VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty - Eight

 

As his flotilla broke through the last of the rafts moored across the Yazoo River at Liverpool Landing,  28 year old Lieutenant Commander John Grimes Walker (above) was pleased to see white smoke rising above the tree line.  He could not yet hear explosions from the Yazoo City dockyards 15 miles upstream, but he knew he soon would - if not before his 3 ironclads and infantry filled transports arrived, then shortly there after. 

Once ashore, Walker was to destroy the three warships under construction in the Yazoo City (above) dockyards, and all the equipment used to build them. But the smoke meant  the rebel engineers had started Walker's job for him. It also seemed likely the rebel gunners on the heights above the town would be spiking and abandoning their guns.

The man who had dispatched Walker on this mission was 49 year old Acting Real Admiral David Dixon Porter (above). Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had promoted Porter over many other officers because his ambition made him “...fertile in resources (and)...great (in) energy...” But that energy and ambition almost got Porter sidelined before the shooting had actually begun. Late in March of 1861, then naval Lieutenant Porter received an unusual invitation from the new Secretary of State, William Seward. Who, I should point out, he did not work for.

Porter knew what the New York politician wanted to talk about; “The Forts” – Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens (above), at the entrance to Pensacola Bay, Florida.  Both brick fortifications were isolated and were under siege, but neither rebel nor Federal officer wanted to shoot first. 

But when Seward asked, “ Can you tell me how we can save Fort Pickens?”, the ambitious Porter could not restrain himself. He immediately answered, “I can, sir.” He then set to work, secretly drawing up a plan to fulfill his hasty promise.

At some point during the next few days it occurred to Porter that his hubris had put him far out on a limb which his boss, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, was likely to cut off. Still, a week later he assured President Lincoln and Secretary Seward that all he needed was the 16 gun steam frigate USS Powatan  (above) and “...a good-sized steamer and six or seven companies of soldiers...and the fort would soon be made impregnable.”

It was the amateur Lincoln who asked the key question. “Is this not a most irregular mode of proceeding? What will Uncle Gideon (above)  say?” Porter warned that disloyal clerks in the Navy Department would betray the expedition. “But if you will issue all the orders from the Executive Mansion,” Porter told Lincoln, “I will guarantee their prompt execution to the letter.” Lieutenant Porter then handed Lincoln four orders to sign. And one of those orders was so curious, Lincoln told Seward, “See that I don't burn my fingers.”

Two of the orders turned the USS Powhatan over to Porter and relieved the current captain. A third instructed the New York Navy Yard (above) – under Commander Andrew Hull Foote - to secretly fit out the Powhatan and not tell the Navy Department about doing it or when it sailed. 

But the fourth order relieved the commander of the Naval Bureau of Detail, the service's personal office, replacing him with 53 year old Virginian, Captain Samuel Barron (above).  Barron was a curious choice, certain to draw Gideon's attention. Barron was so pro-secession he would soon be named Secretary of the Confederate Navy.  The rest of Porter's little fleet sailed in secret on the last day of March, 1861 - the frigate USS Sabine, the steam sloop USS Brooklyn carrying 200 infantry, and the sloop USS St. Louis. But all four orders were delivered to Secretary Welles along with a stack of routine paperwork, late on the afternoon of April Fools Day, 1861.

When the diligent “Uncle Gideon” read the order on the Bureau of Detail, he was furious. His anger was so great that when Wells stormed into the White House, President Lincoln innocently inquired, “What have I done wrong?” Welles launched into a tirade about Barron, but then added that Porter's intervention had left his transport, “The Star of the West”, which had already sailed to resupply Fort Sumter,  without the support of the USS Powhatan.  After an hour's discussion, Lincoln agreed to reverse the order concerning Barron. But by then it was too late to repair any other damage. 

While Fort Pickens was reinforced even before The Powhatan arrived, Porter's political maneuvering had left “The Star Of The West” as an impotent threat trapped outside of Charleston Harbor. But that ships appearance inspired the rebel forces surrounding Sumter to demand it's immediate surrender. When the fort's commander , Captain Anderson,  refused, the rebel's opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on Friday, 12 April, 1861, and the American Civil War began in earnest. 

