VICKSBURG Chapter Seven

 

Ohio businessman Lucius Bliss Wing had a very rude awakening. It was just after dawn on 20 December, 1862, in the bustling Union occupied Mississippi railroad town of Holly Springs. Shouting from the street outside and the pop, pop, pop of gunfire drew the 50 year old cotton merchant from his rented bed and to the window. As he wrote to his wife, Mary, "The street outside was filled with Texas cavalry, real wild butternut colored fellows, yelling like Indians." His roommate exclaimed, "Wing, we're gobbled, by God!"

The idea for the Holly Springs attack had originated with 33 year old  Lieutenant Colonel John Summerfield Griffith (above), commander of the 6th Texas Cavalry Regiment.  In mid-December the asthmatic officer wrote a letter to his new commanding officer: "If you will fit up an expedition, comprising three or four thousand men, and give us Major General Earl Van Dorn...we will penetrate to the rear of the enemy, capture Holly Springs... and perhaps, force him to retreat...if not, we can certainly force more of the enemy to remain in their rear..." 

In fact, Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton had already asked his neighboring commander in Tennessee, Major General Braxton Bragg, to dispatch his cavalry under Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, to raid against Grant's supply line. Now, having heard of Griffith's idea, he summoned Major General Earl "Buck" Van Dorn to Jackson.

Major General Van Dorn (above) and the man who had just replaced him, Lieutenant General John Pemberton,  found reason for agreement.  They both understood that as long as the Federal host outnumbered the rebels in central Mississippi it was inevitable that Jackson would fall. And that meant the Pearl River Bridge would also fall.  With the loss of that railroad connection with the rest of the Confederacy, it meant that Vicksburg was as good as lost as well. With the loss of the last connection to the Trans-Mississippi confederacy, any practical hope for the survival of the Confederacy as an independent nation was also lost. 

Both men understood the only hope the Confederacy had was to make any Federal victory in Mississippi so expensive and time consuming as to be politically unacceptable. In short, the only military option was to delay the outcome, and while doing so avoid losing the war.  Specifically, Grant  had to be delayed.  And the best chance of doing that was to destroy the Federal supply depot in Holly Springs.

Van Dorn returned to Grenada and within 24 hours offered his plan - a cavalry raid to destroy as much of the food, ammunition and equipment stored at Holly Springs as possible. He would take three brigades of cavalry. Colonel Griffith would command 1,500 Texas men. The 1,200 Tennesseans of the second brigade would be led by 27 year old Colonel William Hicks "Red" Jackson. And 37 year old Lieutenant Colonel Robert "White Headed Bob" Allan McCulloch  would lead a third brigade of 800 men from Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas. 

On 15 December, Jackson and McCulloch's units arrived in Grenada, where they were joined the Texas Brigade. Rations were issued and each trooper was given 60 rounds of ammo. But the intended target of the raid was a closely guarded secret.  They set out before dawn on Tuesday, 16 December, heading west, and in an Herculean effort covered 50 miles that first rainy march, reaching Houston, Mississippi, about noon on Thursday.  They were now beyond the Federal left flank.

Van Dorn allowed his men and horses a few hours of rest, and then drove them due north 25 miles to the crossroads town of Pontotoc, Mississippi. The population here were thrill by the return of Confederate troops, displaying "extravagant demonstrations of joy" on 18 December. And it was here that the entire raid came close to failure.

Unbeknown to the rebels, they were spotted in Pontotoc by scouts (above) from two regiments of Federal Cavalry (above) - the 7th Illinois and the 2nd Iowa - returning from a raid against the Mobile and Ohio Railroad around Tupelo Mississippi. There was no contact and no shooting, and the information was not passed up the chain of command until after the Federal Cavalry had returned to their lines outside of Water Valley.   

That night Van Dorn's men slept in "chilling, drenching rainstorm".  The cold morning of the 19th "... the horses' hooves kicked up clods of frosty earth...". Many of the troopers wore as many as six shirts beneath their coats. The exhausted men had not had a hot meal for 24 hours  "Yet their officers noted that their spirits were remarkably high." They pushed through the flooding roads 27 miles north to New Albany, on the Tallahatchie River. The raiding party was now less than 20 miles from Holly Springs.

That morning , 19 December, word of the substantial rebel raiding party spotted near Pontotoc finally reached Grant's headquarters in Oxford. Immediately warnings were telegraphed to federal outposts throughout northern Mississippi, in particular to 35  year old Colonel Robert Creigthton  Murphy (above), of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, defending the supply depot at Holly Springs.

