VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty - Six

 

Captain Yeger's saber flashed in the sun. Two squadrons of rebel cavalrymen opened fire on the Bear Creek bridge. And the single company of Harris' brigade, 28^th Mississippi cavalry spurred their horses forward, four abreast, down the narrow fenced road, directly into the open mouth of a 12 inch howitzer. The cannon belched fire and smoke. Hundreds of supersonic lead balls filled the air. And 100 Iowa Yankee carbines barked death.

Twice the Mississippi rebels charged, and twice the Iowa boys forced them back. But then, seeing the Yankees pulling the ugly little gun to the west side of the bridge, Captain Yerger ordered this men forward a third time. And this time the riders in butternut brown and gray scattered the blue clad gunners and captured the ugly little cannon. In victory the rebels barely notice the Yankees had fired the bridge, and it would soon be unusable.

History would insist that this 22 June, 1863 skirmish at Bear Creek, just west of the Birdsong Ferry over the Big Black River, was of importance only to the 13 Americans killed on both sides – including the brave Captain Yeger – and the 32 wounded , and, of course to the 40 horses killed. The bridge would be repaired, and that would take just a little time . But it did have a larger meaning to at least two other men.

As June slipped away, General Joseph Johnston's strongest unit, Major General William Henry Talbot Walker's 8,000 man division, was station 20 miles northwest of Canton, Mississippi at the crossroads village of Vernon. From there Walker could guard against a Yankee end run toward Yazoo City. And should Johnston take the offensive, as President Jefferson Davis had ordered, the first step for Walker would be a march 3 miles due west to Bogue Chitto – in the Choctaw language, Big Creek – and then another 4 mile march to the Big Black River at Birdsong Ferry, 10 miles north of the Big Black River Bridge battlefield. 

Just east of Canton, was the 6,000 man division of one armed Major General William Wing Loring. Based in part on the the success of the skirmish at Bear Creek Bridge, “Old Joe” Johnston intended both Walker and Loring's divisions to spear head a drive across the Big Black River to Bear Creek and beyond, to Grant's supply base on Chickasaw Bayou below Snyder's Bluff.

To support that 2 division thrust, General Johnston had stationed Major General John Cabel Breckenridge's 6,000 man division some 20 miles south of Vernon and 10 miles due west of Canton, defending the little railroad town of Bolton. The Southern rail line had been rendered useless for the past month. But the Big Black River Railroad Bridge was still standing, just 20 miles beyond  Bolton – a single day's march.

In addition, the 6,000 man division of wealthy slave owner Major General Samuel Gibbs French occupied the trenches at Jackson, at the end of the hastily repaired Central Mississippi railroad. The line was dependable only as far south as Canton. Beyond that the lack of ballast for the rails and the patchwork bridge repairs cut speeds in half or more. And now most of the slave workers had been switched to repairing the bridge over the Pearl River. Should the army move forward, Johnston could use French's division to support either Breckenridge or the thrust over the Big Black.

Finally, on Sunday, 28 June, General Johnston (above) gave the order, and the next morning, Monday, 29 June, his ramshackle Army of Relief, loaded with 3 days rations, lurched forward. Immediately problems showed Johnston's force had so exhausted itself in just getting to Jackson and Canton that it was still in no condition to take on Grant's Army of the Tennessee. On the first day General Walker's men managed to cover 6 miles, but they stumbled into camps on the Jones Plantation, still short of Birdsong Ferry.

And it was the inability of Breckenridge's men to move efficiently that drove the primadonna “Ole Blizzards” Loring (above) to throw yet another of his infamous hissy fits. His men were supposed to march this day from Canton to Bolton, then turn north, heading for Birdsong Ferry. 

But they could not get through Bolton, which was jammed with Breckenridge's men still being issued their 3 days of rations. Flashing his sword and temper, Loring tried shoving individual units out of his way, which only made the situation worse . And then the now disjointed Breckenridge's regiments elbowed their way in between Loring's regiments.

Word of the tangled mess reached Breckenridge before noon. He ordered his forward units to hold at Edward's Depot, while he raced back to Bolton and faced down Loring in a shouting match.  While all of that was going on, neither Loring's troops nor Breckenridge's troops moved very much at all. Eventually Johnston's staff officers intervened, and the mess slowly untangled. But Breckenridge's division got no farther than Edward's Depot, and Loring's division no further than Brownsville, Mississippi. And because those unit's did not reach their intended first day's objectives, General French's 6,000 men barely moved out of Jackson. All in all, the first day's march had been a minor disaster.

