VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty-Six

The Illinois horsemen broke camp at about 6:00am, Sunday, 26 April, 1863. They paused long enough in Raleigh, Mississippi to capture the local sheriff and seize $3,000 in Confederate currency. It began to rain heavily in the afternoon, but Colonel Grierson drove his men on until they had reached the Strong River, outside of Westville, 40 road miles from their starting point that day.

As the rest of the command tried to find a dry spot to make camp, 4 companies were mounted on the freshest horses available and sent off into the wet dark. The man leading this group might have led the Grierson raid if Grierson had not made it back in time - 31 year old lawyer Colonel Edward Prince. His orders were to capture and hold the ferry across the Pearl River.  But for Colonel Grierson, the question,  now that the Vicksburg Jackson railroad had been hit hard, was where to go next.

It seems obvious to me that it was obvious to Colonel Benjamin Harrison Grierson that Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant was intending to launch a major assault against Vicksburg before the end of April. If not now, why the rush? Grierson was urgently recalled from leave in Illinois to lead the raid, arriving less then 24 hours before it was launched. And why send Grierson down the rebel right flank, unless Grant was intending on attacking the rebel left flank, probably in the region of Grand Gulf? So,  although no explicit orders had been issued, it seems obvious to me that Grierson was riding to meet Grant somewhere in the vicinity of Grand Gulf.

After a few hours sleep, Grierson got his weary men and horses moving again about midnight, Monday, 27 April. They crossed the Strong River bridge, which they burned behind them. Just about dawn, they arrived at the Pearl River. Although crossing the captured ferry took several hours, once again Grierson sent Colonel Prince ahead, this time to Hazelhurst. As they approached that village, on the north/south New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern railroad, Prince decided on new bit of chicanery. He wrote out a dispatch addressed to General Pemberton in Jackson, 40 miles to the north. In it he claimed that the Pearl River ferry had been destroyed before the Yankees had arrived, and that they were last seen heading northeast, as if intending on hitting the Southern Railroad again, before joining with the Yankees out of Greenville.

The message was delivered by two "scouts" dressed in stolen uniforms, and they watched as it was telegraphed to Pemberton. Shortly there after, Colonel Prince's tiny command captured the station, and almost took another train as well. However the engineer spotted a blue clad trooper and was able to reverse his engine back toward Jackson. And as it left the station, so did Colonel Prince's clever deception plan. 

He was forced to satisfy himself with burning a box car filled with artillery shells. And once again the sound of exploding shells forced the rest of Grierson's command to race into town, only to discover there was no battle. So the Yankees spent the rest of the day, tearing up track, burning the cross ties to heat the rails and bend them until they were useless.

Having finally received confirmation of Grierson's location from the observant engineer, Pemberton ordered the 6,500 infantrymen of General William Wing Loring's division now the rail line to Edward's Station to defend the all important Southern Railroad, and moved to encircle the Yankees with what little cavalry he had. The regiment under 49 year old lawyer and state representative Colonel William Wirt Adams (above)  from Grand Gulf and instructed to close in from the west. 

They were joined by 2 irregular units - Porter's Partisans' marching from Jackson under Captain W.W. Porter, and coming in from the south was the First Tennessee Rangers under 42 year old Memphis lawyer, Colonel Robert Vinkler Richardson. And 28 year old Ohio native Colonel Clark Russell Barteau was ordered to slam the back door on Grierson by moving his 22nd Tennessee regiment of cavalry to Hazelhurst.

Colonel Grierson (above, center) did not know the trap was closing, but did not wait to find out. At 6:00am, Tuesday, 28 April his men and their weary mounts hit the roads again. Thankfully the roads were now dry, and the units made good time. 

About four hours later the Colonel dispatched 4 more companies of the 7th Illinois south to strike the New Orleans, Jackson railroad again, again burning rail cars, the depot and a bridge in the lumber town of Bahala, known locally "for the number and size of its saloons".  Meanwhile Grierson's command continued south west, to the village of Union Church - so named because when the village was founded around 1805, the few Methodists had to worship in union with the majority Presbyterians.

Grierson and his 950 troopers were now within 60 miles of Grand Gulf. The Colonel could expect to hear of Grant's crossing the Mississippi somewhere close to that landing, today or tomorrow, or maybe the day after. But Grierson's union with Grant was not to be. About 1:00am, on the morning of Wednesday, 29 April, two "scouts" screening the 4 companies of the 7th returning from their raid stumbled into pickets for Wirt Adam's 400 troopers and militia,with artillery support, marching out from Grand Gulf. Thinking they were speaking with fellow rebels, the pickets revealed they were expecting to ambush the damn Yankees come morning, outside of Union Church.

