VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Three

One of the things America lost in the 20^th century, was a familiarity with death. Consider the life of one daughter of Mississippi, Mary Hynum. She was born in early April of 1805.  In 1825 she became the third wife of Abner Pipes, who owned a plantation on the southern edge of the Chocktaw nation, 4 miles west of Rocky Springs, near the Harkinson's Ferry over the Big Black River. They had three children, first two sons, James born in 1827 and Isaac Newton Pipes, born in 1829. Six years later in 1835, the patriarch Abner Pipes died, just a few days before his and Mary's newborn son also died.

Even after the February 1839 passage of the Married Women's Property Act, women in Mississippi still could not sign legal documents. And with 2 minor sons, 34 year old widow Mary Hynum Pipes was in constant danger of losing the plantation. So in 1839 she married 49 year old Samuel Bagnell, 

He and Mary had 4 additional children – an infant who died shortly after birth, Ciaus, who died on 27 July, 1845, just 2 days short of his third birthday, 15 month old Emma who died 2 days after Ciaus, and William, who died at the age of 9 in the summer of 1846.  

Then, in August of 1847, at 54 years of age Samuel Bagnell, also died. That left Mary living in the house with only the two sons from her first marriage.  Two years later 20 year old Isaac Pipes married Ann Eliza Evans from Bastrop, Louisiana, and brought her home to Mississippi.

By the spring of 1863 both James and Isaac were serving as privates among the 200 or so members of the Fourth Mississippi cavalry “Battalion” called to the defense of their homes. The 4^th skirmished with Grant's army after the defeat at Port Gibson, and both sons would survive the war. But their service left now 58 year old Mary Hynum Pipes Bagnell and her daughter-in-law alone with the house servants, until Wednesday, 6 May, 1863 when Yankee Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant chose her home as his headquarters.

Camped around the Pipes Bagnell house were the 19,350 men of the XIII Corps, under 52 year old Lincoln doppelganger Major General John Alexander McClernand, with forward elements still holding the bridge over the Big Black River at Harkinson's Ferry.   Four miles to the east, around Willow Springs, was the XVII Corps, 17,390 men under 34 year old West Point graduate Major General James Birdseye McPherson. 

Left behind in Louisiana was the XV Corps, 15,975 men under 53 year old Major General William Tecumseh Sherman. The XV Corps was waiting while 2 million rations of hardtack and ammunition were stockpiled in Grand Gulf.

Separated from Grant, Sherman's imagination of pending disaster for the entire army cut off in Mississippi, had once again gotten the better of him.  But on Wednesday, 6 May, as the first of his men began the crossing from Hard Times Landing,  Sherman (above) dispatched a reassuring message to the commander of his 2^nd division, 42 year old Missourian Major General Francis Preston Blair. Sherman assured the tail end Charlie of the Army of the Tennessee, “Grant reports plenty of meat and corn on the other side...”. That same morning, 60 wagons loaded with ammunition, left Grand Gulf for Willow Springs, guarded by 300 troopers of Federal cavalry.

As Major Mark S, Hurley observed in his 1992 paper, “Union Logistics in the Vicksburg Campaign”,

“Grant's original plan....(was to) detach McClernand's corps to General Banks to cooperate in the reduction of Port Hudson....(but then) he learned that Banks was moving up the Red River instead of up the Mississippi.”

So, with Banks tied down in southern Louisiana for at least the next 30 days, Grant decided to act alone. On 3 May, he notified his boss. 48 year old General-in-Chief, Henry Wagner Halleck  (above) that “The country will provide all the forage required for anything like an active campaign. Other supplies will have to be drawn from Milliken's Bend." The next morning, from Mary Pipes Bagnell's parlor,  he shifted that supply base south, to Grand Gulf.

