ask the planter who owned the mule he had arrived upon. It was his mule, responded the planter. Well, said General Smith, the thieves could not have been his men, because his men would not have left the mule behind. And with that the planter was sent on his way, on foot.

Clearly, the troops were already working to stretch their rations beyond the ten days they had been told to make them last. And they were having no trouble doing that.  However General Smith did not allow his men to tarry at the springs or forage too much along their route. That very afternoon Smith pushed his men forward through Rock Springs,  5 miles to Harkinson's Ferry -  the main crossing of the Big Black River by the Port Gibson Road.  They arrived there just as the day was ending, and after a brief exchange of cannon fire the 20th Ohio Infantry stormed across the bridge, forcing the rebels to assume that Grant was going to make a drive directly for Vicksburg, just 20 miles further north.  The Yankees did little more than raid up the road, but if an immediate  assault in Vicksburg was not Grant's intention, what was next for the Army of the Tennessee?

Before he had even crossed the Mississippi  River, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant (above) understood what he was risking by passing below the still active guns at Vicksburg. He would write later, “To have no communications - to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole army without a rear link was a tremendous gamble!" Once over the river he could not retreat, there would be no rescue and no resupply. He could not merely stay where he was.  He had to fight and he had to win, every fight and every skirmish. A single reversal could force him to pause and any pause would spell doom.  But fight who, and fight where?

There was still the possibility of joining with Nathaniel Banks( above)  and his 30,000 man Army of the Gulf,  and together crushing Port Hudson and then marching north to Vicksburg with 70,000 men.   But Banks had been tempted to follow a will-o-wisp of easy victories up Bayou Teeche, moving farther away from the key battleground of the Mississippi River.  The Massachusetts political general would not meet his promised return date of 10 May in front of Port Hudson.  And Grant could not wait until Banks returned. Grant had the initiative, and he could not surrender it,  else Pemberton would eventually gather strength against him. He most move forward. And after a bath in the newly liberated fortress of Grand Gulf, Grant rode north to keep a close eye on his most troublesome subordinate, Major General John McClernand.

Grant arrived at Rocky Springs after a daylong ride, "...by a strange and circuitous road." The next morning he might move directly on Vicksburg.  But he had only some 30,000 men in 2 corps drawing up to the Big Black River south of the city.  And Pemberton had about that same number in the new fortifications on the eastern side of Vicksburg.  Isolated as he was , Grant could not afford any battle which offered him less than favorable odds.   Deep in his enemies' rear,  he must keep the Confederates divided and not allow them to concentrate against him. Grant truly had the elephant by the tail.  He needed Sherman to join him, as quickly as possible.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Three

The horsemen of the 6^th Illinois cavalry arrived in LaGrange Tennessee on Friday, 7 November, 1862. The rebel pickets fired a few shots as a formality, but their real task was observe and then to retreat and  report the Federal advance of “thirty regiments of infantry and four of cavalry” occupying  the little Tennessee vacation town. 

Poet, teacher and farmer, 40 year old Captain Henry Clinton Forbes (above), saw  LaGrange,  Tennessee as a...

“...neat little place of about a thousand people. The yards were beautifully improved, filled with evergreens and rare shrubberies. A fine college building crowned a gentle eminence to the east of the town and a Seminary for Ladies (above)  looked across it from the North.”

As a military objective LaGrange had but one asset. It stood at the edge of a 300 foot high bluff (above, lower center)  over looking the Coldwater River valley. 

The headwaters of the Coldwater (above) meandered southward...

... combining with first the Tallahatche River (above)....

, and then at Greenwood, Mississippi, the Coldwater combined with the Yalobusha River...

...to form the meandering Yazoo,  The low lands between the Yazoo and the Mississippi, formed the Mississippi Delta, AKA the Great Yazoo Swamp.... 

...which emptied into the Mississippi River just above Vicksburg. Invading the state here placed a federal army directly astride the head of all the rivers which controlled region. But even more importantly, the northern out post of the 24,000 man rebel Army of Mississippi, still recovering from the disaster at Corinth, was visible just  23 miles away at Holly Springs. 

The real prize of this avenue of attack was 220 miles to the south in the state capital and industrial and communication hub of Jackson (above), Mississippi.  It was here that the east/west Southern Railroad (blue) from Vicksburg, touched the north/south Central Mississippi railroad. The Southern RR then crossed the Pearl River bridge before connecting with Alabama and points east. Once Jackson was occupied and it's industry and rail lines and the Pearl River bridge were all destroyed, the wealth of the trans-Mississippi Confederacy might as well be on the moon for all the good it would do the rebellious government in  Richmond, Virginia. 

