VICKSBURG Chapter Forty - Four

 

May of 1863 was a dry month. In California it was the second spring of a 4 year drought, interrupted by the brief respite of the heavy winter rains.  But the coming desiccation would kill half a million cattle and sheep. It was so dry that spring in Kansas, the Junction City Union reported “If this continues another week, this section, at least, will be 'blowed' away.” 

In Nebraska hot dry winds converted the muddy South Platte river into “...clouds of dust and sand...”. Farmer Sam Clark wrote from southern Iowa, “Unless we have rain and that very soon, the corn crop in this state will be almost a complete failure… “

In Saint Paul, Minnesota, the Mississippi River fell so low that May, riverboats were unable to navigate. During the first three weeks of the month, Milwaukee, Wisconsin received just six-tenths of an inch of rain. In Kentucky, the dry weather sped up the hay and grain harvesting, but also “shriveled the rivers (to) fordable in many places”. But the dry weather made marching easy for the long columns of blue clad locusts as they spread across the interior of the state of Mississippi, consuming everything within reach.

But all good - and bad - things must come to an end, and in the early morning darkness of Thursday, 14 May, 1863, a cold front slipped across the American south. Clouds suddenly appeared. and dropped a brief downpour on the dirt roads and the 45,000 sleeping Yankee soldiers. 

When 33 year old Hoosier, Brigadier General Marcellus Montroe Crocker (above), saw the Clinton – Jackson road that morning, the water was pooling a foot deep in low spots on the sun hardened pavement. Over night General McPherson and, 9 miles to the south, General Sherman had agreed to coordination their assaults, so Crocker found himself burdened with a schedule.

Crocker, was another example of the way the war had reshaped men’s lives. He had been forced to leave West Point in 1849 when his father’s death required him to return to Indiana. In 1851 Marcellus had moved to Iowa, where he passed the bar in 1852.  But when the war broke he immediately raised a company of volunteers. Over the winter of 1861-62 Marcellus was promoted 4 times, eventually to Brigadier General. He commanded a brigade at the battle of Shiloh (above)  - where he earned the title of "The Black-Bearded Cossack", for his fearlessness under fire, and where he was wounded in the arm, the neck and the shoulder. He also led a brigade at the Battle of Corinth, throwing the rebels back with a desperate charge. He had now risen to command the 17th division, 13 regiments from Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

On the other side of the war, just about dawn that Thursday, General Gregg led the about 900 men - the 24th South Carolina, 46th Georgia, and 14th Mississippi Regiments – past the deaf and dumb asylum, 2 miles out the muddy Jackson/ Clinton road. Their goal was the hilltop farm of 51 year old Oliver Perry Wright.

Oliver had been born in North Carolina, married Katherine “Kate” Barrett and moved to Mississippi in 1852. Over the next eight years the couple raised six children, 1 boy and 5 girls, supporting them by using slaves to cultivate 400 acres of not cotton but fruit and foodstuffs for the citizens of Jackson. Like all white males in Mississippi, Oliver was a member of the anti-slave militia. And despite being middle aged Oliver was a member of the 23^rd Mississippi Volunteer Infantry, but probably as a staff officer. He was not listed as captured when the 23^rd surrendered at Fort Donaldson in February of 1862.   And now, General Gregg had decided to turn the Perry “farm” into a battlefield.

It took the rebels about an hour on slick, muddy roads to reach the farm, and they immediately began laying out a defensive line, with skirmishers out front in the fields. The 24^th was stationed behind the fence line in front of the house and barns, the Georgia 46^th cleared some some fields of fire in an orchard by chopping down a few trees, and the 14^th Mississippi was held back in reserve. By about 10:00am the rebels were as ready as they were ever going to be, when the lead elements of General Crocker's 2^nd Brigade arrived from Clinton. The rebel skirmishers were pushed back into their lines by the advance of 5 regiments under 32 year old Colonel Green Berry Raum, a fiercely anti-slavery Democrat from Illinois. And Raum had just gotten his men into a line of battle for the uphill assault when the skies opened up again.

