VICKSBURG Chapter Forty-Two

On Saturday, 9 May, 1863, 56 year old General Joseph Eggelston Johnson (above) received a telegram from the Confederate Secretary of War, 47 year old James Alexander Seddon. In classic Seddon double-talk, it read, “Proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief command of the forces there, giving to those in the field, as far as practicable, the encouragement and benefit of your personal direction. Arrange to take for temporary service with you, or to be followed without delay, three thousand good troops...now on their way to General Pemberton...and more may be expected.”

To Johnson's experienced eye the missive set him up to be blamed for the military disaster created by the arrogant meddlesome martinet, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ((above). And hidden in Seddon's verbosity were two ugly realities. There were no additional troops available, and Davis reserved the right to interfere with Johnson's command at anytime to make things worse. 

The unwelcome call to duty found Johnson still recovering from his 1862 wounds, almost bedridden in muddy little village of Tullahoma, Tennessee, watching the 45,000 hungry men of The Army of Tennessee slowly starving to death.  It was clear to Johnson, that his subordinate, 46 year old General Braxton Bragg, was going to be easy prey, as soon as the 50,000 man Federal Army of the Cumberland, under 42 year old Major General William Starke “Rosy” Rosecrans, decided to move against them.  But south of Bragg's precarious position was the vital railroad junction town of Chattanooga, Tennessee, through which food and arms from Alabama and Georgia were being  carried to the rebel Army of Northern Virginia.  Surprisingly little of that bounty reached Bragg's slowly dwindling army.

Like the arrogant and annoying carbuncle Jefferson Davis thought him to be, Johnson replied promptly. He wrote, “ I shall go immediately, although unfit for field-service. I had been prevented, by the orders of the Administration, from giving my personal attention to military affairs in Mississippi at any time since the 22d of January. On the contrary, those orders had required my presence in Tennessee during the whole of that period.” You could almost hear Davis spit in reply across the humming telegraph wires.

Pausing in his whining, on Sunday morning, 10 May, 1863, Joseph Johnson boarded an express train headed south for Chattanooga. Arriving on the Tennessee River, he was less than 400 miles from his destination, via first the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, to Corinth, Mississippi, where he would previously have changed to the Mobile and Ohio rail line directly to Jackson. At 30 miles an hour the journey should have taken less than a day. But Corinth had been in Federal hands for a year, and that route was no longer available to Confederates.

So, from Chattanooga, General Johnson had to continue 140 miles south on the Western and Atlantic Railroad to Atlanta, Georgia. There he had to switch to the Atlanta and West Point Railroad to connect in that city with the Western Railway of Alabama, in order to reach Montgomery - another 160 miles of travel. It is famously only 50 miles from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, home in 1863 to the Ordnance and Naval Foundry complex at the head of navigation on the Alabama River. And it was only 50 miles further to Meridian, Mississippi, along the planned route of the Alabama and Mississippi Railroad. But the war had broken out before that line had reach much beyond Selma, and the final 50 mile gap would never be completely closed – a bridge over the Tombigbee River would not be built until the 1870's.

So, after reaching Selma, General Johnson had to shift to a spur of the Nashville and Louisville railroad, which traveled 176 miles south and west to Mobile Alabama. There he was able to transfer to the Mobile and Ohio railroad for the 150 mile trip almost due north to Meridian, Mississippi. Once there, the weary and wounded General could board a Southern Railroad express for the final 100 miles to the capital city - Jackson, Mississippi. The 400 mile original trip had been almost doubled and the travel time tripled. Johnson did not arrive in Jackson until Wednesday, 13 May, 1863 – a day late and a dollar short.

As the sun rose on Tuesday, 12 May 1863, 19 year old regimental adjutant Henry Otis Dwight (above), was marching north out of Utica, Mississippi in the lead of 7,000 federal infantry. He recalled, “The weather was splendid, the roads were in fine condition and there was plenty to eat in the country.” He also noted, “...we were more conscientious about taking (about) what we wanted than where we were.”

Where they were was deep in the bowels of the Confederacy, without a safe line of retreat or a reliable line of supply. And yet they were supremely confident in themselves and their commanders - from 38 year old Colonel Manning Ferguson Force of the 20^th Ohio, all the way up to 37 year old commander of the 3^rd division, 37 year old Illinois native John “Jack” Alexander Logan.

