VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty - Five

 

On the south side of a high bluff, over a mile behind the forts and trenches defending the landward side of Vicksburg, and just a half mile from the riverfront batteries holding off the Yankee navy to the west, stood a 2 story brick mansion, one of the finest homes in Vicksburg (above).  It's address was 1018 Crawford Street.  Across the street stood a church, next door the Balfour Mansion.

On Sunday, 28 June, 1863 it was called “the Willis' house”, because one of the cities' wealthiest men owned it - grand-nephew to the town's founder, “planter” and slave owner 42 year old Thomas Vick Willis. The siege caught him away, tending to his slaves and properties. 

But up the lovely spiral staircase on the second floor resided Tom's 30 year old wife  Mary with their 4 children and her slaves, all trapped in Vicksburg because her latest pregnancy had made travel unsafe.  

And on the ground floor, in the five public rooms, resided and worked the unhappiest man in all of  Vicksburg,  48 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (below).

On this day, the General had received an extraordinary letter. How it came into his hand is unknown, but it might have been passed to him by the recently promoted Major General John Steven's Bowen. No author signed the letter, although it claimed to speak for “Many Soldiers” in the trenches. And Pemberton can have harbored little doubt that it did. “Sir: In accordance with my own feelings,” it began, “ and that of my fellow soldiers, with whom I have conferred, I submit to your serious consideration the following note...”

Clearly, the author or author's knew generals, because they began by feeding his vanity. “We, as an army,” it said, “have as much confidence in you as a commanding general as we perhaps ought to have. We believe you have displayed as much generalship as any other man could have done under similar circumstances. We give you great credit for the stern patriotism you have evinced in the defense of Vicksburg during a protracted and unparalleled siege.”

Except, it was not an unparalleled siege. The Roman's siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. lasted some 4 months, and that same year the hill top fortress of Massada held out for about 90 days – more than twice as long as Vicksburg. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had laid siege to Grenada, Spain from April 1491 to 2 January, 1492 – almost 8 months And Gibraltar had survived its “Great” siege from 24 June, 1779 to 7 February, 1783 – 3 years and 7 months. When General Pemberton got this note, Vicksburg had been under siege for a little over one month. And, historically, that seems to be just about “parallel” for the average siege.

Choosing to ignore such unpleasant realities, the writer continued. “ I also feel proud of the gallant conduct of the soldiers under your command in repulsing the enemy at every assault and bearing with patient endurance all the privations and hardships incident to a siege of forty-odd days' duration. Everybody admits that we have all covered ourselves in glory, but, alas! alas! General, a crisis has arrived in the midst of our siege.”

“Our rations have been cut down to one biscuit and a small bit of bacon per day. Not enough, scarcely, to keep soul and body together, much less to stand the hardships we are called upon to stand.” The writer noted, “...there is complaining and general dissatisfaction through out our lines.” The cause of all this was obvious. “Men don't want to starve,” warned the writer, “ and don't intend to, but they call upon you for justice...” Soldiers asking a commanding general for justice was coming close to insubordination. Still, the writer forged ahead. “The emergency of the case demands prompt and decided action on your part. If you can't feed us, you had better surrender us.”

This clearly was insubordination, and maybe even treason. But, warned the author, “Horrible as the idea is, (better this) than suffer this noble army to disgrace themselves by desertion.” Arguing these were “stubborn facts” the author insisted, “ I tell you plainly, men are not going to lie here and perish... hunger will compel a man to do almost anything. You had better heed a warning voice, though it is the voice of a private soldier. This army is now ripe for mutiny, unless it can be fed.”

The grammar was too perfect to be that of a “private soldier.”  General Pemberton (above) would have surely recognized that instantly. And there are no signatures on the single surviving copy. So why did Pemberton preserve this note? We are told it was found in his private papers after the siege. Perhaps it was to be used as evidence for Pemberton's defense at a court martial. There was another possibility, of course. The letter  may have come from the other side of the trenches. The Army of the Tennessee knew perfectly well the conditions inside Vicksburg, as Mr. Dana's message to Stanton and Lincoln revealed.  This note might have been Yankee “psy-op”, and if it was, that would hold its own specific dread for the commander of the “American Gibraltar”. A hungry army is no threat to the enemy if the enemy knows how hungry they are.

