CARPE DIEM, CARPE RODENT

 

I begin by asking why is this day different than all other days. That question,  in Jewish families, is the beginning of the Passover Seder. But if you have Celtic markers on your genomes, it is the beginning of Imm'ulk, the second quarter of the year in a pagan calendar, the way the ancient Celts marked time, and Imm'ulk was the season the female sheep start to drip milk from their teats. And, no, that is not why a female sheep is called a 'Yew”.

Lactating sheep may seem like a rotten reason to have a holiday, unless you are heavily invested in lamb futures, or, if sheep or goat milk makes up a large part of your children's protein intake. The word Imm'ulk in old Irish means “in the belly”, as in baby lambs, or goat kids. And that brings up the Celtic lady of fertility, Bree-id.  

The people of the pre-Christian British Isles, and particularly the center of the Bree-id cult around Kikdare, Ireland, felt the need to invoke a goddess because every year without fail the sheep milk drip seemed to always begin about halfway between the Winter Solstice (22 December) and the Spring Equinox (21 March).  And a thousand years ago that was a magical and mystical event.  

Today we know its just a little nut of coincidence, the product of the Earth's 365 and ¼ day elliptical orbit around the sun and its 23 degree angle of tilt and a hundred million years of precedent. Change any of those numbers and you get a different coincidence, and different holidays.

On her facebook page - if she had one - Bree-id would have listed her interests as biology, poetry and heavy metal. Believe it or not, that made her a pacifist among the otherwise violent and argumentative Celtic gods, thus her association with fertility and motherhood. When the Romans arrived they recorded her name as Brighid – which seems to be where the English word “bride” comes from - again fertility. 

It was easy for the Irish to convert to Christianity. They just made Brigid a saint.  The Christians faced a harder problem converting the Celts of Scotland, in part because they still had snakes. Their fertility spirit was Cailleach,  a shape shifter, AKA a hag. An ancient Scottish proverb says, “The serpent will come from the hole, On the brown Day of Bride, Though there should be three feet of snow, On the flat surface of the ground.” The Scots would not scan a good poet until Robert Burns in the 18^th century.

The Scots told their children that on the first day of Imm'ulk the hag would go out to gather firewood for the rest of the winter. And since she also controlled the weather, if Caileach made the sun shine that day, it meant she was trying to gather lots of wood, which meant winter was going to last another month and a half or so. But if it was cloudy on the first day of Imm'ulk, then Caileach was planning on an early spring and she would not need extra sunlight for her search. In other words, if the old hag saw her shadow, it would be six more weeks of winter. And if that sounds familiar to you, its because that is the straight line, the set up to a joke retold year after year. Allow me to explain:

The Christians later co-opted the Irish goddess as Saint Brighid, spinning the story that she was the mother of St. Patrick, who drove the snakes out of Ireland. They just made that up of course, and later dropped her as a saint, but then they also made up the part about the snakes and Saint Patrick too. 

But because the Romans recruited both Irish and Scottish Celt's as soldiers and used them on the Rhine River frontier (above), the blended legends of Brigid and Caileach became embedded in Germany. 

And because the descendants of those Roman/Germans  became coal miners, and because the German miners' descendants  later moved to America (above), drawn by jobs in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, where, for some reason, the Germans were called “Dutchmen”, that is how Irish ewes dripping milk from their teats, and an ugly old Scottish woman scrounging for firewood, combined to produce a Pennsylvanian German immigrant festival celebrating the largest rodent in North America – Ground Hog Day.

See, a ground hog is a rodent, but its not a rat. They are much closer to a squirrel in need of weight watchers. And, without the expressive tails. This 4 to 9 pound animal, is actually a marmot. There are marmots living among the rocks and mountains of South Africa, and the Middle East, and central Europe, and along the foothills of the Himalayas. The ones living in North America are actually some of the smallest marmots anywhere, in part because living on flat ground, they are surrounded by foxes, wolves, coyotes, bears and hawks and eagles – all of whom find groundhogs very tasty. On the treeless great plains, they evolved into prairie dogs. And back east, they became groundhogs – grass eaters all. Look at it this way; if God were a rodent, cows would look more like ground hogs.

This plump, furry, generally irritated little beast is known by a number of nom-de-rodents. They sequel when injured and whistle to warn their mates (Ground hogs and Whistle-pigs), and the native Americans called them “wuchak” (woodchucks). They hibernate over winter below the frost line, emerging from their extensive Chateau marmots only in the spring. And since they don't have calendars, they respond to changing temperatures. When their dens warm up, they wake up and go looking for something green to eat. 

