VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty

 

It was the afternoon of Friday, 25 June, 1863 - the 38^th day of the siege of Vicksburg - and Sergeant Morris was the last man in the tunnel. He felt the cold brass fittings of the navel fuses (above) in the dark, making certain the squib was nestled deep among the rough grains of black powder - at the bottom bag of 20 bags of black powder. The Ohio Sergeant ran his fingers along the twin wires running from the squib, out of the bag and across the dirt floor of the left forward gallery.  Feeling no break, and bent double, he struggled through the 4 foot high 3 foot wide passage for 15 feet toward the lantern.

The man in charge was a 25 year old captain of engineers, Andrew Hickenlooper (above).  And in an organization obsessed with rank and seniority, the Corps of Engineers was the only part where brains and education might preceded either.  Andrew had been born in August of 1837 in the east central Ohio coal town of Harding.  It was also the home to Levi Coffin, unofficial “President of the Underground Railroad”, which after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 secretly shepherded desperate people north to Canada.

At the apex of “Y” junction, the sergeant turned into the dark again. In the pitch black right forward gallery he repeated his squib and fuse check on it's 500 pounds of black powder. Then backing slowly to the junction, he made certain the squib and fuses for the 700 pounds of powder stacked here were secure. And only then did he pick up the lantern and retreat, moving faster now that the roof was 5 feet high, running the 6 wires loosely through his palm until, 45 feet later, he stumbled into daylight.

In Dutch-German Hickenlooper meant a hedge-hopper or runner and carried the vague connotation of a thief.  Andrew's father was honest and hard working but blessed with a lack of ambition. Looking for a more interesting job he moved his family to Cincinnati, where Andrew attended the Woodward Grammar School and Xavier College.   The Jesuits who ran both instilled more than enough ambition in young Hickenlooper. At 19 he went to work for the city surveyor, and 3 years later was elected to the job himself. He married and quickly had two children

Exiting the tunnel in a trench labeled “Logan's Approach” (above), Sergeant Morris was greeted by Lieutenant Thomas Russel, from Missouri. He took the loose bundle of wires,  all 6 cut to equal length, from Morris.  A work gang under the sergeant immediately began refilling the tunnel – leaving a crevice for the fuse wires to pass through cleanly.  As they did, the Missouri lieutenant carefully laid the wires along a wooden plank, and staked them firmly. Then the ends of the wires were stripped, and a musket cap placed upon the bare end of each wire. Lastly, a stick was tied down over all the caps.

On Sunday morning, 6 April, 1862, the 5^th Ohio light artillery, a 6 gun battery recruited and commanded by Lieutenant Andrew Hickenlooper, was surprised and almost overrun while in camp northwest of the Quaker “Shiloh Meeting House”.  The lieutenant managed to save all but 2 of his 6 pounders, and rushed them to support Union soldiers in what became known as “The Hornet's Nest” (above). “Then came the long triple lines of bristling steel,” Andrew wrote later, “whose stern face bearers...came pressing on, until our cannon's loud acceptance of their challenge...caused the assailants to hesitate, break in confusion and hastily retire". Over 8 hours Andrew and his 4 remaining cannon repelled as many as 8 attacks, until ordered to withdraw about 4:30 that afternoon.

Because of his courage and skill at Shiloh, Hickenlooper was promoted and made Chief Engineer for the XVII Corps.  Under Grant's Special Order Number 140, issued on 25 May,  Andrew was responsible for prosecuting the siege of Vicksburg to his front. 

He described the topography and his plans this way. “The highest point between the (Louisiana redan) and the (Shirley) House (above) was selected...to locate a battery (named Battery Hickenlooper)..."

"....covering the extensions of the sap beyond that point. Two 8-inch naval guns located in battery(Archer) south-east of this point...(silenced) the guns of the Confederate fort; thus leaving the Union soldiers exposed only to the ever vigilant sharp-shooters of the enemy...."

"A favorite amusement of the soldiers was to place a cap on the end of a ramrod and to raise it just above the head-logs betting on the number of bullets which would pass through it within a given time.”