Murphy's 1,600 men was divided in three. Half of his infantry was camped near the railroad depot, and

the rest were billeted in town, around the court house square. There were also six companies of cavalry camped out at the fairgrounds. Despite the warning from Grant's Headquarters, none of the units were put upon alert, and some of the officers had even begun their Christmas celebrations ahead of time. 

At dawn on 20 December, 1862, the rebel cavalry came into town in three columns. The first swamped the infantry around the depot. 

The second rode straight into through town and caught the cavalry in camp, while the third column attacked the infantry which had formed up in the court house square. Wrote one rebel colonel, "“We struck the camp like a thunderbolt....we had literally ridden over them.”  The fight, what little there was of it, was over by 8:00am. Of the 1,500 man garrison few if any were killed or wounded, and only 130 blue clad cavalry men avoided capture 

The rebels captured three freight trains, waiting to be unloaded, and warehouses filled with all the sinews of war: 5,000 rifles, 2,000 pistols, 100,000 uniforms, 5,000 barrels of foodstuffs and $600,000 worth of miscellaneous supplies.  And in the old Confederate Armory the federals had established an entire 2,000 bed hospital with a million dollars of medical supplies.  They also destroyed all telegraph equipment in town, ripping up the lines for a half mile in all directions. Grant was now cut off from communication with the outside world, including Washington. 

Civilian Lucius Wing described what the rebels did after they had outfitted themselves and burdened their horses with Yankee excesses.  They "... put fire to the Depot, Engine House, Government Stores, and a train of H3 cars standing on the track....(and) burned everything to the ground.... Immense piles of stores and forage, such as Hay, corn, oats...Beef and Pork, Rice, Molasses Whiskey boxes of clothing, Hospital stores ie. “went up” in one grand conflagration."

"Twelve Hundred Bales of (seized) cotton waiting shipment...were set on fire and contributed...to this scene of magnificent horror....At three o'clock the arsenal was fired and soon blew up with a most awful explosion. It broke most of the glass in town...."  In all, during their 10 hours in Holly Springs Van Dorn's men destroyed some $44,259,000 in federal supplies at today's prices.

Mr. Wing said that "....by five o’clock the entire rebel force had melted away into the woods from which they came, leaving a shattered town, hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, and thousands of bewildered, demoralized, and weaponless Union soldiers...".  They also left behind the "blundering" Colonel Robert Creigthton  Murphy.. He complained "I have done all in my power - in truth, my force was inadequate".  Grant disagreed. Murphy was arrested, and then simply dismissed from the service for "cowardly and disgraceful conduct".

At the same time, Confederate Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest (above), had unwillingly set out from Clifton, Tennessee with 1,800 badly armed inexperienced men and four cannon, 

Over the next two weeks his troopers covered an average of 20 miles day, fought three battles, daily skirmishes, destroyed 50 bridges on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and so broke up the trestle work the road was useless as a federal supply line for the rest of the war. They also captured or killed 2,500 federal soldiers, captured or disabled 10 pieces of artillery, captured 50 wagons and horse teams, 10,000 weapons, a million rounds of ammunition, 1,800 blankets and knapsacks. Even without the Holly Springs raid, Grant would have suffered supply problems. With the raid, Grant's position was untenable.

The federal army was immediately put on half rations, and began to retreat back to Le Grange. Years later, in his memoriers, Grant remembered how the citizens of Oxford appeared in his office. "They came with broad smiles on their faces indicating intense joy, to ask what I was going to do now without any (food) for my soldiers to eat. I told them I was not disturbed; that I had already sent troops and wagons to collect all the food and forage they could find fifteen miles on each side of the road. Countenances soon changed, and so did the inquiry. The next was, “What are WE to do?”

Earlier, on Saturday, 6 December, 1862, to lighten the pressure on his quartermasters, Grant ordered his cavalry regiments to form special units to search for "rations and forage..." A journalist for the Chicago Times reported, “Trains of wagons, heavily guarded, were sent out by (the) scores...and stripped the country of all food...Mills were erected, grain ground, fat stock driven in and slaughtered by thousands, and abundant supplies obtained.” Now, after the Holly Springs raid, Grant ordered all of his men to forage from the Mississippi countryside.

One man assigned to such a column, Private Charles W. Wills out of Illinois noted that, “ Every house within ten miles of the army is visited about five times a day by our soldiers and the (rebel) guerrillas...There is more stealing in one day here than the whole United States suffered in a year before the war.”  Grant would write later, "I was amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded. It showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months...." instead of two weeks...".  Grant noted, "This taught me a lesson."  