He was born and raised in the southern crust of Illinois which touched the slaves states of Missouri and Kentucky. The busy port at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, Cairo, Illinois, along with the towns of Thebes, Goshen and Karnak, inspired the title usually given to the region - “Little Egypt”. In fact Cairo was further south than Richmond, Virginia. 

And although the 1847 state constitution made Illinois a “free state”, there were always slaves to be found in “Little Egypt”. And as a member of the state legislature in 1853, John Logan had authored the “Black Law”, which fined any free black man or woman $50 if they stayed in Illinois for longer than 10 days. It earned him the nickname, “Dirty Work Logan”. The fine was increased by $50 for each re-arrest. But even members of his own family, and his long time law partner condemned him for it, John Logan, as a Stephen Douglas Democrat spoke against secession. At the behest of Colonel Ulysses S. Grant, he told a crowd of potential recruits, "There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots or traitors."

It was understandable then, if there were many who thought “Black” John Logan was a little crazy. He was “...not a large man, (but) his long black hair, piercing ebony eyes, and swarthy complexion gave (him)...an impressive presence.” He was also a political general, given a command because he could raise troops and inspire loyalty in a conflicted region. And he turned out to be a damn good field commander. Wounded three times at Fort Donaldson, and reported as dead on the casualty list, he kept his unit in the fight and held off the rebel attempt to break out. General Logan missed the battle of Shiloh while his wife nursed him back to health. But by the spring of 1863, he was back in the saddle, and in command of the 3^rd Division as it marched across Mississippi.

What John Logan saw of slavery in the flesh, in all of its ugly sexist and brutality,  convinced this racist that Americans of black skin must be given their freedom, and the right to vote. No less a man than Frederick Douglas once said that if a man like “Black” Jack Logan could have a change of heart about race, then there was hope for everyone. And out in front of that Logan's hope, just after 10:00am this Tuesday morning, was Henry Dwight, and the men of the 20^th Ohio.

Dwight wrote later, “The road lay through woods and fields, passing few houses, and what there were were as still as a farmhouse in haying time...Sometimes an old negro woman would appear, bowing and smirking, and then when the first embarrassment had worn off like she would say: “Lord a masay! Be there any more men where you uns come from? ‘Pears like as if I nebber saw so many men since I’se been born.” At this, some one would be sure to give the regular answer in such cases made and provided: “Yes, aunty, we come from the place where they make men.

“After a while... we heard two pops, which we were able to recognize as gunshots, far on in front. “Hello, somebody is shooting squirrels,” said one of the boys. “Pop, pop, pop,” came three more shots in quick succession, but a little nearer. “The squirrels are shooting back,” growled a burly Irishman, “and sure it’s meself that don’t approve of that kind of squirrel shooting, not a bit of it.”

It was the beginning of the battle or Raymond. And within a few hours, the military situation in Mississippi would be very different.

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YET TO COME

I begin our story not where it began, nor, unfortunately, where it ended. Instead we begin just after eleven in the morning, Friday, 20 June, 1913, with 29 year old Heinz Schmidt bounding up a staircase, carrying a heavy briefcase in his left hand.  In his right hand he carried a gun.  The first person Heinz met at the top of the stairs was Maria Pohl.  She had never seen him before but he looked agitated, so she started to ask what was wrong.  Without a word, Heinz pushed a Browning semi-automatic pistol into Maria's face. Instinctively Maria ducked, and when the gun went off it sent a .9mm lead pellet at 1,150 feet per second a quarter of an inch past her right ear.  Maria continued her ducking movement, pushing open the door of classroom 8a. She locked the door behind her. Frustrated, Heinz pushed on the unlocked door of classroom 8b. He burst in upon 60, five to eight year old girls of Mrs. Pohl's class. He was the only adult in the room. He opened fire.

In 1884 French chemist Paul Vielle (above)  mixed nitrocellulose with a little ether and some paraffin and produced what he called pourdre blanche – white powder. It would not ignite unless compressed. But when ignited it was three times as powerful as black powder, gave off very little smoke, and left little residue behind to clog machinery.  Thousands of gunsmiths scrambled to take advantage of Vielle's smokeless powder, in particular a mechanical genius, the son of a gunsmith, living in Ogden, Utah: John Moses Browning.