Then, on Monday, 21 June, Captain Hickenlooper put out a call for men experienced in mining. From those volunteers he picked 36 men, who he divided into a day and a night shift, with each shift broken into 3 “reliefs”.   Andrew later explained, “ On the night of the 22d these men, properly equipped with drills, short-handled picks, shovels...(began) driving a gallery...” Lieutenant Russel pushed the first shift 12 feet into the hill beneath the Louisiana redan. “  

Each relief worked an hour at a time, two picking, two shoveling, and two handing back the grain sacks filled with earth...The soil...(showed ) remarkable tenacity, (and was) easily cut and requiring but little bracing.” 

During Thursday, 24 June, the miners pushed the tunnel another 40 feet under the Confederate position.

“The powder was brought up in barrels and kept in the main sap at a safe distance....and there opened and placed in grain-sacks....” By “...the morning of the 25^th, the miners commenced depositing the powder,...” Captain Hickenlooper explained, “These were taken up on the backs of the miners, who made the run over the exposed ground...nearly one hundred trips with the dangerous loads, all were landed in the mine without a single accident.”

Informed that Hickenlooper expected everything to be ready by 3:00 p.m. that Friday, Grant ordered a powerful attack against the redan, lead by volunteers from the 31^st and 45^th Illinois volunteer regiments. But “follow on” regiments were not prepared. The attack, when it came, was to be of limited scope. However, Grant was there himself to witness the “remarkable” explosion. The entire army was in on the secret, and as 3:00 p.m. approached, the constant boom and snap of Federal artillery and sniper fire faded into an anticipatory silence.

At 3:15 p.m. Captain Hickenlooper gave the command. Lieutenant Russel slammed a hammer down on the board, and all six fuse lines crackled. A foot high plume of white smoke began to walk toward the wall of earth and rock which now blocked the tunnel's entrance. The crackling white smoke danced into the crevice and disappeared into hill side.   And now, other than the anxious stares and nervous body language of 50,000 Yankees outside of Vicksburg, there was no indication of the catastrophe which was about to come.

The lines had been cut to a 15 minute fuse. But 3:25 came and went with the redan still impassively towering over the Yankee saps and trenches. Then 3:26. Whispers began to scurry about the Yankee lines.   At 3:27, the miners began to ponder who was going to “volunteer” to crawl back into the dank tunnel, find the break in the fuses, repair and relight them.  If we are to believe what Andrew Hickenlooper wrote years later, he had no doubts. “Every eye was riveted,” he wrote, “upon that huge redoubt standing high above... 

"At the appointed moment it appeared as though the whole fort and connecting outworks commenced an upward movement, gradually breaking into fragments and growing less bulky in appearance, until it looked like an immense fountain of finely pulverized earth, mingled with flashes of fire and clouds of smoke, through which could occasionally be caught a glimpse of some dark objects,-men, gun-carriages, shelters, etc.”

The breech in the defenses of Vicksburg had been made. Or so it seemed.

- 30 - 

VICKSBURG Chapter Forty

 

The city of Vicksburg had been laid out on a series of 20 to 30 foot high steps along the Mississippi River, each marking a flood stage as the Wisconsin glaciers retreated over the previous 10,000 years. And along the crest of each of these benches ran a main north-south street. First there was Levee Street, created by the current river's high water mark, then Pearl Street, then Oak or Mulberry, then Washington Street, and along the final and highest step ran Cherry Street. 

Depot Street ran east-west, beginning at the Southern Railroad station on the levee and rose directly 30 vertical feet until it “T”ed into Washington Street. But most cross streets took advantage of the ravines which periodically eroded through the packed clay by either snaking through them - such as Madison Street a block north of Depot Street - or bridging them – as Bridge Street, a half block south, which angled across the ravine on stilts, making an easier step up to Cherry Street. It was on a north south side street, between Madison and Bridge, that the eccentric Colonel Thomas E. Robbins built the most unusual home in all of Vicksburg.