Porter (above) could claim he had tried to warn Welles about Secretary Seward's conspiracy. But Welles was not fooled. He could have treated Porter as a possible double agent for the Confederate states. Or he could have simply refused to advance him. But Welles was enough of a patriot that he found a way to overlook the ambitious Lieutenant's machinations. At least, Uncle Gideon told his diary, “Mr. Seward...committed (Porter) at once, and decisively, to the Union cause.” And Gideon Welles still felt comfortable jumping Porter several ranks to an Acting Rear Admiral, and putting him in charge of Grant's “Brown Water Navy” after it's first commander, Andrew Foote, was promoted. And because of that, Vicksburg was doomed.

By Monday, 4 May, 1863, after the port of Grand Gulf, Mississippi had been secured and Sherman's Corps had begun ferrying across the river. Porter was finally free to press his advantage. One ironclad, the Mound City, was sent north to close off the Mississippi just below Vicksburg. Meanwhile Porter steamed south with the rest of his  fleet - The ironclads USS Benton and USS Pittsburg, the side wheel ram the USS Lafayette, the wooden gun boat USS General Price, the river boat USS Switzerland and the tug, USS Ivy. On Thursday, 7 May, these ships had rendezvoused with Admiral Farragut's blue water ships at the mouth of the Red River.

Loading coal and ammunition, Porter's flotilla then steamed up the Red River to Alexandria, Louisiana. Here they made contact with Major General Nathaniel Bank's Army of the Gulf, (above) finally returning to the Mississippi River after his Bayou Teeche adventure. Farragut could now provide shipping to transfer Bank's men to Port Hudson, which had been Bank's original assignment.

Beginning on Friday, 8 May a Union mortar flotilla, supported by the sloop USS Richmond, began a 2 day bombardment of the other remaining Confederate hold out on the Mississippi River, Port Hudson. The shelling was largely ineffective, but gave the garrison a taste of things to come. Meanwhile, by Friday, 15 May, Porter himself had rejoined his fleet anchored in the mouth of the Yazoo River above Vicksburg.

The very next day sailors reported hearing cannon fire off to the west. Unaware this was the distant echoes of the battle of Champion Hill, and not knowing the outcome of that battle, Admiral Porter ordered a tug to steam up the Yazoo River, looking for Grant's army. Finally, after making contact with the Iowa Cavalry on 18 May, Porter ordered marines to occupy Snyder's Bluff.

He also instructed the transports at Milliken's Bend to make steam, and begin landing food and ammunition at the Johnson Plantation a mile east of Chickasaw Bayou.

Grant and Sherman reached Snyder's Bluff on that Tuesday afternoon of 19 May. It had been 52 days since McClernand's corps had begun building the road south from Young's Point. Seeing that rations were already being landed, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above) admitted that until this moment he had doubted Grant's plan would work.  In fact, Sherman's XV Corps marching toward Vicksburg behind him would, that very evening, consume the last of their rations. Had Snyder's bluff held out for even a few days, Grant's army might have been forced to retreat into the interior to seek food. The nearest ammunition depot was back in Grand Gulf. But after Champion Hill the army did not have enough reserve to supply a single battle. But now Sherman had no doubts. 

He told Grant this was “one of the greatest campaigns in history.” Grant accepted the compliment, and announced his intention to attack Vicksburg in the morning.

In fact, the Federal supply problem was not solved – not completely. On Wednesday, 20 May, two Missouri units, companies of Major William Tweeddale's Engineer Regiment of the West, and Captain Herman Klosterman's Pioneer Company from Sherman's XV Corps, set 432 men to work rebuilding the road from Johnson's plantation, up onto the bluffs, and then 6 miles beyond to the rear of the new Federal army hemming in Vicksburg.  

Although the first wagons moved off that morning, full rations of food and ammunition would not be supplied until 24 May.  But improvements to the supply continued to be made until the end of the siege,  including over 500 feet of bridges, first pontoons and then more permanent structures.

On the afternoon of Thursday, 21 May, the federal ironclads Baron DeKalb and Chocktaw, the tinclads Forest Rose, Linden and Petel, dropped anchor in the Yazoo River, off Yazoo city.  Under their powerful guns, Lieutenant Command John Grimes Walker landed troops. 

They found the burned out hulks of the rebel ironclad rams which Admiral Porter had been so concerned about for so long - the Mobile, and the Republic, as well as the remains of a 3^rd even larger vessel, as yet unnamed.

The dockyard's 5 carpenter and blacksmith shops had also been burned down by the rebels before their retreat.  It seemed obvious that 45 year old Confederate Naval Lieutenant Isaac Newton Brown, in charge of the construction of the rams, had received little or no warning of Pemberton's decision to abandon Snyder's Bluff.   The federal tinclads spent the next day prowling up the river for a few miles, burning buildings, boats and bridges. The shore crews destroyed a sawmill and lumberyard north of Yazoo City. 