In Mrs. Poole's classroom, on the mezzanine level of the St. Marien Shule (St. Mary's School) in the Bremen, Germany, the Catholic girls were screaming, diving under tables, and dieing.  One was heard to cry out, “Please, Uncle, don't shoot us.” But Heinz was not listening.  He fired until his gun was empty, then reloaded a new clip, and continued firing.   Two of the girls were shot dead on the spot, Anna Kubica and Elsa Maria Herrmann, both seven years old.  Fifteen other girls were wounded. When his gun jammed,  Heinz pulled from his bag yet another Browning model 1900 semi-automatic pistol. In the momentary lull, the girls rushed out of the classroom, trying to escape down the stairs.

When John Moses Browning's own son asked if the old man would have become a gunsmith if his father had been a cheese maker, John pondered the question for a moment before admitting he probably would not have. Then he burst out laughing and assured his son, “I would not have made cheese, either.” But John's Mormon father had been a gunsmith, and a good one. And John was a better one, so famous he would eventually be known as “The Father of Automatic Fire.” He would hold, in the end, 128 patents and design 80 separate firearms.  One website contends, “It can be said without exaggeration that Browning’s guns made Winchester. And Colt. And Remington, Savage, and the Belgium firm, Fabrique Nationale (FN). Not to mention his own namesake company, Browning”  John Browning developed the Browning Automatic Rifle (the BAR), used in two world wars, as well as both the thirty and “Ma-Deuce” fifty caliber machine guns still in use by the US military, almost century later, all of which he sold to the U.S. government for a fraction of their royalty value.   But in the beginning, his most profitable work was his invention of semi-automatic pistols.

Heinz ran after the girls, firing from his fresh pistol - he had eight more in the bag, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Eight year old Maria Anna Rychlik died at the top of the stairs. In her panic, little seven year old, Sophie Gornisiewicz, tried to climb over the stairwell banister. She slipped and fell and when she landed, Sophie snapped her neck. Following the screaming children, fleeing for their lives, Heinz ran down the first flight of stairs to the landing.

John Browning never worked from blueprints. In his own words, “A good idea starts a celebration in the mind, and every nerve in the body seems to crowd up to see the fireworks.” John would sketch rough designs of the tools he would need to make his gun, to explain them for assistants and lathe operators. Between 1884 and 1887, he sold 20 new designs to Winchester firearms. Explained one of the men who worked with him, “He was a hands-on manager of the entire process of gun making, field-testing every experimental gun as a hunter and skilled marksman and supervising the manufacturing.  He was also a shrewd negotiator. He was the complete man: inventor, engineer and entrepreneur.”

On the landing, Heinz paused to lean out a window and fire at boys, who were running away from the school. He wounding five of them. A carpenter working on a nearby roof was hit in the arm. Several apartments in the line of fire were penetrated by shots from Heinz's Browning hand guns.  But as he paused to reload, the gunman was now interrupted when a school custodian named Butz landed on his back. The two struggled for a moment until Heinz shot the janitor in the face. Grabbing his brief case still heavy with guns and ammo, Heinz ran back up the stairs.

Browning's design philosophy on reliability was simple. “If anything can happen in a gun it probably will sooner or later.” In his new ingenious blow-back pistol, the breech which received the bullet's propelling explosion was locked in place by two screws. Instead, the “action” which converted the recoil was a reciprocating “slide”, attached front and rear to the gun's frame. When the gun was fired the barrel and slide recoiled together for two-tenths of an inch, and then the barrel disengaged from the slide. The barrel swung downward clearing the breech, so the spent shell casing could be ejected.

As Heinz reached the top of the stairs again, stepping over the bodies of the wounded girls, he was confronted by a male teacher, Hubert Mollmann. They struggled for a moment before Heinz shot him in the shoulder. Mollman fell, but the teacher still clawed at the shooter, tackling him and bringing him to the floor. Kicking free, Heinz sat up and shot Mollmann in the stomach. Heinz then stood over the moaning instructor, reloaded, picked up his brief case, and waked quickly down the stairs for a final time. Outside, a crowd of neighbors and parents had just reached the school.