Thomas liked to be known as “Colonel” Robbins, but was best known as a Judge of the Warren County bankruptcy court, and a scavenger who took full advantage of his early notice of flotsam of local business failures and jetsam abandoned on the docks and in the warehouses. By 1840 “The Colonel” had acquired a shipment of hexagonal bricks supposedly fired in Britain, which inspired him to construct a monument to his unique business acumen.

Built atop a 17 acre mound above Washington Street, a block south of the new Warren County Courthouse, Robbins' Castle boasted a moat – the better to incubate mosquitoes – and a surrounding hedge of Osage Orange trees – whose scent disguised the deflection of cooling breezes. I suspect it was his monument which sped poor Thomas Robbins on to his final reward not long after finishing his mansion in the early 1840's. And in 1859 his house was bought by another acquiring lawyer named Armistead Burwell Junior, as a home for himself and his wife, Mary.

Armistead had been named after his father, a Petersburg, Virginia (above) slave and plantation owner and a Colonel in the War of 1812.  Sometime in 1818, Colonel Burwell had taken to repeatedly rapping at least one of his 50 pieces of property, a house slave named Agness “Aggy” Hobbs. As a result she had given birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth Hobbs. 

When Elizabeth reach 14, she was subjected to repeated whippings and rapes by a white relative to “break her spirit”, before being “married” (i.e. rented) to Hillsborough, North Carolina slave owner Alexander Kirkland, who beat and rapped Elizabeth for 4 years, until she gave birth to a son. Luckily for Elizabeth, 18 months later, Alexander Kirkland died, and Elizabeth and her son were eventually returned to the Garland family.  It was upon a foundation of this kind of brutality that the gentile southern tradition of their "peculiar institution" of slavery, rested

Armistead Burwell Junior had moved to Vicksburg in 1859 and bought The Castle because he had been told it was a “healthy spot”. However, with the arrival of secession, he dared not stay. Like his father, Armistead was a pro-union man. A slave owner, but a union man. He wrote a friend, “I dare not go any place in the interior ((as I) would be hung or imprisoned if I did.” In fact, he was arrested in September of 1861, and held for several weeks. When finally released, Armistead left the castle behind and fled north. Being a supporter of slavery was no longer enough to remain in good standing in the city of Vicksburg.

“The Gibraltar of the Confederacy” had been the capitalist dream of a Methodist minister. Newitt Vick.  In 1805 the 39 year old, with his wife Elizabeth Clark Vick and their 7 children, moved to Church Hill, Mississippi Territory, about 20 miles north of Natchez. As the saying goes, they prospered and multiplied. After adding 3 more children, in 1811 Newitt was able to buy land for his own plantation in the Walnut Hills along the Yazoo River.

Newitt called his little empire “Open Woods”, and through the sweat and blood of 66 enslaved human beings - and after adding 3 more white children - in 1818, this compromised Christian bought 612 acres along the cliffs above the Mississippi River, and surveyed and plotted out a town site, roughly 17 blocks north to south by 14 blocks east to west. But the couple never lived to profit from their investment, because both Newitt and Elizabeth died in the 1819 yellow fever epidemic.

The executor of the estate sold off the lots in 1822, for the benefit of the 13 Vick children. And the town of 500 was named in Newitts honor. Thirty-five years after its founding, Vicksburg had a population of 4,500 whites and some 30 “free colored”. In the adjacent Warren County, the population was almost 3,500 whites, but they were surrounded by 13,763 human beings held in bondage. In the county the war to defend slavery had strong support – among the whites. But within the city limits that support might be as “squishy” as the Confederate economy.

In 1861 the newly printed Confederate “gray back” dollar was worth ninety cents of its Yankee “greenback” counterpart. By the end of that first year of war the Gray Back had already lost 30% of that value. Two years later the gray back was worth less than half of its Yankee counterpart. To continue to buy food, uniforms, blankets and ammunition, the Confederacy had simply printed more gray backs. By May of 1863, almost half of Richmond's budget was allocated to paying interest on the loans needed to pay the other half of the budget.

All Confederate states extended credit to the Richmond government, but never equally. On the front lines, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and now Mississippi, strained to feed and arm the men fighting on their soil. But other governors, such as 42 year old Joseph Emerson “Joe” Brown of Georgia (above),...