All public property in Yazoo City itself was burned down, but leaving the  private businesses along main street (above) untouched.  One hundred fifteen military patients at a hospital in town were given paroles  And on Saturday, 23 May, 1863, Lieutenant Commander Grimes steamed his little fleet back to the mouth of the Yazoo River.  All this damage was merely the first blow the Confederacy was to receive because of Lieutenant General Pemberton's  abandonment of Snyder's bluff.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Twelve

 

As early as 1743 French King Louis XV required settlers in his Louisiana colony to build levees to restrain the Mississippi River floods - from the French word "lever", meaning to "raise on top". By 1803, when the Americans paid $15 million for the colony, there were 1,000 miles of levees protecting individual towns and plantations. By the middle of that century that millage had doubled. And the greatest advocate for levees in the state of Mississippi was a 46 year old transplanted Illinois native, a Kentucky lawyer and an opportunistic politician, James Lusk Alcorn.

Assembled over 2 decades, Alcorn (above)'s "Mound Place" cotton plantation, just east of Friar's Point, Mississippi, was worked by 93 African-American slaves, and was valued in 1860 as being worth a quarter of a million dollars. He always kept his eye on the bottom line and biographers described Alcorn's politics as "a Whig up to 1859, a Union man in 1860, a secessionist in 1861, a fire-eater in 1862, (and) a peace-man in 1863..."  Protecting his plantation was The Great Levee. At 18 feet high and 100 feet thick, it was the largest levee in the state.  It had been built in 1856 by the state Levee District, using slaves contracted from Mr. Alcorn's plantation. And the President of the Levee District, the highest paid employee in the state, just happened to be Mr. James Lusk Alcorn.

This massive earthen structure, 8 miles downstream from Helena, Arkansas, had lowered the water level in the oxbow Moon Lake just behind it by 8 feet, offering up hundreds of new secure acres for Alcorn's cotton.  But it also slammed shut what had been the Yazoo Pass (above, below), a 14 mile long "... narrow, snag filled slough..." that led to the 115 circuitous miles of  the Coldwater River...

...and then to the Little Tallahatchie River.  About 250 miles below Moon Lake, the Tallahatchie River joined  the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River at the small community of Greenwood, Mississippi.  This was a back door used by small Mississippi delta farmers to avoid the markets in Vicksburg, and instead sell their cotton and produce to the upstream ports of Helena and Memphis, Tennessee  The Great Levee chocked off these small farmers, cementing the wealth of  James Alcorn, at their expense. Men such as Alcorn projected the image of slavery steeped in tradition. In reality, it was a short cut to power built on other men's labors, both white and black.

And this was where things sat in late January of 1863 when 43 year old Federal Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter (above) learned that the rebels were building 3 gunboats in Yazoo City, 330 miles up the Yazoo River and 80 road miles northeast of Vicksburg. The Yazoo construction yard, rescued and transplanted from Memphis before its fall, included 5 saw and planning mills, carpenter, blacksmith and machinery shops, and,  reaching expectantly across the mud for the Yazoo River,  were three wooden ways, upon which were laboriously being built what would one day, hopefully,  be the wooden gunboats C.S.S. Yazoo, the C.S.S. Mobile, and a 310 foot long yet to be named ironclad, locally referred to as the Yazoo Monster.

Admiral Porter wanted to destroy that trio before they were finished. And since Pemberton was installing heavy guns atop Snyder's Bluff, closing the mouth of the Yazoo River to the Federals, Porter needed a back door.  Some 60 road miles north of Yazoo City (above) was Greenwood, at the head of the Yazoo River, and at the bottom of the Yazoo Pass. So, in late January Porter dispatched 27 year old Acting Naval Lieutenant George Washington Brown, to see if the back door at The Great Levee could be pried open again.

Brown's ship was the 155 foot long stern wheeler, the "Forest Rose" (above).  Pittsburgh built, she was a "tin-clad" gun boat, and in 2 years the U.S. Navy had bought, converted or built 60 of these "Brown Water" or "Mud Navy" ships to control the shallow and narrow bayous and backwaters of the Mississippi flood plain. The Rose's slopping wooden front was thick enough to absorb small arms fire. Her wood sides were reinforced with boiler-plate up to an inch thick. She carried two 30 pound rifled cannons and four 24 pound howitzers. With her two boilers, she could sail and maneuver at 6 knots in just 5 feet of water. After the Fort Hindman operation, the Rose had been stationed in Helena, to deal with partisan threats to the Federal supply line.  But on Monday, 2 February 1863, she steamed downstream to the Great Levee, accompanied by a 25 year old wunderkind, already a Lieutenant Colonel of Engineers, James Harrison Wilson and 400 "pioneers" - soldiers with shovels.

