VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Six

 

The 200 blue clad troopers from the 6^th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry reached the New Orleans and Jackson railroad line about a mile and a half north of Crystal Springs, Mississippi  - 30 miles south south west of Jackson - just after 9:00am on Monday, 11 May, 1863. They began their destructive work at once. 

Under orders from their commander, Colonel Thomas Clark Wright (above),  half stood guard while the other 100 stripped a mile and a half of telegraph wire from its poles and piled it atop bridges over Vaughn and Rhodes Creeks, which they then set ablaze. 

The Yankees also tore up 3 short sections of rails between the creeks. These were heated over their own burning cross ties and 125 bales of cotton, labeled “Property of the Confederate States of America”. The softened rails were warped enough to make them unusable.

Clark Wright's uncivil war – he preferred the name Clark - began just a week after Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter. In a coup on 20 April, 1861, on the border with “Bleeding Kansas”, pro-slavery militia had captured the Federal arsenal in Liberty, Missouri – also Jesse James' hometown. A similar attempt at the St. Louis arsenal was foiled, and pro-Federal forces quickly took control the state government, and its bank accounts. 

On 1 August, on the Iowa border, 500 pro-union militiamen, lead by 44 year old Colonel David Moore, “put the bayonet” to 2,000 poorly equipped pro-slavery men in Athens, Missouri. Two of the rebels sent running were Colonel Moore's own sons. A week later, Colonel Thomas Clark Wright participated in the Battle of Wilson's Creek (above), which proved emblematic for Missouri's entire war.  It was a bloody tactical defeat for the Federals and a bloody strategic defeat for the Confederates - in short, everybody lost.

The war in Missouri saw more fighting than any other states except Virginia and Tennessee, and more division than most. A year later, after the Federal victory in the 3 hour battle in the town square of Kirksville, in northeastern Missouri, Colonel John McNeil (above) ordered 15 surrendered rebels executed, and Lieutenant Colonel Frisby McCullough was shot as a “Bushwhacker”, even though he was wearing a Confederate uniform and had papers confirming his rank.

Peremptory violence such as this, and that of terrorists “Bloody Bill” Anderson and William Quantrill ate at discipline, until the war in Missouri descended into an endless series of raids, ambushes, torture, murders, kidnappings, lynchings, barn burnings, poisoned wells, rapes and robberies, more often criminal as militarily motivated. Often the perpetrators knew the victims. Often they were neighbors. Occasionally, they were even related.

Missouri's war would not end until 3 April, 1881, when Jesse James would be murdered in his St. Joseph parlor. Before then, perhaps 40,000 men, women and children would die – 27,000 from 1861 to 1865 alone. And Colonel Thomas Clark Wright rose from this moral swamp. As he finished his 11 May, 1863 raid on the New Orleans And Jackson railroad, Colonel Wright released 18 prisoners on parole. But 15 others were trussed up and and tied to mules, to suffer the bruising 25 mile ride back headquarters of the XVII Corps, north of Utica, Mississippi on the Old Port Gibson Road, at the Roach Plantation. Colonel Wright reported he believed it would take the rebels 5 or 6 days to repair all the damage his men had done to the railroad. But things in Mississippi were changing much faster than that.

Owner of the plantation he called Woodville was James P. Roach, banker and a partner in the firm of Wirt Adams and Company on Crawford Street in Vicksburg (above). James, his wife Loulie and their 6 children had lived on Depot street for a decade, 

To James his plantation and the human beings who toiled and suffered on it were an “investment property”, collateral for loans and a status symbol. But he did not live to see the war fought to defend his wealth. In 1860, after a long illness, James Roach had died at 50 years of age. He left behind an 18 year old son Tom, 15 year old Nora, 12 year old Mahala, 5 year old Sophy and John, and 4 year old Jim.

In 1860 Vicksburg had a population of 4,600 white souls. With the slowly closing Federal noose around the city, 3 years later it had swollen to perhaps 10,000. 

After Pemberton left for his first field command, the man in charge of Vicksburg was 42 year old Alabamian, Major General Martin Luther Smith (above). Besides commanding the division which had withstood Sherman's January Chickasaw Bayou assault, he was generally considered the best engineer in the Confederacy. But Smith was also responsible for the river batteries Joe Johnston had criticized the previous December. And in the event, that criticism had been proven prophetic.

