VICKSBURG Chapter Seven

The way the story is usually told is that only after realizing his Desoto canal would not work, did Major General Ulysses Simpson Grant turn to the Lake Providence canal, 40 miles upstream from Young's Point. In fact, in early January Grant had dispatched a small battalion of engineers all across the region, seeking someway, anyway to get around or at Vicksburg. The Desoto canal was the just the most obvious choice. But it would have saved a lot of time and energy had those engineers known how the Mississippi River formed Lake Providence in the first place But that would have to wait a couple of generations for students of geology and fluviomorphology to learn their trade.

Dig into the mud of the of Lower Mississippi and beneath 35 feet of river deposits you will find 50 feet and more of yellow sand, the bottom of the 400 mile long Mississippi Embayment, an arm of the ancient Tethys Ocean, which followed the crack of the New Madrid rift valley into the very center of North America, as far north as present day Cairo, Illinois. Over most the last 100 million years this was a backwater, while American's most powerful rivers, like the Teays in Ohio and Indiana and the New River of Virginia, flowed northwest from the Himalayan heights of the Appalachian Mountains to the Arctic Sea. Then, 2.5 million years ago the first of the Laurentide glaciers blocked those rivers, forcing them south and into the bay.

About 8,000 years ago, the glacial river Warren breached the last of the ice dams at what is today the Wisconsin Dells, and blazed a path which the Illinois River followed, southward, joining the ancient Ohio in filling the 450 mile bay with that 35 feet of river sediments.

Flowing across this ancient silted up bay, Old Man river meanders at an average speed of one and one-half miles an hour, losing just 3 tenths of a vertical inch for every horizontal mile south. With such a slow current, any minor impediment will magnify current variations. Where the current is slightly faster, it eats into the bank. Where the current is a little slower it drops sediments, building up the bank. Over time this creates a curving meander, with the stronger current shifting from the inside at the base of the curve to the outside at its height.

But the current eventually cuts across the base of these meanders, isolating each as an oxbow lake. Each spring flood piles more sediments against the abandoned meander. By 1863, when the

Scottish minister's son and 40 year old artilleryman, Lieutenant Colonel William Latimer Duff arrived to investigate, Lake Providence was a six mile long oxbow, a full mile from the river's new course, and usually 8 feet lower. So a mile long canal, 100 feet wide and 5 feet deep, connecting the Mississippi to Lake Providence would get Grant's army 7 miles inland from the Mississippi.

And from there, said Lt. Colonel Duff, who had made the trip, it was relatively easy. From Lake Providence it was another short mile to the Bushy Bayou, (above) which connected to the sinuous Baxter Bayou, which connected to the 6 mile long Bayou Macon which passed through a cypress swamp. Trees would have to be cleared here, but the swamp fed the Tensas River, which split into the Ouachita River before flowing into the Black River, which flowed into the Red River of the South which finally rejoined the Mississippi River 400 miles south, just below Natchez. As Private and hospital steward Charles Allaire, noted , it seemed, "a long way around 'Robin Hood's Barn'," But such was Grant's desperation to get to Vicksburg.

The new operation began on Tuesday, 3 February, 1863, when Colonel, soon to be Brigadier General, 36 year old George Washington Deitzler was given the task of starting the Lake Providence canal. Shortly there after the 32,000 men of the 17th Crops of the Army of Tennessee under 34 year old General James Birdseye McPherson, were brought in to begin deepening and widening Bushy and Baxter Bayous. Colonel Deitzler, thought it would take no more than 6 days to dig the first mile long canal. After that, "I do not think that we will have any considerable difficulty in finding a passage for gunboats and small stern-wheel boats through Baxter Bayou and Bayou Macon, a distance of from 10 to 15 miles...it will only be necessary to cut a few trees...Once in Bayou Macon, we shall have a clear coast to (the) Red River." He optimistically figured the entire effort would take no more than 3 weeks.

Amazingly the causality rate for the 17th Corps never approached that of its less fortunate comrades working on the Desoto canal. Partly this was because McPherson's camps were on high ground, a mile away from the river, and they were well "policed", meaning clean. But mostly it was because the actual effort back in Bushy and Baxter Bayous was preformed by freed slaves. They were paid for their work, and fed a standard army diet. But no one thought them important to record their death rates. The soldiers spent their time drilling, playing baseball, and raiding the surrounding plantations for food and souvenirs.