It seemed an indication that the numbers alone were not a fair measure of force provided by Johnston's Army of Relief.  He had some 27,000 men, but most had been heavily used just getting to Jackson and Canton, and were now placing demands on the Confederate supply system it could no longer sustain. They were making the kind of rookie mistakes you would expect from "green" soldiers, not veterans.  And when they finally reached the Big Black River Johnston's men discovered that the country to the west, which had been almost empty of Yankees in Mid-June, was far from that by the First of July.

Initially the only Yankees guarding Chickasaw Bayou were cavalry screens and Major General Parke's IX Corps, including 2 brigades in Major General Thomas Welsh's 1^st Division, and 3 weak brigades of Brigadier General Robert B. Potters' 2^nd Division. As May turned to June these men were pushed forward, until their trenches reached from the Yazoo River to Messanger Ford and Bush's Ferry, north of Birdsong Ferry. 

By mid-June those troops, now named the Army of Observation, had been placed under the command of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above), and reinforced with 1 division each from each of the armies other corps - "Parke's two divisions from Haines's Bluff out to the Benton or ridge road; Tuttle's division, of my corps, joining on and extending to a plantation called Young's, overlooking Bear Creek valley, which empties into the Big Black above Messinger's Ferry; then McArthur's division, of McPherson's corps, took up the line, and reached to Osterhaus's division of McClernand's corps, which held a strong fortified position at the railroad-crossing of the Big Black River. "

As the threat of a Vicksburg breakout faded, more divisions from the besieging army were fed into Sherman's command. By the end of the month three divisions of the XVI corps, under 43 year old Minneapolis flour mill owner Major General Cadwallader Colden Washburn provided a substantial reserve. Sherman now had a total of nearly 40,000 men. 

Johnston's Army of Relief could still muster only 27,000, and although the rebels were eager enough, they lacked the military stamina and equipment of the Yankee force.

After the war, Grant confided to journalist John Russell Young, that, “If I had known Johnston was coming (west of the Big Black), I would have told Pemberton to wait in Vicksburg until I wanted him, awaited Johnston’s advance, and given him battle. He could never have beaten that Vicksburg army, and thus I would have destroyed two armies perhaps.” Still Grant insisted, “...the South, in my opinion, had no better soldier than Joe Johnston – none at least that gave me more trouble.” And that included Robert E. Lee.

Johnston spent three days looking for an opening somewhere in Sherman's lines. He was cautious of being caught over the Big Black without a secure line of retreat, as Pemberton had been caught over Baker's Creek at Champion Hill. Finally, on the evening of 3 July, General Johnston decided he must act the next day, to relieve the pressure on Vicksburg's defenders. But that night, he received information which changed his mind.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Eight

 

On 24 June 1823, while "riding the circuit" in Lebanon, Ohio,  90 miles from his home, 40 year old Justice Charles Robert Sherman came down with a fever and died.  And because Charles was an honest man, and left no fortune behind, the world of his 9 year old  son William Tecumseh Sherman simply imploded. 

"Cump" Sherman's 14 siblings were scattered to adoptive families across Ohio. “Cump” and his brother was taken in by a Lancaster neighbor, a lawyer and soon to be U.S. Senator, Thomas Ewing. The tragedy left such deep abandonment issues that “Cump” never called his loving adoptive parents anything but Mister and Misses Ewing. And he never escaped the panic whenever it seemed his security might be swept away again. In May of 1863 Major General William Tecumseh Sherman had a re-occurrence of that panic when he first arrived on the Mississippi side of the Mississippi River.

On Saturday 9 May, “Cump” reached the Pipes-Bagnell house near Harkinson Ferry, expecting to be reunited with his friend Sam, only to discover that the day before General Ulysses Grant had moved on. Cump panicked, a little. He immediately wrote to Grant at Rocky Springs, “ Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road."

Grant promptly reassured his dear friend. “I do not calculate the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” he wrote. “What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.” With that rational explanation, and a few words of reassurance from Grant, Sherman was able to again pass along the confidence to his “tail-end Charlie”, General Francis Preston Blair, that, “Don't let the wagons get encumbered with trash. We will be in want of salt, bread, sugar, and coffee. We may safely trust to the country for meat."

