VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty - Nine

 

A woman of Vicksburg awoke in her cave on Saturday morning, 4 July, 1863 to an unusual sound. Silence. Returning to her home, later that morning, in her kitchen,  she met a soldier looking for scraps. He told her that “...the men in Vicksburg will never forgive Pemberton...A child would have known better than to shut men up in this cursed trap to starve to death...Haven’t I seen my friends carted out three or four in a box, that had died of starvation... because we had a fool for a general.”

At about 10 a.m., white flags began to appear along the rebel fortifications. Painfully thin Confederate regiments (above)  " “staggered like drunken men from emaciation, and...wept like children..." and formed pale skinned ranks on the ridge line. They stacked their rifles, handguns, shotguns, swords and bayonets and furled their battle flags. Then they glumly waited.

John Benjamin Sanborn (above) was a 36 year old widowed lawyer from St. Paul, Minnesota, who had fought in every major engagement of the campaign since the Battle of Port Gibson.  Now a full bird Colonel, he and his old regiment, the 4^th Minnesota infantry, were General Logan's choice to lead the 3^rd division into Vicksburg. The evening before Sanborn's brigade had been issued new uniforms. The soldiers had shined the brass on their muskets and buttons until it shown like new as they formed up along the Jackson Road behind their band.

With General Grant and his staff in the lead, followed by General John Alexander Logan and his 3^rd division staff, the Yankees marched through the remnants of the Louisiana redoubt and down into the heart of Vicksburg. The 3^rd division band was playing “Hail Columbia”, the defacto national anthem since 1800, as well as “The Star Spangled Banner”, which would not be the official anthem until 1931.

Carried in an ambulance at the head of the 45^th Illinois, second regiment in the column, was the wounded Colonel Jasper Adalmorn Maltby. His head bandages still seeped blood from the 22 June battle in the crater of the Louisiana redan,  but the 36 year old gunsmith from Galena was determined to celebrate with his regiment, both crippled in the victory. He would shortly be promoted to Brigadier General, but would struggle to recover from his injuries.

As the column passed into the city itself, the victorious Yankee cannon outside slowly fired a 31 gun salute – one shot for each state in the union, including those in rebellion. By limiting the salute in this way, Grant disguised the number of cannon already moved to Sherman's front 20 miles to the east, which was now preparing to advance against Joe Johnston's Army of Relief. At the junction with Cherry Street the regiment reached the Warren County Courthouse (above) , where they formed around the base of the building. 

In front of the east portico, Grant dismounted and (above) was greeted by his defeated foe - Lieutenant General Pemberton. This set the Yankee soldiers to cheering.

A resident of the United States for just 5 years, Norwegian born 22 year old Private Knud Helling, wrote his best friend, “ We marched into the city in good order with (band) playing and the flags flying...The Rebel soldiers and the inhabitants stood in groups on the street corners and stared at us while we passed them...The inhabitants....looked very pale and wretched...The city is somewhat damaged by the horrible bombardment, and many of the houses have marks from our cannon balls....” John Thurston, also with the 4^th Minnesota, recalled it as “...the most glorious 4^th of July I ever spent.”

The cheering, happy blue coats drove the weary Confederates to evacuate the court house. With them gone, Yankee staff officers clambered up the iron staircase to the cupola, for an unimpeded view of their victory. One of them, who had imbibed of spirits, noticed the staircase had been forged in Cincinnati, and promptly cursed “...the impudence of the people who thought they could whip the United States when they couldn't even make their own staircases.”

Confederate Captain John Henry Jones was so reduced by hunger that he approached a Union lieutenant and requested permission to buy food. The lieutenant responded that request had to go through military channels, to which Jones replied it must be obvious from his appearance, “I would be dead some days before its return”.  