Lieutenant Brown later said that he - meaning he, and Colonel Wilson and the pioneers - buried a 50 pound can of black powder in the levee, "It blew up immense quantities of earth, opening a passage for the water...We then sunk three more...and set them off simultaneously, completely shattering the mound...". Colonel Wilson reported that "The opening was 40 yards wide, and the water pouring through like nothing else I ever saw except Niagara Falls..." 

By Wednesday morning of 4 February the breech was 75 yards across, and the Forest Rose was able to enter Moon Lake 48 hours later. But it was already too late.

When the Rose tied up for the night at the junction of Moon Lake and the Head of the Pass, they captured 3 locals in a dugout canoe. They told Brown that for days a force of Confederate soldiers and 100 slaves had been chopping down trees to obstruct the Pass. In fact is was just 50 slaves under a Confederate naval Lieutenant, Francis Sheppered. 

Clearly, the move to re-open the Yazoo Pass had been anticipated by the rebels, including Confederate President Jefferson Davis (above). On Thursday, 29 January, the Mississippi native had telegraphed from Richmond, asking General Pemberton, "Has anything or can anything be done to obstruct the navigation from Yazoo Pass down?" Clearly the answer had to be "Yes."

There was a growing chorus of warning cries. In charge of the construction of the Yazoo City gunboats, 45 year old naval Commander Isaac Newton Brown (above), wrote to Pemberton, "...if the Yazoo Pass remains unobstructed it may at high water afford the enemy a passage for their gun boats...if the trees along its banks were felled from both sides across the channel, which is seldom 100 feet wide, they would offer serious impediments to its navigation."  And James Alcorn warned Pemberton when Yankee troops occupied his plantation the first week in February.  Of course, being a businessman, he also told the Yankees they should have no trouble using the Yazoo Pass. 

But it was not until Tuesday, 17 February that Pemberton dispatched all the help he could - 1,500 men and the 44 year old profane and disruptive one armed North Carolinian fire plug, Brigadier General William Wing Loring (above).

A correspondent for the Chicago Times noted later that, the Federals were assembling at Helena a powerful expedition - nine gunboats and twenty-seven transports containing over 3,000 infantrymen under 39 year old prickly General Leonard Fulton Ross, - all in the greatest possible secrecy . "A casual observer....can form no possible idea of the character or magnitude of this expedition," the Times wrote hopefully, "as he can see but one or two boats at a time...And on this I base my strongest hopes for the success of the movement." But it took 3 weeks before the Navy and the Army were ready to move.

On Sunday, 22 February, the Times correspondent accompanied the expedition into the Pass. finding the Coldwater River so narrow that it "...affords no opportunity for vessels moving in opposite directions to pass each other...." The writer noted, "On the eastern bank there are two or three fine plantations; but, with these exceptions, the surroundings are an unbroken forest... Wild ducks and geese abound here in profusion...The water being deep, cool, and comparatively clear, abounds with fish of all kinds."

It took another 3 weeks, in constant rain  to even approach Greenwood and the Yazoo River because the rebels had, "...filled the channel with logs, trees, stumps, and all manner of obstacles." This, was troubling because, as the Times warned "If we do not take the enemy by surprise,...God help us!" The fear was that partisans or rebel cavalry would block the Pass before and behind the fleet, trapping them strung out single file in the confines of the Coldwater or the equally narrow Little Tallahatchie River.  If that happened, warned the Times, "There will be no escape for any of us..."

What was awaiting the Federal Fleet in Greenwood was not the Yankee's worst nightmare. But it was almost as bad - a triangle of cotton bales covered in earth, optimistically called Fort Pemberton.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty-Six

 

As his flotilla broke through the last of the rafts moored across the Yazoo River at Liverpool Landing,  28 year old Lieutenant Commander John Grimes Walker (above) was pleased to see white smoke rising above the tree line.  He could not yet hear explosions from the Yazoo City dockyards 15 miles upstream, but he knew he soon would - if not before his 3 ironclads and infantry filled transports arrived, then shortly there after. 

