VICKSBURG Chapter Sixty-Eight

 

The boys in butternut brown stood up just as their supporting cannon opened fire. The blasts caught the 48^th Massachusetts regiment just as they were staking tents and starting cook fires. 

And then, while the 110 Yankees were still reeling from that shock, the 400 veterans of 19^th Arkansas let fly a volley into the blue clad flank. 

Desperately Colonel Eben Francis Stone (above) struggled to get his still green companies into a battle line facing the new threat. But the Bay State boys wavered, and to buy time, Stone ordered a retreat of 100 yards. 

It was almost 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, 21 May, 1863. The battle for Port Hudson had just begun on a flood plain 3 miles to the east, in a clearing containing a general store run by a family named Young, with a Masonic Lodge on it's second floor.

Located on a sharp bend in the Mississippi River, 140 road miles below Vicksburg, the 80 foot high cliffs of Port Hudson were the penultimate thread connecting the productive Trans-Mississippi to the rest of the Confederacy. 

But on 7 May, 1863, when Federal Major General Nathanial Banks' 15,000 men captured Alexandria, Louisiana (above)  on the Red River, that thread had unraveled.   Confederate Western theater commander, General Joseph Johnston, thought the 7,000 men in Port Hudson could be put to better use relieving Vicksburg, the primary final connection to Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. His message to Gardner ordered him to "...evacuate Port Hudson forthwith... "  But Gardner resisted because Confederate President Jefferson Davis had forbid the now isolated fort's evacuation.

The garrison was reduced to relying on a rickety rail line that only ran as far east as Clinton, Louisiana. Food, ammunition and replacements were supposed to come down that line, but little did. Complained a hungry Tennessee gunner at Port Hudson, “We are living in a swamp and drinking water out of a mud hole.” The men suffered from typhoid, malaria, smallpox, and diarrhea. But their admiration for their commander, 40 year old New York born Brigadier General Franklin Kitchell Gardner, held the command together.

Gardner (above)  knew Federal Admiral David Farregut's blue water navy was now transporting Bank's 3 divisions down the Red to the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers to his north. 

With that many men and that much fire power on the big river, Gardner had to worry about an assault directly on Port Hudson. But he suspected Banks would instead land his 25,000 men 20 miles to his north at the once busy river port of Bayou Sara – which might offer Gardner an opportunity. 

Over looking Bayou Sara, atop a high narrow ridge, was St. Francisville (above) , “the town 2 miles long and 2 yards wide”.   If he waited until Banks had committed to the landing at Bayou Sara, Gardner might, by a forced march, capture St. Francisville first, and pound the more numerous Yankees into submission. It was a long shot, but...

...And then on 11 May Gardner learned that 25 miles to his south Federal soldiers – the ex-slaves of the 3^rd Louisiana Native Guards – were rebuilding a bridge just north of Baton Rouge.  And on 14 May,  he learned that 3 Yankee divisions had left Alexandria for Simmesport. Louisiana, on the Atchafalaya river.  A day's steaming up the Atchafalaya would bring Bank's men to the Mississippi, and another day would bring them to Bayou Sarah.  Even the long shot was now gone, and Gardner could feel the teeth of a blue vice closing in on him.  He dispatched men across the Mississippi to slow General Bank's advance, and  sent a portion of the 14^th Arkansas cavalry under Colonel Frank W. Powers, south, to slow any Yankee movement out of Baton Rouge.  In fact, the Yankees were not moving.

A week later, the Yankees finally moved. Coming by road were 14 regiments and 7 artillery batteries of the 1^st Division under 42 year old Brigadier General Christopher Columbus Augur (above)  – another of Grant's West Point classmates.   

Leading the way for Augur were the 3 cavalry regiments under 36 year old newly promoted Brigadier General Benjamin Henry Grierson (above).   

Following by riverboats from New Orleans was the 2^nd Division of 50 year old Rode Island born Brigadier General Thomas West “Tim” Sherman  (no relation to "Cump" Sherman) – with 12,000 men,  enough to handle  Gardner's 7,000 man garrison.