Any brief respite in winter like, say, around the end of January or early February, might draw some of the hungrier ground hogs out to look for some take out.  If it is an early spring, they get a jump on their fellows at early mating. If not, if its a normal or late spring, they become fuel, keeping hungry predators alive until real spring finally shows up - thus proving that individuality is an adaptation for the survival of your species, just not necessarily you.

As far back as 1841 a local storekeeper in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania named James Morris had noted in his diary, “Last Tuesday, the 2^nd... The day on which , according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as weather is to be moderate.” Again, that's the set up. The guy who delivered the punch line was a local funny boy, a bachelor with a quick wit and the good German name of Clymer H. Freas. Clymer had been raised by his older brother, and after graduating from a local collage, he got a job working at the Punxsutawney Spirit, the only newspaper the town of Punxsutawney has ever had.

Sitting halfway between the Allegheny and Susquehanna rivers Punxsutawney had for decades been the local center of the first great American pastime – guns, beer and shooting things. In this case the “things” were ground hogs, and the beer was referred to as “ground hog punch”. And after shooting the whistle pigs, the celebrants then barbecued and ate them. Surprisingly, spending a cold morning killing a large rodent did not catch on with the Pennsylvania womenfolk.  But after the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad began regular service into town in 1883, lots of wealthy men from Pittsburgh began to journey the ninety miles to tramp through the woods around Punxsutawney, blasting away at the large non-aquatic beavers, while getting blasted themselves. The town, evidently, needed the attraction, since in the language of the Delaware Indians, Puixsutawney actually means “Town of mosquitoes”.

Young Clymer evidently did not at first participate in these festivities, because in February of 1886, he first mentioned Ground hog Day in the “Spirit” by merely noting, “up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen his shadow."   However, next year the 22 year old Clymer was invited to his first ground hog soiree at the “hunting lodge” up on Gobbler's Knob, about a mile southeast of town. Clymer had so much fun that two years later he was one of the founding fathers of the Groundhog Club, elected Secretary and poet laureate.

As poet he waxed lyrical about the 1907 GHD; “Promptly at 12:22 O'Clock...a rift was riven in the overhanging clouds and B're Groundhog sallied forth, casting a shadow which shot through a shimmering sheen and sent a shaft of effervescent and effulgent rays...”. Clymer went into more depth describing the speeches given later at the barbecue as “eulogizing the flesh of the only Simon-pure vegetarian on this planet, and each, under the subtle influence of partaken woodchuck and assimilated punch, grew eloquent and combed the earth sea and sky with metaphor and simile, couched in the most beautiful phraseology.” That particular celebration continued past one in the morning. Not a bad punchline.

However the ladies and children must have complained, because in 1909, they held what Clymer described as a “Circumgyratory Pageant of the Astrologers, Horocopists, Magicians, Soothsayers and meteorological Attaches”, also known as a parade. It had floats representing the four seasons and because you would have be drunk to stand outside in the dead of winter, they held it in August, and called it “Old Home Week”. But because there was a lot less drinking, and no groundhogs to justify the thing, the parade never caught on and was soon dropped.

By now Clymer was editor of the paper, and the groundhog day celebrations and his joke had begun filling hotel rooms and restaurants. It was now a serious matter, and as editor Clymer was expected to be a civic booster. It was around now that the groundhog became the town's official symbol, and Clymer named him “Punxsutawney Phil,  Seer of Seers,  Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinaire.” They stopped shooting the rodents (officially), and concentrated on the ridicules legend. But they would have to continue without their poet. In the teens, Bachelor Clymer married Miss Moss Rose Wall. And after that, as a man with responsibilities, he decided to put his skills for hyperbole to a job with more financial remuneration than that offered to a newspaperman and poet laureate. He abandoned Puxsutawney and its mid-winter freezing rodent festival, and moved to balmy Florida where he switched to selling swampland around Tampa. He died there in 1942.

But his work was done. The punch line for the joke had been written down, the dirty words removed, the telling civilized so as to render the joke acceptable to women and children. It didn't happen overnight, of course. In 1920, the first year of prohibition, Phil supposedly threatened not to offer another prediction for 60 weeks, unless he was given a drink. He was not, but he went right on predicting. A mere 37% accuracy rate (not much better than sheer chance) has so far failed to kill the joke, but it  now barely elicits a chuckle, but that will not kill it either. Besides, how much chuckle would a woodchuck chuckle, if a woodchuck could chuckle a chuck? That doesn't seem to matter, either.