That Wednesday, 6 May, he again telegraphed Halleck. “ I will move as soon as three days rations (are) received and send wagons back to the (Grand) Gulf for more to follow.” But where would the army go next?  He might use the bridge at Harkinson's Ferry to strike directly at Vicksburg.  But, as Major Hurley notes, “...the broken nature of the ground favored the Confederates.”  And such an attack might give Pemberton's army an escape route north, into the Yazoo basin. However, “Skirting east of Vicksburg...could deny the Confederates access to supplies and reinforcements from Jackson....(and) the Confederates would not be able to easily tell whether Grant's main effort was against Jackson,...or Vicksburg. Furthermore, marching east gave Grant flexibility because he could easily turn either town into his main attack.”

On Thursday, 7 May, the first of Sherman's battalions left Grand Gulf and began marching up the Rodney Road toward Willow Springs. At the same time the three brigades of 37 year old Major General John Alexander Logan's (above)  3^rd division, of McPherson's Corps, set out on a 3 mile march north along the Natchez Trace for Rocky Springs.  Grant was riding with General Logan, and for anyone aware of his phobia against retracing his steps, that was a highly significant journey. It was also important because Grant was no longer traveling with the troublesome General McClernand. He was close, but Grant felt the need for a wider view.

Rocky Springs (above) was a little village of 2,600 whites operating 3 stores and 13 shops. Within the surrounding Claiborne county were perhaps 300 more whites and some 2,000 slaves. None of the white residents of Rocky Springs lifted a hand against the Yankee infantry as they marched in, but they did not welcome the invaders, either. Still, despite the hate filled stares, said one Yankee soldier, “...we have good, cold spring water...”

On the same day, elements of John McClernand's XIII Corps marched further up the Rodney Road to Big Sand Creek, about 5 miles to the northeast. He was under strict orders to avoid a fight. The steps were small, but the army kept moving, both to keep the rebels uncertain about its exact location, and to keep moving to fresh territory for foraging.

Charles Anderson Dana (above), the Special Investigating Agent for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, was supposed to be keeping an eye on Grant, and had arrived in Rocky Springs with the general.  But after years of editing and managing Horace Greely's New York Tribune, and months spent knee deep in the political maze of Washington, D.C, the 42 year old Dana had “gone native”, and reverted to being a journalist. He liked Grant, and filed positive reports about him.

It was Dana's reports supporting Grant, and questioning McClernand's capabilities, which inspired the autocratic and occasionally hysterical Stanton (above) to send a 5 May telegram to Dana. “General Grant has full and absolute authority to enforce his own commands, and to remove any person who by ignorance, inaction or any other cause interferes with or delays his operations. He has the full confidence of the government, is expected to enforce his authority, and will be firmly and heartily supported, but he will be responsible for any failure to exert his powers. You may communicate this to him.” However, because Grant was moving, this note would not reach Dana until 10 May.

While in camp at Rocky Springs, Dana watched the forage parties dispatched each morning, returning with a bounty of pork, chicken and beef every night. The expedition had briefly assumed the air of a hunting trip, and Dana waxed romantic about the soldier's life. “Away yonder, in the edge of the woods, I hear the drumbeat that calls the soldiers to supper...Pretty soon after dark they are all asleep, lying in their blankets under the trees...Their guns are all ready by their sides, so that if they are suddenly called at night they can start in a moment. It is strange in the mornings before daylight to hear the bugle and drums sound the reveille, which calls the army to wake up."  It was clear that the Army was on the move.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Two

 

The 38 year old bespectacled Democratic publisher of the Hinds County Gazette, George William Harper (above), was worried.  Even during the bright arrogance of 1861, the one time mayor, two term state representative and a major of militia had watched with foreboding as “The Raymond Fencibles” marched off to war in Virginia. Despite his personal rejection of succession, George had volunteered as commissariat, securing supplies for the 2 regiments raised in Hinds county, Mississippi. And this gave him a perspective as, over the next two years, the war crept closer to 512 Palestine Street in Raymond, where George's wife Anna and their six children lived.

Raymond seemed safe from the anarchy of the war. The petite capital of Hinds county was off the main road between Vicksburg and Jackson, yet close to the Natchez Trace, on property donated by General Raymond Robinson. By 1862 the 1,500 white residents boasted a new Greek revival county court house (above) (built with slave labor)... 