But still he had to retreat. Because on 20 December, just about the same moment Van Dorn's troopers were riding into Holly Springs, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman was sailing away from the Memphis docks with 32,000 men - about a third of  the entire Federal army -  who were now off the board, unaware of Grant's dilemma and out of communications with the rest of the world as well.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Six

The Federal troopers of the 4th Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Cavalry,  and 7th Kansas Cavalry were cautiously probing on foot across the rolling rain soaked terrain  about a mile north of Coffeeville, Mississippi, looking for rebel troops.  It was just about 2:30 in the Friday afternoon of 5 December, 1862. 

Their commander, 51 year old Colonel Theophilus Lyle Dickey (above) noted, "...suddenly the enemy opened at short range...using...six pieces of artillery...At the same time his infantry...opened upon our advanced dismounted skirmishers with rapid volleys..." The judge and Mexican war veteran realized at once that he had walked his men into an ambush.

The federals had already captured the Illinois Central Railroad shops in Water Valley (above), two miles to the north, and had no intention of allowing those works to fall back into rebel hands, at least not until they had dismantled and burned them. So the skirmish - or the Battle of Coffeeville in the rebel vernacular - was of little importance, except to the men whose lives were being risked.  

Under Dickey's skilled direction the federal troopers mounted and fell back to the foot of a rise, and opposing artillery shelled each other for a time before  300 troopers of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, under 28 year old West Point graduate William Hicks "Red" Jackson, charged the Federal line, while another 200 flanked the Federal position from the east. The Yankees retreated to the crest of the hill, and after reforming, the Rebels charged the new line as well. About 4:00pm the Federals withdrew to Water Valley. The rebels did not pursue.  

There were some 3,000 men involved in the "Battle of Coffeeville", and each side lost about 10 killed and fewer than 50 wounded.  The day before, Saturday, 4 December,  Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant (above), had established his new headquarters at the college town of Oxford, Mississippi.  

It rained almost every day,  an endless progression of “heavy, persistent showers”.  Captain Charles Wright Willis, commander of the 103rd Illinois Infantry, wrote to his sister of the pitiable state his soldiers were in. "Our boys are suffering from the change of climate and water, and as much as anything, the sudden change of temperature." The steady drip, drip, drip had forced the Yankees to chop down entire forests to lay layers of sodden planks across the few roads, called corduroying. Even given the ten of thousands of hands put to work, the effort slowed the advance by days.  And half a step off the rough wooden road saw wagons and men swallowed by grasping, clinging mud. 

Pemberton and his 23,000 man army were now safely crossed the rain swollen Yalobusha River around Grenada, 113 miles north of Jackson. They were now digging an entire new line of trenches. All hopes for a decisive  engagement in the open were now gone. And it seemed unlikely the rains were going to stop anytime soon.  So Grant decided to use the 15,000 fresh troops Major General McClernand had recruited, still training in Memphis, Tennessee, before the would be usurper had finished his honeymoon and began his planned attack on Vicksburg.  Besides, this might be an opportunity to turn the high water levels to the Yankee's advantage.

On Wednesday, 8 December, 1862, Grant ordered 42 year old Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (above) to put one division on the empty supply trains returning to Memphis. He was to then load those troops along with reinforcements from McClernand's men, and from Hovey's command at Helena - henceforth designated the XIII Corps -  on to transports. Protected by ironclad gunships from Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter's command, the force was to proceed down the Mississippi River to it's junction with the Yazoo River.  Then, sailing up the latter stream, Sherman was to assault and occupy that high ground Grant's staff had identified back in October -  the Walnut Hills.

This would outflank the rebels defending Jackson, force them to divide their smaller force, perhaps even to abandon  Vicksburg entirely.  

There were two immediate problems with the plan. First, any leak about the plan in Memphis, where it had to be assumed everyone held rebel sympathies, would negate the entire effort. Also the telegraph lines between Oxford and Memphis might be tapped.  So Sherman struggled for  three days along the muddy roads to reach the slowly extending rail line, before he could board a train for Memphis. He did not reach the "Queen City" until Friday, 12 December.  And only then, face-to-face could he inform Vice Admiral Dixon Porter, of the plan.

Admiral Porter (above) was expected to cooperate with the army, but he could not be ordered to do so.  However, Porter believed, "The navy must be an adjunct to the army...".  In addition, Porter and Sherman had formed a friendship over the past year, while the Admiral had developed a deep distrust of McClernand. He was on record as having said the appointment of McClernand was as "...great a piece of folly (as) was ever before committed", and claimed to have told Lincoln, "...if you take troops from Grant and Sherman to give them to McClernand, you will weaken the army."