The down pour forced a full hour's delay. Frustrated by the rain, General Crocker ordered Colonel Raum to quickly clear the road to Jackson. So, about 11:00am, with bayonets fixed, the 17th Iowa, the 10th Missouri, and the 80th Ohio regiments (above)  surged forward toward the fence line. The rebels had time to fire a single volley before they were swamped by the blue coats. 

For a few long moments the entire war was reduced to twenty-five hundred men in hand to hand combat, struggling for personal survival. The 80^th Ohio suffered 90 men killed or wounded. The Missouri and Iowa regiments probably matched that loss. The 24^th South Carolina Volunteers lost over 100 men, and the Georgia boys almost as many.

Realizing he had already bought the city of Jackson the addition hours Johnston had asked for, General Gregg  (above) sounded the recall. And covered by the 14^th Mississippi, Gregg's bloodied little force of now less than 700 men, arrived back in the Jackson trench lines about 1:00pm. But by 2:00pm, “Crocker's Grayhounds” had been reorganized and were following the rebels back down the road to Jackson.

Ten miles to the south the 16,000 men of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's XVth Corps had spent the evening camped around an old health spa called “Mississippi Springs” - half way between Raymond and Jackson. 

In a rough circle were 7 sulfur spring fed pools, each with a distinctive taste, smell and laxative effect. And each had their own adjacent hotels or rooming houses. The Federal soldiers, road grit grinding between their teeth, would have understood the words offered 20 years earlier by the drill operator to the Reverend Cooper. When he hit water on the property the driller told the Reverend, “It is water, but it stinketh mightily. It stinketh so bad you can never use it." So, like the Reverend Cooper, the owners of the Mississippi Springs labeled their source a “health spring” and charged more for bathing in and drinking it. But all these dusty Yankee visitors wanted was a long drink of cool untainted water, and after midnight the cloud burst gave them that, and more.

Come the dawn, the Federal advance was led by the 5,000 men of the 3^rd division under 39 year old Brigadier General James Madison Tuttle (above).  

In the front was Brigadier General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Anthony Mower (above)'s brigade. Immediately behind them was the 6 gun 2^nd Iowa Battery, and 6 guns of Battery E of the 1^st Illinois Artillery. Clearly Sherman expected some delaying action by the Confederates to try and stop  his corps from getting into the state capital of Jackson. The rest of the division's infantry, Brigadier General Charles Matthies and Brigadier General Ralph Buckland's brigades, followed.

General Gregg had just dispatched 900 men up the Clinton road when his few cavalry pickets reported Yankees out to the south.  Quickly Gregg threw what he had at the new problem, the 1^st Georgia “Sharpshooter” Battalion and the 3rd Kentucky Mounted Infantry, both under the 34 year old Kentucky lawyer, Colonel Albert Petty Thompson (above). 

Gregg's orders to Thompson were to hold the enemy at the Lynch Creek bridge. And to provide the defense some punch he also dispatched a precious 4 gun battery – a pair of six pound Napoleons and two 3 inch rifles – the Brookhaven Light Artillery - commanded by Captain James S. Hoskin. Gregg made it clear to the Captain those guns had to hold the Yankees until relieved.

Two miles from the trenches of Jackson, and at about 9:30am, Thursday, 14 May, 1863, the 5^th Minnesota Infantry crossed the crest of a ridge above Lynch Creek. Hoskin's artillery immediately laid down harassing fire on the approaching Yankees So 27 year old Colonel Lucius Frederick Hubbard got his Minnesota men spread out into a skirmish line, and Captain Nelson Spoor deployed all 12 federal guns on both sides of the Raymond road and started laying down a counter-battery fire.

One of the rebel crewmen in Hoskin's battery, the unit's bugler, Isaac Herman, remembered that counter fire as very personal. “One of their shots passed over my gun,” he wrote later, “and knocked off its sight. passed between the detachment, striking the caisson lid in the rear and staving it in.” Herman stuck to his gun, until he, “... saw a ball rolling on the ground, about six feet to my right. It seemed to be about the same caliber as ours. It rolled up a stump, bouncing about fifteen feet in the air. I thought it was a solid shot and wanting to send it back to them through the muzzle of our gun, I ran after it. It proved to be a shell, as it exploded, and a piece of it struck my arm...Another ball struck a tree about eight inches in diameter, knocked out a chip, which struck my face and caused me to see the seven stars in plain day light...”.