At 6:00am that morning, Grierson rode out of Union Church headed west, as expected. But less than a mile later the majority of the command suddenly took a side road eastward, while leaving 4 companies at the cross roads, skirmishing with any curious rebels who got too close. It was hours before Wirt Adams pressed the skirmishes hard enough that they melted away into the Mississippi haze. Realizing at last that the Yankees had dodged his trap, an infuriated Adams gathered his men and set off in pursuit.

The morning was infuriating for both sides. As Grierson's men road east toward Brookhaven, Mississippi, they could hear behind them the thundering of Admiral Porter's ironclad's pounding the forts at Grand Gulf. The junction, and security, seemed so close. And the twisting back roads of Mississippi confused the troopers so much that Corporal Sudby would later write, " I do not think we missed traveling toward any point of the compass."

That afternoon Grierson's men galloped into a surprised railroad town of Brookhaven, destroying another dozen freight cars filled with arms and ammunition, tearing up more track, burning another bridge and capturing and paroling another 200 soldiers, either wounded home on leave, or on recruiting duty. But there was a surprise here as well - hundreds of able bodied men seeking a parole of their own, which would exempt them from being drafted in the Confederate army until exchanged for civilians in northern states. In fact the people of Brookhaven were so friendly, Grierson camped there for the night, completing another 40 mile day.

Two miles south down the New Orleans, Jackson rail line was the little town of Bogue Chitto, which Colonel Grierson's raiders captured early on the Thursday morning of 30 April. They burned 25 more box cars and destroyed more track. And here once again, deep in Mississippi, they found strong pro union sentiment. By nightfall the exhausted troopers had reached Summit, Mississippi.

Nine hours behind the Yankees were the First Tennessee Rangers under Colonel Richardson. Sensing they were gaining, Richardson pushed his men to march through the night. Much closer that evening, just 5 miles to the west of Grierson, were the 400 troopers under Colonel Wirt Adams. Both Richardson and Adams planned to attack the Yankees 22 miles further south, the next stop on the New Orleans rail line - a little village of 400 just north of the Louisiana border, Osyka, Mississippi.

The Louisiana Legion under 50 year old lawyer, Colonel William R. Miles, marching northeast out of Port Hudson, was heading for the same location. And 39 year old Lieutenant Colonel George Gnatt, leading the 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, was also converging to the same spot. Like a magnet the 950 troopers of the 6th and 7th Volunteer Cavalry Regiments were drawing every rebel cavalry unit in Mississippi toward the little railroad town of Osyka.

When they stopped for the night of Thursday, 30 April, 1863, 15 miles south of Summit Mississippi, and 7 miles north of Osyka, Colonel Grierson (above) decided that since he had not yet heard of Grant's army crossing the river, come morning - Friday, 1 May, 1863, he would head for the Federal lines outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 100 miles to the southwest.

Of course, by that time,  Grant was already on the Vicksburg side of the Mississippi River.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty - Five

The four ugly dark ships came steaming around Caffees' Point about 7:30am, Wednesday, 29 April, 1863, with the 512 ton, 175 foot long USS Pittsburg, leading the way. Twenty minutes later her big guns - two 9" and three 8" cannon, and six big rifles - opened fire on the upper battery, 50 feet above the river. 

But as they approached the head on confluence of the Big Black River and the Mississippi (above, top right), the whirlpool which gave Grand Gulf its name twisted the ships around, complicating their aim, until finally they drew so close their guns could not elevate high enough to hit the battery. As they continued their attack on the lower battery south of the town, at about 8:25am, a second squadron of 3 more gunboats appeared, anchored just below the whirlpool, and continued the assault on the upper battery.

There is an underlying order to the geography of the great flat floodplain of the Mississippi Delta which reveals itself in repetition. In example; the Yazoo river is forced to join the Mississippi just above Vicksburg because it is blocked by the high bluffs the town sits upon. And forty miles to the south, the return of those same high bluffs channel the Big Black River head on into the main stream bellow the 175 foot high Point of the Rocks, just above the community of Grand Gulf. Here, unlike at Vicksburg, the western shore is flat and swampy. 

After four hours 52 year old Admiral David Dixon Porter's brown water navy silenced the lower battery. But two more hours of bombardment by all 7 Federal gunboats failed to seriously damage the upper battery. And one Federal ironclad - the 930 ton casemate sternwheel USS Tuscumbia - suffered damage to her engine room, and drifted powerless downstream to beach on the Louisiana shore. The rest of Federal ships withdrew about 1:00pm to Hart Times Landing.

