VICKSBURG Chapter Three

The great ugly black beast was broadside in the 5 knot current, her bow struggling to turn upstream, her sloping metal sides sides slick in the heavy Mississippi air, black coal smoke pouring from her twin stacks. The monster was the terror of the water, and unstoppable.  Nothing of the Confederacy survived in her wake. 

It was 12 December, 1862. Suddenly the river beneath her bow was ripped open, and a dull, cruel column of brown water rose high into the air. Fifty pounds of black powder had ignited in the mud on the river bottom, and the twin shock waves, direct and reflected, shattered her wooden hull. “The water rushed in like the roar of Niagara,” said one of  the sailors, and “In five minutes the hold was full of water and the forward part of the gunboat was flooded.” 

In less than 12 minutes the 175 foot long, 51 foot wide Federal Ironclad "U.S.S. Cairo” had sunk in 35 feet of water, leaving only, “...the smoke stacks, and the flag staff..." still rose above the muddy Yazoo River.  Amazingly, none of her crewmen were killed. But a very expensive piece of federal equipment had been destroyed by an improvised explosive device.

Two weeks earlier, on a warm Friday, 28 November, 1862, troopers from the Second Iowa Cavalry regiment brushed aside a few rebel pickets and slipped into Holly Springs, Mississippi – population 3,000 humans, elevation 600 feet above sea level. 

That afternoon, 4 miles to the south, federal artillery shelled rebel infantry on the south bank of the Tallahatchie river. And the next day Major General Ulysses Grant arrived in town, accompanied by his wife and son. It was clear to everybody, the rebels were not looking for a fight. But then neither were the Yankees.

Thirty miles to the south , around Oxford, at the temporary headquarters of the Army of Mississippi, the normally aggressive Major General Earl Van Dorn (above)  saw no choice but to continue his retreat. Many of his officers had lost confidence in him, and he commanded little more then 24,000 men, about half of Grant's total. 

Van Dorn's forces were built around the four Mississippi and Alabama brigades of the cantankerous Major General William Wing Loring's (above) division... 

...and the orphaned Missouri brigades and Louisiana troops of the equally troublesome politician and Major General Sterling Price's division. Just getting these two men to coordinate their retreat was a difficult task. 

As November slipped into December, Grant followed the disappearing rebels, his troops crossing the Tallahatchie River just west of the village of Abbeville. By Tuesday, 2 December, his troops had occupied Oxford (above).  Grant put his staff and his wife and child in the mansion of Colonel William N. Brown, absent commander of the rebel 20^th Mississippi infantry regiment, then on duty in Eastern Tennessee. Everything seemed to be going according to Grant's plans. And then it began to rain, an endless progression of “heavy, persistent showers”.

The next day Grant's chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel John Rawlins (above) ordered the supply depot in LaGrange, moved forward...

.... to Holly Springs.  However that railroad, the Memphis and Jackson road,  was to be repaired no further south, concentrating on the continued repair of the Central Mississippi line, running all the way back to Columbus, Tennessee. It was expected the Central would be ready to supply the army by the end of December.  Besides all of his precious cavalrymen, Grant had to assign a quarter of his infantry to protect that vital supply line. This was important because the region had few roads, and under the rain these were quickly reduced to grasping mud. Until the Central Mississippi line was repaired to Oxford, the Federal armies would be vulnerable.

On Saturday, 6 December, 1862, to lighten the pressure on his quartermasters, Grant ordered his cavalry regiments to form special units to search for "rations and forage..." A journalist for the Chicago Times reported, “Trains of wagons, heavily guarded, were sent out by (the) scores...and stripped the country of all food...Mills were erected, grain ground, fat stock driven in and slaughtered by thousands, and abundant supplies obtained.”

One man assigned to such a column, Private Charles W. Wills out of Illinois noted that “ Every house within ten miles of the army is visited about five times a day by our soldiers and the (rebel) guerrillas...There is more stealing in one day here than the whole United States suffered in a year before the war.”  Grant would write later, "I was amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded. It showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months...." instead of two weeks...".

However, Grant had also become convinced that even with the establishment of a railhead supply depot at Oxford, his feint toward Jackson had reached it's effective limit.  Now was the time to reveal his plans to his General Sherman.  On 7 December, 1862 the two met in Columbus, Tennessee. While Grant continued to menace an advance on Jackson with seven divisions, Sherman was ordered to "...proceed, with as little delay as possible, to Memphis, Tennessee, taking with you one division... On your arrival...(you will) assume command of all the troops there, and that portion of General Curtis’s forces  (at Helena, Arkansas)...As soon as possible move with them down the river to the vicinity of Vicksburg...,with the co-operation of the gunboat fleet under command of Flag-officer Porter proceed to the reduction of that place... in such a manner as circumstances, and your own judgment, may dictate." At once Sherman quickly marched a single division back to Holly Springs. There they boarded empty supply trains returning to Memphis.

Once in Memphis Sherman would take command of the first two divisions recruited by Major General John Alexander McClernand. Sherman would then load all 3 divisions onto transports, and with naval escorts steam 74 miles down the Mississippi River to the federal occupied port of Helena, Arkansas. There he would pick up a fourth infantry division, and sail 220 miles south to the mouth of the Yazoo River, just north of Vicksburg. A few miles up that that stream Sherman was to land his 20,000 men, occupy the high ground Grant had identified on the floor of his Cincinnati hotel room back in October. Then he was to either capture Vicksburg in a coup de main, or lay siege to the place.

While in transit, on Monday, 8 December, 1862, Sherman sent a telegram to the commander of the U.S. Navy's Mississippi River Squadron, Rear Admiral David Porter (above). “Sherm” laid out Grant's plan, and requested Porter's assistance. He could not order Porter to help. But as usual, the aggressive Admiral was ever eager to strike at the rebels. Sherman said he wanted to launch this right hook in 2 weeks, on Saturday, 20 December, 1862.

Confederate commander, Lieutenant General John Pemberton found himself forced into inaction, with his forces split. Major General Van Dorn's 24,000 men were tied down waiting for the Yankees to resume their advance toward Jackson. Another 12,000 men were tied down in Vicksburg while Federal ironclad gunboats nosed their way up the Yazoo river.   It was about this same time, that 33 year old Colonel John Summerfield Griffith (above), member of the 6th Texas Cavalry Regiment, suggested to Pemberton that a cavalry raid against the Federal supply depot at Holly Springs would disrupt Grant's plans. It seems likely that actual source of the idea was Van Dorn, but whoever thought of it, Pemberton felt too constrained to act until the U.S.S. Cairo was sunk on 12 December. When the Yankee sailors withdrew briefly to contemplate their loss, the initiative passed to Pemberton, and he quickly ordered Griffith to begin planning a raid on Holly Springs.

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