The retreating slide compresses a recoil spring. Once fully compressed, this forces the slide back. As it does it strips a new round off the top of the magazine and rejoining the barrel, slides the new round against the breech. The gun is now ready to fire again. All that is required it to pull the trigger again. When the Belgium firm Fabrique Nationale tested a Browning prototype in 1896, it fired 500 consecutive rounds without a failure or a jam, far superior performance to any other gun then on the market. In July of 1897 FN signed a contract to manufacture the weapon, and over the next 11 years would sell almost one million of the small lightweight pistols to European military - and some 7,000 to civilians.

Cornered at last on the ground floor of the school, Heinz was swarmed by men, pummeling and beating him to the ground. The briefcase was wrenched from his grip, and the Browning pulled from his hand. The crowd dragged him outside and there the beating continued. It seems likely he would have been lynched, had not the police arrived to place him under arrest. As they dragged him off to jail, Schmidt called out, “This may be the beginning, but the end is yet to come.”

The United States Army liked the Browning 1900, and its improved model 1903. But they wanted more stopping power. So John Browning went back to his work bench and within a few months redesigned the weapon to fire a larger, forty-five caliber round. That weapon, the Browning model 1911 pistol, would be the standard American military pistol until it was replace by a 9mm weapon in 1985.  Interestingly, when John Browning died of heart failure at his work bench (above), on 26 November, 1926, the weapon he was designing would evolve into the gun that replaced the Browning 1911.   In his obituary, it was said of John Browning, “Even in the midst of acclaim, when the finest model shops in the world were at his disposal, he preferred his small shop in Ogden. Embarrassed by praise, indifferent to fame, he ended his career as humbly as it started.”

The attack on the St. Mary's School in Bremen lasted no more than fifteen minutes, from first shot to last. During that time, Heinz Schmidt had fired 35 rounds. Eighteen children had been wounded, and five adults. Three girls had died instantly of gunshot wounds. Little Sophie with the broken neck, died within a day.   Four days after the bloodbath, the four little girls were buried. Three thousand marched in their funeral procession (above) . Four weeks later, the fifth victim, five year old Elfried Hoger, succumbed to her wounds an died. All that has changed since 1913 is the technology used to design and make guns.  And yet we continue to pretend that nothing has changed.

“This may be the beginning, but the end is yet to come.”

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VICKSBURG Chapter Forty - One

The city had been laid out on a series of 20 to 30 foot high steps along the Mississippi River, each marking a flood stage as the Wisconsin glaciers retreated over the previous 10,000 years. And along the crest of each of these benches ran a main north-south street. First there was Levee Street, created by the current river's high water mark, then Pearl Street, then Oak or Mulberry, then Washington Street, and along the final and highest step ran Cherry Street. 

Depot Street ran east-west, beginning at the Southern Railroad station at the levee and rose directly 30 vertical feet until it “T”ed into Washington Street. But most cross streets took advantage of the ravines which periodically eroded through the packed clay by either snaking through them - such as Madison Street a block north of Depot Street - or bridging them – as Bridge Street, a half block south, which angled across the ravine on stilts, making an easier step up to Cherry Street. It was on a north south side street, between Madison and Bridge, that the eccentric Colonel Thomas E. Robbins built the most unusual home in all of Vicksburg.

Thomas liked to be known as “Colonel” Robbins, but was best known as a Judge of the Warren County bankruptcy court, and a scavenger who took full advantage of his early notice of flotsam of local business failures and jetsam abandoned on the docks and in the warehouses. By 1840 “The Colonel” had acquired a shipment of hexagonal bricks supposedly fired in Britain, which inspired him to construct a monument to his unique business acumen.

Built atop a 17 acre mound above Washington Street, a block south of the new Warren County Courthouse, Robbins' Castle boasted a moat – the better to incubate mosquitoes – and a surrounding hedge of Osage Orange trees – whose scent disguised the deflection of cooling breezes. I suspect it was his monument which sped poor Thomas Robbins on to his final reward not long after finishing his mansion in the early 1840's. And in 1859 his house was bought by another acquiring lawyer named Armistead Burwell Junior and his wife, Mary.

