VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Six

 

One Vicksburg woman remembered that June began with a “clear and unusually warm day. The men sought shelter from the sun's scorching rays beneath the shade of outstretched blankets and in small excavations and huts in the hill sides...” However she was also  forced to admit that it was not only the sun from which the besieged citizens sought protection. “We have slept scarcely none now for two days and two nights.” What was disturbing the lady's sleep were the 200 Federal artillery cannon arrayed against the city.

For Lida Lord (above), daughter of a minister, the siege meant sharing a large cave complex with up to 65 others, “packed in, black and white, like sardines in a box.” Forced underground by the Yankee guns the civilians suffered an endless lists of indignities. “We were...in hourly dread of snakes,” she wrote. “...A large rattlesnake was found one morning under a mattress on which some of us had slept all night.”

An 18 year old Confederate signal corpsman from Virginia, Edward Sanford Gregory, remembered, “...hardly any part of the city was outside the range of the enemy’s artillery. … Just across the Mississippi … mortars were put in position and trained directly on the homes of the people. … Twenty-four hours of each day....their deadly hail of iron dropped through roofs and tore up the deserted and denuded streets. …How many of them came and burst, nobody can have the least idea …”

In fact the Federal commissary had to account for every shell. On average each Yankee gun fired 14 rounds a day - an average one round every 2 minutes. But the guns moored across the river on rafts were not army weapons, but 6 ugly, brutal U.S. Navy 13 inch Seacoast mortars (above)  forged in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania. Their squat barrels alone weighed 17,250 pounds, the carriages another ton. These were not mobile artillery, but they were unusually accurate. And they weren't aimed at people's homes. They arched 200 pound projectiles from the DeSoto peninsula and precisely dropped them, half a mile away, at the corner of Washington and First Streets, along the Vicksburg waterfront.

Their target was the foundry operated by Adam Breach Reading and his brother, C.A.. Antebellum the firm had serviced the steamboat trade, and repaired the occasional locomotive (above). 

Once the war broke out they began producing 6 and 12 pound bronze cannon. Their production was only about 2 a month and perhaps 40 in all were cast before the supply of copper was cut off. But day and night the big mortars kept pounding the site, 7,000 shells in all. Occasionally they overshot, in the process destroying the offices of “The Vicksburg Whig” newspaper, and some private homes. Such insults fell into the category of collateral damage.

And these were not the only Naval guns belching fire upon the city. In the original run passed the Vicksburg batteries on the night of 16 April, 1863, the charge had been led by the ironclad USS Benton (above).  She suffered damage that night, and a more serious injury on 29 April during the ironclad duel with rebel guns at Grand Gulf.  Over the last month the Benton had been tied up along the Mississippi shore while her engines were being repaired. But Admiral Porter was never one to let a gun grow cold.

Two 1 ton 42 pound rifled cannons from the USS Benton were off-loaded at the abandoned port town of Warrenton, 2 miles south of Vicksburg. They were manhandled to within range of the South Fort (above), where they were operated by a detachment from the 34^th Iowa Infantry, and commanded by a Missouri artillery lieutenant named Joseph Atwater,   Battery Benton began to methodically pound the South Fort into silence. 

At the opposite end of the 5 mile long Federal line was Battery Selfridge, whose weapons were navy owned and operated – operated in this case by the very brave and the often sunk, Thomas Oliver Selfridge.

The outbreak of the civil war found the 26 year old naval lieutenant, and son of a Naval Captain, Thomas Selfridge (above),  in command of the 6 gun forward battery aboard the 50 gun frigate the USS Cumberland. 

On Saturday, 8 March, 1862, the Cumberland was rammed and sunk by the Confederate Ironclad CSS Virginia. Thomas did not allow his men to abandon their guns until ordered to do so, despite their shots failing to penetrate the iron skin of the rebel ship. 

As reward for his bravery, Thomas was then given command of the first Yankee submarine, the 47 foot long USS Alligator. She broke down on a test cruise up the Potomac, and had to be towed back to the naval yard by a passing schooner (above). Disgusted with the sub, and having lost his place in the promotion line for the blue water navy, Thomas now begged a transfer to the brown water navy.