By the end of June it was obvious to everyone that every warning  General Joseph Johnston had issued about Vicksburg had come true.  

And as "Old Joe" had warned, the key to Vicksburg was not the trench lines or the fortifications or the water batteries, not the Warren County Court house atop the highest hill in the city of hills. The key to Vicksburg was Snyder's Bluff, and Chickasaw Bayou six miles away. And just as Johnston had said, once that position fell, Vicksburg could not be held.

And as Joe Johnston had pointed out, having lost the long bridge over the Pearl River south of Jackson, any practical reason for holding Snyder's Bluff was also lost.  

Since 1832 railroad engineers had known it took only 8 pounds of force to start 1 ton of cargo moving on rails. And once the “track resistance” - inertia – was overcome the heavier the train, the lower the cost to move a ton of cargo on that train.  A 30 horsepower engine could keep a 70 ton train moving at 20 miles per hour – the distance a horse drawn wagon might cover in a good day – for as long as the fuel lasted. Any connection between the between Vicksburg Mississippi and Richmond Virginia not held together by rail lines was practically speaking, an illusion.

It was a lesson Johnston had been trying to explain to General Pemberton for six months  And it seems likely Pemberton (above) had agreed all along. But President Davis in far off Richmond did not. And Davis issued the orders. Vicksburg must be held. In so ordering him  Davis had created a trap which Pemberton could not escape. This was abundantly clear as June faded into July.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty - Six

 

Captain John Henry Peters was 34 year old that Monday afternoon, of 18 May, 1863. And as he boldly galloped northward across the rolling hills of central Mississippi, he knew he was doing the greatest thing he would ever do, leading 27 men, volunteers all from company B of the 4^th Iowa cavalry – 24 enlisted men and 3 officers – on a great adventure.  Death might be waiting over the next rise. But until then, they were masters of their own fate, and possibly the fate of every soldier in this war.

The only delay in their progress were the occasional stragglers in butternut brown or tattered gray they paused to disarm. They took the soldier's weapons and told the wounded and weary to go home. And then the blue clad knights galloped off, leaving a psychic havoc on their wake. Those they had randomly touched were offered the choice between devotion to duty or to their family, between a form of volunteer slavery and freedom. The individual consequences were of no concern to the troopers, until they fell upon a single sad rebel soldier seeking to escape on a sad horse. With a half dozen Navy Colts pointed at him the man quickly surrendered his weapon. Then, when he realized they were soldiers from Iowa, joy flashed across his face.

He was from the village of Green Isle, Iowa, the prisoner proudly explained. Sheltered in the deep shadows of high bluffs along the Mississippi River – the village only received an hour of winter's sunlight - Green Isle had been one of the first Irish Catholic footholds in the Hawkeye state. The romance of the riverboats which paused there to pickup fire wood had enticed the young rebel to sail down the river, where he had been caught when the war broke out.  Drafted into Confederate service, this was his first chance to escape.  Or so he said.  And, if the captain would write him a pass through the Union lines, so he could get to St. Louis, he promised to show the Yankees a back road into the fortifications atop Snyder's bluff. As that was exactly where they were heading, Captain Peters accepted the offer.

Born in Pennsylvania, John Peters was a life long Democrat.  In his early twenties he spent 2 years in the Yellow Fever and malaria incubator of Cuba, “for his health”. During those years he had studied law, and returned to “the states” in 1852 to pass the bar under a lawyer in Freeport, Illinois. He married a local girl, Helen Kneeland, and the next year the new lawyer and wife moved to the tiny Delaware County seat of Delhi, Iowa. Three sons later, in September of 1861, at Camp Harlan near Mount Pleasant, John signed a three year enlistment as an officer in the 4^th Iowa volunteer cavalry regiment, and promptly rode off to war.