Laughing at the shared frustration with military bureaucracy, the Yankee remembered he had some “trash” in his haversack. The 32 year old Jones wrote that, “The “trash” consisted of "...about two pounds of gingersnaps and butter crackers; luxuries I had not seen for three years. I was struck dumb with amazement....I fell upon that “trash” like a hungry wolf....the memory of that sumptuous feast still lingers, and my heart yet warms with gratitude towards that good officer for the blessing he bestowed.”

Viewing from her nearby home, Dora Miller with her husband watched the American flag unfurled atop the Warren County Courthouse. They shared northern sympathies and he . “...drew a long breath of contentment. Dora herself wrote, “Now I feel once more at home in mine own country.” In an hour more a grand rush of civilians set out for the river. With the riverfront batteries silent, the Federal fleet of transports now swarmed to the empty docks (above), carrying “coffee and flour.” First come, first served,’ you know,” the couple were told. Within hours crowds were dashing “...through the streets with their arms full, canned goods predominating.”

Grant wrote in his memoirs, “Our soldiers were no sooner inside the lines than the two armies began to fraternize...I myself saw our men taking bread from their haversacks and giving it to the enemy they had so recently been engaged in starving out. It was accepted with avidity and with thanks.” Not every southerner was willing to be gracious. Margaret Lord, wife of the Reverend Lord and mother to Lida, turned down a Yankee offer of food.

From the docks, Grant dispatched a staff officer to Cairo, the nearest secure telegraph station, with the following message for Washington: “The enemy surrendered this morning. The only terms allowed is their parole as prisoners of war. This I regard as a great advantage to us at this moment. It saves, probably, several days in the capture, and leaves (our) troops and transports ready for immediate service...

"....Sherman, with a large force, moves immediately on Johnston, to drive him from the State. I will send troops to the relief of Banks, and return the 9th army corps to Burnside.” The dispatch boat arrived in Cairo about noon on Tuesday, 7 July, 1863. And then the entire world knew.

Grant meanwhile returned to his headquarters, where he ordered all but a few units to prepare to join the march on the Big Black River.   About 5:00 that evening, Logan's men began to spread out into the town. Noted the woman of Vicksburg, “What a contrast to the suffering creatures we had seen so long were these stalwart, well-fed men...Sleek horses, polished arms, bright plumes, - this was the pride and panoply of war. Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of those marching columns; and the heart turned with throbs of added pity to the worn men in gray, who were being blindly dashed against this embodiment of modern power. And now this “silence that is golden...” 

It would be a another week before the 31,000 rebel soldiers, including sick and wounded, would receive their parole papers, and set out for their homes or other bases to await exchange. The Confederates also surrendered 50 smooth bore field cannons, 31 rifled field guns, 22 howitzers, 46 smooth bore siege guns, 21 rifled siege guns, 1 siege howitzer, and a 10-inch mortar - 172 artillery pieces in total. 

The Yankees also removed from Confederate control 38,000 artillery shells, 58,000 pounds of black powder, 4,800 artillery cartridges and 60,000 muskets.

Editor John Shannon had dismissed a Yankee boast that one day Grant would eat dinner in Vicksburg, by advising the recipe for cooking rabbit was “First, Ketch your rabbit”. The honorable Mr. Shannon now admitted in the last edition of his publication, printed on the back of wallpaper, that Grant had indeed caught his rabbit.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty - Five

 

Dora Miller, diarist and resident of Vicksburg, saw the remnants of the disaster about three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday, 17 May, 1863. “I shall never forget," she wrote. “that woeful sight of a beaten, demoralized army that came rushing back...” Another woman described that army as, “Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody—the men limped along...followed by siege guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, and wagons in aimless confusion. At twilight two or three bands on the courthouse hill... began playing “Dixie,” “Bonnie Blue Flag,”....I suppose they were rallying the scattered army.”