...and 33 year old Zebulon Baird Vance, of North Carolina (above), did everything they could to avoid releasing money or troops to serve Richmond. By 1863 it was obvious to even a stalwart like Jefferson Davis that the theory of the Confederacy was as much a failure as the Articles of Confederation had proven to be four score years earlier.

A failure on the macro and the micro scale as well. In December of 1860, while “susess” fever broke  across the region the pro-war Vicksburg Sun noted, “It has been but a very short time since a man was tarred and feathered here on account of his expressing too much confidence in Abe Lincoln.” By April, Fort Sumter had been fired upon and Lincoln was calling for 75,000 volunteers to defend Washington, 

Vicksburg resident Dr. Richard Pryor took out an ad in the Vicksburg Evening Citizen offering $50,000 for “the head of Abraham Lincoln”. Editor of the Citizen, James Swords even designed a badge promoting “Southern Rights – For this We Fight”, and suggesting if all true supporters of slavery wore them “We would then know when we met a friend.”

Such vehement sentiments had the desired effect, and the editor of the pro-union Vicksburg Daily Whig, Marmaduke Shannon, struggled to voice enough support for the war to avoid having his offices burned down. “It is enough for us to know that Mississippi...has taken its position”, he wrote. “We, too take our position by its side.” 

But as early as March of 1863, Alabamian General Edward Dorr Tracy  - who would die 2 months later in the battle of Port Gibson - had reported, “(in) this garrisoned town (above), upon which the hopes of a whole people are set...there is not now subsistence for one week. The meat ration has already been virtually discontinued, the quality being such that the men utterly refuse to eat it.” Even before Grant had crossed the river, hunger was stalking the troops and citizens of Vicksburg.

But an hour's ride out of town a seeming unlimited bounty could be found, if you could afford it. Molasses, which before the war had sold for less than 30 cents a gallon, was available for $7.00 a gallon. An 1861 $44 barrel of flour now cost more than $400.00. Salt cost $45 a bag. Turkeys were selling for $50 apiece. The fields were still filled with cotton, and the planters and the government they controlled refused to sacrifice that profit. Lieutenant General Pemberton might have simply requisitioned the supplies the city needed - as Grant was already doing -  but Pemberton felt a greater need for the goodwill of the plantation owners and bankers of Warren County.

One of the most lovely homes within the city, Wexford Lodge, sat atop that second ridge line at the eastern edge of Vicksburg, where the rebels had not extended their fortifications. For a decade it had been the home of 59 year old lawyer, “planter” and slave owner, New Hampshire born James Shirley, his 48 year old second wife from Massachusetts, Adeline Quincy and their three children - 20 year old Frederick Edward, 18 year old Alice Eugenia and 15 year old Robert. The Shirleys were well integrated into Mississippi society and economy before secession. But they remained loyal unionists.

As secession fever spread, James wrote his brother back in New Hampshire, “Our Governor....is ready and willing to tear this little, no-account, dirty Union to tatters.” Still, like General Tracy, James had noticed the citizens of Vicksburg were not enthusiastic about a war. “...banks are curtailing their discounts – drawing in their circulation....money has become scarce; capitalists have withdrawn their funds; all kinds of property has depreciated in value...” Young Fred had even proudly announced that he would rather serve Abraham Lincoln for 20 years than Jefferson Davis for 2 hours. The response of their neighbors was a viable threat of lynching. So Fred had been shipped north to Indiana for everyone's safety. But James stayed to protect his investment, part of which were his slaves.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum was 45 year old Emma Harrison Balfour. An ardent secessionist, Emma had been born in Virginia, come to Mississippi with her first husband, and after his death married Doctor William Balfours in 1847. 

They raised 5 children in their home, at 102 Crawford Street, at the corner of Cherry - 15 year old Louise, 12 year old Willie, 10 year old Alice, 8 year old Emma and 3 year old Annie. It was one of the finest residences in Vicksburg, where the Balfours hosted an 1862 Christmas Eve ball to celebrate the defeat of Grant's December invasion of Mississippi.