The little town never had more than 10,000 residents, and after the mines closed, today it has barely 6,000. Still it is held together by this rodent. In the gift shop down at 102 West Mahoning Street, they sell “Gobbler's Knob Hot Chocolate Mix”, which you can drink from your “Amazink Shadow Mug”, featuring a “Punxsy Phil” and his shadow, which disappears when hot water fills the mug You can also buy Punxsy Phil Mardi Gras beads, and "Punxsutawney Phil in a Can." (above). Pull the pop top and a little plush Phil pops out, holding one of two signs predicting 6 more weeks of winter or not. You can even buy a bag of Ground Hog Poop - actually its malted milk balls, but the kids love it.

You can head south on Highway 36, turn right on Woodlawn Avenue for about a mile to the crest of the hill, to Gobblers Knob. If you go there any day of the year other than Groundhog day you will likely find it abandoned, a empty stage set. The star resides year round downtown, in Barlay Square, at the memorial library, in his newly labeled Phil's Den, complete with below ground level window viewing. For the humans. The rodent of unusual size finds humans rather unentertaining.  Human beings travel thousands of miles just  to see a marmot sleep -that is the real joke. And that is funny. Everybody should laugh at themselves, even PETA. And everybody should do it at least once in your life, like going to Mecca or Jerusalem, or to see the World's Largest Ball of Sting.

Do Ground hogs laugh, I wonder?  I doubt it. Otherwise, they would be getting a much larger share of this largess, than they are.  Just remember. They are cute. But they bite. They always bite. And they have never been noted for their intelligence.  Which is sort of the point of Groundhog Day, since neither have humans.

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Good Riddance To Saxon England

I have been contemplating of late the passing of Saxon England. To tell you the truth, I don't miss it that much. After the Saxons cashed in their chips officially, on the battlefield at Hastings in 1066, I suspect you would have have heard a collective sigh of relief from across the entire length and breadth of England.

Consider Edward, the penultimate Saxon King of England. They called him “the Confessor” but that was more of a twelfth century public relations gambit than an actual description of the real ninth century King. Edward was a pretty ruthless guy. He had his own mother arrested on trumped up charges of adultery just so he could seize her property, if that gives you an idea of his actual family values.

In 1045 Edward married the Saxon, Edith Godwin. He was about forty-five years old at the time and Edith was all of sixteen. The problem here was that Edith’s Saxon father, Leofric Godwin, the powerful Earl of Wessex, had kidnapped Edward’s favorite half brother, Alfred, and handed him over to his Viking enemies. Those not very nice people had blinded Alfred, and he later died from his wounds. As a result Edward was on record as saying that the only way he would forgive the Saxon Godwins is if they brought Alfred back from the dead. So I suspect that Edward’s marriage to Edith Godwin was not exactly a love match.

Leofric owned most of southern England and his wife was Lady Godiva of naked horse riding fame. Did the Lady really ride bare-back through the village of Coventry just to lower the tax burden on the felons, meaning the free people living in the village? I doubt it. In the first place, it would chafe. And, forgiving taxes sure doesn't sound like something the Saxon Leofric would have gone along with.  Although...I am willing to believe the part of the legend about the one curious man named Tom who was struck blind because he just had to take a peek at Lady Cadiva's canter. That made him the original "Peeping Tom".

In addition to Edith, Leofric and Godiva Godwin had produced five Saxon sons, who were, in descending order of seniority and ascending order of brains, Sweyn, Harold, Tostig, Gyrth and Leofwine. And by all accounts they were all trouble. As an example, in 1046 Sweyn Goodwin was creditably accused of seducing the Abbess of the monastery of Leominster.

The modern translation of the Saxon term for “seduction” is more of a “rape”, and King Edward had Sweyn banished for that crime. It was a year before Leofric could bribe Edward into letting the little Saxon monster come home again. But, being a spoiled brat Sweyn forgot that daddy had rescued him and remembered only how long it had taken for daddy to rescue him. In the meantime Edward became determined to get rid of the whole Godwin clan.

In 1051 some of Edward’s French relatives over stayed their welcome in Dover, and the townsfolk staged a riot to drive the freeloaders out of town. Of course it is likely that Edward’s relatives had intended to inspire just such a response, because Edward immediately ordered Leofric to punish the citizens Dover for insulting his family. See, since Dover paid rent to Leofric, he would just be punishing himself. So Leofric refused. And that gave Edward the excuse he needed. He ordered Leofric and the entire Saxon Godwin male clan save one banished from England, and Edward shipped poor Edith off to a nunnery.