In November he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and given command of the city class ironclad the USS Cairo, with a crew of 215 men and officers. On Thursday, 11 December, 1862, the USS Cairo was steaming up the rain swollen Yazoo river,  following 2 tin-clad gun boats, the USS Marmora and the Signal. When they suspected trouble and slowed, the impatient Lieutenant Commander Selfridge steamed ahead and ran into two torpedoes (above). The ironclad went down in  only 12 minutes, luckily without any loss of life. The "Oft Sunk" Thomas was then transferred to gun boats in less exposed positions. But he still kept pushing to get in the fight.

On 27 May of 1863, the ironclad USS Cincinnati had been sunk in 18 feet of water just north of the Vicksburg lines. Naval engineers were able to quickly raise three 9,200 pound 8 inch Columbiad cannons from the wreck. The first week in June these were mounted atop Steele's Hill, in “Battery Selfridge” (above), manned by crewmen from the USS Cairo, and commanded by its namesake. At least on land the "oft sunk" Lieutenant could not be sunk so easily.

On Saturday, 6 June, 1863, one of the Navy's mortar shells punctured the roof of the 4 story tall Washington Hotel (above, at the corner of Washington and China Street hill). Luckily the shell exploded on contact, only destroying three adjacent storage rooms. The hotel had been converted into a hospital, and as yet did not have many patients. So the only person injured was a surgeon whose leg was so mangled it had to be amputated. But the round also destroyed most the rebel morphine and quinine supplies.  The siege had not begun well for the rebel forces.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Sixty - Nine

  

Inside the Louisiana Redan, 26 year old Sergeant William Henry Tunard, of “K” company – the Pelican Rifles – of the 3^rd Louisiana Tigers was keeping a diary. And on Monday, 25 May, 1863, he recorded that it was “Another clear and hot day...In the afternoon a flag of truce was sent into the lines, requesting a cessation of hostilities for the purpose of burying the dead. The effluvia from the putrefying bodies had become almost unbearable to friend an foe, and the request was granted, to continue for three hours.” Almost all the dead were Yankees.

The bodies had lain in the Mississippi heat and humidity for 3 days. Any truce to remove the dead would involve burial parties from both sides.  And that would have provided the rebels with a better view of Grant's army - after throwing themselves against the rebel forts now reduced to barely 40,000 men.   The need to keep his weaknesses from prying rebel eyes drove Grant to refuse earlier offers from local rebel commanders.  Only when the First Parallel of Yankee fortifications had been completed, did Grant request a cease fire. By then any wounded who could not crawl to safety, had long since succumbed.

During the following week, the citizens of Vicksburg felt the Union hold on their city grow subtly tighter. That week General Pemberton cut the soldiers rations in half. On 28 May, Dora Richards recorded that she had heard that “expert swimmers were crossing the Mississippi on logs to communicate with the outside world. But she did not bother to record the news, if there was any. Her concerns like those of all prisoners, had shrunk to her immediate surroundings. She noted, “I am so tired of corn-bread...that I eat it with tears in my eyes. We are lucky to get a quart of milk daily from a family near who have a cow they hourly expect to be killed.”

Every morning Dora handed $5 to her slave cook Martha, before sending her to find food. Hours later the terrified woman would return with a shrinking piece of mule of horse meat for Dora's husband.   Being Yankee sympathizers, the couple had few friends they could ask for help.  “The shells seem to have many different names,” noted Dora.” I hear the soldiers say, “That’s a mortar shell. There goes a Parrot. That’s a rifle shell.” They are all equally terrible.”