In the meantime, General Tuttle started looking for a way around the bridge. The overnight rain had converted the usually lazy Lynch Creek into a full river, but after half an hour the Hoosier found a ford to the south, and started pushing the rest of the 2^nd battalion across. As they did, Colonel Thompson realized his position had been turned. So he sent his Georgia foot soldiers streaming back toward the Jackson trenches, relying on his mounted Kentuckians to cover the withdraw of the cannon. They were not in time, and the entire battery was captured by the flanking Yankees.

By 2:00pm, General Tuttle had advanced up to the Jackson defenses, and seeing the trench line filled with men and cannon, he again moved to outflank the rebels. But the enemy to his front were now mostly Mississippi militia. Johnston had declared the evacuation complete, and Thompson's men were retreating through the city. Only Gregg's 700 were still in the northern trench line. But they were all ready to follow the retreat.

When Tuttle's latest flanking movement found empty trenches, Sherman ordered his entire corps to move into the city, sweeping up the militia in the process. By 4:00pm the stars and stripes was flying again from atop the Mississippi statehouse (above). The Battle of Jackson – such as it was – had cost General Grant 42 dead, 25 wounded and 7 missing in both corps. Rebel losses were about double that.  The second Confederate state capital – after Nashville – had fallen to federal forces. Immediately Grant issued orders to first gut the place and then to abandon it.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Forty - Three

 

The first manifestation of Grant's shift in strategy came shortly after 4:30am on Wednesday, 13 May, 1863, when the bloodied troops of General Logan's 3^rd division marched through the village of Raymond, and surprisingly took the right hand fork in the road. They were heading not toward the capital of Jackson, 25 miles to the east, but north. And by noon they had reached the tiny railroad town of Clinton, Mississippi.

          

After the bloodletting of 12 May, General John Gregg (above) withdrew his battalion to a line along Snake Creek. But he could not stay there. His little force was now reduced to less than 3,000 effectives - healthy men still in organized units with ammunition and the willing to fight. But this was the only force available to defend the state capital. Allowing his men a few hours of rest, Gregg pulled them back further to Mississippi Springs. But in the process, because the Texas General had no cavalry, he lost contact with the Yankees. The afternoon of 13 May, 1863, Gregg returned to Jackson, to gather every additional man he could find, to defend the city.

Meanwhile, the small village of Clinton, fell without a shot fired in its defense. In effect, Grant merely extended his arm, that appendage being Logan's division (above), and the great prize the Federal armies had striven for the past 5 months, dropped into the palm of his hand like a ripe fruit. He now had only to close his fist and the Gibraltar of the Confederacy, the western post supporting the thousand mile long jugular that pumped life's blood from the bounty of the trans-Mississippi across the continent to Richmond, Virginia would be rendered assunder. The instant Yankee soldiers picked up the first ten foot long iron rail from its bed or set fire to the first bridge over a dry creek along the Southern Railroad, the 45,000 rebel soldiers 40 miles to the east defending Vicksburg, were cut off.

The Yankees spent the afternoon tearing up rails for a mile or more to the west of Clinton Station. Anything in town they could not eat or wear or use to entertain themselves, they burned. And while they did, McPherson pushed the 13 regiments of 33 year old Brigadier General Marcellus Monroe Crocker's 14^th Division out the Jackson road. And before the tail of McPherson's XVII Corps had even reached the fork in the road, the 17,000 men of William Tecumseh Sherman's XV Corps marched into Raymond on the Utica road. The next day, 14 May, they were to strike at the capital of the state of Mississippi.

The first effect of the war on the 3,000 residents of Jackson had been inflation. Within a year a pair of boots cost as much as $125.00, a pound of sugar was going for $3.50, Tea cost $7.00 a pound and locally grown watermelons cost up to $25.00 apiece. Still, the war remained an abstraction until April of 1862, when trains delivered a small portion of the the 8,000 wounded from the bloody fields around Shiloh Church, Tennessee, to the hospitals and homes of Jackson.