And in this place the February floods worked in the army's favor. The river was now 15 higher than Lake Providence, and when the coffer dam at the head of the canal was breached on Tuesday, 17 March (above), the water gushed into the lake, even sweeping away a small town on the Mississippi's banks. By Monday, 23 March the lake had so over flowed its banks, as to eliminate the need for a connecting canal to Bushy Bayou.

Grant took over a lake shore mansion in early March to inspect the effort. And while he was duly impressed with the progress he told Washington that, "...there was scarcely a chance of this ever becoming a practicable route for moving troops through an enemy's country." On those narrow bayous, just felling a few trees could chock off the entire army. But more importantly there was the problem of what happened if and when Grant's army reached Natchez. Because there Grant would face an even greater threat than presented by the Illinois political General, John Alexander McClernand - the very, very ambitious politician, 46 year old Major General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks.

Nathaniel Banks (above) was an actual self-made man, having started as a bobbin boy in a Massachusetts textile mill and risen by his own initiative until, at 34 years of age, he was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and at 46, Governor of Massachusetts. While in that office Banks made compromises with the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party, and in 1860 this cost him support when he briefly contested Lincoln for the Presidential nomination. Banks' dominant characteristic was his ambition, which burned with such a flame that it often snuffed out every other spark within him.

With the start of the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Banks a Major General of Volunteers, because of his ability to inspire New England men to enlist. But it was General Nathaniel Banks who brought rebellious Baltimore under control, and kept Maryland in the union during the most dangerous year of 1861. So, despite concerns from West Point trained officers, in February of 1862 Banks was sent to clear out the rebels from the southern Shenandoah Valley. Instead, by the end of May, rebel general "Stonewall" Jackson had driven Bank's army completely out of the Valley.

Banks managed to avoid any blame for that disaster, and was given command of an entire wing of the short lived Federal Army of Virginia, under the pompous General John Pope. On Saturday, 9 August, 1862, left isolated in northern Virginia, and facing a much larger rebel force, again under Jackson, Banks attacked at Cedar Mountain (above). His audacity caught Jackson off guard, and he damn near drove "Stonewall" from the field. But the rebels rallied and at the end of the day it was Banks who was forced to repeat. One of his West Point trained officers described the battle, "...as great a piece of folly as I have ever witnessed on the part of an incompetent general." And for an officer in the sad and misused eastern armies, that was saying quite a bit.

Luckily Banks was slightly wounded in the engagement, and a brief hospitalization allowed his superiors to replace him. Then, in November, Lincoln turned to Nathaniel Banks again to recruit 30,000 new soldiers to form the new Army of the Gulf. Before the men had even began their training they and their commander were dispatched to New Orleans, to replace the even more incompetent political Major General, Benjamin Butler.

Banks was under orders to, as soon as possible, attack and capture the rebel fortress of Fort Hudson, just 20 miles north of the Yankee lines at Baton Rouge, and to then to advance on Vicksburg to assist Major General Grant. But Banks' little Army of the Gulf needed time to complete their training, and their equipment was slow in following them. Besides, the faster Banks moved north, the sooner he would fall under Grant's command. 

Still, he did lead 12,000 men out of Baton Rouge toward Fort Hudson, on the unfortunate date of Friday, the 13th of March, 1863. The effort was a "Mud March" without the mud. It failed before it ever got within sight of the fort because of bad maps and bad communications with Admiral Farragut's ships, which were supposed to provide artillery support. And, of course, Nathaniel Banks could see no political advantage in helping someone else win a battle.

Perhaps it was this minor fiasco which convinced Grant that risking the maze of the Louisiana swamps just to meet up with Banks, was not a likely way to capture Vicksburg. Besides, he still had other options. On the same day when Grant had ordered work to begin on the Lake Providence Canal, further up the Mississippi River, 400 Federal soldiers were dismantling a levee at a place called the "Yazoo Pass", on the Coldwater River (below).