Snyder's bluff (above) was a 900 foot tall spike in the Walnut hills, towering above the head of Chickasaw Bayou, on the Yazoo River. The previous December this had been the edifice which blocked Sherman's attempt to sneak in the back door of Vicksburg. But everything Grant's army had done over the next 5 months, the tons of mud moved in the Lake Providence canal, the sweat and exhaustion in the Yazoo and Steeles Bayou expeditions, the horror of running the Vicksburg batteries, the risks endured by Grierson's troopers, the landing at Bruinisburg, the battles of Port Gibson, of Raymond, of Jackson, of Champion Hill and the Big Black River Bridge, had all been endured just to clamber those last 100 yards to the crest of the Walnut Hills, to break through the back gate of Vicksburg.

Both Sherman and Grant assumed they were going to have to fight the 3,500 man garrison at Snyder's Bluff (above, left) , as well as the 4,000 men which spies reported were encamped along the Brownsville Road.   So when Sherman dispatched the 4^th Iowa that morning from the Marshal Plantation, their orders were to merely report rebel activity on the Brownsville road heading north out of Vicksburg. Talking this road would give Sherman, “ command of the peninsula between the Yazoo River and Big Black.”

They set off just after dawn up the Bridgeport Road to the village of Tucker (above, center left), where they turned north toward the Oak Ridge Road. About noon they reached the Oak Ridge Post Office, and here they halted. An officers' conference was almost unanimous in deciding not to alert the rebels to their presence.  Captain Peters was the sole vote for continuing. The column set on a reverse march. But Peters so pestered his commander, Colonel Simon Swan, that Peters was reluctantly allowed proceed with a squadron to Snyder's Bluff and report what he found.

What Captain Peters found was stunning. He wrote later, “At about three fourths of the way to the summit we came out into a broad military road that wound around into and above the works...Before us lay the broad Yazoo and from the landing up to our very feet lay...the most complete and strongest fortification of the whole Mississippi valley.” At a walk they entered the fortifications, unchallenged by a single sentry. In a ring around the steep slopes of the bluff were the 11 ugly black cannon in their emplacements - two 8 inch Columbiads, three 24 pounders, two 32 pounders and two heavy 12 pounders, all connected by trenches and fire pits for infantry. But the gunners were nowhere to be seen, nor were the infantry.

Continued the captain, “We rode forward expecting every minute a demonstration that would send us back at a livelier pace than we had come in. All at once there poured out a squad of armed soldiers from a large commissary building...25 or 30 in number, and undertook to form a line in our front. In a moment the order came “Left front into line. Draw sabres! Charge!” and in a moment we were down upon them. Not a gun was fired nor a serious saber stroke given. They simply threw down there arms and surrendered. From the Sargent in command I learned that the fortifications had been evacuated the night before.”

In fact the garrison -the 3^rd Louisiana Infantry regiment - had marched for Vicksburg,  carrying all the food and supplies they could. A remaining pile of corn was left on the landing in front of the bluff, supporting the new prisoners contention that 43 year old Brigadier General Louis Hebert and his men would be returning in the morning. This was given added weight when Peters noted that barbed steel spikes had been driven into the touch or vent holes of many of the heavy cannon left behind, which prevented them from being fired until the spikes were removed. Those which had not been “spiked” were triple loaded with shot and shell, ensuring they would explode if the Yankees tried to fire them. Peters knew he could not hold the position with 2 dozen troopers. And it would be a race to return to Union lines and get back with enough infantry to hold the position. Luckily for Captain Peters there were Union soldiers much closer.

Using his binoculars, Captain Peters could see Federal Navy gunboats and ironclads anchored in the mouth of the Yazoo, less than 2 miles away.   So after sending his prisoners to the landing under guard, Peters,  “sent a man to the top of the bluff with a fairly clean towel that I happened to find in my saddle pocket to try and signal a gunboat...I could plainly see a squad of officers on the deck with their glasses pointed in our direction but making no effort to communicate with us. I then directed Lieutenant Clark to take a couple of men and follow down the river bank until he could communicate with the boat.”