That winter, when Grant first invaded the state,  Jackson was encircled by a single “mild” trench dug by slaves.  By then the population had almost doubled, the newcomers being refugees from the battle zones.

And there was also the Jackson Arsenal, in the College Green neighborhood, 2 blocks east and a block south of the state capital building (above). 

In the 2 story brick North School building in College Green – an antebellum boy's school - some 80 men, women and children assembled ammunition -  small arms' cartridges up stairs and artillery shells on the ground floor. 

The work was hard, the pay was low, the conditions abysmal, and the outcome inevitable. At about 3:00pm on Wednesday, 5 November, 1862 there was an horrific explosion, which blew apart the school. This was followed by fires which set off any of the stored munitions left.

The Weekly Mississippian reported 2 days later, “ All the men and women employed in the building...had been hurled to instantaneous destruction...One man had a leg torn off and his brains literally blown out. The body of a poor girl was hanging by one foot to the limb of a tree...her clothes were still burning. Other bodies were blown to the distance of from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards, and presented a mutilated and most shocking appearance. The packages of powder and the shells were yet continually exploding...The fire engine was promptly on the ground, but could not do much owing to the want of water.”

It would appear that several people in authority knew full well the unsafe conditions in the arsenal, since, as the Mississippian newspaper pointed out, “The officers in charge of the Arsenal...save one superintendent, were not on duty at the site.” One was, in fact, “in his sick room.” Those who died did so because they needed the money, and/or because they were dedicated to the cause.

Then, at about 10:30pm that very night “...a fire broke out in (a South State Street)...jewelry and dry-goods establishment...The fire raged northward...and destroyed the house occupied by Mrs. Evans as a millinery establishment and continued its ravages to Mr. Weirs, next to John Martz, next to Mr. John Robinson's where the progress of the flames was arrested. Also destroyed was the depot of the Southern Railroad with several surrounding buildings. Several bales of cotton and a considerable quantity of goods were also destroyed..." One resident noted that before dawn, many of the goods saved from the burning homes and stores were then stolen by looters. Now it felt as if the war was  truly coming to Jackson.

Six months of dread followed, and it began to weigh upon the citizens. As soon as Grant had crossed the Mississippi river, General Pemberton had advised the governor to send the state archives into the interior. People took note of that. Less than a week later, the Mobile Alabama Register and Advertiser newspaper noted that in Jackson, “The trains for the interior are crowded with non-combatants, and the sidewalks blocked up with cases, barrels, old fashioned trunks and chests,..."  Civilians were getting out, and a few soldiers, like General Gregg, were coming in.

And the night of Wednesday, 13 May, 1863, General Gregg was startled to discover yet another arrival in the capital of Mississippi, Lieutenant General Joseph Eggleston Johnson. No one had been told to expect the old man. But Gregg welcomed him, particularly because he was closely followed by 3,000 reinforcements.

 - 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Forty-Two

 

May of 1863 was a dry month. In California it was the second spring of a 4 year drought, which killed half a million cattle and sheep. It was so dry that spring in Kansas, the Junction City Union reported “If this continues another week, this section, at least, will be 'blowed' away.” In Nebraska hot dry winds converted the muddy South Platte river into “...clouds of dust and sand...”. Farmer Sam Clark wrote from southern Iowa, “Unless we have rain and that very soon the corn crop in this state will be almost a complete failure… “

In Saint Paul, Minnesota, the Mississippi River fell so low that May, riverboats were unable to navigate. During the first three weeks of the month, Milwaukee, Wisconsin receive just six-tenths of an inch of rain. In Kentucky, the dry weather sped up the hay and grain harvesting, but also “shriveled the rivers (to) fordable in many places”. But the dry weather made marching easy for the long columns of blue clad locusts as they spread across the interior of the state of Mississippi, consuming everything within reach.

But all good - and bad - things must come to an end, and in the early morning darkness of Thursday, 14 May, 1863, a cold front slipped across the American south. Clouds suddenly appeared. and dropped a brief downpour on the dirt roads and the 45,000 sleeping Yankee soldiers. 