With the arrival of the bulk of Sherman's XV corps, Grant now had in Central Mississippi about 45,000 men. And he had decided, while scouring his maps and cavalry reports over Mrs. Pipes-Bagnell's dinning room table, to strike first to the north, to cut the Vicksburg and Jackson Southern Railroad. 

By occupying that line he would be cutting Vicksburg off from reinforcement from the eastern Confederacy, just as he had cut Vicksburg off from the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy by occupying the Texas and Monroe railroad line to Desoto, Louisiana. And in typical Grant fashion, he chose to accomplish this in as devious a fashion as he could.

It was impossible to disguise the arrival of Sherman's Corps around Harkinson Ferry. So Grant used the noise and dust to his advantage. Sherman was instructed to ostentatiously prepare to assault the rebel lines along the Big Black River. 

The bridge captured by McClerand's men would never support a major advance, so scouts and staff officers were seen inspecting possible crossing points above and below it. With Vicksburg just 20 miles to the north, Pemberton would have had no choice but to assume Grant was preparing a “coupe de main” or “direct assault” on the city, and hold his divisions back to defend against it.

Meanwhile, McClernand's XIII Corps had moved to camps further up the road which hugged the

Big Black River.  Rebel observation posts could not help but see the dust from their marches and the smoke from their camp fires extending inland toward the Natchez Trace. This seemed to hint that Grant was moving further north toward the Big Black River Bridge, west of Edward's Depot. That larger structure, and the railroad bridge nearby, could support a major advance on Vicksburg. And Pemberton had been suspecting since the Port Gibson breakout, that this was Grant's real goal. 

But also on that Saturday, 9 May, the divisions of McPherson's XVII corps were marching northeast on the Natchez Trace, passing through the XIII corps camps. At the hamlet of Reganton they took the road east, camping 3 miles beyond Utica. Grant was now traveling with the XVII Corps and set his new headquarters outside of Cayuga.

The XVII corps was now Grant's right flank, threatening Clinton and tying down the slowly assembling Confederate force in the state capital of Jackson. Sherman was positioned in the middle, where he could march directly on Bolton, screened by McClernand, ands strike toward Edward's Depot to the north.  Grant's intention was to cut the Southern Railroad not once but in three, tripling his odds of severing the vital railroad.

Over the first two weeks in May of 1863, Grant showed he had indeed learned from Napoleon, who wrote, "When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success...”. Grant had done this by following the Emperor's twin guidelines. “Operations must be designed to surprise and confuse the enemy,” while rendering them helpless “through the severance of his lines of supply, communications, and retreat.”

Over the first 2 weeks in October of 1805 the core of Napoleon's Le Grand Armee marched 275 miles from the banks of the Rhine to the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. He thus placed his army between the 60,000 Austrians under General Mack von Leiberich, around Ulm, and the 80,000 Russians under Tzar Alexander I, just nearing the Austrian capital of Vienna. By the end of October, Napoleon had forced General Mack to surrender. And on 3 December in the startling victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon killed or captured half the Russian army. Those twin achievements inspired Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. What Grant was about to achieve at Vicksburg deserved an equally impressive artistic footnote, and more because it was not achieved merely to make one man an Emperor.

Back in February, shortly after arriving to dig the Lake Providence canal, Sergeant Cyrus F. Boyd, had gotten his first unvarnished look at the reality of human slavery.  Among the “contraband” who entered the 15^th Iowa lines that first day, Boyd spotted a young girl with dark skin, deep blue eyes and straight hair which hung down to her shoulders. 

The mother explained the girl had been fathered by her “master”, and said she had given birth to two other daughters by the same rapist. Upon hearing this, according to Boyd, an unnamed corn husker had exploded in anger at the injustice. “By God”, he shouted, “ I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on it.” Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had re-framed the war, from one for the survival of the United States, into one for the future of humanity.

Two days later, on 11 May, Grant's primary worry was a sudden shortage of water. The appearance of dry weather and the presence of 45,000 men and 100,000 horses, had left streams and and wells bone dry. Still Grant pushed his men forward. On this Monday, 54 year old General Frederick Steele's (above)  1st division of Sherman's XV Corps, marched to Five mile Creek, looking for a drink of water. 