A few hours later Peters was, “...taken from the saddle and carried to the officer's mess room (on the USS Baron De Kalbe)  (above).  The prospects of a good supper after a fast of 12 or 14 hours and a ride of over 20 miles...settled the question and I became the guest of the Captain, and did ample justice to a splendid supper with all the et cetera....after signaling an orderly boat and preparing a message to our fleet of transports....notifying them... that the Yazoo was open up to Chickasaw Bayou, we climbed upon the backs of our hungry and tired horses and rode rapidly back toward the place we had left..”.

While the 4^th Iowa was returning, infantry and Marines were landed and scaled Snyder's Bluff,

and the gun boats dropped anchor, to defend them. The troopers from Iowa reached their own lines after midnight, “to the utter surprise and great joy of our whole command”, said Peters.   And by 2:00am, on Tuesday, 19, May, 1863, Grant and Sherman were informed they had reestablished communications with the U.S. Navy, and their supply line.  The back door to Vicksburg (below), had been kicked wide open.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty - Five

 

Dora Miller, diarist and resident of Vicksburg, saw the remnants of the disaster about three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday, 17 May, 1863. “I shall never forget," she wrote. “that woeful sight of a beaten, demoralized army that came rushing back...” Another woman described that army as, “Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody—the men limped along...followed by siege guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, and wagons in aimless confusion. At twilight two or three bands on the courthouse hill... began playing “Dixie,” “Bonnie Blue Flag,”....I suppose they were rallying the scattered army.”

Several of the weary soldiers confided to civilians they would desert before fighting another battle under Pemberton. “The stillness of the Sabbath night was broken...the blasphemous oaths of the soldier and the cry of the child, mingled...There were many gentlewomen and tender children torn from their homes by the advance of a ruthless foe, and compelled to fly to our lines for protection; and mixed up with them in one vast crowd were the gallant men who had left Vicksburg three short weeks before, in all the pride and confidence of a just cause, and returning to it a demoralized mob.”

Dora Miller was northern born and pro-union. But even Emma Balfour, matron of a wealthy and powerful pro slavery family, could not not ignore reality. She told her diary, “ My pen almost refuses to tell of our terrible defeat…What is to become of all the living things in this place when the boats begin shelling – God only knows. Shut up as in a trap, no ingress or egress – and thousands of women and children who have fled here for safety…” And about 18,000 soldiers.

Pemberton had finally ordered the army to begin seizing food stuffs in an around the city. The work did not began in earnest until 15, May. Over the next 48 hours the two division commanders in Vicksburg, Major Generals John Horace Forney and Martin Luther Smith, brought in half a million pounds of smoked pork and salted beef. In addition, every plantation within a day's ride was stripped of chickens, turkeys, beef and dairy cattle, sheep, hogs, mules and horses, all driven within the fortifications which now defined the eastern boundary of the last major Confederate hold on the Mississippi River.

The ever judgmental Emma Balfour was not impressed. “From 12 o’clock until late in the night”, she noted, “the streets and roads were jammed with wagons, cannons, horses, men, mules, stock, sheep, everything you can imagine that appertains to an army...” But she also added, “Nothing like order prevailed.” The ever inefficient 40 year old John Clifford Pemberton was certain he had stockpiled more than enough food for the citizens and garrison to hold out until they were relieved by General Joe Johnston and his army, assembling in Jackson. Pemberton estimated he could hold out for about  six weeks.

Grant had a lot less time. Recalled one of his officers, “The gloomy report was circulated to the effect that our bread ration was exhausted or so nearly so that (after 20 May) the commissary could not furnish one hardtack apiece for all the men.” Forage, which had been abundant for the army on the march, was suddenly scarce when shared with an opposing army. Not only did the enemy presence restrict forage – the verb - it also forced men and horses to use their forage – the noun - faster. Early on in the war, Washington experts had calculated an army of 45,000 men on the march seeking forage in the Confederacy, would require 6 square miles of land for subsistence. But the closer Grant got to Vicksburg, the smaller was the square he had access to. With starvation now in the near future, Grant had to re-establish his supply line back to Memphis as soon as possible.