Armistead had been named after his father, a Petersburg, Virginia (above) slave and plantation owner and an 1812 War colonel.  Sometime in 1818, Colonel Burwell had taken to repeatedly rapping at least one of his 50 pieces of property, a house slave named Agness “Aggy” Hobbs. As a result she had given birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth Hobbs. 

When Elizabeth reach 14, she was subjected to repeated whippings and rapes by a white relative to “break her spirit”, before being “married” (i.e. rented) to Hillsborough, North Carolina slave owner Alexander Kirkland, who beat and rapped Elizabeth for 4 years, until she gave birth to a son. Luckily for Elizabeth, 18 months later, Alexander Kirkland died, and Elizabeth and her son were eventually returned to the Garland family.  It was upon a foundation of this kind of brutality that the gentile southern tradition of their "peculiar institution" of slavery, rested

Armistead Burwell Junior had moved to Vicksburg in 1859 and bought The Castle because he had been told it was a “healthy spot”. However, with the arrival of secession, he dared not stay. Like his father, Armistead was a pro-union man. A slave owner, but a union man. He wrote a friend, “I dare not go any place in the interior ((as I) would be hung or imprisoned if I did).” In fact, he was arrested in September of 1861, and held for several weeks. When finally released, Armistead left the castle behind and fled north. Being a supporter of slavery was no longer enough to remain in good standing in the city of Vicksburg.

“The Gibraltar of the Confederacy” had been the capitalist dream of a Methodist minister. Newitt Vick had been born in Southhamton County, Virginia in 1766, In 1805 the 39 year old, with his wife Elizabeth Clark Vick and their 7 children, moved to Church Hill, Mississippi Territory, about 20 miles north of Natchez. As the saying goes, they prospered and multiplied. After adding 3 more children, in 1811 Newitt was able to buy land for his own plantation in the Wallnut Hills along the Yazoo River.

Newitt called his little empire “Open Woods”, and through the sweat and blood of 66 enslaved human beings - and after adding 3 more children - in 1818, this compromised Christian bought 612 acres along the cliffs above the Mississippi River, and surveyed and plotted out a town site, roughly 17 blocks north to south by 14 blocks east to west. But the couple never lived to profit from their investment, because both Newitt and Elizabeth died in the 1819 yellow fever epidemic.

The executor of the estate sold off the lots in 1822, for the benefit of the 13 Vick children. And the town of 500 was named in Newitts honor. Thirty-five years after its founding, Vicksburg had a population of 4,500 whites and some 30 “free colored”. In the adjacent Warren County, the population was almost 3,500 whites, but they were surrounded by 13,763 human beings held in bondage. In the county the war to defend slavery had strong support – among the whites. But within the city limits that support might be as “squishy” as the Confederate economy.

In 1861 the newly printed Confederate “gray back” dollar was worth ninety cents of its Yankee “greenback” counterpart. By the end of that first year of war the Gray Back had already lost 30% of that value. Two years later the gray back was worth less than half of its Yankee counterpart. To continue to buy food, uniforms, blankets and ammunition, the Confederacy had simply printed more gray backs. By May of 1863, almost half of Richmond's budget was allocated to paying interest on the loans needed to pay the other half of the budget.

All Confederate states extended credit to the Richmond government, but never equally. On the front lines, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and now Mississippi, strained to feed and arm the men fighting on their soil. But other governors, such as 42 year old Joseph Emerson “Joe” Brown of Georgia (above),...

...and 33 year old Zebulon Baird Vance, of North Carolina (above), did everything they could to avoid releasing money or troops to serve Richmond. By 1863 it was obvious to even a stalwart like Jefferson Davis that the theory of the Confederacy was as much a failure as the Articles of Confederation had proven to be four score years earlier.

A failure on the macro and the micro scale as well. In December of 1860, while “susess” fever broke  across the region the pro-war Vicksburg Sun noted, “It has been but a very short time since a man was tarred and feathered here on account of his expressing too much confidence in Abe Lincoln.” By April, with Fort Sumter fired upon and Lincoln calling for 75,000 volunteers to defend Washington, 

Vicksburg resident Dr. Richard Pryor took out an ad in the Vicksburg Evening Citizen offering $50,000 for “the head of Abraham Lincoln”. Editor of the Citizen, James Swords even designed a badge promoting “Southern Rights – For this We Fight”, and suggesting if all true supporters of slavery wore them “We would then know when we met a friend.”