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Six

It was not the horrors of battle that transformed John Alexander Ritter (above) from a naive patriotic volunteer into a cynical veteran, but a place - Young's Point, Louisiana, 10 miles up river from Vicksburg.  The 44 year old Republican doctor was one of 32,000 members of Grant's Army of Tennessee who arrived at Mr. Young's abandoned plantation on 20 January, 1863.  John had left a growing medical practice, a thousand acres of land, a wife and 7 children, to enlist as a private soldier to put down the rebellion. Only later had he been promoted to captain and appointed regimental Surgeon of the 49th Indiana Volunteers. 

Two weeks after his arrival at Young's Point -  on Monday, 9 February -  Dr. Ritter wrote to his eldest son that "We have quite a pleasant camp but....The river is very high and still raising." Because of the damp conditions, all of the Federals made camp atop the large levee Mr. Young had built to defend his property -  his cotton and his human slaves -  from the ravages of the mighty Mississippi River.

Three cold, rainy days later Dr. Ritter wrote ominously,"We have considerable sickness in the regiment..."  Just a months later, an Ohio Democrat, a corporal in the same camp, complained, "It is alarming to see the deaths that occur daily."  He suggested, "Any man that would volunteer or go drafted now ought to be shot the very day he goes." As March of 1863 ended, a depressed Doctor Ritter wrote his wife, Margaret, "...It rained, it hailed...My tent blew down...I had a cold damp place to sleep that night .." These were, as Tom Paine said four score and a few odd years earlier, "The times that try men's souls". And not just the souls of Captains and Corporals. It was also a bad, really horrible time for Major Generals as well.

The bad times began on Wednesday, 3 December, 1862 when Confederate Major General Thomas Carmichael Hindman (above) and his 11,000 man Legion crossed the upper Arkansas River at Fort Smith, on the border with the Indian territory.

Hindman's Legion intended to make a lightening 100 mile forced march through a corner of the Boston Mountains, visa the 30 mile long Cove Creek canyon, in order to pick off an isolated Federal Division of 5,000 men near the village of Cane Hill. But then things went wrong.

First, the federal commander, Brigadier General James Gilpatrick Blunt, sensed what was coming and a second Federal division of 5,000 men under General Francis Herron was dispatched on a 110 mile forced march to their support. Second and worse, on the night of Thursday, 4 December, the clouds burst over the Ozarks and the usually placid Cove Creek (above) became a rampaging Amazon. During that Friday, 5 December, the drenched rebel Legion had to cross and re-cross the swollen Cove Creek 37 times. They finally escaped the mountains 24 hours later, late, soaked to the skin and exhausted.

Learning of the approaching Federal reinforcements, Hindman decided to defeat Herron's road weary command first. If his own men had been fresh, it might have worked, but they were drained and exhausted and wet, and after bypassing Blunt's 5,000 men, the best HIndeman could do was to block Herron's division at the little village of Prairie Grove, Arkansas. 

On Sunday, 7 December, 1862, the numerically superior rebels drove the Yankees back. But just when it looked like a southern victory, Blunt's men threw themselves on the rebel flank, and the day ended with 1,400 Confederate casualties to 1,200 Federal dead, wounded and missing. Major General Hindman had no choice but to retreat back to Fort Smith. having accomplished nothing of value.  His mood was not improved two weeks later when his namesake fort on the lower Arkansas River was captured and destroyed by a Federal Army under Lieutenant General McClernand.

Back in July of 1862 the Desoto Canal (above) had been abandoned because of low water. Now in January of 1863, after almost a month of rains, Federal Colonel of Engineers Josiah Bissell, thought he could turn the flooding Mississippi to his advantage. 

Major General Ulysses Simpson Grant explained the plan to his boss, "Old Brains" 58 year old General-in-Chief Henry Wagner Halleck (above) , " I propose running a canal", wrote Grant, "...(which) will debauch below the bluffs on the opposite side of the river..". And a second work crew would weaken the shore of the peninsula, and force the river to redirect the currents to widen the cut-through, thus bypassing Vicksburg entirely

Colonel Bissell divided the work into 160 foot sections and 1,000 man work crews, who returned each night to their camp, atop the levee at Young's Point. McClernand's three divisions, and slaves drafted from the abandoned plantations around Desoto, would widen the old canal by 9 feet and deepen it to 10 feet. 