...Two respectable rooming houses - “The City” and “The Oak Tree” (above) - as well as the not quite so respectable Florin House, several grand homes and two dozen or more tenement apartments. 

The town also boasted a new Episcopalian  church as well as the older Methodist church, ministered over by the Reverend Cooper - who was also owner of the diuretic medicinal waters of Coopers Wells resort (above)  just south of town. 

There were a couple of dry goods stores, a few saloons and blacksmiths, a hand full of doctors, a flurry of lawyers and Harper's  Hinds County Gazette - second oldest newspaper in the state. Raymond was as peaceful a town as could be found in the cotton empire. And then, four days ago on 2 May, 1863, the Yankees had captured Port Gibson, just 50 miles to the south.

The sudden appearance of blue uniforms in the very gut of Mississippi ripped apart the carefully cultured self image of gentility which had graced the south for a century. In a region already stripped of young white males, the nightmare of retribution was abruptly set free to stalk the land in daylight, and the thousands of ways the “peculiar institution” had twisted and bent the society, laws and psychology of the south were revealed in all their hypocrisy. So terrifying was this sudden reality it must be doubtful if either master or slave welcomed the revelation without reservations.

On Tuesday, 5 May, halfway between Raymond and Edward's Depot. 500 troopers of the 2^nd Illinois Cavalry had descended upon and captured 100 mounted infantry of the 20^th Mississippi. That put Yankees within 8 miles of Raymond.  

The next morning, George Harper used his new Number 3 Washington Press, manufactured by New York based Robert Hoe and Company, to deliver the depressing news to his readers. It was, he wrote, “...a very gloomy day. Enemy reported at Edwards Station, Auburn, Cayuga, (and) Rocky Springs.”

George assured his readers the Yankees would concentrate on Vicksburg, 40 miles to the east, and that the fighting would come no closer than the banks of the Big Black River – still 20 miles, a full day's travel, away.  But George knew a zone of uncertainty had opened up in the rolling hills of central Mississippi, bordered by Bayou Pierre on the south, the Big Black River on the west, Snake Creek to the east, and to the north, the little community of Edward's Depot.

The 20 year old Tennessean Richard O. “Rich” Edward was one of the 75,000 whites drawn and 100,000 slaves forced to Mississippi after the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. The sudden creation of 11 million acres of land turned conventional economics on its head. As attorney and author of “The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi”, Joseph Glover Baldwin put it, “The country was just settling up”. Fraud was rampant, and it seemed every idiot was making money. One of them explained, “...credit is plenty, and he who has no money can do as much business as he who has...”. “Rich” Edward easily acquired a few hundred acres in the Yazoo River delta and started growing cotton.

In 1834, Mississippi produced 85 million pounds of cotton. Three years later the cotton kingdom produced 200 million pounds of the white fiber. Over the same time the price paid for that cotton in New Orleans almost doubled. This drove inflation, but again, few seemed to notice. Baldwin explained that “Money, or what passed for money was the only cheap thing to be had.” It seemed as if the good times would go on forever. They did not.

During March and February of 1837 the price of cotton dropped 25%. The immediate cause was President Andrew Jackson's order that the only payment accepted for Federal lands would be in gold or silver. This caused private banks to raise interest rates on paper – or specie – loans. And that produced a seemingly endless string of bankruptcies. In August of 1838, Colonel William H. Shelton, President of one of the largest banks in Mississippi,  fled after his bank failed - “Gone to Texas” was the phrase. A year later he committed suicide. In 1840 the entire state of Mississippi defaulted on $2 million worth of loans to cotton farmers. It took seven long years for the recovery to even begin.

In 1847 Richard Edward paid a dollar an acre for a section of 640 acres of Harlan County, 16 miles from Vicksburg and just east of the Big Black tributary called Baker's Creek. The impetus for his investment was a new cotton boom.   In 1850 Richard's 30 slaves produced one hundred eighty 500 pound bales of cotton, shipped out of his own depot on the Mississippi Southern Railroad (above). By 1860 Richard's wealth included 124 slave laborers, making him one of the top 12% of slave owners.