Beneath Smith was the 42 year old New Yorker Colonel Edward Higgins. He had spent half his life at sea, which seemingly made him the perfect commander for the 3,600 gunners who had defended the Vicksburg river front up to this point. But Major Higgins had also commanded the guns of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, on the river below New Orleans. And those forts and guns had been “run”, and bypassed, much the same way the Vicksburg batteries had, just the month before. The delta forts held out until late April, 1862 when they and Higgins surrendered. While on parole, Higgins had been promoted to Colonel, and when officially exchanged in September, he had been assigned to Vicksburg.

Commanding a division beneath Major General Smith was 32 year old Major General Horace Forney (above).  An 1852 graduate of West Point, Forney had returned there in 1858 after the the Mormon Expectation, to teach tactics. He had resigned his commission when Alabama seceded. As the colonel of the 10^th Alabama regiment, he had been solely responsible for the defense of the Shenandoah Valley, while the rest of the Confederate army concentrated at Mananass Junction to defeat the first Yankee invasion of Virginia. Badly wounded in the arm at the skirmish at Dransville, he was promoted to first Brigadier General and then, in October 1862 to Major General, and given command of the District of the Gulf.

His rapid promotion was primarily politically and romantically inspired, since while recovering he had courted and married 22 year old Miss Septima Sexta Middleton Rutledge, great granddaughter of both Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton – both signers of the Declaration of Independence. Her politically powerful Alabama family insisted her husband be a great soldier. Finally sent to Vicksburg, his duties were limited to the garrisoning of a prepared position.

Smith's own division occupied a mile of artillery redoubts with connecting trenches behind the Military Road running from Fort Hill (above)  at the far left of the line,  to its junction with Graveyard Road on the right.  

From the Stockade Redoubt south to the Jackson Road was defended by Forney's division. From there the line bent inward to the Baldwin Ferry Road and the Southern Railroad line, to Hall's Ferry Road, and terminated at the South Fort, and the Mississippi River.

The troops intended to occupy the line south of the Jackson road to the River if need be, including the divisions of 45 year old Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, 32 year old Major General John Stevens Bowen, and 44 year old Major General William Wing Loring, At  that moment in early May they were all gathered 7miles to the east of Vicksburg, around the railroad stop of Bovina, under 49 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton, as an offensive force.

General Smith acknowledged that the defense line he had constructed might have been stronger, if it had occupied an equally high ridge some 600 yards further to the east. But that idea, “increasing as it did the length of the entire line of defense, was abandoned for want of sufficient force to occupy it.” In other words, the Gibraltar of the Confederacy was not the strongest position on the Mississippi River. It was the strongest position possible.

That evening, when Colonel Thomas Clark Wright's exhausted troopers fell into their sleeping bags on the Roach Plantation, Wright's day was not yet done,  He had to write out his report to his superiors - , the damage to the rail line and the prisoners he had taken. And then he added that he had been told a brigade of Confederate infantry  had passed down the rail road to Jackson a few hours before his arrival. And, he added,  there were reports of a second rebel brigade which was supposed to be passing on to Jackson in a few hours. 

The first Brigade had been Greeg's 4,600 men. The Yankees now knew they would be waiting for them in Jackson or Raymond.  But the following brigade , under 38 year old Brigadier General Samuel Bell Maxey (above), was south of the break Wright's men had made in the New Orleans and Jackson rail line.  Delayed because of that break, those 4,000 men were ordered to return to Port Hudson. Thus Wright's cavalry raid handed McPherson's Corps the victory at on 12 May, before a shot was even fired.

But there was also another effect of the raid. Later in the month, while acknowledging  that Colonel Wright had always been following his orders,  Lieutenant General Grant would suggest to subordinates, that the Missourian's actions with regard to taking and treating of prisoners was excessive.  And before the month of June was over, before Vicksburg had surrendered, Colonel Thomas Clark Wright would quietly resign his position in the Federal army.   This was a war for the future soul of the nation. And the leadership of the Federal Army agreed there must be limits to the actions of the winners, else what was won would prove not worth the price that was paid. 

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