The Richards were one of the shrinking number of residents who chose to remain above ground in their rented home.  One night, as Dora's husband was watching the glowing fuses of shells falling on the city, he suddenly shouted, “Run!” “I started through the back room”, wrote Dora, “...when the crash came that threw me to the floor. It was the most appalling sensation I’d ever known. … Shaken and deafened, I picked myself up....we found the entire side of the room torn out.” (above)

Dora and her little family kept a private cistern for water. A second water source they surrendered to soldiers, “My heart bleeds for them. They have nothing but spoiled, greasy bacon, and bread made of musty pea flour, and but little of that. The sick ones can’t bolt it. They come into the kitchen when Martha puts the pan of cornbread in the stove, and beg for the bowl she mixes it in....they look so ashamed of their poor clothes. I know we saved the lives of two by giving a few meals…”

Looters set a fire in Vicksburg's business district, to cover their crimes. Edward Sanford Gregory, a 20 year old resident, watched as the flames went out of control. “There was nothing to do except to remove the articles of value from the houses within its range. A great crowd collected, notwithstanding the concentration of the mortar fire; and yet there were no remembered casualties. The whole block was burned, of course; and the wonder is, only one.”

Then on at Midnight on Sunday, 30 May, 1863 the nature of the siege abruptly changed. Privileged daughter of the Confederacy, Emma Balfour (above), recorded the event. “At (midnight)... the guns all along the lines opened and the parrot shells flew as thick as hail around us!” 

Emma lived in a mansion (above) at the corner of Crawford and Adam's streets,  atop Vicksburg's highest ridge line, with her husband, physician and plantation and slave owner, Dr. William Balfour. The couple had hosted the Christmas eve ball in their residence. As befitting their social status, they had refused to occupy one of the 500 caves carved out of the loam, and were lying in their 2nd floor beds when the general bombardment suddenly commenced.

“We came down in the sitting room,” Emma wrote, “...we remained there till a shell struck in the garden against a tree...We got thoroughly worn out and disheartened and after looking to see the damage, went into the parlor and lay on the sofas there until morning, feeling that at any moment a mortar shell might crash through the roof....”

The Balfour's mansion stood next door to the Willis home (above),  taken over by General Pemberton as his headquarters. Looking out at her neighbor's home Emma noted, “People were running in every direction to find a place of safety. The shells fell literally like hail. Mrs. Willis’ House was struck twice and two horses in front of her door were killed. General Pemberton and his staff had to quit it.”

The shelling held Mrs. Balfour in dreadful fascination. The shells, she wrote, “...came rushing down like some infernal demon, seemed to me to be coming exactly on me...They come gradually making their way higher and higher, tracked by their firing fuse till they reach their greatest altitude—then with a rush and whiz they come down furiously...

"Then lookout, for if they explode before reaching the ground which they generally do, the pieces fly in all directions—the very least of which will kill one and most of them of sufficient weight to team through a house from top to bottom! The parrot shells come directly so one can feel somewhat protected from them by getting under a wall, but when both come at once and so fast that one has not time to see where one shell is going before another comes—it wears one out.”

Come the dawn, the artillery continued their heavy work. And under their cover the sap lines began reaching out from the First Parallel for the rebel forts. John Alexander McClernand (above), being a natural born politician and a Major General by convenience, could not pass up the opportunity to raise the moral of his XIII Corps soldiers with a message he titled General Order 72. It was not an order. It was a prolonged pretentious platitudinous palaver filled promulgation of meadow muffins. As political speak it was harmless enough. As a military order it was suicide.

It began, “Comrades, As your commander, I am proud to congratulate you upon your constancy, valor, and successes. History affords no more brilliant example of soldierly qualities. Your victories have followed in such rapid succession that their echoes have not yet reached the country. They will challenge its grateful and enthusiastic applause. Yourselves striking out a new path, your comrades of the Army of the Tennessee followed, and a way was thus opened for them to redeem previous disappointments.”

The rest of the Army of the Tennessee followed the path blazed by the XIII Corps? What about Chickasaw Bayou? Where was the XIII Corps at Chickasaw Bayou? And where was the XIII Corps for four hours at Champion's Hill?  Beyond that, a  reasonable argument could be made that the bloodletting of 22 May had been brought on by the delay of XIII Corps in destroying the rebel left at Champion's Hill. And half of the horror of that day, caused by McClernand's childish seeking of glory.

