AMERICAN MURDER Part One

 

I won't call the lady a liar, but I don't believe any of the stories Priscilla Grinder told about the two gunshots shattering the early morning darkness, no that she heard her guest begging for help and never peeked out her door. So maybe it was murder.

Grinder's Stand, as it was called, stood along the ridge route called the Natchez Trace or “The Devil's Backbone”. The road - to give it a generous title - began where the first high ground above New Orleans, touched the Mississippi River, at a human den of inequity called Natchez. 

Following ancient buffalo trails "The Trace" then meandered through a dense macabre forests 445 miles, twenty days by horse and foot, to Nashville, Tennessee, where it joined Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road heading to the east. Under the progressive President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Army was set to work clearing the trace to 8 feet wide and removing all tree stumps above 16 inches tall, so "The Trace" could be used by high riding Conestoga wagons. But each stream and river still had to be forded, even if the traveler could afford to pay a toll along those short parallel sections improved even more by local entrepreneurs.

In 1802, when Louisiana was still French territory, the customs house in Natchez reported a million dollars worth of tobacco, flower, hemp, cider and whiskey on its way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. By 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, "The Trace" saw as many as 1,000 travelers a year -  the crews of flatboats and rafts which had floated down stream, returning home on foot with their profits. 

Where there are profits, there are those who would steal them. Each ominous river and stream crossing on "The Trace" was reputed to be the unmarked graves of boatmen who had been set upon by gangs of “Land Pirates”. There was no law on "The Trace".  And while the level of violence never approached the legends, meeting a group of strangers at an isolated ford or forest clearing, or blind turning in the trail, was still an unnerving experience.

Robert Evans Grinder and Priscilla Knight were each born within sight of Moore's knob (above, BG)), the 1,700 foot high granite mountain that looms over Stokes county, North Carolina. As teenagers they ran away together, and in 1799 were married in Nashville, about the time their daughter, Parthenia, was born. They were living examples of the new nation, young, illiterate, hard working and hungry to succeed.

So as the soldiers hacked and sawed their way south along "The Trace", the Grinder's followed. And in 1807 they came to the Tennessee “Barins”, high ground between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, sixty miles southwest of Nashville. Here the Grinders enlarged and hacked out a couple of clearings amidst the oaks and dogwoods. Back in the woods they planted corn and rye. And in a clearing along the trace they built a small one room cabin, and an adjoining barn with a small stable. 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on a common space.  A third building close by served as the detached kitchen. In 1807 these three structures served as Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” or way stations along The Trace, where for thirty cents you could rent a bed or part of a bed or just a roof for the night. 

For a few cents more Priscilla could supply a bowl of warm gruel. And it was a successful business, until a toll road by-pass opened, and the Grinder's income dropped off. So the Grinders depended on their fallback industry, selling corn mash whiskey to the Chickasaw Indians, whose nation's border lay just a few yards beyond Grinder's Stand's front door.

In the rainy dusk of 10 October, 1809, this failing wilderness hostel was unexpectedly confronted by a tall, gaunt man who materialized out of the woods.  Priscilla Grinder, alone with her children,  must have greeted him warily. Why was this man in an expensive blue and white stripped duster, traveling alone? Why had he not taken the bypass when he could obviously afford it?  

According to Priscilla, he tried to set her mind at ease by telling her that his two servants should be arriving shortly with pack animals. But that only added to the mystery. And if she had known her weary visitor was Merriweather Lewis (above), Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory  and one of the most famous men in North America, it likely would not have eased her mind .  In God's name, why was such a man stopping at her door, seeking the sad comforts which she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

                                  - 30 -  

AMERICAN MURDER Part One

 

I won't call the lady a liar, but I don't believe any of the stories Priscilla Grinder told about the two gunshots shattering the early morning darkness, heard her guest begging for help and never peeked out her door. But maybe it was murder.

Grinder's Stand, as it was called, stood along the ridge route called the Natchez Trace or “The Devil's Backbone”. The road - to give it a generous title - began where the first high ground above New Orleans, touched the Mississippi River, at a human den of inequity called Natchez. 