This is what Grant as a West Point graduate and a military professional knew - and what Abraham Lincoln and John McClernand as amateurs did not: occupying Jackson, Mississippi and destroying it's contents would accomplish everything the amateurs believed capturing Vicksburg would.  And Jackson was a lot easier to approach, and the approach would be easier to supply, via the Central Mississippi railroad.  And that is why Grant was concentrating his 42,000 man Army of the Tennessee against central Mississippi in  November of 1862. 

But the destruction of that railroad was not Grant's only objective, of course. Of at least equal importance was the destruction of Pemberton's army. The primary object of the entire war was stamping out the rebellion, and that meant imposing the will of the majority of Americans on those who sought to destroy by violence the means by which the will of the majority was peacefully expressed - the constitution. 

And then there was the need to actually clear the Mississippi river for commerce, to allow it to run "unvexed  to the sea". So, yes, Vicksburg would eventually have to be occupied, as well as it's mate at the river check point further south, Port Hudson. And the Army of the Cumberland under Grant's command, was the way that was going to happen, beginning here, in central Mississippi.

Coming south from Bolivar, Tennessee were two divisions - about 10,000 men - under a Grant favorite, the young and smart Major General James McPherson. (above) 

Advancing west from Corinth, Mississippi were three divisions - about 15,000 men -  under the combative Major General Charles Hamilton (above). His column was led by the 2^nd Iowa Volunteer Cavalry, which occupied Grand Junction, just 3 miles east of LaGrange, thus joining the right  and center wings of the Army of the Tennessee 

The left wing was nominally commanded by the sour but combative Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above), But his three infantry divisions of about 15,000 men,  were tasked with defending  Memphis, with only the additional assignment of backing up Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson's  6^th Illinois Cavalry,  in their capture of LaGrange.

Instead the effective right wing of the Army of the Tennessee would be a single infantry division and a cavalry detachment under Hoosier General Alvin Peterson Hovey (above), commanding the Eastern District of Arkansas. Steaming from the port of Helena on the Mississippi River, he was to advance overland to the Coldwater River and destroy railroad bridges around Grenada – thus unflanking the  rebel defensive line along the Yalobusha, the last river line before Jackson.  

In planning his advance Grant had secreted himself and his staff in Nashville's City Hotel (above). With maps and reports scattered about his rooms, Grant familiarized himself with the terrain of Mississippi, until he had committed every inch of it to memory.

And doing this, Grant noticed a three mile stretch of 90 foot high bluffs, 23 miles above Vicksburg rising above the lethargic and meandering Yazoo River.

Eventually he could name most of the features of these otherwise obscure Walnut Hills (above)  - Drumgould's Bluff, Snyder's Mill and Snyder's bluff, Haine's Landing and Haine's Bluff, the Johnson Plantation and Chickasaw Bayou.  And as Grant began his advance down the center of Mississippi, he kept those bluffs in mind. It was that attention to detail which was to make Ulysses Grant the greatest general of his generation. 

So, on Sunday, 2 November, 1862 Grant informed Washington, "I have commenced a movement on Grand Junction with three divisions from Corinth and two from Bolivar [Tennessee]. Will leave here to-morrow evening and take command in person. If found practical, I will go on to Holly Springs, and maybe Grenada...",.

Grant sounded confident, but besides fighting the rebel army under General Earl Van Dorn and chasing off rebel cavalry raids against his supply lines - all under the shadow of the approaching winter - Grant was also engaged in combat with Washington. His immediate boss, newly promoted General-in-Chief Henry "the Brain" Halleck (above) had long harbored doubts about Grant's sobriety. And Lincoln, who had never met Grant, had just appointed McClernand to compete with him for supplies and reinforcements in Tennessee. So Grant decided to ask for clarification. In official channels, meaning publicly, he asked Halleck directly. What was McClernand's authority to be? Did the Illinious doppleganger answer to Grant, or did Grant answer to him?

The request made Lincoln painfully aware of the error he had made in allowing his old friend to have access to him . And it forced Halleck to do something he hated to do: make a decision. On 11 November, 1862, "The Brain" was forced to telegraph Grant a single, simple clear sentence. "You have command of all troops in your department, and have permission to fight the enemy where you please." So his authority was now unambiguous. Lots of people in Washington might not like having to trust Grant, but they now were publicly committed to supporting him, But Halleck's approval of Grant's advance had just a whiff of reserve. He approved the invasion of Mississippi, "...as soon as you are strong enough for that purpose." So if he faced a reversal that would be taken to show he had not been strong enough..