At the same time, 500 feet down stream from the canal entrance, Sherman's 3 divisions and drafted slave labor were digging a second channel into the peninsula, throwing the excavated earth into the stream to direct the river back toward the canal, where it was hoped the current would turn the Desoto high ground into an island.

On 22 January, 52 year old Major General John Alexander McClernand,, informed his boss, General Grant, "The water of the Mississippi River...is in the upper end of the canal and must run through in a few hours..."Two days later he added, "The waters...are now running through the canal a foot deep." Two days after that he informed Grant "The water flows three feet deep in the canal, but gives no evidence of diverting the channel of the river...."

He was complaining about the lack of success of 43 year old Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose men were supposed to be diverting the Mississippi.  Sherman restricted his complaints to his private letters home, where he bemoaned “Rain, rain — water above, below and all around." The locals had their own word for the viscus mud of the bottom land that weighed down the shovels of the Union soldiers. They called it "gumbo"  And Grant's infantry spent 12 hours a day knee deep in the gumbo, struggling with spades to move the mud a few feet. Each night they would form up and march the 2 to 3 miles upstream to their miserable camps atop the Young's Point Levee. While they slept the rain would wash most of their work back into the canal.

The entire command was exhausted, wet and discouraged. During that winter and spring, they were losing 19 men a day to disease - pneumonia , malaria and dysentery. At least two men were also reported killed by alligators, and an unknown number by poisonous snakes. Since the only ground dry enough dig graves in was the Young's Point levee , one soldier wrote home that “The troops were thus hemmed in by the burial-places of their comrades.”

The Sanitary Commission was appalled by the Young's Point levee camps, "For miles, the inside of the levee was sown with graves... In places the levee was broken or washed out by the waters, and the decaying dead were partially disinterred.” The observer added that The River was so far over its banks, that it was, "...shore-less in some places, and stretched its dull, turbid waste of waters as far as the eye could reach...”.

Remembered one Illinois soldier, "The swamps became lakes, and camps and roads were sloughs of black mire. If one put his foot squarely down anywhere...it brought with it a pound or two of unctuous earth..."  On the high ground, at Memphis, that February, the river was recorded 34 and a half feet above flood stage.  At Vicksburg it reached 51 feet, and at Natchez, 42 feet. 

But the soldiers were not digging the canal on high ground. Captain Lewis Harris, of Richmond, Indiana, told his wife that month, "Our Company F has lost six men...four died from sickness. Five are sick in the hospital and six in the quarters..." He also mentioned desertions and at least one attempted suicide in his company.  

The ultimate insult to morale was that many of the soldiers were experienced enough to know the eddy just below the canal's entrance meant the current was not going to shift to the canal. And the irregular bombardment of the work crews from the Vicksburg batteries, just 900 yards across the river, meant the rebels were still on guard,. Grant's men became convinced their sacrifice was useless. And Grant quietly and quickly agreed the canal would never work,  And yet he kept the men digging. Some nameless enlisted sages composed a prayer to mock themselves as they climbed inside their wet bunks atop the Young's Point levee every night. "Now I lay me down to sleep, in mud that’s many fathoms deep. If I’m not here when you awake, just hunt me up with an oyster rake."

Why did Grant keep the men digging? Perhaps because every day, Halleck informed Grant, President Lincoln asked how the work was progressing.  On 9 February, with the river still rising 2.5 inches every 24 hours, Engineer Captain Fredrick Prime explained to General Grant, "A dam has been erected at each point where the canal crosses the levee." But, because of a layer of clay a few feet below the surface, "The water seeps in so that...the new entrance cannot be pushed deeper than about 4 feet."  So, even as the river rose, and the flooding got worse, the water actually in the canal was not deep enough for gun boats or loaded transports.  Finally, on Friday, 6 March, 1863,  Grant telegraphed the War Department and Lincoln that the canal was almost complete. The very next day, the river burst through the coffer dam and flooded the works, but only with 4 feet of muddy water  All work had to be halted while the damn was rebuilt . The entire process was so discouraging that a lesser man then Grant or Lincoln, might have given up.