But that gay occasion had been interrupted by word of the Yankee Fleet entering the mouth of the Yazoo River, on their way to the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. Day after day Grant's noose around Vicksburg tightened. Now that disunion had been declared, now that blood had been shed, now that treason had been committed, it was no longer possible that slavery would be left alone.

During the later 1840's, still a slave, Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland had managed to establish a tiny enterprise as a seamstress and pattern cutter in Vicksburg. With her earnings she helped to support her oppressors, and then in 1852 Elizabeth  bought her and her son's freedom for $1,200 – worth $34,000.00 today.  

During the next decade she moved to Washington, D.C., and because of her skills and ambition, was eventually introduced to Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife. She made dresses for the First lady, and Lizzie and Mary became friends. And by her very existence Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland was living disproof of the lies, sins and horrors created to justify slavery and white supremacy.

From its inception, the Confederacy was not only impractical and immoral, it was a cruel and inhumane fraud, perpetrated at the expense of both blacks and whites. And both races paid a heavy price for it even before the war.  And the price in the city of Vicksburg was about to go even higher.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Eight

It was the afternoon of Friday, 25 June, 1863 - the 38^th day of the siege of Vicksburg - and Sergeant Morris was the last man in the tunnel. He felt the cold brass fittings of the navel fuses (above) in the dark, making certain the squib was nestled deep among the rough grains of black powder - in the bottom bag of 20 bags of black powder stacked in the chamber. The Ohio Sergeant ran his fingers along the twin wires running from the squib, out of the bag and across the dirt floor of the left forward gallery.  Feeling no break, and bent double, he struggled through the 4 foot high 3 foot wide passage for 15 feet toward the lantern.

The man in charge was a 25 year old captain of engineers, Andrew Hickenlooper (above).  And in an organization obsessed with rank and seniority, the Corps of Engineers was the only part where brains and education might preceded either.  Andrew had been born in August of 1837 in the east central Ohio coal town of Harding.  It was also the home to Levi Coffin, unofficial “President of the Underground Railroad”, which after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 secretly shepherded desperate people north to Canada.

At the apex of “Y” junction, the sergeant turned into the dark again. In the pitch black right forward gallery he repeated his squib and fuse check on it's 500 pounds of black powder. Then backing slowly to the junction, he made certain the squib and fuses for the 700 pounds of powder stacked here were secure. And only then did he pick up the lantern and retreat, moving faster now that the roof was 5 feet high, running the 6 wires loosely through his palm until, 45 feet later, he stumbled into daylight.

In Dutch-German Hickenlooper meant a hedge-hopper or runner and carried the vague connotation of a thief.  Andrew's father was honest and hard working but blessed with a lack of ambition. Looking for a more interesting job he moved his family to Cincinnati, where Andrew attended the Woodward Grammar School and Xavier College.   The Jesuits who ran both instilled more than enough ambition in young Hickenlooper. At 19 he went to work for the city surveyor, and 3 years later was elected to the job himself. He married and quickly had two children

Exiting the tunnel in a trench labeled “Logan's Approach” (above), Sergeant Morris was greeted by Lieutenant Thomas Russel, from Missouri. He took the loose bundle of wires,  all 6 cut to equal length, from Morris.  A work gang under the sergeant immediately began refilling the tunnel – leaving a crevice for the fuse wires to pass through cleanly.  As they did, the Missouri lieutenant carefully laid the wires along a wooden plank, and staked them firmly. Then the ends of the wires were stripped, and a musket cap placed upon the bare end of each wire. Lastly, a stick was tied down over all the caps.

On Sunday morning, 6 April, 1862, the 5^th Ohio light artillery, a 6 gun battery recruited and commanded by Lieutenant Andrew Hickenlooper, was surprised and almost overrun while in camp northwest of the Quaker “Shiloh Meeting House”.  The lieutenant managed to save all but 2 of his 6 pounders, and rushed them to support Union soldiers in what became known as “The Hornet's Nest” (above). “Then came the long triple lines of bristling steel,” Andrew wrote later, “whose stern face bearers...came pressing on, until our cannon's loud acceptance of their challenge...caused the assailants to hesitate, break in confusion and hastily retire". Over 8 hours Andrew and his 4 remaining cannon repelled as many as 8 attacks, until ordered to withdraw about 4:30 that afternoon.