Since 2 May, when their 600 mile ride across Mississippi had ended with a parade into Baton Rouge (above)  Grierson's 1,700 troopers had been resting and rearming.  Starting well before dawn on Thursday, 21 May, the Yankee troopers easily pushed Colonel Power's horsemen, back.   By noon Grierson's men had reached the little cross roads and clearing called Plain's Store.

Grierson did not pause here, continuing another 10 miles north to secure the crossings of Thompson's Creek. Ten miles beyond Thompson's Creek was St. Francisville. But more importantly, right behind Greierson's Midwest cavalry was Augur's 1^st Brigade, the 2^nd Louisiana, the 21^st Maine, the 48^th and 49^th Massachusetts and 116^th New York regiments, along with a battery of artillery. Meanwhile, Augur's 3^rd Brigade, 4 regiments under 37 year old Colonel Nathan Augustus Monroe Dudley, swung toward the river to secure a spot called Springfield Landing, to receive the division of Rhode Island native, General "Tim" Sherman.  

And that, as the saying goes, cut it, - the “it” being the supply and communication line to Clinton, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi and, Mobile, Alabama. Federal infantry and artillery astride the Plains Store crossroads was the knock out punch to the much feared artillery bastion high above the choke point on the Mississippi (above), Port Hudson.  Farregut's blue water battleships could not silence the place. But Port Hudson now became just another isolated fortification occupied by not enough men to hold it, but more men than the Confederacy could afford to lose defending it.

Still, like a punch drunk boxer, General Gardner reflexively counter punched. Learning of the arrival of the Yankee infantry, Gardner dispatched a battery of artillery and 400 men from the 32^nd Louisiana regiment – 7 infantry companies and 5 of cavalry known as Miles' Legion – under 47 year old wealthy slave owner and New Orleans lawyer, Colonel William Raphael Miles. Luckily for the rebels, Miles discovered the Yankees had made a mistake.

The mistake was made by an unnamed captain or lieutenant on General Augur's staff. It was the kind of mistake made by an army stagnant for too long. To be good at moving troops and posting them into defensive positions you need practice, and repetition. And Augur's staff had done little moving in the past year.   And so, after a forced march of 20 miles, this particular staff officer, charged with seeing the 48^th Massachusetts Infantry securely posted a quarter mile west of the crossroads, placed the regiment a hundred yards too far forward, beyond the protection of their supporting artillery, in the woods straddling the Port Hudson road.

Colonel Eben Francis Stone (above) , the 40 year old lawyer out of the fishing village of Newburyport,  may have had concerns about the position, but he never had time to express them. He placed half his men in the woods to the north of the Port Hudson road, and half to the south. 

And no sooner had Stone finished this task that rebel artillery began blasting straight down the road, between them. Alerted to the threat to their front, the 3 companies south of the road were caught when the Confederate infantry opened fire on their right flank. A few moments later Stone ordered his men to fall back.

The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Francis O’Brien, rushed forward when the artillery opened up and had took charge of the 3 companies north of the road. O'Brien had been born in  Tipperary, Ireland. But his immigrant home stood on Bunker's Hill above Boston harbor, and in the spirit of his adopted neighborhood, he ordered these men to stand where they were. Not being outflanked, they did.  

The right wing of the 48^th fell back to its new position in the clearing around the Plains Store, where the presence of their own artillery bolstered their confidence. And when the 19^th Arkansas emerged out of the woods – 400 strong against perhaps 40 Yankees - the New England boys stood firm. Just as the rebels prepared to fire upon the 48^th a second time, the 116th New York regiment, stationed to their right, charged into the rebel flank.  Following Captain John Higgins, the upstate New Yorkers drove the rebels to retreat. And that quickly the threat to the Yankee line was swept away.