In far off Virginia, on Tuesday, 20 January, 1863 - the same day that Major General Grant issued orders for work to begin on the Desoto Canal - 39 year old Major General Ambrose Everett Burnside (above) ordered a new offensive he believed would revive the Army of the Potomac and his own career.  He would feint toward Fredericksburg. At the same time his engineers would establish a bridgehead upstream. Artillery would then be rushed across the Rappahannock River, and dug in on the road to Richmond.  Then Lee would have to throw his Army of Northern Virginia against an impregnable defense, just as in December Burnside had thrown his Army of the Potomac against Marye's Heights outside of Fredericksburg. But then, as in Arkansas and Louisiana, it began to rain.

It began raining on northern Virginia that Tuesday night, and continued the next morning while Federal engineers pushed 5 pontoon bridges across the river. Lee's army did not move an inch, and that evening in looked as if Burnside had stolen a march on his enemy. Delighted, he ordered up his artillery and infantry. But on Wednesday, it kept raining. The columns of guns and wagons churned the mud into deepening, grasping paste. The march first slowed and then, by Thursday, with it still raining, regiments struggled all day to traverse a mile or two.

That Thursday, Burnside issued the dumbest order in the sorry sad bloody history of the Army of the Potomac. In a desperate attempt to improve moral, he issued the full whiskey ration to his wet, miserable soldiers. Suddenly the roads were not only clogged with wagons and soldiers stuck in the mud, but drunken soldiers, and wagons driven by drunken teamsters stuck in a rapidly freezing mud. Enough fights broke out that the army stopped moving entirely. Burnside realized his secret move had been discovered when rebels solders across the river erected signs that read, "Burnside's Army Stuck in the Mud!"

The only good thing that came from "The Mud March" was that the incompetent Major General Burnside was relieved. before he completely destroyed the Army of the Potomac. And many critics, both inside and outside the government, wondered if the same fate would have to be meted out to Major General Grant (below), to save his poor Army of Tennessee, which was still no closer to capturing Vicksburg.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Six 4th Week in May

FRIDAY MAY 22, 1863

Since midnight, the 220 artillery pieces in Grant's arsenal have been bombarding the Vicksburg land defences, joined by Union gunboats in the river. The barrage continues for four hours after dawn. At 10:00 am the Union infantry advances along a three mile front. Along Graveyard Road, the assault is led by 150 volunteers who have nicknamed themselves "The Forlorn Hope". They carry scaling ladders and planks to lay over the wire entanglements at the bottom of the revine. But "The Forelorn Hope" is driven back under heavy fire, as are the assaults all along the line. By 11:00 am Generals Sherman and McPherson are convinced the attacks are useless, and Grant is inclined to agree.

Just then a messenger arrives from General McClerand, commanding on the left. He requests another division in reinforcement and hints that he has captured two forts. Grant demurs, telling McClerand to use his own reserves. But both Sherman and McPherson now launch additional assaults, to support McClerand's troops.

In truth, McClerand has captured no Rebel forts, and by 5:00 pm, all the assaults are called off. Union causalities are 502 dead, 2,500 wounded and 147 missing. Confederate General Pemberton has lost less than 500 men, in total. And Rebel moral has been substantially restored. Vicksburg is never going to fall to assault. And Grant has yet another reason to want to be rid of McClerand.

SATURDAY MAY 23, 1863

It is exactly three weeks since Grant's 42,000 man army crossed the Mississippi and began its march on Vicksburg. At no time did Federal troops have more than a 2,000 man advantage over the Confederate forces in total, and yet at each individual engagement Grant held a substantial battle field advantage - At Port Gibson, Grant had 20,000 men, General Bowen, less than 5,000 - At Raymond led Grant 12,000, Gregg 4,100 – At Jackson, Grant commanded 38,000, Johnston, 5,000 – At Champion's Hill, Grant led 32,000 men, Pemberton just 22,000 – And at the battle of the Big Black River, Grant commanded 32,000 men while Bowen led just 5,000. He had always been victorious because of his remorseless drive to a single objective.

In far off Washington, General Hallack decides to reinforce success. Just a week before he was seeking to sidetrack Grant to Bank's command at Port Hudson. But now Washington is sending Grant every man it can, bringing his force, by the end of the campaign, to 77,000 men. And it is Banks who has been regulated to a sideshow.