Doing same,  29 year old James Madison Tuttle's (above)  3rd division of the same corps camped closer to Auburn. General McPherson's XVII Corps advance only 1 ½ miles, slowed by the search for water. That night Grant urged McPherson to press his men to take Raymond, saying, “We must fight before our rations fail”.

At 5:30am, Tuesday, 12 May, 1863, all three Yankee corps continued their advance from Five Mile Creek. General McClernand's (above) XIII corps were guarding the army's flank along the Big Black River.  

Sherman's (above)XV Corps was moving faster, determined to cut the Southern railroad at Bolton by nightfall. 

But 32 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's (above) XVII was so short of water their main thrust this day was toward Raymond, to capture and use the wells south that town.

As they set out, Grant sent a message via Grand Gulf, to General Halleck, Beginning now, the Army of the Tennessee would be out of communication until they had captured Vicksburg. Or been destroyed. What Grant was telling Lincoln, was that he was so confident of victory that he was marching  an entire Federal Army right off the map.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - One

 

As sunlight first touched Chancellorsville, Virginia on Monday, 4 May, 1863, both armies were staggering back from a disaster. The 133,000 man Federal Army of the Potomac under Joe Hooker had literally been worse than decimated, losing some 17,000 men - 1,600 dead, 9,800 wounded and almost 6,000 captured or missing. - almost 13% of their total strength.   But the 60,000 man rebel Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee had suffered some 13,000 causalities - 1,700 dead, 9,000 wounded and over 2,000 captured or missing – or over 20% of their strength. 

General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker,  although still in command,  rightly bore most of the blame for the Federal failure.  He was mocked in the press both south (above) and north.  However, although few could see it at the time, the tragedy was a tactical victory for the Confederates, but a strategic defeat.

Two advantages helped disguise the scale of the disaster for General Lee's army.  First and foremost, General Longstreet's corps had not been present at Chancellorsville.  Lee (above) had been forced to disperse one third of his army,  some  30,000 men , to southern tidewater Virginia, so they could be fed.  They would now be rejoining Lee -  combat veterans, fresh and not blunted by a wasting battle.   And secondly, Lee had won a clear psychological victory over Hooker.  Lee, it seemed,  always won his battles with the Army of the Potomac. But Lee knew better.

The only shadow which seemed to darken this victory was that Lee's right hand man,  the  religiously fanatical General “Stonewall” Jackson,  had lost his left arm at Chancellorsville.  He was bedridden now, and would not be available to General Lee on his invasion of Pennsylvania. And Lee must invade. His army would never be stronger.  And only in the north would the Confederacy find the surpluses to feed, clothe and arm their soldiers.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, most of the 42,000 men under Lieutenant General John Pemberton were

marching to realign after Grant's attack around the rebel right flank. There were now about 33,000 men in and around Vicksburg, another 6,000 in and around Jackson, with perhaps 2,000 men in Port Hudson on the Mississippi, just above Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Pemberton's first impulse had been to abandon Port Hudson and call the garrison back to Vicksburg,  but Confederate President Jefferson Davis had countermanded that order.  In fact, over the next few weeks Davis would feed another 10,000 reinforcements into the isolated post, while commanders elsewhere in the state would be starved for men.

One of the most powerful Confederate regiments was on a forced march to Grand Gulf that morning - the 400 plus men of the 26^th Mississippi Infantry.   In April they had repelled the Federals at Fort Pemberton.  Now, they were ordered to Grand Gulf. They might have used the Southern Railroad to save time and energy, but after the raid on Newton Station, that line was no longer available.  The only way to get from the Yazoo delta to Grand Gulf was on foot.  And for two and a half days they had been marching under their colonel, A.E. Reynolds.  But they only got as far as Bayou Pierre before running into the Federals, who were marching north to meet them.

Their commander, the acquisitive Arthur Exum Reynolds,  was a big man in Tishomingo County - he was rich, he was politically powerful and he was fat. The 300 pound lawyer (above, evidently holding in his gut)  had moved to the north eastern corner of Mississippi in the early 1840's, once the Chickasaw native peoples had been forced out.  After the Presidential election of 1860, as a wealthy state representative "A.E." was a natural choice to represent his county at the secession convention. He agreed with the majority that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery",  but like 16 others he voted to wait until other states had joined the rebellion before taking the ultimate step.