When 33 year old Hoosier, Brigadier General Marcellus Montroe Crocker (above), saw the Clinton – Jackson road that morning, the water was pooling a foot deep in low spots on the sun hardened pavement. Over night General McPherson and, 9 miles to the south, General Sherman had agreed to coordination their assaults, so Crocker found himself burdened with a schedule.

Crocker, was another example of the way the war had reshaped men’s lives. He had been forced to leave West Point in 1849 when his father’s death required him to return to Indiana. In 1851 Marcellus had moved to Iowa, where he passed the bar in 1852.  But when the war broke he immediately raised a company of volunteers. Over the winter of 1861-62 Marcellus was promoted 4 times, eventually to Brigadier General. He commanded a brigade at the battle of Shiloh (above)  - where he earned the title of "The Black-Bearded Cossack", for his fearlessness under fire, and where he was wounded in the arm, the neck and the shoulder. He also led a brigade at the Battle of Corinth, throwing the rebels back with a desperate charge. He had now risen to command the 17th division, 13 regiments from Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

On the other side of the war, just about dawn that Thursday, General Gregg led the about 900 men - 24th South Carolina, 46th Georgia, and 14th Mississippi Regiments – past the deaf and dumb asylum, 2 miles out the muddy Jackson/ Clinton road. Their goal was the hilltop farm of 51 year old Oliver Perry Wright.

Oliver had been born in North Carolina, married Katherine “Kate” Barrett and moved to Mississippi in 1852. Over the next eight years the couple raised six children, 1 boy and 5 girls, supporting them by using slaves to cultivate 400 acres of not cotton but fruit and foodstuffs for the citizens of Jackson. Like all white males in Mississippi, Oliver was a member of the anti-slave militia. And despite being middle aged Oliver was a member of the 23^rd Mississippi Volunteer Infantry, but probably as a staff officer. He was not listed as captured when the 23^rd surrendered at Fort Donaldson in February of 1862.   And now, General Gregg had decided to turn the Perry “farm” into a battlefield.

It took the rebels about an hour on slick, muddy roads to reach the farm, and they immediately began laying out a defensive line, with skirmishers out front in the fields. The 24^th was stationed behind the fence line in front of the house and barns, the Georgia 46^th cleared some some fields of fire in an orchard by chopping down a few trees, and the 14^th Mississippi was held back in reserve. By about 10:00am the rebels were as ready as they were ever going to be, when the lead elements of General Crocker's 2^nd Brigade arrived from Clinton. The rebel skirmishers were pushed back into their lines by the advance of 5 regiments under 32 year old Colonel Green Berry Raum, a fiercely anti-slavery Democrat from Illinois. And Raum had just gotten his men into a line of battle for the uphill assault when the skies opened up again.

The down pour forced a full hour's delay. Frustrated by the rain, General Crocker ordered Colonel Raum to quickly clear the road to Jackson. So, about 11:00am, with bayonets fixed, the 17th Iowa, the 10th Missouri, and the 80th Ohio regiments (above)  surged forward toward the fence line. The rebels had time to fire a single volley before they were swamped by the blue coats. 

For a few long moments the entire war was reduced to twenty-five hundred men in hand to hand combat, struggling for personal survival. The 80^th Ohio suffered 90 men killed or wounded. The Missouri and Iowa regiments probably matched that loss. The 24^th South Carolina Volunteers lost over a 100 men, and the Georgia boys almost as many.

Realizing he had already bought the city of Jackson the addition hours Johnston had asked for, General Gregg  (above) sounded the recall. And covered by the 14^th Mississippi, Gregg's bloodied little force of now less than 700 men, arrived back in the Jackson trench lines about 1:00pm. But by 2:00pm, “Crocker's Grayhounds” had been reorganized and were following the rebels back down the road to Jackson.

Ten miles to the south the 16,000 men of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's XVth Corps had spent the evening camped around an old health spa called “Mississippi Springs” - half way between Raymond and Jackson. 

In a rough circle, 7 sulfur springs fed pools, each with a distinctive taste, smell and laxative effect, and each with adjacent hotels or rooming houses. The Federal soldiers, road grit grinding between their teeth, would have understood the words offered 20 years earlier by the drill operator to the Reverend Cooper. When he hit water on the property the driller told the Reverend, “It is water, but it stinketh mightily. It stinketh so bad you can never use it." So, like the Reverend Cooper, the owners of the Mississippi Springs labeled their source a “health spring” and charged more for bathing in and drinking it. But all these dusty Yankee visitors wanted was a long drink of cool untainted water, and after midnight the cloud burst gave them that, and more.