Such vehement sentiments had the desired effect, and the editor of the pro-union Vicksburg Daily Whig, Marmaduke Shannon, struggled to voice enough support for the war to avoid having his offices burned down. “It is enough for us to know that Mississippi...has taken its position”, he wrote. “We, too take our position by its side.” 

But as early as March of 1863, Alabamian General Edward Dorr Tracy  - who would die 2 months later in the battle of Port Gibson - had reported, “(in) this garrisoned town (above), upon which the hopes of a whole people are set...there is not now subsistence for one week. The meat ration has already been virtually discontinued, the quality being such that the men utterly refuse to eat it.” Even before Grant had crossed the river, hunger was stalking the troops and citizens of Vicksburg.

But an hour's ride out of town a seeming unlimited bounty could be found, if you could afford it. Molasses, which before the war had sold for less than 30 cents a gallon, was available for $7.00 a gallon. An 1861 $44 barrel of flour now cost more than $400.00. Salt cost $45 a bag. Turkeys were selling for $50 apiece. The fields were still filled with cotton, and the planters and the government they controlled refused to sacrifice that profit. Lieutenant General Pemberton might have simply requisitioned the supplies the city needed - as Grant was already doing -  but Pemberton felt a greater need for the goodwill of the plantation owners and bankers of Warren County.

One of the most lovely homes within the city, Wexford Lodge, sat atop that second ridge line at the eastern edge of Vicksburg, were the rebels had not extended their fortifications. For a decade it had been the home of 59 year old lawyer, “planter” and slave owner, New Hampshire born James Shirley, his 48 year old second wife from Massachusetts, Adeline Quincy and their three children - 20 year old Frederick Edward, 18 year old Alice Eugenia and 15 year old Robert. The Shirleys were well integrated into Mississippi society and economy before secession. But they remained loyal unionists.

As secession fever spread, James wrote his brother back in New Hampshire, “Our Governor....is ready and willing to tear this little, no-account, dirty Union to tatters.” Still, like General Tracy,James had noticed the city of Vicksburg were not enthusiastic about a war. “...banks are curtailing their discounts – drawing in their circulation....money has become scarce; capitalists have withdrawn their funds; all kinds of property has depreciated in value...” Young Fred had even proudly announced that he would rather serve Abraham Lincoln for 20 years than Jefferson Davis for 2 hours. The response of their neighbors was a viable threat of lynching. So Fred had been shipped north to Indiana for everyone's safety. But James stayed to protect his investment, part of which were his slaves.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum was 45 year old Emma Harrison Balfour. An ardent secessionist, Emma had been born in Virginia, come to Mississippi with her first husband, and after his death married Doctor William Balfours in 1847. 

They raised 5 children in their home, at 102 Crawford Street, at the corner of Cherry - 15 year old Louise, 12 year old Willie, 10 year old Alice, 8 year old Emma and 3 year old Annie. It was one of the finest residences in Vicksburg, where the Balfours hosted an 1862 Christmas Eve ball to celebrate the defeat of Grant's December invasion of Mississippi.

But that gay occasion had been interrupted by word of the Yankee Fleet entering the mouth of the Yazoo River, on their way to the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. Day after day Grant's noose around Vicksburg tightened. Now that disunion had been declared, now that blood had been shed, now that treason had been committed, it was no longer possible that slavery would be left alone.

During the later 1840's, Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland had managed to establish a tiny enterprise as a seamstress and pattern cutter. With her earnings she helped to support her oppressors, and then in 1852 Elizabeth  bought her and her son's freedom for $1,200 – or $34,000.00 today.  

Over the next decade she moved to Washington, D.C., and because of her skills and ambition, was eventually introduced to Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife. She made dresses for the First lady, and Lizzie and Mary became friends. And by her very existence Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland was living proof the lies, sins and horrors created to justify slavery and white supremacy.

From its inception, the Confederacy was not only impractical and immoral, it was a cruel and inhumane fraud, perpetrated at the expense of both blacks and whites. And both races paid a heavy price for it even before the war.

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