Several of the weary soldiers confided to civilians they would desert before fighting another battle under Pemberton. “The stillness of the Sabbath night was broken...the blasphemous oaths of the soldier and the cry of the child, mingled...There were many gentlewomen and tender children torn from their homes by the advance of a ruthless foe, and compelled to fly to our lines for protection; and mixed up with them in one vast crowd were the gallant men who had left Vicksburg three short weeks before, in all the pride and confidence of a just cause, and returning to it a demoralized mob.”

Dora Miller was northern born and pro-union. But even Emma Balfour, matron of a wealthy and powerful pro slavery family, could not not ignore reality. She told her diary, “ My pen almost refuses to tell of our terrible defeat…What is to become of all the living things in this place when the boats begin shelling – God only knows. Shut up as in a trap, no ingress or egress – and thousands of women and children who have fled here for safety…” And about 18,000 soldiers.

Pemberton had finally ordered the army to begin seizing food stuffs in an around the city. The work did not began in earnest until 15, May. Over the next 48 hours the two division commanders in Vicksburg, Major Generals John Horace Forney and Martin Luther Smith, brought in half a million pounds of smoked pork and salted beef. In addition, every plantation within a day's ride was stripped of chickens, turkeys, beef and dairy cattle, sheep, hogs, mules and horses, all driven within the fortifications which now defined the eastern boundary of the last major Confederate hold on the Mississippi River.

The ever judgmental Emma Balfour was not impressed. “From 12 o’clock until late in the night”, she noted, “the streets and roads were jammed with wagons, cannons, horses, men, mules, stock, sheep, everything you can imagine that appertains to an army...” But she also added, “Nothing like order prevailed.” The ever inefficient 40 year old John Clifford Pemberton was certain he had stockpiled more than enough food for the citizens and garrison to hold out until they were relieved by General Joe Johnston and his army, assembling in Jackson. Pemberton estimated he could hold out for about  six weeks.

Grant had a lot less time. Recalled one of his officers, “The gloomy report was circulated to the effect that our bread ration was exhausted or so nearly so that (after 20 May) the commissary could not furnish one hardtack apiece for all the men.” Forage, which had been abundant for the army on the march, was suddenly scarce when shared with an opposing army. Not only did the enemy presence restrict forage – the verb - it also forced men and horses to use their forage – the noun - faster. Early on in the war, Washington experts had calculated an army of 45,000 men on the march seeking forage in the Confederacy, would require 6 square miles of land for subsistence. But the closer Grant got to Vicksburg, the smaller was the square he had access to. With starvation now in the near future, Grant had to re-establish his supply line back to Memphis as soon as possible.

Eleven miles east of Vicksburg, Grant was delayed by the destroyed bridges over the Big Black river (above). But while the flames were still licking at the turpentine soaked beams, a 25 year old Buckeye genius, and a hero of the battle of Shiloh, Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, was building a replacement bridge. And he reused the improvisations of his confederate counterpart, Major Lockett. Felling trees from the dense wood which had so hindered the Yankee assault, Hickenlooper built a frame, which he then filled with 47 buoyant cotton bales from Lockett's defensive line. To convert the floating frame into a effective bridge, Hickenlooper dismantled a shoreline cotton gin to provide planks for the road bed and approaches. When finished not long after dawn on Monday, 18 May, the crossing was 110 feet long and 10 feet wide.

The new bridge was promptly put to use by the XIII corps – as soon as the bands could be assembled to play McClernand (above) and his men across. 

It was a typically dramatic flourish by the politician McClernand  but at least this ceremony did not delay the advance past 8:00 a.m.  Despite this the Yankees would reach Vicksburg before noon. McClernand's orders were to close up to the rebel defenses and keep the enemy pinned in them.

General McPherson's Corps would not be following the XIII corps, but had been redirected by Grant 2 miles to the north, where they were to cross the Big Black at the nearly abandoned village of Amsterdam. The little town had been almost wiped out in the 1830's by cholera and the nearby presence of Edward's Depot.  McPherson's (above) orders were to advance while guarding the right flank of General Sherman's Corps. It was Sherman's Corps which had the primary objective on this important day.