Continued General McClernand's praise for his men, “...you were the first to...plant our colors in the State of Mississippi....you came up to the enemy near Port Gibson...by vigorously pressing him at all points drove him from his position, taking a large number of prisoners and small arms and five pieces of cannon. General Logan’s DIVISION came up in time to gallantly share in consummating the most valuable victory won since the capture of Fort Donelson.”

According to the verbose Major General, the victories at Raymond and Jackson were the result of the heroic actions of the XIII corps, with a little help from the rest of the army. And at Champion's Hill? Said McClernand, “... after a sanguinary and obstinate battle, with the assistance of General McPherson’s corps, beat and routed him, taking many prisoners and small arms and several pieces of cannon.” With the assistance of XVII Corps? In fact the attack failed to obliterate the rebel army because XIII Corps delayed their assault for 3 to 4 hours.

The boast too far was yet to come, but McClernand made it in the very next paragraph. “On the 22^nd... you assaulted the enemy’s defenses in front at 10 a. m., and within thirty minutes had made a lodgement and planted your colors upon two of his bastions....only gained by a bloody and protracted struggle....the largest success achieved anywhere along the whole line of our army. For nearly eight hours, under a scorching sun and destructive fire, you firmly held your footing... 

"How and why the general assault failed, it would be useless now to explain. The Thirteenth Army Corps, acknowledging the good intentions of all, would scorn indulgence in weak regrets and idle recriminations. According justice to all, it would only defend itself.  If, while the enemy was massing to crush it, assistance was asked for by a diversion at other points, or by re-enforcement, it only asked what in one case Major-General Grant had specifically and peremptorily ordered, namely, simultaneous and persistent attack all along our lines until the enemy’s outer works should be carried, and what, in the other, by massing a strong force in time upon a weakened point, would have probably insured success.”

And there it was. The attack on 22 May had failed because General Grant  (above) had delayed in supporting McClernand's assaults. McClernand had not actually said that, but he implied it. And in politics, implication is conviction. And what was the effect of Grant's lack of support for the brave and noble soldiers of McClenand's XIII Corps? “The enemy’s odious defenses still block your access to Vicksburg. Treason still rules that rebellious city, and closes the Mississippi River against rightful use by the Illinois who inhabit its sources and the great Northwest. "

And then he signed the knife sticking out of Grant's back, just in case anyone doubted who had placed it there - Abraham Lincoln's good friend, "JOHN A. McClernand, Major-General, Commanding. (above)”

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Four

One Vicksburg woman remembered that June began with a “clear and unusually warm day. The men sought shelter from the sun's scorching rays beneath the shade of outstretched blankets and in small excavations and huts in the hill sides...” However she was also  forced to admit that it was not only the sun from which the besieged citizens sought protection. “We have slept scarcely none now for two days and two nights.” What was disturbing the lady's sleep were the 200 Federal artillery cannon arrayed against the city.

For Lida Lord (above), daughter of a minister, the siege meant sharing a large cave complex with up to 65 others, “packed in, black and white, like sardines in a box.” Forced underground by the Yankee guns the civilians suffered an endless lists of indignities. “We were...in hourly dread of snakes,” she wrote. “...A large rattlesnake was found one morning under a mattress on which some of us had slept all night.”

An 18 year old Confederate signal corpsman from Virginia, Edward Sanford Gregory, remembered, “...hardly any part of the city was outside the range of the enemy’s artillery. … Just across the Mississippi … mortars were put in position and trained directly on the homes of the people. … Twenty-four hours of each day....their deadly hail of iron dropped through roofs and tore up the deserted and denuded streets. …How many of them came and burst, nobody can have the least idea …”

In fact the Federal commissary had to account for every shell. On average each Yankee gun fired 14 rounds a day - an average one round every 2 minutes. But the guns moored across the river on rafts were not army weapons, but 6 ugly, brutal U.S. Navy 13 inch Seacoast mortars (above)  forged in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania. Their squat barrels alone weighed 17,250 pounds, the carriages another ton. These were not mobile artillery, but they were unusually accurate. And they weren't aimed at people's homes. They arched 200 pound projectiles from the DeSoto peninsula and precisely dropped them, half a mile away, at the corner of Washington and First Streets, along the Vicksburg waterfront.

