In the center of the Federal line, General Alvin Hovey's 12th division was in trouble. By about 2:30pm on Saturday, 16 May, 1863, his 1st brigade had been badly mauled during their three hour fight atop Champion Hill. With them now driven off the crest, Hovey threw his 2ndrd brigade, under the nearsighted 30 year old Colonel George Boardman Boomer, back up the hill, to breakup the enemy assault down the hill, he was certain would follow.
Pomeroy Martin remembered how , “Gallantly they went up the Hill.” And behind them Hovey lined up the bloodied 1st brigade survivors and every cannon he had - the 16th Ohio light, the 2nd Ohio and Battery A of the 1st Missouri Light – 18 guns in total. At the moment, they held their fire, fearful of injuring Boardman's troops. But for a few long minutes those guns and the exhausted 1st battalion were the only protection for the vital federal wagon supply train parked around the Champion house.
Years later the 2nd brigade's second in command, 36 year old dentist Colonel Benjamin Devor Dean, of the 26th Missouri, recalled, “...the 10th Iowa and 93rd Illinois immediately engaged the enemy... Colonel Boomer...seeing the enemy approaching on our right flank, ordered the 26th Missouri to meet them, which it did on the double quick... getting possession of a deep ravine which the enemy was trying to secure.” For ten minutes or so the 26th stood up against a larger 52nd Georgia regiment. But the engagement cost the 26th Missouri 2 officers and 16 enlisted killed, and 3 officers and 66 enlisted men wounded.
Watching from the the bottom around the Champion house, gunner Pomeroy Martin saw that “...the whole line... was pressed back slowly, as the rebels were massing all their forces to crush us here. But now...batteries reached further around to the right, poured in an enfilading fire, which was so terrific as to check effectually the rebel advance, and they gave way and fled in confusion.” The cannon to the right, were from General Logan's division.
At the same time, rebel General Seth Barton (above), in command of the 1st brigade, on the extreme left flank of the rebel line atop Champion Hill, perceived a need for action. He could see Logan's division stumbling up the slope toward him, and decided it would be better to strike the Yankees while they were discombobulated than to passively wait for them to slam into his men.
Barton posted a fragment of the 52nd Georgia regiment with the 4 Parrott rifled cannon of Corput's battery to defend the only bridge over Baker's Creek (above). Certain these men could hold the vital position, Barton then drove the 40th, 41st, and 43rd Georgia regiments down the slope, hoping to fall unexpectedly on the Yankee's.
The initial wave, masked by the forested slopes until they were almost on top of the Yankees, drove in the first blue line, but “...enforced by (the Yankee) second and third lines”, wrote Barton later, “my farther advance was checked..” The troops Barton was hitting were part of Logan's 3rd Brigade, under 42 year old Brigadier General John Dunlap Stevens - the 8th and 81st Illinois, and the 20th and 32nd Ohio regiments. The Federals outnumbered Barton's Georgia soldiers, and were able to bring flanking fire on their attack, forcing the Georgians to to pull back. Under fire, Barton adjusted his line and threw his troops forward again.
Sergeant Osborn Oldroyd, in the 20th Ohio, remembered the rebels “succeeded in driving us a short distance” But then the Buckeyes made their own adjustments, stopped the Georgians a second time and forced them to pull back a few yards into the trees for safety.
When first ordered to advance up the heavily wooded slopes of Champion Hill, Grant had asked Logan if he needed more men. The 37 year old “Black Jack” John Alexander Logan (above) assured his commander, “There are not rebels enough outside of hell to drive back the 3rd division!” In later generations the epithet “Black Jack” would be a demeaning title, indicating the bearer had “stooped” to command African-American troops. But this “Black Jack” - perhaps the original – was a term of familiarity and fondness, which described Logan's jet black hair and blazing black eyes as well as his dark fury in battle. It was a term of respect. He was that rarity in this most political of all America's wars, one of President Lincoln's political generals who was also one of his most respected combat commanders.
Shortly after Logan's division began moving up the northern face of Champion hill, General Hovey, having committed his 2nd brigade in the bitter fight on the same hill, asked for regiments to stabilize his position. But although Logan directed artillery to lay fire on the rebel's attacking Hovey's men, he sent no troops. Logan's reason for being parsimonious with his support was that he could read a map, and his map indicated that his 3rd division was being offered the opportunity to destroy the entire rebel army.
It has been an axiomatic that you should not fight with a river at your back since 12 August 490 B.C. E, when Athenian hoplites butchered the larger Persian army in the surf at Marathon beach. A decade even earlier, the Chinese general Sun Tzu had warned “After crossing a river, you should get far away from it”.
But on Friday, 15 May, 1863, when faced with the rain swollen ford of Baker's Creek, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above) had persevered and counter marched his army to the only bridge over that same creek. A day later, this determination was about to be revealed as a deadly mistake, and there was some irony in that the revelation would be made by the 1st brigade of General Logan's division.
They were the 20th, 31st 45th and 124th Illinois regiments along with the 23rd Indiana. Most were men from the Cairo region of the Prairie state, the district called Little Egypt. The Hoosiers were from the adjoining sympathetic section of Indiana. Hoosier 1st Lieutenant Shadrach Hooper, could have been speaking for the entire brigade when he said, “...it was a case of brother contending against brother, father against son and chum against schoolmate.” The region was strongly pro-slavery with Confederate sympathies. But these regiments had answered the call to duty because of loyalty and faith in Black Jack Logan, who had been their congressman before the war. And now they were going to deliver Vicksburg over to the the abolitionist north.
The brigade general was a 46 year old jeweler named John Eugene Smith (above). His father, John Banler Smith, of Bern, Switzerland, had served in Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign. After the defeat at Waterloo, the Smith family had emigrated to Philadelphia along with their 1 year old son. In 1834, that son, John Eugene, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to apprentice in a jewelry store. There he met is wife, Aimee A. Massot, and they were married in 1836.
In the 1840's, the growing family had moved to the northern Illinois, Mississippi river town of Gelena (above),
There John operated a Main Street jewelry and watch shop, and had become a friend to the half owner of a leather shop, Orvil Grant (above, center) - younger brother of Ulysses Grant.
These were the men, like most humans, of divided loyalties, struggling in a divided nation, But in a brief spasm of horrible violence, these men were about to seal the fate of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the entire Confederacy.
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