When they did, "A.E." raised his own 400 man regiment. He was unanimously elected Colonel of the 26^th.  They arrived at Fort Donaldson, Tennessee in February of 1862 (above) - just in time to suffer 12 dead and 69 wounded in their and General Grant's first major battle.  During that engagement, "A.E."'s horse was killed, and the substantial Colonel, while uninjured, lacked the wind to keep up with his unit under his own power. So he led from the rear. The entire regiment, including A.E., were forced to surrender. They were paroled and reformed in September at Jackson, Mississippi. The 46 year old A.E. was again in command as they skirmished with Grant's army during his December 1862 advance to and January 1863 retreat from Grenada, Mississippi.  And now under orders from the profane General Loring, A.E. wisely offered only token resistance to the advancing Yankees.

Captain Patterson's  engineers worked all night to repair the bridge over the North Fork of Bayou Pierre, and at 5:30 the morning of Monday, 4 May, 1863, General Smith's division crossed the bridge and continued up the Port Gibson road toward Willow Springs. As they approached the tiny community a battery of rebel artillery from the Mississippi 26th made a show of firing a few rounds, but retreated before Federal artillery could return the favor. And with that the valuable fresh water of Willow Springs fell into Union hands.

While the Yankees were refilling their canteens a civilian plantation owner appeared riding a mule and demanding to speak with the officer in charge. The General's soldiers, the outraged plantation owner complained, had stolen everything in his larder - pigs and cows and horses. 

The man demanded his property be returned and the thieves punished. The craggy General Smith calmly ask the planter who owned the mule he had arrived upon. It was his mule, responded the planter. Well, said General Smith, the thieves could not have been his men, because his men would not have left the mule behind. And with that the planter was sent on his way, on foot.

Clearly, the troops were already working to stretch their rations beyond the ten days they had been told to make them last. And they were having no trouble doing that.  However General Smith did not allow his men to tarry at the springs or forage too much along their route. That very afternoon Smith pushed his men forward through Rock Springs,  5 miles to Harkinson's Ferry -  the main crossing of the Big Black River by the Port Gibson Road.  They arrived there just as the day was ending, and after a brief exchange of cannon fire the 20th Ohio Infantry stormed across the bridge, forcing the rebels to assume that Grant was going to make a drive directly for Vicksburg, just 20 miles further north.  The Yankees did little more than raid up the road, but if an immediate  assault in Vicksburg was not Grant's intention, what was next for the Army of the Tennessee?

Before he had even crossed the Mississippi  River, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant (above) understood what he was risking by passing below the still active guns at Vicksburg. He would write later, “To have no communications - to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole army without a rear link was a tremendous gamble!" Once over the river he could not retreat, there would be no rescue and no resupply. He could not merely stay where he was.  He had to fight and he had to win, every fight and every skirmish. A single reversal could force him to pause and any pause would spell doom.  But fight who, and fight where?

There was still the possibility of joining with Nathaniel Banks( above)  and his 30,000 man Army of the Gulf,  and together crushing Port Hudson and then marching north to Vicksburg with 70,000 men.   But Banks had been tempted to follow a will-o-wisp of easy victories up Bayou Teeche, moving farther away from the key battleground of the Mississippi River.  The Massachusetts political general would not meet his promised return date of 10 May in front of Port Hudson.  And Grant could not wait until Banks returned. Grant had the initiative, and he could not surrender it,  else Pemberton would eventually gather strength against him. He most move forward. And after a bath in the newly liberated fortress of Grand Gulf, Grant rode north to keep a close eye on his most troublesome subordinate, Major General John McClernand.

Grant arrived at Rocky Springs after a daylong ride, "...by a strange and circuitous road." The next morning he might move directly on Vicksburg.  But he had only some 30,000 men in 2 corps drawing up to the Big Black River south of the city.  And Pemberton had about that same number in the new fortifications on the eastern side of Vicksburg.  Isolated as he was , Grant could not afford any battle which offered him less than favorable odds.   Deep in his enemies' rear,  he must keep the Confederates divided and not allow them to concentrate against him. Grant truly had the elephant by the tail.  He needed Sherman to join him, as quickly as possible.

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