Come the dawn, the Federal advance was led by the 5,000 men of the 3^rd division under 39 year old Brigadier General James Madison Tuttle (above).  

In the front was Brigadier General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Anthony Mower (above)'s brigade. Immediately behind them was the 6 gun 2^nd Iowa Battery, and 6 guns of Battery E of the 1^st Illinois Artillery. Clearly Sherman expected some delaying action by the Confederates to try and stop  his corps from getting into Jackson. The rest of the division's infantry, Brigadier General Charles Matthies and Brigadier General Ralph Buckland's brigades, followed.

General Gregg had just dispatched 900 men up the Clinton road when his few cavalry pickets reported Yankees out to the south.  Quickly Gregg threw what he had at the new problem, the 1^st Georgia “Sharpshooter” Battalion and the 3rd Kentucky Mounted Infantry, both under the 34 year old Kentucky lawyer, Colonel Albert Petty Thompson (above). 

His orders to Thompson were to hold the enemy at the Lynch Creek bridge. And to provide the defense some punch he also dispatched a precious 4 gun battery – a pair of six pound Napoleons and two 3 inch rifles – the Brookhaven Light Artillery - commanded by Captain James S. Hoskin. Gregg made it clear to the Captain those guns had to hold the Yankees until relieved.

Two miles from the trenches of Jackson, and at about 9:30am, Thursday, 14 May, 1863, the 5^th Minnesota Infantry crossed the crest of a ridge above Lynch Creek. Hoskin's artillery immediately laid down harassing fire on the approaching Yankees So 27 year old Colonel Lucius Frederick Hubbard got his Minnesota men spread out into a skirmish line, and Captain Nelson Spoor deployed all 12 federal guns on both sides of the Raymond road and started laying down a counter-battery fire.

One of the rebel crewmen in Hoskin's battery, the unit's bugler, Isaac Herman, remembered that counter fire as very personal. “One of their shots passed over my gun,” he wrote later, “and knocked off its sight. passed between the detachment, striking the caisson lid in the rear and staving it in.” Herman stuck to his gun, until he, “... saw a ball rolling on the ground, about six feet to my right. It seemed to be about the same caliber as ours. It rolled up a stump, bouncing about fifteen feet in the air. I thought it was a solid shot and wanting to send it back to them through the muzzle of our gun, I ran after it. It proved to be a shell, as it exploded, and a piece of it struck my arm...Another ball struck a tree about eight inches in diameter, knocked out a chip, which struck my face and caused me to see the seven stars in plain day light...”.

In the meantime, General Tuttle started looking for a way around the bridge. The overnight rain had converted the usually lazy Lynch Creek into a full river, but after half an hour the Hoosier found a ford to the south, and started pushing the rest of the 2^nd battalion across. As they did, Colonel Thompson realized his position had been turned. So he sent his Georgia foot soldiers streaming back toward the Jackson trenches, relying on his mounted Kentuckians to cover the withdraw of the cannon. They were not in time, and the entire battery was captured by the flanking Yankees.

By 2:00pm, General Tuttle had advanced up to the Jackson defenses, and seeing the trench line filled with men and cannon, he again moved to outflank the rebels. But the enemy to his front were now mostly Mississippi militia. Johnston had declared the evacuation complete, and Thompson's men were retreating through the city. Only Gregg's 700 were still in the northern trench line. But they were ready to follow the retreat.

When Tuttle's latest flanking movement found empty trenches, Sherman ordered his entire corps to move into the city, sweeping up the militia in the process. By 4:00pm the stars and stripes was flying again from atop the Mississippi statehouse (above). The Battle of Jackson – such as it was – had cost General Grant 42 dead, 25 wounded and 7 missing in both corps. Rebel losses were about double that.  The second Confederate state capital – after Nashville – had fallen to federal forces. Immediately Grant issued orders to first gut the place and then to abandon it.

- 30 -