Major General Blair beat the XV corps to Bridgeport by a an hour or so, and his men were unloading the pontoons sections when Sherman marched in about noon on Sunday, 17 May. The few rebel militia were easily chased off the west bank, and the bridge (above) was assembled and in use by night fall. Blair's division crossed that evening, with Frederick Steele's 1^st division and James Tuttle's 3^rd division crossing on Monday morning, 18 May, 1863. Once on dry ground on the same side of the Big Black River as Vicksburg, Sherman released the 4^th Iowa cavalry regiment, with orders to capture the now vital crossroads of the Benton and the Oak Ridge Road.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty-Seven

 

A woman of Vicksburg awoke in her cave on Saturday morning, 4 July, 1863 to an unusual sound. Silence. Returning to her home, later that morning, in her kitchen,  she met a soldier looking for scraps. He told her that “...the men in Vicksburg will never forgive Pemberton...A child would have known better than to shut men up in this cursed trap to starve to death...Haven’t I seen my friends carted out three or four in a box, that had died of starvation... because we had a fool for a general.”

At about 10 a.m., white flags began to appear along the rebel fortifications. Painfully thin Confederate regiments (above)  " “staggered like drunken men from emaciation, and...wept like children..." and formed pale skinned ranks on the ridge line. They stacked their rifles, handguns, shotguns, swords and bayonets and furled their battle flags. Then they glumly waited.

John Benjamin Sanborn (above) was a 36 year old widowed lawyer from St. Paul, Minnesota, who had fought in every major engagement of the campaign since the Battle of Port Gibson.  Now a full bird Colonel, he and his old regiment, the 4^th Minnesota infantry, were General Logan's choice to lead the 3^rd division into Vicksburg. The evening before Sanborn's brigade had been issued new uniforms. The soldiers had shined the brass on their muskets and buttons until it shown like new as they formed up along the Jackson Road behind their band.

With General Grant and his staff in the lead, followed by General John Alexander Logan and his 3^rd division staff, the Yankees marched through the remnants of the Louisiana redoubt and down into the heart of Vicksburg. The 3^rd division band was playing “Hail Columbia”, the defacto national anthem since 1800, as well as “The Star Spangled Banner”, which would not be the official anthem until 1931.

Carried in an ambulance at the head of the 45^th Illinois, second regiment in the column, was the wounded Colonel Jasper Adalmorn Maltby. His head bandages still seeped blood from the 22 June battle in the crater of the Louisiana redan,  but the 36 year old gunsmith from Galena was determined to celebrate with his regiment, both crippled in the victory. He would shortly be promoted to Brigadier General, but would struggle to recover from his injuries.

As the column passed into the city itself, the victorious Yankee cannon outside slowly fired a 31 gun salute – one shot for each state in the union, including those in rebellion. By limiting the salute in this way, Grant disguised the number of cannon already moved to Sherman's front 20 miles to the east, which was now preparing to advance against Joe Johnston's Army of Relief. At the junction with Cherry Street the regiment reached the Warren County Courthouse (above) , where they formed around the base of the building. 

In front of the east portico, Grant dismounted and (above) was greeted by his defeated foe - Lieutenant General Pemberton. This set the Yankee soldiers to cheering.

A resident of the United States for just 5 years, Norwegian born 22 year old Private Knud Helling, wrote his best friend, “ We marched into the city in good order with (band) playing and the flags flying...The Rebel soldiers and the inhabitants stood in groups on the street corners and stared at us while we passed them...The inhabitants....looked very pale and wretched...The city is somewhat damaged by the horrible bombardment, and many of the houses have marks from our cannon balls....” John Thurston, also with the 4^th Minnesota, recalled it as “...the most glorious 4^th of July I ever spent.”