In this dispute, one Goodwin, , the youngest boy,  Leofwine Godwin, had sided with Edward. It was the “smart” play for Leofwine since, as the youngest son, he was never going to get rich living off his older brothers’ leavings. Meanwhile the banished elder Leofric and his loyal sons hung out in Ireland and France for a year, gathering their strength.

And when they were ready, the Saxon Godwins came home, which is another way of saying they re-invaded England. After a fight they forced Edward to return all of their seized lands and let poor Edith out of the monastery. And then, of course, Leofric forced his own youngest son, Leofwine, into exile in Scandinavia; after all, turnabout is fair play. And they were all Saxons, which is to say they were a couple of generations removed from being Vikings.

Leofric Godwin died in 1055, not long after the death of his eldest son Sweyn, cause unknown in either case.  Suffice it to say that I'll bet Edward shed not a tear at their funerals. But Harold may have. Harold was now the head of the Godwin family, which made his little brother Tostig, his problem.

Tostig was running Northumbria and had doubled the taxes while boozing it up and stealing from the local gentry. In 1065, while Totsig was out of town, the noblemen of York, Lincoln and Nottingham all rose up and slaughtered Tostig’s sycophants. The rebels then marched on Oxford, the local government center. King Edward saw no reason he should be paying to straighten out yet another of the Goodwin brood fight, and frankly, neither did Harold. So Harold simply turned Northumbria over to the rebel leader, Morkere.

That left Totsig out of a job, and very unhappy with his elder brother. Tostig sailed for Scandinavia and a reunion with his younger brother, Leofwine.

Near the end of 1065 Edward the Confessor fell into a coma and finally died on 5 January, 1066. Harold, never one to waste time, the very next day, 6 January, 1066. got himself crowned as Harold II. Harold the Saxon was the first king ever crowned in Westminster Abby.

And poor Edith, the daughter of Lady Godiva, the girl who had been a queen at 16, a divorcee and a nun at 24, a queen again at 25, was now, at the advanced old age of 26, a widow and a nun again. Her loving brother Harold shipped her off to a brand new abbey at Winchester, where she died in December of 1075, at the age of 36. The Saxons were very hard on their women.

They were almost as hard on their kings. The new King Harold was facing two immediate challenges. From Normandy there was Edward’s cousin William, who claimed that Harold, while hiding out in France, had promised him the throne of England.

And on 8 September 1066, a Viking army under the King of Norway, landed at the mouth of the river Tyne. With the Vikings were the Godwin brothers, Tostig and Leofwine. Who was it who said that family ties were the best of ties, the worst of ties? I think it was me. Anyway....

Harold immediately marched his army north, moving so quickly that just outside of York, at Stamford Bridge, on 25 September, 1066 he caught the Vikings without their armor on. According to legend, Harold met Tostig before the battle and offered him a chance to change sides - again. Tostig asked what Harold could offer the Vikings if they would peacefully go home. Harold replied that he could offer each of them six feet of English soil, or more if they were taller. Making peace and saving lives does not seemed to have interested the Saxons very much.

Harold Goodwin’s army than fell on the Vikings and almost wiped them out. Amongst the piles of dead were both Tostig and Leofwine. And it does not seem that Harold felt any sorrow that so little of the his family was left. It was a great victory, spoiled only when word arrived that William and his Norman army had landed on English soil far to the south on 27 September, 1066.

Harold now marched his exhausted men 240 miles south to meet William’s army at Hastings on 14 October  1066. There, nine hours of more slaughter reduced the vaunted Godwin family to just Edith, sewing away in her nunnery.

William the Norman would be remembered as the “Conqueror”, and Harold II the Saxon King, as the “Conquered”. But really, history must have been glad to see the back side of such a bloodthirsty pack of cannibals as the Godwins, the last ruling Saxons of England. With family like that, you don't need enemies.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Eleven

 

It was not the horrors of battle that transformed John Alexander Ritter (above) 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 42,000 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 of the slave owners. 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 month 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 his 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 Major General McClernand.  Such was the winter of 1862-63 for the rebels in the Trans-Mississippi. But the Yankee soldiers had it little better.

Back in July of 1862 building 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 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 attempt by 9 feet and deepen it to 10 feet. 

At the same time, 500 feet down stream from the proposed canal's entrance, Sherman's 3 divisions along with drafted (and paid) escaped 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 also 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 further south 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.

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