As the dark ships disappeared upstream, the commander at Grand Gulf , 32 year old General John Stevens Bowen had not doubt they would be back. While the attack was still in progress he telegraphed his boss, General Stevenson, in Vicksburg. Detailing the assault, he added, "Six transports in sight, loaded with troops, but stationary. " 

Stevenson was at last galvanized into action. He telegraphed his boss, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton in Jackson that, " The line to Grand Gulf is broken. Heavy firing in that direction..." He also ordered 29 year old Georgia lawyer Brigadier General Edward Dorr Tracy Jr and 35 year old Columbus, Mississippi bookstore owner Brigadier General William Edwin Baldwin to move their brigades to Grand Gulf as quickly as possible.

Across the river, Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant was on the move as well, riding toward the 500 acre plantation owned by 47 year old Doctor Jeremiah Yellott Hollingsworth, and his wife Francis, which they called "Hard Times".  

This cotton plantation was the end of a 75 mile long cordoroy road from Milliken's Bend, built over April by Major General John A. McClernand's XIII Corps. The troops on the 6 transports spotted by General Bowen had been the lead elements of that corps, the 10,000 men of 40 year old Brigadier General Peter Joseph Osterhouse's 9th division and 33 year old Brigadier General Eugene Asa Carr's 14th division. But following McClernand's corps down that same road were also the troops of the XVII Corps, under 34 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson.

The men of the XVII corps had spent February and March digging the canal at Lake Providence, Louisiana.  But in early April they had moved to Milliken's Bend, and began to march down the cordoroy road, repairing it as they came on. The work slowed their progress, but as yet Grant was not certain exactly where these men were marching to.  

Typical was the experience of the 20th Ohio Volunteer Regiment, of the 2nd Brigade, 37 year old Major General John Alexander Logan's 3rd Division in McPherson's Corps. They were covering an average of just 6 miles a day.  Their Major, 39 year old Cincinnati lawyer Manning Ferguson Force, remembered the "6 days of plodding" down a road which was "strewn with wrecks of wagons and their loads, and half buried guns. At a halt of some hours the men stood deep in mud, for want of any means of sitting."

Major Force, "A spare grave man with an eye that penetrated to the spine of a culprit..." also remembered the humidity, and the bugs. "When the sun set, the leaves of the forest seemed to exude smoke," he wrote after the war, " and the air became a saturated solution of gnats....They swarmed upon our necks, seeming to encircle them with bands of hot iron. Tortured and blinded, we could neither eat nor see.” But they kept slowly marching south, and Grant, with his pathological aversion to retracing his steps, was going to have to quickly figure out some where to put 40,000 soldiers.

After arriving in the Hollingsworth Plantation house at about 2:30pm that Wednesday, 29 April, Grant was immediately confronted by Admiral Porter, with news of his failure to overcome the upper battery at Grand Gulf.  Grant did not pause. His response was quick and quiet. "Unload the infantry. The men will march another 3 miles south of Grand Gulf over the Coffee Peninsula, and after dark I shall run every transport I have below the batteries and not one shall be injured." Porter accepted the idea at once, and issued the orders to the transports and barges waiting offshore.

The two divisions, Osterhouse's and Carr's disembarked, formed up on the levee, and set off on the five mile march to the home owned by Passmore Hoopes and his wife Eliza, bearing the romantic of French name of Disharoon. By dark both divisions were encamped, waiting for the ships to join them. With a flash and bang of covering fire from Porter's ironclads, the six federal transports with barges and flatboats in tow made the run past Grand Gulf. And as Grant had said, they made it without a single loss of boats or lives.

Grant's plan that afternoon was to re-board his men on the steamboats the next morning, and carry them 12 miles south to the Mississippi shore at the old French river port of Petit Gouffre - "Little Gulf" as opposed to Grand Gulf.  The village's name had been changed in 1828, adopting the nomen of the first Chief Justice of Mississippi Territory - from 1803 to 1811 - Thomas Rodney, originally from Delaware. His older brother, Caesar, had been a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. To confirm his plan, Grant sent a scouting party down river to Rodney, to confirm there was a road which would lead back to Grand Gulf.  But when they returned later that night they brought with them a runaway slave. And as so often happened in this war for union, a black man changed everyone's plans.

This man told Grant there was no need to travel 12 miles to find a good landing spot on the Mississippi shore. Just 3 miles south from the landing at Disharoon, a few hundred yards south of a little stream called Bayou Pierre (above), was a solid earthen bank and plenty of room for several steamboats to tie up and unload. Just inland above the river was the almost abandoned village of Bruinsburg, with a small Bethel Church. 

