VICKSBURG Chapter FIfty

In the dark, late on the evening of Thursday, 14 May, 1863, after abandoning Jackson, Mississippi General Joe Johnston (above) paused 6 miles north along the New Orleans and Memphis rail line. There he composed another missive – to call it an order seems to be stretching that definition beyond the breaking point - to Lieutenant General Pemberton, somewhere to the west, near Bovina Station. He wondered if Pemberton might be able to cut Grant's supply line. He wondered how long Grant's army could survive, once it's supply had been cut. And he urge, again, that Pemberton unit their forces. “I am anxious to see a force assembled that may be able to inflict a heavy blow upon the enemy." And that was the passive aggressive order he sent to Pemberton, near midnight on Friday, 15, May.

Later that morning another 4,000 man brigade joined his forces, bringing Johnston's strength to about 10,000 men. But the new arrivals were exhausted, and needed at least a day to recover. More troops were coming, and within a week Johnston would have perhaps 30,000 men. But ominously, forty miles to the west on that morning, Lieutenant General Pemberton and his army was not moving toward a junction, as ordered earlier, but were waiting.

Pemberton's original plan had been a compromise between his conflicting orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis to hold Vicksburg, and his “orders” from General Joe Johnston, to abandon the city and march his army east to join forces with Johnston's gathering little force. Pemberton's solution to this conflict seemed practical. 

Pemberton left 2 divisions of infantry and the battalion of artillerymen – about 13,000 men in total – to hold Vicksburg and the heights above the mouth of the Yazoo River. With his remaining 3 divisions of infantry and Wade Adam's Cavalry -about 17,000 men - he would advance eastward along the Southern Railroad to Edward's Depot (above). By staying along the railroad he was protecting his own supply line.

However last night, at a council of war, Pemberton had accepted Major General Loring's suggestion, that the army should strike away from the railroad, toward Raymond – 20 miles to the southeast. The goal was to cut Grant's supply line, force him to pull back to protect his “line of communications”, and thus allow Johnston's smaller force to safely advance and link up with Pemberton. Thus Grant would be forced to react to the rebels for a change, perhaps even cause him to make a mistake. But, leaving the railroad required shifting the Confederate's supply line. And that required finding more horses and wagons.

It took time to seize the transport – until now Pemberton had refused to simply take what he needed – and to load the wagons and organize them into a column. And so Pemberton's entire army spent the morning on their asses while this wagon train was formed. The rebel army was not ready to move until the morning was almost gone. And then, before the great advance had made much more than a single mile, it was forced to halt again.

You see, there were three routes which could be taken from Edward's Depot to Raymond. The most northern road crossed Baker's Creek on a bridge and then rounded the northern slopes of a low hill before reaching a crossroads. Continuing east lead to Bolton. Turning south, on what was called The Middle Road, lead to Raymond. The central route, called the Jackson road, turned right off the Bolton Road a quarter of a mile east of the bridge, and then climbed that 75 foot hill. On its broad flat top the Jackson road crossed a narrow north south lane called the Ratcliff Road, before descending back to level ground where it passed the farmhouse of Sid and Matilda Champion, who had given their name to the entire hill.

The farmland had been a wedding gift from the father of the bride, and in the 7 years since their nuptials, Sid and Matilda  (above) had built a 2 story home, and introduced 4 children into the world. Sid had joined the 28^th Mississippi cavalry in '62. And now, a year later, with soldiers from both sides gathering around her home, Matilda had taken the children to her father's home in Madison County, Mississippi. The property was left to be guarded by the slaves who toiled soil. 

Following the Jackson Road after it passed the Champion home, lead to the small Jackson Creek and then it crossed The Middle Road. Turning south led to Raymond, but should the traveler continue east they would eventually reach Clinton and then the state capital of Jackson.

But General Pemberton had chosen the most southern route, which a mile east of Edward's Depot forded Baker's creek. It avoided Champion's Hill entirely, and ran adjacent to a light railroad, which in peace time had carried the cotton harvested in and around Raymond to the southern railroad at Edward's Depot. But this proved to be a most unfortunate choice, because, as the head of Pemberton's column approached the Baker's Creek ford the rebels found the stream so swollen with Friday's downpour, it had washed out the bridge.

A little scouting would have warned Pemberton of this problem But no one had checked the route in daylight, even with the hours of delay in getting started....

...not even the one armed General Loring (above), whose division formed the vanguard of this sad sack of a march. So now, Pemberton's little army had to turn about in place, one unit after the other slowly filing a mile back to Edward's Depot, and then lining up again on the Bolton road. It took another hour or more. The inability to execute a simple march sapped the energy and spirit of the troops. But the man most offended was Major General Loring. He had been urging Pemberton to attack the Yankees since the Battle of Port Gibson. This entire maneuver was his idea, And as its implementation quickly revealed its drawbacks, Loring blamed not himself but Pemberton. Old “Give 'em Blizzards” already low estimation of Lieutenant General Pemberton, plummeted even further.