But in a back room at Edward's Produce and Grocery was the iron fist required to make that wealth possible – 300 muskets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Almost every large plantation in the south required such a larder, ever ready to respond to the expected great slave revolt, when it came. The 3,000 weapons destroyed by Grierson's raid were further evidence of these doomsday vaults dispersed though out Mississippi.  And these were not hysterical fantasies. 

According to the 1860 census, there were 791,000 humans living in the state of Mississippi, of whom 437,000 – 55% - were owned by the remaining 45%. Some 80,000 white Mississippi men then went to war, further unbalancing the social power structure. It would have been odd, if the whites had not felt vulnerable, because they were.

But in the pine forests of Winston county, in north/central Mississippi,  where there were only 122 black slaves, owned by just 14 white families - out of the total of 637 white families in the district. There was strong pro-union sentiment in Winston County. Yet even here, where masters vastly outnumbered those in bondage, owner Mr. C. D, Kelly was willing to believe his own cook's tale of a mass slave conspiracy. Her name was never provided, but Mr. Kelly said that on Friday, 20 September 1860, while he was “chastising”, the “girl”, she had revealed a massive plot to poison every white family in the county. 

She said she had been provided with poison to murder her master, his wife and child.  According to the New York Times, a week after learning of the plot, Mr. Kelly, “...called on some five or six responsible and sober-thinking gentlemen,” to form a Vigilance Committee. On 28 September the committee went from plantation to plantation, beating slaves without explanation or examination. The following day, the committee returned and some of the slaves spontaneously “confessed”, leading to the arrest of about 30 slaves. It was assumed white agitators had lead the conspiracy, specifically a traveling photographer, later detained in Philadelphia and identified only as G. Harrington – possibly Cole Harrington, originally from New York City.

Observed The Times, “ Knowing well that the law is too tardy in its course...” the committee “...unanimously committed” to pass punishment, “...on all persons, black or white, that may be impeached before it. of aiding or abetting in insurrectionist plans or movements, heretofore or hereafter.” The result, as reported in the Louisville and St. Louis newspapers, was that one negro and Mr. Harrington “had been hung.” 

And, of course the remaining 29 slaves were whipped, “...so severely, that it was thought they would die.’’

In February of 1862 such fear drove Joseph Davis, elder brother to Confederate President Jeff Davis,  to take his family and “house slaves” to Alabama for their safety.  But the moment the master's boat left the dock of his Hurricane Plantation,  his field hands took control of the entire peninsula, ransacking both Joseph's Hurricane Plantation house and Jefferson Davis' Brierfield Plantation house.   

All the cotton was burned, while the self-emancipated slaves took everything they could use back to their cabins (above) And there they stayed.  A Confederate lieutenant, dispatched with a patrol to put down the rebellion was shot at. The officer complained that, “...almost all the slaves on (the) Davis plantation had guns and newspapers.” 

Fifteen of the rebellious slaves were caught and several executed, but the remaining slaves remained defiant. They even refused to surrender the property to the Yankees, when they arrived. 

It was clear that for some time the so called benign slave masters had been sitting atop a powder keg of their own making. 

Robert Augustus Tombs (above), the 53 year old alcoholic Georgia genius, made the other obvious point regarding slavery in his farewell address in U.S. Senate. He said, “We want no negro equality, no negro citizenship...” But this deeply racist man also accepted as fact that slavery was doomed in America. A year later, as Confederate Secretary of State, he assured the Confederate Congress, "In 15 years more, without a great increase in Slave territory, either the slaves must be permitted to flee from the whites, or the whites must flee from the slaves."  It would seem that all talk of "benign slavery" was so much antebellum horse manure, not shared by the actual defenders of the institution. 