The cheering, happy blue coats drove the weary Confederates to evacuate the court house. With them gone, Yankee staff officers clambered up the iron staircase to the cupola, for an unimpeded view of their victory. One of them, who had imbibed of spirits, noticed the staircase had been forged in Cincinnati, and promptly cursed “...the impudence of the people who thought they could whip the United States when they couldn't even make their own staircases.”

Confederate Captain John Henry Jones was so reduced by hunger that he approached a Union lieutenant and requested permission to buy food. The lieutenant responded that request had to go through military channels, to which Jones replied it must be obvious from his appearance, “I would be dead some days before its return”.  

Laughing at the shared frustration with military bureaucracy, the Yankee remembered he had some “trash” in his haversack. The 32 year old Jones wrote that, “The “trash” consisted of "...about two pounds of gingersnaps and butter crackers; luxuries I had not seen for three years. I was struck dumb with amazement....I fell upon that “trash” like a hungry wolf....the memory of that sumptuous feast still lingers, and my heart yet warms with gratitude towards that good officer for the blessing he bestowed.”

Viewing from her nearby home, Dora Miller with her husband watched the American flag unfurled atop the Warren County Courthouse. They shared northern sympathies and he . “...drew a long breath of contentment. Dora herself wrote, “Now I feel once more at home in mine own country.” In an hour more a grand rush of civilians set out for the river. With the riverfront batteries silent, the Federal fleet of transports now swarmed to the empty docks (above), carrying “coffee and flour.” First come, first served,’ you know,” the couple were told. Within hours crowds were dashing “...through the streets with their arms full, canned goods predominating.”

Grant wrote in his memoirs, “Our soldiers were no sooner inside the lines than the two armies began to fraternize...I myself saw our men taking bread from their haversacks and giving it to the enemy they had so recently been engaged in starving out. It was accepted with avidity and with thanks.” Not every southerner was willing to be gracious. Margaret Lord, wife of the Reverend Lord and mother to Lida, turned down a Yankee offer of food.

From the docks, Grant dispatched a staff officer to Cairo, the nearest secure telegraph station, with the following message for Washington: “The enemy surrendered this morning. The only terms allowed is their parole as prisoners of war. This I regard as a great advantage to us at this moment. It saves, probably, several days in the capture, and leaves (our) troops and transports ready for immediate service...

"....Sherman, with a large force, moves immediately on Johnston, to drive him from the State. I will send troops to the relief of Banks, and return the 9th army corps to Burnside.” The dispatch boat arrived in Cairo about noon on Tuesday, 7 July, 1863. And then the entire world knew.

Grant meanwhile returned to his headquarters, where he ordered all but a few units to prepare to join the march on the Big Black River.   About 5:00 that evening, Logan's men began to spread out into the town. Noted the woman of Vicksburg, “What a contrast to the suffering creatures we had seen so long were these stalwart, well-fed men...Sleek horses, polished arms, bright plumes, - this was the pride and panoply of war. Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of those marching columns; and the heart turned with throbs of added pity to the worn men in gray, who were being blindly dashed against this embodiment of modern power. And now this “silence that is golden...” 

It would be a another week before the 31,000 rebel soldiers, including sick and wounded, would receive their parole papers, and set out for their homes or other bases to await exchange. The Confederates also surrendered 50 smooth bore field cannons, 31 rifled field guns, 22 howitzers, 46 smooth bore siege guns, 21 rifled siege guns, 1 siege howitzer, and a 10-inch mortar - 172 artillery pieces in total. 

The Yankees also removed from Confederate control 38,000 artillery shells, 58,000 pounds of black powder, 4,800 artillery cartridges and 60,000 muskets.

Editor John Shannon had dismissed a Yankee boast that one day Grant would eat dinner in Vicksburg, by advising the recipe for cooking rabbit was “First, Ketch your rabbit”. The honorable Mr. Shannon now admitted in the last edition of his publication, printed on the back of wallpaper, that Grant had indeed caught his rabbit.

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