Then Pemberton made things even worse. After crossing the bridge and turning south on the Jackson road he chose to lead the column onto the narrow and badly maintained “Ratcliff Plantation Road”, which ran a mile south across the top of Champion's Hill before dropping and reconnecting with road he had originally intended upon using. This final choice slowed their progress even more, and the effect of all this waiting, marching and counter-marching, and now following the narrow dark country lane, was that when darkness finally brought the frustrating and exhausting day to an end,  Private Wesley Connor, a member of the Cherokee Artillery near the rear of the column, recorded his unit set out promptly at 7:00am, and then “... marched two hundred yards, halted an hour or two, and then marched back to our position...” They then waited another 11 hours, until 6:00pm , when they “Left our position again, and marched eastward several miles and then southward. Bivouacked five or six miles from Edwards Depot.”  Loring's division had traveled the farthest, but by nightfall was little more than 4 miles down the Raymond road – reaching the property of the twice widowed, 46 year old Sarah Ann Walton Bowles Ellison.

Lorings men pitched their tents around the widow's house, while Lieutenant General Pemberton slept comfortably inside. Two miles up the road to the north centered of the junction of the Raymond and Ratcliff road was the division of Major General Bowen. And behind them, the troops commanded by Major General Stevenson camped around the hill top.  And behind them was the supply train, which had delayed the army for half a day. That train had advanced less than four miles in total. It was a disastrous day's march. In fact, the wreckage of Pemberton's first bold decision would save his army because it failed.

Awakening before 5:00 the next morning, Saturday, 16 May, 1863, Pemberton learned that the cavalry scouts sent ahead to locate Grant's supply trains had found the roads from Port Gibson to Raymond, completely empty. Suddenly Pemberton is adrift. Where are Grant's supply trains? Where is Grant's army” Then about 6:30 the commander of his cavalry brigade, Colonel Wirt Adams (above) came galloping up and dismounted. He reported that his men were skirmishing with Yankee infantry on the Bolton Road, at the very rear of Pemberton's army. And behind those skirmishers there appeared to be a lot of Yankee soldiers on the road to Edward's Depot.

Almost immediately a new rider appeared, bearing a message from General Johnston, in Jackson, Mississippi and dated on the afternoon of Thursday, 14 May. It informed Pemberton that Johnston was being forced to surrender Jackson, and added, “Our being compelled to leave Jackson makes your plan (to attack Grant's supply line) impractical. The only mode by which we can unite is by your moving directly to Clinton...".

And abruptly, Pemberton had no choice but to do that very thing.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Forty-Three

When 34 year old Brigadier General John Gregg (above) awoke on that Tuesday morning, he was bone weary. 

His 4,500 man brigade had left Port Hudson just 7 days earlier, on Tuesday, 5 May, 1863, and after a 200 mile long odyssey  - by foot and by rail -  they had staggered into Jackson, Mississippi, having lost perhaps 500 men through injury and 'straggling'. After a day of rest, on Monday, 11 May, Gregg had been forced to urge his men another dusty 27 miles to the southwest, to the county seat of Raymond. The exhausted rebels found just six of Wirt Adam's cavalrymen in the town, leaving Gregg with little idea what was waiting just over his horizon.

He was forced to rely on guidance from his superior, 48 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton, who on 12 May was finally taking a journey of his own, 20 miles east of the Vicksburg entrenchments. Around the little village of Bovina Station (above, center), a mile west of the Big Black River, Pemberton was struggling to concentrate the 18,000 men of the divisions of Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, Major General John Stevens Bowen and – the biggest pebble in his shoe – the one armed Major General William Wing Loring. It seemed every order Pemberton issued inspired the vainglorious “Old Blizzards” to respond with at least 3 telegrams of protest, suggestion and or complaints.

Right now, the arrogant and rude Loring was urging his commander to strike out toward the line of Baker's and Fourteen Mile creeks to force Grant into battle before he was ready. But forced into a straight jacket of passivity by Jefferson Davis's orders to defend Vicksburg and Port Hudson at all costs, Pemberton had little choice but to wait for Grant to launch a direct assault via the Big Black River Bridge. Which is why he had his men digging entrenchments to defend the bridge and adjacent fords, instead of probing for the Yankees as Loring kept urging.

In fact most of Wirt Adam's cavalry was available for such a mission, just a few miles up the road at Edward's Depot. Except nobody shared that fact with the commanding general, not even Wirt Adams. Nor did anyone in Richmond think to inform Pemberton of the imminent arrival in Jackson of his superior, General Johnson. Not even Johnson. The infection of suspicion and mistrust in the Confederate command originated with Jefferson Davis, and fed a lack of discipline in Pemberton's junior officers. 