 Also,  viewed on a purely economic basis, slavery in the America was already dying. The first slave empires had been Virginia and Maryland. Fifteen to twenty years later "...due to the exhaustion of the soil..."  South Carolina had replaced them in cotton output.  As the cotton bushes consumed the available nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in the soil, cotton yields in first South Carolina and fifteen years later, in Mississippi and Georgia began falling off. By 1860, Arkansas and Louisiana were the new queens of cotton production. By 1875, if not earlier, Texas would be used up. And then, without expansion into Mexico, which had made slavery illegal in 1845, slavery in North America would die a natural death.

Would the United States fight a new war, as they had in 1838 to seize Texas, to convert Mexico into the new slave empire? Was it likely Britain and France would allow such a conquest, if attempted,  to go unchallenged? 

The truth was, as George William Harper well knew, the day of the slave empire was ending. And the American Civil War was about one third of the nation refusing to accept that reality.

There were three men who would affirm that unequivocal reality to the citizens of the Confederacy - President Abraham Lincoln, in Washington, D.C., commander of the Army of the Tennessee, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant, and General William Tecumseh Sherman, who on 6 May, 1863, stepped ashore at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, at the head of the 15,000 men of his XVth. Corp.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-One

I can empathize with 49 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton. (above) That spring of 1863, the official chain of command dictated he report to and take orders from 56 year old full General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, 600 miles away in Chattanooga, Tennessee. But he was outranked by the President of the Confederate States of America, 57 year old Jefferson Finis Davis, 1,000 miles away in Richmond, Virginia. Davis's orders to Pemberton conflicted with Johnston's orders so often that the Pennsylvania Confederate had begun to avoid even communicating with Chattanooga. It was just another example of how everything to do with Vicksburg was complicated.

The complications began with the word “state”. The southern slave owners had rejected the

1789 Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8 of which tasked the Federal legislature to “...make all laws...necessary and proper...” for the national government to function. That made the Federal authorities sovereign, and produced the contradiction in that same document of the phrase "sovereign states"  The state governments were always subservient.   So, despite their complete failure, the slave owners sought to return to the 1781 Articles of Confederation, Article Two of which said that “Each state retains its sovereignty...”. It was why the slave owners called their rebellious government The Confederacy.

This theory meant the Army of the Confederate States was not a national army. The approximately 700,000 flesh and blood 18 to 45 year old white males in Confederate service were paid $11 a month – when they were paid - by their home counties in their individual states – their uniforms, shoes, weapons, ammunition, blankets and eating utensils and food were all supposed to be supplied by their states. So in December of 1862, the Confederate President was forced to remind the Mississippi legislature in Jackson on, “...the necessity of harmony between the Confederate Government and the State Governments. They must act together...” Except they often could not.

As large swaths of Missouri, as well as counties around Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee were lost to the Yankees, Confederate Generals were forced to cajole local farmers out of their crops, local merchants out of their goods and local bankers out of their money, to support troops from those lost counties still fighting.

The Confederate system also required that every inch of Confederate territory be defended in order to defend any of it.  It was a matter of faith to the firebrands like Davis who had brought on this war, that the north's industrial and population superiority, as well as their centralized civil authority, could be overcome if the southern people took heed of the greatest military mind of their time. 

He was the genius whose amazing victory at Austerlitz had inspired Beethoven's fifth symphony, the conqueror of Europe from Moscow to Madrid, the Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte (above). And Napoleon had said, “The moral is to the physical as three to one”, and prophesied “...the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.”

But the military genius whose campaign's Napoleon studied was the King of Prussia, Friedrich “Frederick the Great” Holenzollern (above). And Friedrich said, “Little minds try to defend everything at once, but...He who defends everything defends nothing.” And then there was that other Napoleon quote, “An army which cannot be regularly recruited is a doomed army”.

After Grant's army had popped the cork at Port Gibson on 1 May, 1863, Pemberton ordered the 2,000 men at Port Hudson to join his army defending the main point - Vicksburg. But Confederate President Davis (above) had countermanded that order - "To hold both Vicksburg and Port Hudson is necessary to a connection with Trans-Mississippi.”