Following ancient buffalo trails "The Trace" then meandered through a dense macabre forests 445 miles, twenty days by horse and foot, to Nashville, Tennessee, where it joined Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road heading to the east. Under the progressive President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Army was set to work clearing the trace to 8 feet wide and removing all tree stumps above 16 inches tall, so "The Trace" could be used by high riding Conestoga wagons. But each stream and river still had to be forded, even if the traveler could afford to pay a toll along those short parallel sections improved even more by local entrepreneurs.

In 1802, when Louisiana was still French territory, the customs house in Natchez reported a million dollars worth of tobacco, flower, hemp, cider and whiskey on its way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. By 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, "The Trace" saw as many as 1,000 travelers a year -  the crews of flatboats and rafts returning home on foot with their profits. 

Where there are profits, there are those who would steal them. Each ominous river and stream crossing on "The Trace" was reputed to be the unmarked graves of boatmen who had been set upon by gangs of “Land Pirates”. There was no law on "The Trace".  And while the level of violence never approached the legends, meeting a group of strangers at an isolated ford or forest clearing, or blind turning in the trail was still an unnerving experience.

Robert Evans Grinder and Priscilla Knight were each born within sight of Moore's knob (above, BG)), the 1,700 foot high granite mountain that looms over Stokes county, North Carolina. As teenagers they ran away together, and in 1799 were married in Nashville, about the time their daughter, Parthenia, was born. They were living examples of the new nation, young, illiterate, hard working and hungry to succeed.

So as the soldiers hacked and sawed their way south along "The Trace", the Grinder's followed. And in 1807 they came to the Tennessee “Barins”, high ground between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, sixty miles southwest of Nashville. Here the Grinders enlarged and hacked out a couple of clearings amidst the oaks and dogwoods. Back in the woods they planted corn and rye. And in a clearing along the trace they built a small one room cabin, and an adjoining barn with a small stable. 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on a common space.  A third building close by served as the detached kitchen. In 1807 these three structures served as Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” or way stations along The Trace, where for thirty cents you could rent a bed or part of a bed or just a roof for the night. 

For a few cents more Priscilla could supply a bowl of warm gruel. And it was a successful business, until a toll road by-pass opened, and the Grinder's income dropped off. So the Grinders depended on their fallback industry, selling corn mash whiskey to the Chickasaw Indians, whose nation's border lay just a few yards beyond Grinder's Stand's front door.

In the rainy dusk of 10 October, 1809, this failing wilderness hostel was unexpectedly confronted by a tall, gaunt man who materialized out of the woods.  Priscilla Grinder, alone with her children,  must have greeted him warily. Why was this man in an expensive blue and white stripped duster, traveling alone? Why had he not taken the bypass when he could obviously afford it?  

According to Priscilla, he tried to set her mind at ease by telling her that his two servants should be arriving shortly with pack animals. But that only added to the mystery. And if she had known her weary visitor was Merriweather Lewis (above), Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory  and one of the most famous men in North America, it likely would not have eased her mind .  In God's name, why was such a man stopping at her door, seeking the sad comforts which she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

                                  - 30 -  

AMERICAN MURDER Part One

 

I won't call the lady a liar, but I don't believe any of the stories Priscilla Grinder told about that night - that she heard two gunshots shatter the early morning darkness, heard her guest begging for help and never peeked out her door. I can not say exactly what occurred that pitiless night. But maybe it was murder.

Grinder's Stand, as it was called, stood along the ridge route called the Natchez Trace or “The Devil's Backbone”. The road - to give it a generous title - began where the first high ground above New Orleans, touched the Mississippi River, at a human den of inequity called Natchez. 

Following ancient buffalo trails "The Trace" then meandered through a dense macabre forests 445 miles, twenty days by horse and foot, to Nashville, Tennessee, where it joined Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road heading to the east. Under the progressive President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Army was set to work clearing the trace to 8 feet wide and removing all tree stumps above 16 inches tall, so "The Trace" could be used by high riding Conestoga wagons. But each stream and river still had to be forded, even if the traveler could afford to pay a toll along those short parallel sections improved even more by local entrepreneurs.

In 1802, when Louisiana was still French territory, the customs house in Natchez reported a million dollars worth of tobacco, flower, hemp, cider and whiskey on its way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. By 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, "The Trace" saw as many as 1,000 travelers a year -  the crews of flatboats and rafts returning home on foot with their profits. 