When the 2nd Iowa Cavalry occupied Holly Springs (above) without a major fight on Saturday, 15 November, Grant faced yet another problem. He commanded some 30,000 infantrymen available for front line duty, backed up with only some 5,000 cavalry troopers. That was far too few horsemen to preform reconnaissance and picket duty over an 80 mile wide front. And that yawning shortage would increase with ever step the army took southward. Grant needed to use infantry to substitute for his lack of cavalry. 

Referring to the gauntlets worn by the troopers, Grant telegraphed Sherman, back in Memphis, "I cannot move...with a force sufficient to handle that number without gloves." And while he waited for what reinforcements Sherman could send,  Grant established his first major supply depot at Holly Springs. 

Back in Memphis (above), Sherman now had options.  Thanks to Major General John McClernand's recruiting, 15,000 fresh men had or were about to arrive. And while they took over guarding the forts surrounding the Mississippi River port, and were drilled until they became soldiers, Sherman could now fulfill Grant's request,  advancing two divisions via the Central Mississippi Railroad to Holly Springs.

It appeared to Grant that by the time McClenrand had finished his honeymoon, Jackson Mississippi would be in burnt to the ground, and any attack on Vicksburg would be rendered redundant. His mistake, like the error in judgement made by so many general officers on both sides, was that Grant had underestimated Rebel Major General Earl Van Dorn (below).

    

- 30 -

VICKSBURG - Chapter Twenty - Eight

 

As sunlight first struck Virginia on Monday, 4 May, 1863, both armies were staggering back from the disaster of the battle of Chancellorsville. The 133,000 man Federal Army of the Potomac under Joe Hooker had literally been worse than decimated, losing some 17,000 men - 1,600 dead, 9,800 wounded and almost 6,000 captured or missing. - almost 13% of their total strength.   But the 60,000 man rebel Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee had suffered some 13,000 causalities - 1,700 dead, 9,000 wounded and over 2,000 captured or missing – or over 20% of their strength. 

General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker,  although still in command,  rightly bore most of the blame for the Federal failure.  He was mocked in the press both south (above) and north.  However, although few could see it at the time, the tragedy was a tactical victory for the Confederates, but a strategic defeat.

Two advantages helped disguise the scale of the disaster for General Lee's army.  First and foremost, General Longstreet's corps had not been present at Chancellorsville.  Lee (above) had been forced to disperse one third of his army,  some  30,000 men , to southern tidewater Virginia, so they could be fed.  They would now be rejoining Lee -  combat veterans, fresh and not blunted by a wasting battle.   And secondly, Lee had won a clear psychological victory over Hooker.  Lee, it seemed,  always won his battles with the Army of the Potomac. But Lee knew better.

The only shadow which seemed to darken this victory was that Lee's right hand man,  the  religiously fanatical General “Stonewall” Jackson,  had lost his left arm at Chancellorsville.  He was bedridden now, and would not be available to General Lee on his invasion of Pennsylvania. And Lee must invade. His army would never be stronger.  And only in the north would the Confederacy find the surpluses to feed, clothe and arm their soldiers.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, most of the 42,000 men under Lieutenant General John Pemberton were

marching to realign after Grant's attack around the rebel right flank. There were now about 33,000 men in and around Vicksburg, another 6,000 in and around Jackson, with perhaps 2,000 men in Port Hudson on the Mississippi, just above Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Pemberton's first impulse had been to abandon Port Hudson and call the garrison back to Vicksburg,  but Confederate President Jefferson Davis had countermanded that order.  In fact, over the next few weeks Davis would feed another 10,000 reinforcements into the isolated post, while commanders elsewhere in the state would be starved for men.

One of the most powerful Confederate regiments was on a forced march to Grand Gulf that morning - the 400 plus men of the 26^th Mississippi Infantry.   In April they had repelled the Federals at Fort Pemberton.  Now, they were ordered to Grand Gulf. They might have used the Southern Railroad to save time and energy, but after the raid on Newton Station, that line was no longer available.  The only way to get from the Yazoo delta to Grand Gulf was on foot.  And for two and a half days they had been marching under their colonel, A.E. Reynolds.  But they only got as far as Bayou Pierre before running into the Federals, who were marching north to meet them.