Eleven miles east of Vicksburg, Grant was delayed by the destroyed bridges over the Big Black river (above). But while the flames were still licking at the turpentine soaked beams, a 25 year old Buckeye genius, and a hero of the battle of Shiloh, Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, was building a replacement bridge. And he reused the improvisations of his confederate counterpart, Major Lockett. Felling trees from the dense wood which had so hindered the Yankee assault, Hickenlooper built a frame, which he then filled with 47 buoyant cotton bales from Lockett's defensive line. To convert the floating frame into a effective bridge, Hickenlooper dismantled a shoreline cotton gin to provide planks for the road bed and approaches. When finished not long after dawn on Monday, 18 May, the crossing was 110 feet long and 10 feet wide.

The new bridge was promptly put to use by the XIII corps – as soon as the bands could be assembled to play McClernand (above) and his men across. 

It was a typically dramatic flourish by the politician McClernand  but at least this ceremony did not delay the advance past 8:00 a.m.  Despite this the Yankees would reach Vicksburg before noon. McClernand's orders were to close up to the rebel defenses and keep the enemy pinned in them.

General McPherson's Corps would not be following the XIII corps, but had been redirected by Grant 2 miles to the north, where they were to cross the Big Black at the nearly abandoned village of Amsterdam. The little town had been almost wiped out in the 1830's by cholera and the nearby presence of Edward's Depot.  McPherson's (above) orders were to advance while guarding the right flank of General Sherman's Corps. It was Sherman's Corps which had the primary objective on this important day.

Major General Blair beat the XV corps to Bridgeport by a an hour or so, and his men were unloading the pontoons sections when Sherman marched in about noon on Sunday, 17 May. The few rebel militia were easily chased off the west bank, and the bridge (above) was assembled and in use by night fall. Blair's division crossed that evening, with Frederick Steele's 1^st division and James Tuttle's 3^rd division crossing on Monday morning, 18 May, 1863. Once on dry ground on the same side of the Big Black River as Vicksburg, Sherman released the 4^th Iowa cavalry regiment, with orders to capture the now vital crossroads of the Benton and the Oak Ridge Road.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty-Three

 

On the south side of a high bluff, over a mile behind the forts and trenches defending the landward side of Vicksburg, and just a half mile from the riverfront batteries holding off the Yankee navy to the west, stood a 2 story brick mansion, one of the finest homes in Vicksburg (above).  It's address was 1018 Crawford Street.  Across the street stood a church, next door the Balfour Mansion.

On Sunday, 28 June, 1863 it was called “the Willis' house”, because one of the cities' wealthiest men owned it - grand-nephew to the town's founder, “planter” and slave owner 42 year old Thomas Vick Willis. The siege caught him away, tending to his slaves and properties. 

But up the lovely spiral staircase on the second floor resided Tom's 30 year old wife  Mary with their 4 children and her slaves, all trapped in Vicksburg because her latest pregnancy had made travel unsafe.  

And on the ground floor, in the five public rooms, resided and worked the unhappiest man in all of  Vicksburg,  48 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (below).

On this day, the General had received an extraordinary letter. How it came into his hand is unknown, but it might have been passed to him by the recently promoted Major General John Steven's Bowen. No author signed the letter, although it claimed to speak for “Many Soldiers” in the trenches. And Pemberton can have harbored little doubt that it did. “Sir: In accordance with my own feelings,” it began, “ and that of my fellow soldiers, with whom I have conferred, I submit to your serious consideration the following note...”

Clearly, the author or author's knew generals, because they began by feeding his vanity. “We, as an army,” it said, “have as much confidence in you as a commanding general as we perhaps ought to have. We believe you have displayed as much generalship as any other man could have done under similar circumstances. We give you great credit for the stern patriotism you have evinced in the defense of Vicksburg during a protracted and unparalleled siege.”