The battle of Plains Store cost the Yankees 15 dead, 71 wounded and 14 captured. The rebels lost in total about 90 men., some 70 of those French Creoles who surrendered saying "Viva la Republic!"  But the battle  ended as it began – with Port Hudson cut off,  just like Vicksburg. The next day yet another message arrived from General Joe Johnston in Jackson. It again ordered General Gardner to destroy his guns and evacuate Port Hudson at once.  This time Gardner was inclined to obey. But it was a day late, as the saying goes, and a dollar short. 

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THE OIL CENTURY

I shall begin by stating a singular fact of chemistry, which is that burning one pound of coal produces one kilo-watt-hour of electricity, while burning the equivalent volume of oil produces 12.76 kilo-watt-hours.  Because of this, long before any Europeans knew where to find enough oil to burn, every admiral knew it was inevitable that future navies must be powered by oil. 

Then in 1901 a German professor named Kissling discovered a virtually unlimited “lake of petroleum” south of the Ottoman Turkish city of Kirkuk (above, upper center), and around Basra (above, lower right),  The professor had been searching in this god-forsaken dessert on orders from his boss, George von Siemens, managing director of Deutsche Bank.

Before he earned his “von”, George Siemens was just a promising Prussian civil servant. His skills in negotiating telegraph treaties had brought him the attention of Otto von Bismarck (above), the man who in 1871 had  made Wilhelm Ludwig the first Kaiser of Germany. Otto helped set up the Deutsche Bank and made George it's first director, because to Bismarck it seemed inevitable that Germany would be surrounded by enemies; France to the west, Russia to the east, and everywhere the British Navy. But the British addiction to capitalism made it was possible that  money could wiggle through any British blockade.

George von Siemens (above) knew very little about banking, but he was convinced it was inevitable that railroads were going to build a new world order. So, much of the money that built the second and third American transcontinental railroads in the 1880's came from his Deutsche Bank, and George had a close up view of American capitalism in action. Americans, he wrote, “...are ruthless robbers...but they know how to think big.” So Director Siemens started looking for someplace to invest where the robbers thought smaller than he did.

To Abdul Hamid II (above), 34^th Sultan, it was inevitable that the natural resources in the Ottoman Empire ought to make it one of the strongest powers in Europe. But successful rebellions in Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania, and graft and waste in his own government, had reduced Turkey to “The Sick man of Europe" - so deeply in debt that Abdul was forced by his creditors in London and Paris to turn over collection of the Empire's taxes (and its post office) to the “Ottoman Public Debt Administration”, run from banks in Paris and London. 

So when Deutsche Bank offered Abdul a hundred million dollars to build a railroad from Berlin to Bagdad (above),  Abdul eagerly accepted, even if George Siemens insisted it be built with “only German materials”, and give Deutsche Bank mineral rights for 20 miles on either side of the railroad tracks. 

And that's why Professor Kissling was tapping rocks in the dessert outside of Kirkurk (above) and in the marshes around Basra – to find some way of paying for the railroad. And it was Kissling's report, made public in 1905 to reassure British investors in Deutsche Bank, which started a barrel- chested big-thinker ego-maniac named Winston Churchill to start thinking about the not yet inevitable triumph of the British Empire.

Modern history remembers him as the British archetypal bulldog, but that came later. In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Britain Churchill was a more of a Newt Gingrich – a bombastic clown extravagant in his language and his life style, which he financed by writing only slightly embellished books and newspaper accounts of his own adventures. 

Then Winston went into politics, and in 1913 he was named First Lord of the Admiralty (above), civilian head of the British navy. While everybody else was worried about the coal fed German Grand fleet sailing up the Thames, Winston was convinced it was inevitable that the Berlin to Baghdad railroad would fuel the rise of a greater Germany powered by oil.

His Admirals told Churchill the British Navy would need a speed of 25 knots to out maneuver a larger German fleet. Such a speed was possible only with oil powered warships. But in 1913, the British Empire controlled less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. Churchill wrote to his government masters, “We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers....of at least a proportion of the oil which we require.” The decision was made that the Foreign Office and the Bank of England must acquire all the oil reserves that they could. But how?

By now George von Seimens was no longer manager of Deutsche Bank, having passed away in October of 1901. And Abdul Hamid was no longer Sultan, having been deposed by the Young Turks under Enver Pasha in 1909. 