Their commander, the acquisitive Arthur Exum Reynolds,  was a big man in Tishomingo County - he was rich, he was politically powerful and he was fat. The 300 pound lawyer (above, evidently holding in his gut)  had moved to the north eastern corner of Mississippi in the early 1840's, once the Chickasaw native peoples had been forced out.  After the Presidential election of 1860, as a wealthy state representative "A.E." was a natural choice to represent his county at the secession convention. He agreed with the majority that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery",  but like 16 others he voted to wait until other states had joined the rebellion before taking the ultimate step.

When they did, "A.E." raised his own 400 man regiment. He was unanimously elected Colonel of the 26^th.  They arrived at Fort Donaldson, Tennessee in February of 1862 (above) - just in time to suffer 12 dead and 69 wounded in their and General Grant's first major battle.  During that engagement, "A.E."'s horse was killed, and the substantial Colonel, while uninjured, lacked the wind to keep up with his unit under his own power. So he led from his rear. The entire regiment, including A.E., were forced to surrender. They were paroled and reformed in September at Jackson, Mississippi. The 46 year old A.E. was again in command as they skirmished with Grant's army during his December 1862 advance to and January 1863 retreat from Grenada, Mississippi.  And now under orders from the profane General Loring, A.E. wisely offered only token resistance to the advancing Yankees.

Captain Patterson's  engineers worked all night to repair the bridge over the North Fork of Bayou Pierre, and at 5:30 the morning of Monday, 4 May, 1863, General Smith's division crossed the bridge and continued up the Port Gibson road toward Willow Springs. As they approached the tiny community a battery of rebel artillery from the Mississippi 26th made a show of firing a few rounds, but retreated before Federal artillery could return the favor. And with that the valuable fresh water of Willow Springs fell into Union hands.

While the Yankees were refilling their canteens a civilian plantation owner appeared riding a mule and demanding to speak with the officer in charge. The General's soldiers, the outraged plantation owner complained, had stolen everything in his larder - pigs and cows and horses. 

The man demanded his property be returned and the thieves punished. The craggy General Smith calmly ask the planter who owned the mule he had arrived upon. It was his mule, responded the planter. Well, said General Smith, the thieves could not have been his men, because his men would not have left the mule behind. And with that the planter was sent on his way, on foot.

Clearly, the troops were already working to stretch their rations beyond the ten days they had been told to make them last. And they were having no trouble doing that.  However General Smith did not allow his men to tarry at the springs or forage too much along their route. That very afternoon Smith pushed his men forward through Rock Springs,  5 miles to Harkinson's Ferry -  the main crossing of the Big Black River by the Port Gibson Road.  They arrived there just as the day was ending, and after a brief exchange of cannon fire the 20th Ohio Infantry stormed across the bridge, forcing the rebels to assume that Grant was going to make a drive directly for Vicksburg, just 20 miles further north.  The Yankees did little more than raid up the road, but if an immediate  assault in Vicksburg was not Grant's intention, what was next for the Army of the Tennessee?

Before he had even crossed the Mississippi  River, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant (above) understood what he was risking by passing below the still active guns at Vicksburg. He would write later, “To have no communications - to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole army without a rear link was a tremendous gamble!" Once over the river he could not retreat, there would be no rescue and no resupply. He could not merely stay where he was.  He had to fight and he had to win, every fight and every skirmish. A single reversal could force him to pause and any pause would spell doom.  But fight who, and fight where?

There was still the possibility of joining with Nathaniel Banks( above)  and his 30,000 man Army of the Gulf,  together crushing Port Hudson and then marching north to Vicksburg with 70,000 men.   But Banks had been tempted to follow a will-o-wisp of easy victories up Bayou Teeche, moving farther away from the key battleground of the Mississippi River.  The Massachusetts political general would not meet his promised return date of 10 May in front of Port Hudson.  And Grant could not wait until Banks returned. Grant had the initiative, and he could not surrender it,  else Pemberton would eventually gather strength against him. He most move forward. And after a bath in the newly liberated fortress of Grand Gulf, Grant rode north to keep a close eye on his most troublesome subordinate, Major General John McClernand.

Grant arrived at Rocky Springs after a daylong ride, "...by a strange and circuitous road." The next morning he might move directly on Vicksburg.  But he had only some 30,000 men in 2 corps drawing up to the Big Black River south of the city.  And Pemberton had about that same number in the new fortifications on the eastern side of Vicksburg.  Isolated as he was , Grant could not afford any battle which offered him less than favorable odds.   Deep in his enemies' rear,  he must keep the Confederates divided and not allow them to concentrate against him. Grant truly had the elephant by the tail.  He needed Sherman to join him, as quickly as possible.

- 30 -