Once ashore, Walker was to destroy the three warships under construction in Yazoo City (above) dockyards, and all the equipment used to build them. But the smoke meant  the rebel engineers had started Walker's job for him. It also seemed likely the rebel gunners on the heights above the town would be spiking and abandoning their guns.

The man who had dispatched Walker on this mission was 49 year old Acting Real Admiral David Dixon Porter (above). Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had promoted Porter over many other officers because his ambition made him “...fertile in resources (and)...great (in) energy...” But that energy and ambition almost got Porter sidelined before the shooting had actually begun. Late in March of 1861, then naval Lieutenant Porter received an unusual invitation from the new Secretary of State, William Seward. Who, I should point out, he did not work for.

Porter knew what the New York politician wanted to talk about; “The Forts” – Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens (above), at the entrance to Pensacola Bay, Florida.  Both brick fortifications were isolated and were under siege, but neither rebel nor Federal officer wanted to shoot first. 

But when Seward asked, “ Can you tell me how we can save Fort Pickens?”, the ambitious Porter could not restrain himself. He immediately answered, “I can, sir.” He then set to work, secretly drawing up a plan to fulfill his hasty promise.

At some point during the next few days it occurred to Porter that his hubris had put him far out on a limb which his boss, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, was likely to cut off. Still, a week later he assured President Lincoln and Secretary Seward that all he needed was the 16 gun steam frigate USS Powatan  (above) and “...a good-sized steamer and six or seven companies of soldiers...and the fort would soon be made impregnable.”

It was the amateur Lincoln who asked the key question. “Is this not a most irregular mode of proceeding? What will Uncle Gideon (above)  say?” Porter warned that disloyal clerks in the Navy Department would betray the expedition. “But if you will issue all the orders from the Executive Mansion,” Porter told Lincoln, “I will guarantee their prompt execution to the letter.” Lieutenant Porter then handed Lincoln four orders to sign. And one of those orders was so curious, Lincoln told Seward, “See that I don't burn my fingers.”

Two of the orders turned the USS Powhatan over to Porter and relieved the current captain. A third instructed the New York Navy Yard (above) – under Commander Andrew Hull Foote - to secretly fit out the Powhatan and not tell the Navy Department about doing it or when it sailed. 

But the fourth order relieved the commander of the Naval Bureau of Detail, the service's personal office, replacing him with 53 year old Virginian, Captain Samuel Barron (above).  Barron was a curious choice, certain to draw Gideon's attention. Barron was so pro-secession he would soon be named Secretary of the Confederate Navy.  The rest of Porter's little fleet sailed in secret on the last day of March, 1861 - the frigate USS Sabine, the steam sloop USS Brooklyn carrying 200 infantry, and the sloop USS St. Louis. But all four orders were delivered to Secretary Welles along with a stack of routine paperwork, late on the afternoon of April Fools Day, 1861.

When the diligent “Uncle Gideon” read the order on the Bureau of Detail, he was furious. His anger was so great that when Wells stormed into the White House, President Lincoln innocently inquired, “What have I done wrong?” Welles launched into a tirade about Barron, but then added that Porter's intervention had left his transport, “The Star of the West”, which had already sailed to resupply Fort Sumter,  without the support of the USS Powhatan.  After an hour's discussion, Lincoln agreed to reverse the order concerning Barron. But by then it was too late to repair any other damage. 

While Fort Pickens was reinforced even before The Powhatan arrived, Porter's political maneuvering had left “The Star Of The West” as an impotent threat trapped outside of Charleston Harbor. But that ships appearance inspired the rebel forces surrounding Sumter to demand it's immediate surrender. When the fort's commander , Captain Anderson,  refused, the rebel's opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on Friday, 12 April, 1861, and the American Civil War began in earnest. 

Porter (above) could claim he had tried to warn Welles about Secretary Seward's conspiracy. But Welles was not fooled. He could have treated Porter as a possible double agent for the Confederate states. Or he could have simply refused to advance him. But Welles was enough of a patriot that he found a way to overlook the ambitious Lieutenant's machinations. At least, Uncle Gideon told his diary, “Mr. Seward...committed (Porter) at once, and decisively, to the Union cause.” And Gideon Welles still felt comfortable jumping Porter several ranks to an Acting Rear Admiral, and putting him in charge of Grant's “Brown Water Navy” after it's first commander, Andrew Foote, was promoted. And because of that, Vicksburg was doomed.