Where there are profits, there are those who would steal them. Each ominous river and stream crossing on "The Trace" was reputed to be the unmarked graves of boatmen who had been set upon by gangs of “Land Pirates”. There was no law on "The Trace".  And while the level of violence never approached the legends, meeting a group of strangers at an isolated ford or forest clearing, or blind turning in the trail was still an unnerving experience.

Robert Evans Grinder and Priscilla Knight were each born within sight of Moore's knob (above, BG)), the 1,700 foot high granite mountain that looms over Stokes county, North Carolina. As teenagers they ran away together, and in 1799 were married in Nashville, about the time their daughter, Parthenia, was born. They were living examples of the new nation, young, illiterate, hard working and hungry to succeed.

So as the soldiers hacked and sawed their way south along "The Trace", the Grinder's followed. And in 1807 they came to the Tennessee “Barins”, high ground between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, sixty miles southwest of Nashville. Here the Grinders enlarged and hacked out a couple of clearings amidst the oaks and dogwoods. Back in the woods they planted corn and rye. And in a clearing along the trace they built a small one room cabin, and an adjoining barn with a small stable. 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on a common space.  A third building close by served as the detached kitchen. In 1807 these three structures served as Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” or way stations along The Trace, where for thirty cents you could rent a bed or part of a bed or just a roof for the night. 

For a few cents more Priscilla could supply a bowl of warm gruel. And it was a successful business, until a toll road by-pass opened, and the Grinder's income dropped off. So the Grinders depended on their fallback industry, selling corn mash whiskey to the Chickasaw Indians, whose nation's border lay just a few yards beyond Grinder's Stand's front door.

In the rainy dusk of 10 October, 1809, this failing wilderness hostel was unexpectedly confronted by a tall, gaunt man who materialized out of the woods.  Priscilla Grinder, alone with her children,  must have greeted him warily. Why was this man in an expensive blue and white stripped duster, traveling alone? Why had he not taken the bypass when he could obviously afford it?  

According to Priscilla, he tried to set her mind at ease by telling her that his two servants should be arriving shortly with pack animals. But that only added to the mystery. And if she had known her weary visitor was Merriweather Lewis (above), Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory  and one of the most famous men in North America, it likely would not have eased her mind .  In God's name, why was such a man stopping at her door, seeking the sad comforts which she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

                                  - 30 -  

VICKSBURG Chapter Seventeen

  

During his 4 years at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Ulysses "Simpson" aka "Sam" Grant's (above) best friend was Missouri born Frederick Tracy Dent. And after graduation in 1843 Grant was posted to the Quartermaster's Corps, at Jefferson Barracks, in Saint Louis, where he fell in love with Fred's slightly cross-eyed sister, Julia Boggs Dent.

Overshadowed by her minor affliction, Julia (above)  was quiet and determined. She played the piano pretty well, and like "Sam" she was a skilled horsewoman. Although they were well matched and deeply in love, the Mexican-American War prevented the couple from marrying until 1848. Sam's father did not attend the wedding because Julia's family owned slaves.

Sam did not like military life very much, but Julia's presence made his postings to Detroit and then Sackett's Harbor, New York (above), on Lake Erie, more than bearable. But in 1854 Sam was assigned to Fort Humboldt in modern day Eureka, California. 

To get there he would have to cross the fever infested isthmus of Panama, and since Julia was pregnant, Sam made the dangerous, lengthy passage alone. Eighteen months later, and six months after arriving at Humboldt, the homesick Captain Grant was drunk so often, he was forced to resign.

Back in Missouri, he twice tried farming (above), once with slaves loaned by his father-in-law and once with a slave Julia had inherited. He was a failure both times. Unable to house or feed his wife and 4 children, Sam had only one object of value he could sell. The slave was worth some $1,500, a small fortune in 1858. But rather than sell the man, Sam gave him his freedom. His wife's in-laws clucked their tongues at his impracticality. His wife's cousins gave him a job as a bill collector. Sam was a failure at that, too. 

Then in 1860, Sam's father gave him a job running a "Grant and Perkins Leather Goods" shop (above) in Galena, Illinois. He might have been a failure at that, too. But a year later the Civil War broke out, and Grant would later say, "I never went into our leather store again."