Because of his courage and skill at Shiloh, Hickenlooper was promoted and made Chief Engineer for the XVII Corps.  Under Grant's Special Order Number 140, issued on 25 May,  Andrew was responsible for prosecuting the siege of Vicksburg to his front. 

He described the topography and his plans this way. “The highest point between the (Louisiana redan) and the (Shirley) House (above) was selected...to locate a battery (named Battery Hickenlooper)..."

"....covering the extensions of the sap beyond that point. Two 8-inch naval guns located in battery(Archer) south-east of this point...(silenced) the guns of the Confederate fort; thus leaving the Union soldiers exposed only to the ever vigilant sharp-shooters of the enemy...."

"A favorite amusement of the soldiers was to place a cap on the end of a ramrod and to raise it just above the head-logs betting on the number of bullets which would pass through it within a given time.”

Then, on Monday, 21 June, Captain Hickenlooper put out a call for men experienced in mining. From those volunteers he picked 36 men, who he divided into a day and a night shift, with each shift broken into 3 “reliefs”.   Andrew later explained, “ On the night of the 22d these men, properly equipped with drills, short-handled picks, shovels...(began) driving a gallery...” Lieutenant Russel pushed the first shift 12 feet into the hill beneath the Louisiana redan. “  

Each relief worked an hour at a time, two picking, two shoveling, and two handing back the grain sacks filled with earth...The soil...(showed ) remarkable tenacity, (and was) easily cut and requiring but little bracing.” 

During Thursday, 24 June, the miners pushed the tunnel another 40 feet under the Confederate position.

“The powder was brought up in barrels and kept in the main sap at a safe distance....and there opened and placed in grain-sacks....” By “...the morning of the 25^th, the miners commenced depositing the powder,...” Captain Hickenlooper explained, “These were taken up on the backs of the miners, who made the run over the exposed ground...nearly one hundred trips with the dangerous loads, all were landed in the mine without a single accident.”

Informed that Hickenlooper expected everything to be ready by 3:00 p.m. that Friday, Grant ordered a powerful attack against the redan, lead by volunteers from the 31^st and 45^th Illinois volunteer regiments. But “follow on” regiments were not prepared. The attack, when it came, was to be of limited scope. However, Grant was there himself to witness the “remarkable” explosion. The entire army was in on the secret, and as 3:00 p.m. approached, the constant boom and snap of Federal artillery and sniper fire faded into an anticipatory silence.

At 3:15 p.m. Captain Hickenlooper gave the command. Lieutenant Russel slammed a hammer down on the board, and all six fuse lines crackled. A foot high plume of white smoke began to walk toward the wall of earth and rock which now blocked the tunnel's entrance. The crackling white smoke danced into the crevice and disappeared into hill side.   And now, other than the anxious stares and nervous body language of 50,000 Yankees outside of Vicksburg, there was no indication of the catastrophe which was about to come.

The lines had been cut to a 15 minute fuse. But 3:25 came and went with the redan still impassively towering over the Yankee saps and trenches. Then 3:26. Whispers began to scurry about the Yankee lines.   At 3:27, the miners began to ponder who was going to “volunteer” to crawl back into the dank tunnel, find the break in the fuses, repair and relight them.  If we are to believe what Andrew Hickenlooper wrote years later, he had no doubts. “Every eye was riveted,” he wrote, “upon that huge redoubt standing high above... 

"At the appointed moment it appeared as though the whole fort and connecting outworks commenced an upward movement, gradually breaking into fragments and growing less bulky in appearance, until it looked like an immense fountain of finely pulverized earth, mingled with flashes of fire and clouds of smoke, through which could occasionally be caught a glimpse of some dark objects,-men, gun-carriages, shelters, etc.”

The breech in the defenses of Vicksburg had been made. Or so it seemed.

- 30 -