From there the man assured Grant, two good roads climbed the bluffs north toward Port Gibson (above), and which,  once captured,  would outflank Grand Gulf.

By all accounts, Grant expressed no second thoughts. He ordered the transports to load troops in the morning, of Thursday, 30 April, 1863, at Disharoon Landing, Louisiana and unload them again at Bruinsburg, Mississippi. It would be the largest amphibious operation in the history of the United States, until the Normandy landings of 6 June 1944.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty - Four

The six Mississippi River steamboats cast off from Young's Point as soon as the moon set - about 11:30pm, on Wednesday, 22 April, 1863; The Tigress, the Anglo Saxon, the J.W. Cheeseman, the Enterprise City, the Moderator and the Horizon. Each ship had barges lashed to their thin wooden starboard sides for desperately needed protection, and cotton bale armor stacked around their boilers and engines to absorb the anticipated torrent of abuse. Sacks of oats, corn and barley were piled chest high on their upper decks to soften the plunging fire from howitzers. 

The brown water Navy of Admiral Porter was not asked, and did not offer an opinion of this lunacy. It was an army operation, from start to finish. Just a week before, Admiral Porter had made a similar run past the Vicksburg batteries, with few causalities and the loss of just one ship. But Porter's fleet were mostly ironclad gunboats, able to distract the rebel gunners by shooting back at them. And the only ship sunk that night had been, like these six, an unarmed riverboat. But this floating "forlorn Hope" was strictly an army operation, under the orders of Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant, and Grant's orders were to be obeyed. 

The officer who volunteered to lead this ad hoc flotilla was Lieutenant-Colonel William S. Oliver. All 6 steamships under his command were crewed by 25 army volunteers, because none of the experienced civilian boatmen were stupid enough to risk their lives on this harebrained scheme, and not even a general was willing to order men into to sail unarmed and unarmored ships past the Vicksburg guns. Colonel Oliver had strategically placed buckets of sand about the ship, and had fire hoses unrolled, ready to extinguish the dozens of infernos certain to burst forth on each boat. After an afternoon shakedown cruise up the river, to familiarize themselves with their new environments, the men were as ready as they could be.     

To be blunt, they got the hell kicked out of them. Two miles south from their starting point, as the first ship drew abreast of the Vicksburg court house at 12:20am Thursday, 23 April, "a shower of missiles of all shapes and kinds, from Minie balls to 200-pound shot and shell” fell upon the wooden sacrificial lambs "It seemed as though Heaven and Hell had turned everything loose to destroy us", remembered Colonel Oliver "The Anglo-Saxon" took one shell into her engine, followed by a second that blew apart her pilot house. Powerless and with no one at the helm, since there was no longer a helm, she drifted down river with the 4 knot current. 

The steam ship Cheeseman breached on a sandbar, but managed to back off, and resume downstream. There she came to the rescue of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver and the crew of the Tigress, which sank with 30 holes in her hull, including 4 foot gaping vacuum in her stern. When a rebel shell shattered one of the Enterprise City's smokestacks, a piece of shrapnel went spinning into the pilot house killing the pilot. The ship spun out of line and ran aground right under the Vicksburg guns. Colonel Oliver directed the Cheeseman to sail between the injured boat and the guns, throw her helpless crew a line and tow them back into the river.

By the time it was all over - about 3:00am, 23 April - the Vicksburg gunners had matched their effort from the previous week, firing about 500 rounds. This time the results were more impressive. Of the 6 ships, The Tigress was sunk, the Horizon had turned back, the Enterprise City and the Anglo Saxon were barely afloat. By dawn, only the Cheeseman and the Moderator were able to get up steam to meet Porter's fleet at Hard Times Landing.  But added to the 2 transports which had survived the run on 16 April, that gave Grant 4 operational steam ships to bridge the Mississippi river. Barely enough, but enough to start.      

In direct command of the 12,000 men in Vicksburg, 45 year old Virginian, Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, jr., tried to warn his boss, 49 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above), that the the Yankees were moving against the Confederate line, stretching from Jackson on the right to Vicksburg on the left. Stevenson was convinced the Federals were going to move toward the center, north of Vicksburg.   But the bureaucrat Pemberton seemed to be suffering from a case of tunnel vision.

