VICKSBURG Chapter Two

The horsemen of the 6^th Illinois cavalry arrived in LaGrange on Friday, 7 November, 1862. The rebel pickets fired a few shots as a formality, but their real task was to report the advance of “thirty regiments of infantry and four of cavalry” marching on the little Tennessee vacation town. 

Poet, teacher and farmer, 40 year old Captain Henry Clinton Forbes, later described LaGrange as a “...neat little place of about a thousand people. The yards were beautifully improved, filled with evergreens and rare shrubberies. A fine college building crowned a gentle eminence to the east of the town and a Seminary for Ladies (above)  looked across it from the North.”

As a military objective LaGrange had but one asset. It stood at the edge of a 300 foot high bluff looking southward over the Wolf River valley.  That stream flowed generally northwest, and reached the Mississippi just south of Mud Island, at Memphis, Tennessee. Over a gentle divide were the headwaters of the Coldwater River which meandered south westward, combining with other streams to form the Yazoo River, the which emptied into the Mississippi River just above Vicksburg. Invading the state  here placed a federal army directly astride all the rivers which controlled region. But even more importantly, the Confederate headquarters, 23 miles away at Holly Springs, was actually visible from LaGrange, making it the perfect launching pad for an invasion of central Mississippi.

The real prize of this avenue of attack was the industrial and communication hub of Jackson (above) and the east/west Southern Railroad (blue) from Vicksburg, which crossed the Pearl River bridge just southeast of the Mississippi state capital. Once Jackson was occupied and that bridge destroyed, the wealth of the trans-Mississippi Confederacy might as well be on the moon for all the good it would do the Richmond. 

But Jackson was 220 miles south of LaGrange, behind what could be three river defense lines - the Coldwater, the Tallahatche and the Yalobusha. And much of the year those rivers might seem more like a great collective swamp - the Mississippi Delta.  In retrospect it seems unlikely Grant was intending his advance into central Mississippi to be anything except a feint.

Whatever his intent, that early November of 1862 Major General Ulysses Grant was concentrating his army. Coming south from Bolivar, Tennessee were two divisions under a Grant favorite, Major General James McPherson. (above) 

Advancing west from Corinth, Mississippi were three divisions under the combative Major General Charles Hamilton (above). His column was led by the 2^nd Iowa Volunteer Cavalry, which occupied Grand Junction, just 3 miles east of LaGrange, thus joining the left and center wings of Grant's army.  

The right wing was logically commanded by the sour but loyal Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, His three infantry divisions were encamped in Memphis, and their only job initially was to support Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson's  6^th Illinois Cavalry,  in their capture of LaGrange and their scouting as far south as the Tallahatchie River.

If Sherman were not to move, the threat to Jackson would need a right wing,  and Grant intended that to be a single infantry division and a cavalry detachment under Hoosier General Alvin Peterson Hovey (above), commanding the Eastern District of Arkansas. Steaming from the port of Helena, he was to advance to the Coldwater River and destroy railroad bridges around Grenada – thus unflanking the  potential  rebel defensive line along the Yalobusha. 

Sherman, meanwhile, was to remain in Memphis, where he could hijack the two divisions recruited and trained in Illinois by Major General John Alexander McClernand. Once the rebels had been forced to retreat as far south as Grenada, Mississippi, Sherman would steam down the big river and up the Yazoo River and land five divisions in Vicksburg's rear, occupying the high ground northeast of the city. If that were Grant's plan it seems he told no one of it, not General Halleck in Washington, and  not even Sherman, But I think that was clearly was his intent - else why hold Sherman in Memphis?

But having penetrated  the LaGrange and Grand Junction (above) line, and thrown his cavalry south as far as Holly Springs, which the 2nd Iowa Cavalry occupied on Saturday, 15 November,  Grant came to believe the rebels had almost as many men in central Mississippi as he did. So late in November Grant wrote Sherman "I cannot move from with a force sufficient to handle that number without gloves." So Grant ordered Sherman to push his 15,000 veteran infantrymen 50 miles south to Holly Springs, to tie down as many rebels in central Mississippi  as possible.  But Grant also ordered Sherman not to spend time or energy repairing the Central Mississippi Rail line beyond Holly Springs, which he established as a supply depot. 

Grant now commanded some 40,000 infantrymen but only some 5,000 cavalry troopers. That was far too few horsemen to preform reconnaissance and picket duty over an 80 mile wide front, extending from the Coldwater River to the mountains of western Mississippi. So the gloves in Grant's message were a reference to the standard equipment of gauntlets worn by cavalrymen. That yawning shortage of cavalry would increase in depth with ever step the army took southward. Grant was forced to to use infantry to fill in for his lack of cavalry. 

While Grant spent November of 1862 assembling his host and inching southward in fine weather,  in  the “...beaten and demoralized...” rebel Army of Mississippi, frustrations boiled over. Many officers blamed the failure at Cornith, like the March failure at Pea Ridge in Arkansas,  on the short brash and brilliant Major General Earl Van Dorn (above). 

The face of that frustration became division commander General John Stevens Bowen (above), who formally charged Van Dorn with failing to make a proper reconnaissance before the attack on Corinth, marching the troops in a hastily and disorderly manner to the attack, failing to press the attack sooner on the second day, and neglecting the wounded after the attack failed. Later a charge of drunkenness while on duty was even added.

Back in Richmond, President Jefferson Davis had realized Van Dorn would have to be replaced even before the failure at Corinth. But the pugnacious little serial adulterer had to be handled carefully.  He still had talents the south needed. So on 10 October, 1862, Davis shifted Major General John Clifford Pemberton from South Carolina to command a new department including all of Mississippi and Eastern Louisiana.  To avoid injuring Van Dorn's fragile ego by being demoted,  or even being replaced with a life long staff officer,  Pemberton was simply promoted over Van Dorn, to the rank of Lieutenant-General.  The new commander's orders were concise. He was, to "... consider the successful defense of those States (Mississippi) as the first and chief object of your command." Pemberton arrived at his new headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi, on Tuesday, 14 October 1862.

Two days later Pemberton would officially assume command, headquartered in the state capital(above)  To avoid disrupting the defense of Mississippi Van Dorn remained in the command of the army, leading the troops, and Pemberton assumed the post he was most comfortable with - as a bureaucrat,   Under Pemberton the army was fed more regularly. Blankets appeared.  Ammunition began to arrive where it was needed, as did replacements. Medical care even improved slightly.  Said a Jackson newspaper, "No officer ever devoted himself with greater assiduity to his duties. Late and early he is at his office, laboring incessantly.”  But even though Pemberton journeyed to the new headquarters at Grenada, Mississippi, to talk with Van Dorn, the average soldiers and even the most people in Jackson remained unaware the new Lieutenant General was in charge. 

And then Pemberton ran out of time. On  Monday, 24 November, 1862, General Sherman marched his three divisions south out of Memphis, to join the general advance, to the Tallahatchie River.  And on Thursday, 27 November, Federal General Hovey launched 2,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry in a raid toward the mouth of the Coldwater river, where it met the Tallahatchie. They burned bridges and damaged the railroads, cutting communications and threatening to outflank the defenses .  Also on 27 November, General Hamilton set his infantry south from Grand Junction. Grant's full invasion of Mississippi had begun.

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