At 8:00 a.m., on Thursday, 22 May, 1863, the six Parrot guns of the 1st Wisconsin Light Artillery began to methodically shell the Railroad Redoubt from 600 yards. This massive earthen structure stood above the gorge through which passed the Baldwin Ferry Road and the Southern Railroad line, into Vicksburg. Boom. Pause. Boom. Pause.
Six rounds a minute, one round per minute from each rifle, the big Parrots sent 18 pound shell after 18 pound shell screaming at 1,900 feet per second into the packed earth northeastern wall until a portion slumped (above). This created an advantage which did not exist at any of the other 14 forts, redoubts and redans along the 6 mile front. And this advantage would kill hundreds of Yankee soldiers.
Inside the redoubt - which the rebels had labeled Fort Beauregard - were the traumatized remnants of the 31st Alabama infantry, some 240 men under Montgomery native, recently promoted Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Mann Arrington. Three weeks earlier, their Colonel, Daniel Hudley, had been shot in the hip and captured at Port Hudson, where the regiment had been decimated. Less than a week ago, at Champion Hill, the 31st had lost another 230 men, killed, wounded and captured - half their strength.
The spear which Major General John Alexander McClernand was about to toss at the Railroad Redoubt was the 22nd Iowa “Johnson County” regiment, under 35 year old politician, lawyer and judge, Colonel William Milo Stone (above). Antebellum, Stone had helped nominate Abraham Lincoln. In April of 1862 Major Stone had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Shiloh. Sent to Richmond's Libby prison, William had been invited to meet Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and carried his peace offer to Washington. When Lincoln refused to negotiate anything but a Confederate surrender, Stone had dutifully returned to Libby prison. Exchanged later that same year, Stone was promoted to Colonel of 22nd Iowa.
Supporting the 22nd on their right was the 21st Iowa, as well as the 11th Wisconsin and the 77th Illinois, all from Micheal Lawler's 2nd Brigade, Eugene Asa Carr's 14th division, as well as the 97th Illinois regiment, borrowed from 2nd Brigade, Andrew Jackson Smith's 10th Division. McClernand held out no forlorn hope for his men. The Yankees came forward with fixed bayonets. Stone did not want his men wasting time getting across the kill zone in front of the Redoubt.
Talladega native, Major George Mathieson of the 31st Alabama, would dispassionately note that at 10:00 a.m., “...a heavy column of infantry appeared in front, and attempted to charge my position. The men of my command poured a heavy fire into their ranks...” Members of the 22nd Iowa saw things more emotionally. His sword held high, Colonel Stone set out, shouting, “Forward, 22nd Iowa!” The regimental adjutant, 22 year old Captain Samuel Pryce, wrote that “The regiment sprang forward ... hurling itself like a young hurricane....It was a tornado of iron on our left, a hurricane of shot on our right…we passed through the mouth of hell.”
The initial charge through “... a concentrated fire of grape and musketry...” took no more than 10 minutes, but only about 50 men managed to reach the trench at the foot of the redoubt. Among the wounded was Colonel Stone. With no scaling ladders, and so many officers injured, it was under the direction of 20 year old Sergeant Joseph Evan Griffith of “I” company, that the men formed a human chain, pulling each other up the wall until there were about 15 or 20 men atop the redoubt. The regimental flag was planted there by Private David Trine.
At the same time, on their right, the 22nd Iowa made the same charge, but 22 year old college student, Sargent Nicolas Claire Messenger, led 11 men of the 22nd to the left, up and out of the ravine, directly into the partially collapsed flank of the redoubt.
Messenger was the first to breach the fort, where, according to an Iowa witness, “While standing on the parapet, Messenger fired his gun from his hips, and either killed or wounded a confederate with gray whiskers...” A Confederate witness confirmed that “The first man to enter, a sergeant, was rather tall (Messenger was almost 6 feet)...shot and killed a Confederate dressed in a new gray suit, sitting close to the brass cannon, and he then jumped in upon the balance of us...(and) commenced to club them with his musket...”
Of the 11 Iowa boys who entered the fort, only two made it out. Sargent Messenger survived because he stumbled upon a Confederate Lieutenant with 16 rebels caught between the lines. The big sergeant told them it was too hot for any man to stay and live, and ordered them to follow him. And they did. As they climbed back over the collapsed wall of the fort, 4 or the surrendering rebels were killed. But as soon as Messenger could turn his prisoners over to another, he clambered “....up on the top of the fort and there deliberately stuck his ramrod in the ground and commenced to load his gun...but he did not stay there long, as some of his comrades pulled him down ...”
Nick himself wrote later, “I was struck by three balls below the left knee...I pulled up my pants to inspect the damage...” But still he kept firing. There were only 15 to 20 men with him atop the redoubt, the best shots in the regiment each staying until they were either shot or could no longer hold themselves there. Adjunct Pryce said, “There was no room on the slope for more men. Neither was it an easy task to plant a heavy flagstaff into the hard ground with bullets flying all around.”
Another witness tried to describe the incomprehensible scene. “A surge of death and destruction swept over the parapet,” he wrote, “... blotting out men’s lives as a reaper cuts down standing grain. The missiles were flying and whistling...hands and faces were already streaming with blood. The ground was covered with the desperately wounded and dead.” Another soldier remembered flashes of horror. “The ground was covered with the dead and wounded on both sides.” At about noon, Welsh born Sargent Joe Griffith was ordered to escort Messenger's surviving prisoners to the rear.
The remnants of the 31st Alabama had reformed in the trench line behind the redoubt, where they were reinforced by the remnants of the 46th Alabama. The Confederates kept up a steady fire on the Yankees, and Major Mathieson noted the Yankee, “... killed and wounded lay thick on the field...I do not know the precise amount of his loss, but think it must have been 150 or 200 in killed and wounded.” As of 11:00 a.m., an hour into the assault, the Iowa boys sent back their second request for reinforcements. At the same time, everyone else on the battlefield had decided the day was a failure.
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