And Pemberton remembered that in 1862 he had been removed from South Carolina because he favored abandoning Fort Sumter (above).  And the man who had removed him was President Jefferson Davis. So Pemberton did not protest Davis' order, and the 2,000 men remained at Port Hudson.

But Pemberton still had reason for confidence that first week of May. He had direct command over the gunners for the batteries defending Vicksburg (above), as well as the 11,000 men holding the trenches east of the city and Haines Bluff above the Yazoo River, He was even feeling confident enough to push his remaining 17,000 men in three divisions forward 20 miles to the Big Black River. 

For the first time in his career, Pemberton now had direct command over combat troops in the field, including those of the argumentative 44 year old Major General William Wing Loring's division , as well as that of 45 year old Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson and 32 year old Brigadier General John Stevens Bowen's battle scared veterans from Port Gibson.

That force seemed sufficient to defend the 4 crossings of the Big Black River against Grant's 30,000 men. The Yankees had already forced the bridge at Hankinson's Ferry, and pushed a mile or so toward Warrenton.  Pemberton suspected this would southern most road would be the crossing Grant would take. It was was his fastest approach to Vicksburg,  True, farther north were Hall's Ferry and Baldwin's Ferry over the Big Black river, and even the bridges along the Vicksburg, Auburn, Jackson road and the Southern Railroad also had to be defended.  But Pemberton remained sure Grant would take the most immediate route, because as far as Pemberton saw it, Grant's army was living on borrowed time.

Everyday the Yankees spent in Mississippi they were consuming their food and ammunition. Their supply lines ran 40 miles down the tenuous cordoryed road from Millikan's Bend to Hard Times Landing. Their cargoes then had to be transferred onto a pair of weary steamboats to be transported across the river to Grand Gulf. They then had to be reloaded onto wagons to carry the precious supplies another 20 to 30 miles over bad roads to Rock Springs and the Big Black River crossings. Any break, even a temporary one,  in that line and Grant's men would be left starving and defenseless. Even if the supply line held, Grant could afford maybe one big fight before his ammunition ran out. And his food would very likely run short even before then.

So, Pemberton slowly shifted his divisions northward along the Big Black, watching for an opening to cut off any dangling parts of McClearand's Corps, while being careful not to offer any vulnerable parts of his own  divisions.  Wherever Grant tried to cross the river, Pemberton intended to  bleed Grant's army, use up its precious supplies before killing it. 

President Davis had promised 10,000 more men were on the way from South Carolina. Those reinforcements and the 5-6,000 militia men Pemberton had already ordered to assemble in Jackson, would sweep up the remnants of Grant's ambitions when his army melted away in the Mississippi interior. So encouraged was Pemberton that he telegraphed Richmond on 3 May that everything was under control.

However, at Rocky Springs 41 year old Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant was also confident, because he had seen something Pemberton evidently had not.

As his 30,000 plus men edged north along the Big Black River, Grant found himself to be 40 miles from Vicksburg, and 60 miles from the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi. He had achieved what Napoleon called “The Central Position” via “La maneuver sur les derrieres”, or 'A March on the Enemies Buttocks”.

If Grant turned west and successfully forced a crossing of the Big Black, he would drive the rebels into their entrenchments at Vicksburg. Those siege lines would multiply the rebel's numbers. But it would also give the Yankees access to Haines Bluff and re-establish Grant's own supply line up the Mississippi to Memphis.

If Pemberton was too vigilant and the Big Black River crossings seemed too strong, Grant could always use McClerand's Corps to screen an attack eastward on Jackson. Destroying the railroad shops and telegraph lines in Jackson would isolate Vicksburg and Pemberton's entire army.  But to attempt that, McPherson's Corps would have to turn their backs on Pemberton's forces, making him vulnerable to being taken in the rear.  In order to improve his chances in either direction, Grant needed Sherman's Corp on the Mississippi side of the river as quickly as possible.

Until then, during the first week of May, 1863, the two armies were like a pair of cobra's locked in a caduceus, both just one bite from total victory or total defeat.

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