Also this day, the Illustrated London News discusses a deputation of English Labor Union members who the day before had visited the American Ambassador, to express their belief that “the cause of the North to be the cause of freedom, that they wished for the success of Mr. Lincoln's armies...”. The News was skeptical, but hastened to add, “We are not going to interfere for the South....we encourage no breaking of the (Union) blockade...” With each passing day it becomes less likely that any foreign nation will recognize the slave state Confederacy.

SUNDAY MAY 24, 1863

Yesterday evening, along Grant's Mississippi River supply line, just south of the Tennessee border and near the riverfront village of Austin, Mississippi, Confederate sharpshooters fired on a supply boat, killing able Seaman Philip Dalton. Angered by that attack, this morning Brigadier General A.W. Ellet lands his forces and is drawn into a fruitless two hour battle eight miles outside of Austin with the 2^nd Arkansas Cavalry. The Rebels eventually withdraw.  Believing Confederate agents in the town have been bringing in weapons and ammunition from across the river (which they probably have), Elliot orders the town burned to the ground.  It is an act of terrorism (as was the sniper shot) and a warning to all Rebel sympathizers.

MONDAY MAY 25, 1863

Grant issues Special Order Number 140, instructing “"Corps Commanders will immediately commence the work of reducing the enemy by regular approaches (siege). It is desirable that no more loss of life shall be sustained in the reduction of Vicksburg, and the capture of the garrison. Every advantage will be taken of the natural inequalities of the ground to gain positions from which to start mines, trenches, or advance batteries." 

Also on this day, whiskered U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles (center - to Lincoln's right) notes in his diary that an argument over the fugitive slave act broke out in a cabinet meeting between Postmaster General Francis Blair (to Welles' right, a slave owner) and Salomon Chase (to Lincoln's left, a Radical Republican), the Secretary of the Treasury. President Lincoln finally intervened, to tell one of his stories, about a man from Illinois “who was in debt and terribly annoyed by a pressing creditor, until finally the debtor (pretended) to be crazy whenever the creditor broached the subject. “I,” said the President, “have on more than one occasion, in this room, when beset by extremists on this question, been compelled to appear to be very mad." He continued, ” I think none of you will ever dispose of this subject without getting mad.”  Three years into the war and there were still leaders in the north who favored returning escaped slaves to their masters in the borders states, Slavery as an institution was not yet dead.  

TUESDAY MAY 26, 1863

Today, General Frank Blair, son of the Postmaster General Blair, leads his division from Sherman's corps out of the siege lines. His orders are to destroy the supplies Confederates are collecting at Mechanicsburg, Mississippi, intended for General Johnston's troops still in Jackson, Mississippi. General Blair will be gone a week, during which time, while dueling with Wirt Adam's cavalry, he will burn 500,000 bushels of corn, and the grist mill used to grind it, and capture 1,000 head of cattle, 300 mules and 40 bales of cotton  He will also bring back “negroes, equal to my own command”. Thanks to this raid, no matter how many men General Johnston is able to gather, he will not be able to advance from his lines around Jackson until he has replaced those supplies. There will be no relief for Vicksburg from Jackson, Mississippi.

WEDNESDAY MAY 27, 1863

This morning, General Banks launches his 13,000 man army against the defenses of Port Hudson. The attacks are uncoordinated and are easily thrown back. Among the attacking units are the 1^st and 3^rd Louisiana Native Guards, the first black Americans to officially wear Union Blue. Union casualties are 1,995, while the Confederates lose just 235.  General Banks will not be rushing to replace Grant anytime soon.

THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1863

After the overnight cloud burst a week earlier, the drought in Mississippi has returned with a vengeance. In Vicksburg this is already creating concern. The city has no wells. It has always drawn water from the numerous streams and rivulets that cut through the bluffs to the Mississippi River. General Pemberton has almost unlimited weapons and ammunition, collected here to supply the entire Confederacy. But he is short of food, and already rationing water. To escape the almost constant Federal bombardment, citizens of Vicksburg begin to dig in the cliffs to protect themselves. All hope in Vicksburg now rest on General Johnston in Jackson. In fact, that hope is already dead.

- 30 -