Except, it was not an unparalleled siege. The Roman's siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. lasted some 4 months, and that same year the hill top fortress of Massada held out for about 90 days – more than twice as long as Vicksburg. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had laid siege to Grenada, Spain from April 1491 to 2 January, 1492 – almost 8 months And Gibraltar had survived its “Great” siege from 24 June, 1779 to 7 February, 1783 – 3 years and 7 months. When General Pemberton got this note, Vicksburg had been under siege for a little over one month. And, historically, that seems to be just about “parallel” for the average siege.

Choosing to ignore such unpleasant realities, the writer continued. “ I also feel proud of the gallant conduct of the soldiers under your command in repulsing the enemy at every assault and bearing with patient endurance all the privations and hardships incident to a siege of forty-odd days' duration. Everybody admits that we have all covered ourselves in glory, but, alas! alas! General, a crisis has arrived in the midst of our siege.”

“Our rations have been cut down to one biscuit and a small bit of bacon per day. Not enough, scarcely, to keep soul and body together, much less to stand the hardships we are called upon to stand.” The writer noted, “...there is complaining and general dissatisfaction through out our lines.” The cause of all this was obvious. “Men don't want to starve,” warned the writer, “ and don't intend to, but they call upon you for justice...” Soldiers asking a commanding general for justice was coming close to insubordination. Still, the writer forged ahead. “The emergency of the case demands prompt and decided action on your part. If you can't feed us, you had better surrender us.”

This clearly was insubordination, and maybe even treason. But, warned the author, “Horrible as the idea is, (better this) than suffer this noble army to disgrace themselves by desertion.” Arguing these were “stubborn facts” the author insisted, “ I tell you plainly, men are not going to lie here and perish... hunger will compel a man to do almost anything. You had better heed a warning voice, though it is the voice of a private soldier. This army is now ripe for mutiny, unless it can be fed.”

The grammar was too perfect to be that of a “private soldier.”  General Pemberton (above) would have surely recognized that instantly. And there are no signatures on the single surviving copy. So why did Pemberton preserve this note? We are told it was found in his private papers after the siege. Perhaps it was to be used as evidence for Pemberton's defense at a court martial. There was another possibility, of course. The letter  may have come from the other side of the trenches. The Army of the Tennessee knew perfectly well the conditions inside Vicksburg, as Mr. Dana's message to Stanton and Lincoln revealed.  This note might have been Yankee “psy-op”, and if it was, that would hold its own specific dread for the commander of the “American Gibraltar”. A hungry army is no threat to the enemy if the enemy knows how hungry they are.

By the end of June it was obvious to everyone that every warning  General Joseph Johnston had issued about Vicksburg had come true.  

And as "Old Joe" had warned, the key to Vicksburg was not the trench lines or the fortifications or the water batteries, not the Warren County Court house atop the highest hill in the city of hills. The key to Vicksburg was Snyder's Bluff, and Chickasaw Bayou six miles away. And just as Johnston had said, once that position fell, Vicksburg could not be held.

And as Joe Johnston had pointed out, having lost the long bridge over the Pearl River south of Jackson, any practical reason for holding Snyder's Bluff was also lost.  

Since 1832 railroad engineers had known it took only 8 pounds of force to start 1 ton of cargo moving on rails. And once the “track resistance” - inertia – was overcome the heavier the train, the lower the cost to move a ton of cargo on that train.  A 30 horsepower engine could keep a 70 ton train moving at 20 miles per hour – the distance a horse drawn wagon might cover in a good day – for as long as the fuel lasted. Any connection between the between Vicksburg Mississippi and Richmond Virginia not held together by rail lines was practically speaking, an illusion.

It was a lesson Johnston had been trying to explain to General Pemberton for six months  And it seems likely Pemberton (above) had agreed all along. But President Davis in far off Richmond did not. And Davis issued the orders. Vicksburg must be held. In so ordering him  Davis had created a trap which Pemberton could not escape. This was abundantly clear as June faded into July.

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