So, struggling with the burdens of his first combat command, Pemberton vented his frustrations on General John Gregg and his 6 regiments, forty miles away on the other side of Grant's army. While the telegraph line to Jackson and Raymond was still working, Pemberton lectured the Texan. “Do not attack the enemy until he is engaged at Edwards or Big Black River Bridge. Be ready to fall on his rear or flank at any moment. Do not allow yourself to be flanked or taken in the rear. Be careful that you do not lose your command.”

However, this morning, 12 May, 1863,  General Gregg learned from local militia of a Federal infantry brigade marching up the Utica Road, and decided to take the opportunity to stage a mini-Cannae. First he would tempt the Yankees into attacking the small bridge over the Fourteen Mile Creek, 2 miles south of Raymond. Once the Yankees had crossed the bridge, 1,500 Rebel infantry would sweep across the creek below the bridge, and then turning back, cut the Yankees off and crush them against Gregg's main body. To achieve that, however, Gregg would have to push his weary soldiers a little further.

Private Frank Herron of the 3^rd Tennessee infantry, remembered that morning. “"Without breakfast, tired, hungry and with blistered feet, sadness was pictured on the faces of my companions as we were hastening on through the dust...But our sadness was suddenly relieved when we saw on a porch of a palatial home some beautiful girls waving the Bonnie Blue Flag. We gave the old and familiar yell in return and no sad faces were seen for awhile...”

Gregg's plan was perfectly reasonable, but for two things. First, with Pemberton's warnings ringing in his ears, and without cavalry to screen his flanks, Gregg was forced to assign the 400 soldiers of the 41^st Tennessee regiment, under 49 year old Scottish born Colonel Robert Farquarson, to control the road north to Bolton and Edward's Depot. He also assigned the 350 men of the 50^th Tennessee regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas W. Beaumont, to block the Auburn road. Together those assignments cut Gregg's offensive strength by almost a thousand men. And secondly, what was marching north from Utica was not a Federal brigade, but the 7,000 men of John Logan's 3^rd division, with two more divisions of 34 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's Corps, right behind them – over 17,000 soldiers in total.

The Yankees were looking for water. It was the only essential which the Federal army could not bring along.  And while hungry men might march for a week, a thirsty army would begin to collapse within 72 hours. And after 12 straight days of sunny skies, the entire state of Mississippi was drying up. Wells were beginning to run dry. Creeks were reduced to a trickle. The only reliable source of water in the area was Fourteen Mile Creek, fed by springs south of Raymond. That was McPherson's immediate goal, get to the creek and fill his canteens. And only after that, march on to Raymond.

But McPherson's Corps was not totally blind. The 6^th Missouri raid on the Mobile and Ohio railroad of the day before had revealed that a rebel brigade had passed through Crystal Springs on the way to Jackson. In addition the rails destroyed had prevented a second rebel battalion from reaching Jackson. Worse for the rebels, the roads out of Raymond had not been picketed. Civilians - and there were always random civilians – trickled out of Raymond and were captured by Yankee pickets on the Auburn and Utica roads. Each traveler, no matter their loyalties, carried details of the rebel troops in Raymond.

Gregg put the 548 men of the 7^th Texas infantry across the Utica Road, to hold the bridge. It's commander, the recently widowed 32 year old Colonel Hiram Bronson Granbury, sent skirmishers across Fortymile Creek, to hide among the trees and brush on the south bank. 

In a support position a thousand yards behind the 7^th Texas, Gregg set the Irishmen of the composite 10^th and 30^th Tennessee regiment. He told their commander, 36 year old ex-Nashville mayor Colonel Randal William McGavock, to also be ready to also assist the 50^th Tennessee, a thousand yards to the west, at the Auburn Road.

As his strategic reserve, on high ground at the eastern end of his line, Gregg placed the 315 men of the 3^rd Tennessee Regiment, under 39 year old Colonel Doctor Calvin Harvey Walker. And to their west, on a knoll beside the Utica road, he placed Captain Bledsoe and his little 3 gun battery – two 12-pound Napoleon cannon, one bronze and one iron, and a single Whitworth Rifle, with the 500 men of the 1^st Tennessee infantry battalion protecting the only artillery he had.

The timing was close. As Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Beaumont of the 50^th Tennessee noted after the battle, even before reached his position astride the Auburn road, “...the battle was opened by the artillery, with occasional musketry.” Beaumont added, “It was not long before General Gregg rode up and ordered me to move...into a woods in rear of the enemy's battery, and attack...unless I should find it too strongly protected...”

The 50^th Tennessee, with the 10^th/30^th composite regiment in support, crossed Fortymile Creek, and quickly found themselves facing an entire line of Yankee infantry.

- 30 -