Historian Bruce Catton explained,  in his beautiful centennial record of the war, what rebel President Jeff Davis' problem was in Mississippi, that spring of 1863. "Unless help could be brought in from outside the Department, the game was going to be lost.  But all of the troops that might conceivably be brought in...could not be summoned without inviting disaster. To accept this argument was in effect to admit that the Confederacy was being tried beyond its strength."  It might be, suggested Catton, that an answer to the problem Grant was presenting to the Confederacy did not exist. But few in the service of the slave states in 1863, were willing to admit that.

From where Pemberton sat, Vicksburg, like Charleston before it, was not vital to the survival of the Confederacy. If lost it could be retaken. Whereas the Vicksburg, Jackson and Meridian railroad - the Southern Railroad - was vital. Seriously break that line - as would be done that very day, at Newton Station - and the cattle and cereal from Texas, the salt and sugar from Louisiana, the hogs and hominy from Arkansas would not reach the beating heart of the Confederacy - General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. And then the entire game would be up. 

Pemberton and his staff were struggling to shift infantry to block the fleet footed Yankee cavalry of Colonel Grierison. To defend Jackson itself,  Pemberton sent 3 regiments to Morton, Mississippi.  He dispatched General Loring to Meridian where that independent minded office kidnapped an infantry brigade in route to Vicksburg, and held them for the duration of the crises. Pemberton also dispatched militia on forced marches to Okolona, Canton and Carthage, Mississippi.

By telegraph he begged fellow Lieutenant General Braxton Bragg for the return of some cavalry transferred under orders from General Joseph Johnston. In response, a unit from Mobile, Alabama began the long ride north and west.  Meanwhile, in his desperate search for cavalry Pemberton even stole 7 companies from his own command, at Grand Gulf, Mississippi (above), over the protests of the commander of that outpost, Major General John Bowen.  

Once Porter's gunboats had run the Vicksburg batteries on Thursday, 17 April, Bowen (above) ordered 28 year old Colonel Francis Marion Cockerell to pull his two Missouri regiments back to Grand Gulf.  He still maintained a few hundred men on the western shore, and he pushed pickets south on the Mississippi side to look out for Yankees scouting for crossing points.  Bowen's immediate boss, Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, jr,  and his ultimate commander General Pemberton, sent him additional soldiers, bringing his command at Grand Gulf up to 5,000 men by Wednesday, 23 April - the day after Grant's transport run. But it was still not enough for Bowen. 

On Sunday, 27 April General Bowen telegraphed General Stevenson, in Vicksburg, "All the movements of the enemy...seem to indicate an intention... to march their army still lower down in Louisiana, perhaps to Saint Joseph, and then to run their steamers by me and cross to Rodney... I would recommend the sending of a regiment and section of artillery to Rodney, which would materially delay their crossing and advance."  The problem was, Stevenson did not agree that Grant was planning  to cross the river below Grand Gulf . He thought the threat was a lot closer to Vicksburg.

Since early April, well north of Vicksburg,  a federal division under Major General Fredrick Steeele had been marching southwest out of the Mississippi River town of Greenville, pushing into the delta all the way to headwaters of Deer Creek.  An Iowa private named Jacob Ritter wrote home about the operation referred to by the Yankee soldiers as "The "Greenville Wallow" ,  He wrote, "We nearly laid the country waste along the road - burned most of the cotton gins, and a large amount of cotton, corn, bacon...We brought in a large drove of fat cattle, besides what we got all the chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys we could eat…and we got more Negroes and mules than you could shake a stick at.” The damage was so great, and the threat so great, Stevenson had to march troops from Fort Pemberton at the head of the Yazoo River to drive the Yankees back.

And then on Tuesday, 29 April, 8 federal gunboats - the Tyler, Choctaw, DeKalb, Signal, Romeo, Linden, Petrel, and Black Hawk - followed by 10 transports loaded with infantry began steaming up the Yazoo River. They dropped anchor that afternoon at the mouth of the Chickashaw Bayou, scene of Sherman's failed attack in December. The next morning - Friday, 30 April - the ships moved upstream a mile to Drumgould's Bluff. The gunboats started blasting at the rebel guns on the heights, getting so close to the Confederate artillery positions that the Choctaw took fifty hits, although with no casualties. Then just about 6:00pm, Federal troops began disembarking.  

Stevenson (above) reasoned this was a far larger operation than anything happening around Grand Gulf, or even Jackson. That must mean Grant's main thrust was a coup de main,  aimed right at Vicksburg.  The attack on Newton Station, and running gunboats past the Vicksburg batteries must be mere diversions. Stevenson remained certain of that, even after the Federal gunboats began bombarding the forts at Grand Gulf. 

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