By Monday, 4 May, 1863, after the port of Grand Gulf, Mississippi had been secured and Sherman's Corps had begun ferrying across the river. Porter was finally free to press his advantage. One ironclad, the Mound City, was sent north to close off the Mississippi just below Vicksburg. Meanwhile Porter steamed south with the rest of his  fleet - The ironclads USS Benton and USS Pittsburg, the side wheel ram the USS Lafayette, the wooden gun boat USS General Price, the river boat USS Switzerland and the tug, USS Ivy. On Thursday, 7 May, these ships had rendezvoused with Admiral Farragut's blue water ships at the mouth of the Red River.

Loading coal and ammunition, Porter's flotilla then steamed up the Red River to Alexandria, Louisiana. Here they made contact with Major General Nathaniel Bank's Army of the Gulf, (above) finally returning to the Mississippi River after his Bayou Teeche adventure. Farragut could now provide shipping to transfer Bank's men to Port Hudson, which had been Bank's original assignment.

Beginning on Friday, 8 May a Union mortar flotilla, supported by the sloop USS Richmond, began a 2 day bombardment of the other remaining Confederate hold out on the Mississippi River, Port Hudson. The shelling was largely ineffective, but gave the garrison a taste for of things to come. Meanwhile, by Friday, 15 May, Porter himself had rejoined his fleet anchored in the mouth of the Yazoo River above Vicksburg.

The very next day sailors reported hearing cannon fire off to the west. Unaware this was the distant echoes of the battle of Champion Hill, and not knowing the outcome of that battle, Admiral Porter ordered a tug to steam up the Yazoo River, looking for Grant's army. Finally, after making contact with the Iowa Cavalry on 18 May, Porter ordered marines to occupy Snyder's Bluff.

He also instructed the transports at Milliken's Bend to make steam, and begin landing food and ammunition at the Johnson Plantation a mile east of Chickasaw Bayou.

Grant and Sherman reached Snyder's Bluff on that Tuesday afternoon of 19 May. It had been 52 days since McClernand's corps had begun building the road south from Young's Point. Seeing that rations were already being landed, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above) admitted that until this moment he had doubted Grant's plan would work.  In fact, Sherman's XV Corps marching toward Vicksburg behind him would that evening consume the last of their rations. Had Snyder's bluff held out for even a few days, Grant's army might have been forced to retreat into the interior to seek food. The nearest ammunition depot was back in Grand Gulf. But after Champion Hill the army did not have enough reserve to supply a single battle. But now Sherman had no doubts. 

He told Grant this was “one of the greatest campaigns in history.” Grant accepted the compliment, and announced his intention to attack Vicksburg in the morning.

In fact, the Federal supply problem was not solved – not completely. On Wednesday, 20 May, two Missouri units, companies of Major William Tweeddale's Engineer Regiment of the West, and Captain Herman Klosterman's Pioneer Company from Sherman's XV Corps, set 432 men to work rebuilding the road from Johnson's plantation, up onto the bluffs, and then 6 miles beyond to the rear of the new Federal army hemming in Vicksburg.  

Although the first wagons moved off that morning, full rations of food and ammunition would not be supplied until 24 May.  But improvements to the supply continued to be made until the end of the siege,  including over 500 feet of bridges, first pontoons and then more permanent structures.

On the afternoon of Thursday, 21 May, the federal ironclads Baron DeKalb and Chocktaw, the tinclads Forest Rose, Linden and Petel, dropped anchor in the Yazoo River, off Yazoo city.  Under their powerful guns, Lieutenant Command John Grimes Walker landed troops. 

They found the burned out hulks of the rebel ironclad rams which Admiral Porter had been so concerned about for so long - the Mobile, and the Republic, as well as the remains of a 3^rd even larger vessel, as yet unnamed.

The dockyard's 5 carpenter and blacksmith shops had also been burned down by the rebels before their retreat.  It seemed obvious that 45 year old Confederate Naval Lieutenant Isaac Newton Brown, in charge of the construction of the rams, had received little or no warning of Pemberton's decision to abandon Snyder's Bluff.   The federal tinclads spent the next day prowling up the river for a few miles, burning buildings, boats and bridges. The shore crews destroyed a sawmill and lumberyard north of Yazoo City. 

All public property in Yazoo City itself was burned down, but leaving the  private businesses along main street (above) untouched.  One hundred fifteen military patients at a hospital in town were given paroles  And on Saturday, 23 May, 1863, Lieutenant Commander Grimes steamed his little fleet back to the mouth of the Yazoo River.  All this damage was merely the first blow the Confederacy was to receive because of Lieutenant General Pemberton's  abandonment of Snyder's bluff.

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