Success now surrendered to Grant. By January of 1863, not as quickly as Pemberton but within 2 years, Grant rose from a Colonel of Volunteers to Lieutenant General, commanding the 103,000 men of the Army of The Tennessee . And if that makes it sound as if he should easily have smashed Pemberton's Army of 50,000, it is a gross over simplification.

In the western theater, all supplies - men and horses, wagons and shoes, hardtack and beef on the hoof, ammunition and nails - was fed into the funnels of Evansville, Indiana, Cairo, Illinois and Louisville, Kentucky. 

 From there, via the Louisville and Nashville railroads, the supplies were transported to the great warehouse of the western armies, Nashville, Tennessee (above). The city was surrounded by mushrooming repositories, depositories and warehouses that "covered whole blocks, with corrals and stables by the acres". And there were thousands of additional tons of overflow bounty, "..stored outdoors on raised, covered platforms." 

 From Nashville, the Federals were maintaining two separate armies invading the Confederacy. The objective given to General William Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland was Atlanta, and its supply line ran 152 miles southeast from Nashville to Chattanooga. The supply line for Grant's Army was divided in-two. The Nashville and Mississippi railroad ran 160 miles to Madea, Tennessee, on the Mississippi River, and from there by steamboat to Memphis.

With the lesson of Holly Springs fresh in his memory Grant felt required - and Halleck  insisted - he  use half his strength to guard his supply line. There were 15 to 20,000 men, mostly "heavy" artillery units, in and around his supply base at Memphis. 

He had another 15 to 20,000 infantry and cavalry, on his left flank, protecting LaGrange, Tennessee. Another 5 to 6,000 men were in fortifications along the Mississippi to discourage attacks on his supply ships plying the river. 

While Grant could briefly call upon some of those 40 to 45,000 men to support his attacks, it reduced his "effectivies" - soldiers available for combat - to about 52,000 men, divided almost equally between McClernand's XVIII Corps, Sherman's XV Corps and McPherson's XVII Corps.

Pemberton's rebels, defending their own territory, had far shorter supply lines. .So on the battlefield the odds were almost even - about 50,000 rebels against 50,000 federals. To gain a temporary advantage in numbers, Grant had tried using the rivers, the Mississippi, the Yazoo, the Talihatichie, and the bayous of the delta to steal a march and outflank Pemberton's men. But using interior lines the rebels had so far been able to block the Federal moves. In his frustration, Grant decided to reduce his ambitions.

The latest option presented by Grant's engineers was to dig a mile and a half long canal straight from a dock called Duckport Landing along Milliken's Bend. This canal would connect just southwest of Richmond, Louisiana, to the headwaters of a turgid bayou called Walnut. This creek was so contorted it confused even the locals who called some sections  of the same stream, "Brushy Bayou", others Walnut Bayou.  This stream meandered for 20 miles across the flood plain, covering only some ten miles in straight line, before joining the larger aptly named Roundabout Bayou, which generally turned southeastward until it connected with a smaller seep called Bayou Vidal.

Thirty-seven miles from the beginning at Brushy Bayou, this last narrow stream trickled into an oxbow aneurysm called Lake St. Joseph   At its southern end, this body of water came within a few yards of touching the Mississippi at the 500 acre Hard Times Plantation owned by a Baltimore transplant, Dr, Jeremiah Yelloet Hollingsworth. The dock used for loading Dr. Hollingsworth's cotton harvests was called Hard Times Landing.  It was just south  of the sunken village of New Carthage. And this tiny half sunken piece of Louisiana was now the target for Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant's entire army.

Significantly, Hard Times Landing was 5 miles south of the town of Grand Gulf, on the Mississippi state side of the river. Once his gun boats and barrages loaded with troops had used the Duckport canal to pass the fearsome Vicksburg batteries, Grant could cross the river to Grand Gulf, and bring Pemberton's army to battle. At that point Grant and his men were certain they would defeat the rebels.

But the closer to New Carthage the tip of Grant's spear - the 600 Hoosiers of Colonel Bennet's (above) 49th Indiana - got, the stiffer the rebel resistance became.

- 30 -