And in 1908 there was incorporated a most unusual bank in Constantinople. It was called the National Bank of Turkey. The most visible member of the board of directors was an Ottoman Armenian-slash-British citizen, named Calouste Gulbenkian (above).  Of course the British Foreign Office insisted, the bank was "...not initiated or suggested by us..."But that was horse manure.

Half of the capital in the National Bank of Turkey was supplied by Deutsche Bank, which also put up  their mineral rights along the Berlin to Bagdad railroad. The other half was put up by a new investment fund called the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, in which the same Calouste Gulbenkian was a major stock holder.  In 1912  Anglo-Persian Oil stumbled upon more oil fields in Iran, and hints of some in Saudi Arabia.,

And the guy who drew up the paperwork for all of this was none other than the little Armenian Calouste Gulbenkian (above), who paid himself for his work by giving himself a 5% share of all the oil pumped out of the new oil fields, if any ever was. 

The entire region was on the cusp of great changes.  The Berlin to Baghdad railroad had yet to reach Baghdad. Nobody had yet pumped a drop of oil out of the ground, because there were no pipe lines or terminals to receive it.  And the German bankers had not yet noticed they were now junior partners in the oil business with the British government. And then the First World War broke out.  And for the next four years artillery replaced lawyers as the big guns in oil negotiations, and the inevitable became subject to change.

In 1915 the British army captured Basra. In 1917 they captured Bagdad. In 1918 they captured Kirkurk.  By 1919 the Kaiser was deposed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved. Deutsche Bank was bankrupt. Turkey was flat broke again. 

At the peace conference in Paris, the victorious English and French sliced the oil fields off from the Ottoman Empire leaving behind Turkey, and two brand new countries built around oil fields - Syria under French control and Iraq controlled by England. Each new country had a figure head appointed as President. In Syria he was a Shite, while the majority of the population were Sunni Muslims. In Iraq the potentate was Sunni, while the majority of the people were Shite.  That kept the both leaders reliant on their colonial investors

British and French corporations now controlled most of the world's oil supply outside of the United States.  Turkish Petroleum Company became the Iraq Petroleum Company, and eventually became "British Petroleum.  And then, stepping back into the sun light of the new world peace,....

...who should suddenly show up but the Armenian/British lawyer, Calouste Gulbenkian. He was still with his 1914 contracts still in his pocket, and he insisted it was inevitable that he was going to be paid his 5%.

After ten years of legal haggling, in July of 1928, the oil companies finally caved in. They let Calouste Gulbenkian take a big red marker and draw a circle around all the oil fields he laid claim to (above). The “Red Line Agreement” gave him, personally, 5% of the value of any oil pumped out from within that circle - forever.  His heirs are still collecting it today.

He was “Mr. Five Percent”, maybe the richest man in the world because he had been in the right place at the right time.  When he died in 1955, his personal fortune was estimated at $840 million ($40 billion in today's money).

The value of all this oil was established during World War Two, during which Germany was constantly short of fuel, while the battleships and tanks and aircraft of Britain and the United States were awash in the black gold. In 1945 the inevitable became fact.

As the Petroleum Century drew to a close, British Petroleum was the largest oil company and the fourth largest and most profitable corporation in the world.  And then, a decade into the twenty-first century, at about a quarter to ten on the morning of 29 April, 2010, an oil rig 48 miles off the gulf coast of Louisiana, leased by B.P., exploded. 

Eleven workers were killed. But worse even than the loss of human life, before the well was capped 

almost 5 million barrels of toxic petroleum crude gushed into the Gulf of Mexico.....

... killing everything which ingested it.  B.P. has estimated its total cost for the clean up will be at least about $40 billion.  The actual final cost will likely be several times that amount. 

And from the moment the admirals decided future battleships would be powered by oil, this spill, and the millions of other spills larger and smaller, world wide, all became inevitable. It helps if you remember, it has only been a little over a century since oil became the energy source of the future. But in the future only change is inevitable.

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