Their target was the foundry operated by Adam Breach Reading and his brother, C.A.. Antebellum the firm had serviced the steamboat trade, and repaired the occasional locomotive (above). 

Once the war broke out they began producing 6 and 12 pound bronze cannon. Their production was only about 2 a month and perhaps 40 in all were cast before the supply of copper was cut off. But day and night the big mortars kept pounding the site, 7,000 shells in all. Occasionally they overshot, in the process destroying the offices of “The Vicksburg Whig” newspaper, and some private homes. Such insults fell into the category of collateral damage.

And these were not the only Naval guns belching fire upon the city. In the original run passed the Vicksburg batteries on the night of 16 April, 1863, the charge had been led by the ironclad USS Benton (above).  She suffered damage that night, and a more serious injury on 29 April during the ironclad duel with rebel guns at Grand Gulf.  Over the last month the Benton had been tied up along the Mississippi shore while her engines were being repaired. But Admiral Porter was never one to let a gun grow cold.

Two 1 ton 42 pound rifled cannons from the USS Benton were off-loaded at the abandoned port town of Warrenton, 2 miles south of Vicksburg. They were manhandled to within range of the South Fort (above), where they were operated by a detachment from the 34^th Iowa Infantry, and commanded by a Missouri artillery lieutenant named Joseph Atwater,   Battery Benton began to methodically pound the South Fort into silence. 

At the opposite end of the 5 mile long Federal line was Battery Selfridge, whose weapons were navy owned and operated – operated in this case by the very brave and the often sunk, Thomas Oliver Selfridge.

The outbreak of the civil war found the 26 year old naval lieutenant, and son of a Naval Captain, Thomas Selfridge (above),  in command of the 6 gun forward battery aboard the 50 gun frigate the USS Cumberland. 

On Saturday, 8 March, 1862, the Cumberland was rammed and sunk by the Confederate Ironclad CSS Virginia. Thomas did not allow his men to abandon their guns until ordered to do so, despite their shots failing to penetrate the iron skin of the rebel ship. 

As reward for his bravery, Thomas was then given command of the first Yankee submarine, the 47 foot long USS Alligator. She broke down on a test cruise up the Potomac, and had to be towed back to the naval yard by a passing schooner (above). Disgusted with the sub, and having lost his place in the promotion line for the blue water navy, Thomas now begged a transfer to the brown water navy.

In November he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and given command of the city class ironclad the USS Cairo, with a crew of 215 men and officers. On Thursday, 11 December, 1862, the USS Cairo was steaming up the rain swollen Yazoo river,  following 2 tin-clad gun boats, the USS Marmora and the Signal. When they suspected trouble and slowed, the impatient Lieutenant Commander Selfridge steamed ahead and ran into two torpedoes (above). The ironclad went down in  only 12 minutes, luckily without any loss of life. The "Oft Sunk" Thomas was then transferred to gun boats in less exposed positions. But he still kept pushing to get in the fight.

On 27 May of 1863, the ironclad USS Cincinnati had been sunk in 18 feet of water just north of the Vicksburg lines. Naval engineers were able to quickly raise three 9,200 pound 8 inch Columbiad cannons from the wreck. The first week in June these were mounted atop Steele's Hill, in “Battery Selfridge” (above), manned by crewmen from the USS Cairo, and commanded by its namesake. At least on land the "oft sunk" Lieutenant could not be sunk so easily.

On Saturday, 6 June, 1863, one of the Navy's mortar shells punctured the roof of the 4 story tall Washington Hotel (above, at the corner of Washington and China Street hill). Luckily the shell exploded on contact, only destroying three adjacent storage rooms. The hotel had been converted into a hospital, and as yet did not have many patients. So the only person injured was a surgeon whose leg was so mangled it had to be amputated. But the round also destroyed most the rebel morphine and quinine supplies.  The siege had not begun well for the rebel forces.

- 30 -