The 41 year old "Cump" Sherman had arrived at the head of  42 year old Brigadier General Morgan Lewis Smith's (above) 7,000 man division, Sherman then kidnapped the first two divisions of the XIII Corps which had arrived....

....the 6,000 men of 42 year old General George Washington Morgan (above)....

....and the 8,000 men under 48 year old General Andrew Jackson Smith. As soon as enough river transports arrived at Memphis, these 21,000 men would boarded.  However this would not happen until 20 December. And as he left the Memphis docks that morning he was putting himself out of contact with his boss and events in Central Mississippi.

Then, with 12,000 reinforcements from Helena, Arkansas, all 34,000 men would then enter the Yazoo river on 21 December, and five days later, just as McClernand was saying "I do" in back in Illinois, Sherman was landing his men 10 miles up the Yazoo river, at Chickasaw Bayou (above) on one of the many plantations owned by the family of Captain William A. Johnson - a one time  ship's captain and business partner of the pirate Jeanne Lafitte.

Captain Johnson was Lafitte's fence for those stolen cargoes which could be sold in New York. This proved such a successful business model that Johnson's five sons inherited and enlarged a sizable empire, stretching from legitimate shipping, to huge sugar and cotton plantations in the Louisiana delta and this one along the Yazoo delta. After harvest. the Johnson sugar cane would be shipped aboard Johnson ships to Johnson distilleries in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to be cooked with New England molasses into rum.

The mash waste from the distillation was shoveled next door as feed to cows kept in a dirty factory dairy, where they were milked by Bowery alcoholics , nicknamed "nurse maids". The New York Times described the resulting "swill milk" as a " “bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water, which, on standing, deposits a yellowish, brown sediment..." in the glass. 

 This was then peddled from street carts (above), adding to the high childhood death rate from cholera and diphtheria in the city. And it encouraged the adult residents to drink Johnson's rum as a safer alternative. The distilleries also funded a half century long political delay in New York City sanitary laws, and also paid for the political war against anti-slavery societies in the city.

It was the distillery side of their empire which in 1844 inspired one of the Captain's grandsons, Bradish Johnson (above), to name his new financial endeavor The Chemical Bank of New York. Ninety years after the civil war Chemical Bank bought out Chase Bank and then during the next half century of concentration of wealth, merged and morphed into the too big to fail J.P. Morgan Chase and Company. Thus the Johnson Plantation on the Yazoo River offers a glimpse of the true financial base of slavery.

When Porter's seven gun boats first nosed into the back waters of the Yazoo River there so few rebel soldiers defending the Walnut Hills above the Johnson Plantation, that Sherman saw no reason to rush his men off the 59 transports. Grant was presumed to have Pemberton's rebels tied down outside of Granada, Mississippi. But because the telegraph lines out of Holly Springs had been cut, Sherman did not know that Grant's men were already on half rations, while Pemberton was already transferring most of his little army west, to block Sherman's move at Chickasaw Bayou.

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VICKSBURG - Chapter Five

By the first of November the “...beaten and demoralized...” rebel Army of Mississippi was still struggling  to recover from it's failure to retake the rail crossroads of Corinth. Over two bloody days - 3 and 4 October, 1862 -  the rebels had lost 20% of their man power.  And this had not been Major General Earl Van Dorn's first fiasco.

A year earlier the Mississippi born short, brash, serial sex offender Major General Earl Van Dorn (above) had been promoted to commander of the Army of  the Trans-Mississippi, to end the squabbling between Missouri militia generals Sterling Price and Benjamin McCullough. But Van Doren had visions of grandeur and hoped to recapture the entire state of Missouri. He boasted to his wife, "I must have St. Louis..."

At the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas on 7 March of 1862 ,Van Dorn not only caught the Yankees off guard with a forced march, he outnumbered them.  However illness confined him to an ambulance, the weather turned vile, McCullough was killed and after a second day of vicious fighting - 8 March -  (above), his exhausted men were forced to retreat and Missouri was lost forever.  Van Dorn was transferred and given command of the Army of Mississippi.

On 5 August, 1862, the attack of a force led by rebel General John C. Breckenridge, failed to recapture the Louisiana capital of Baton Rouge, increasing the pressure on Van Dorn to do something to reverse the situation along the Big River. 

And then, on 3 October,  General  Van Doren surprised the Federal general Rosecrans at the Second Battle of Corinth, Mississippi. But again the Yankees managed to hold their units together and survived the initial attack.

Come mid-day of 4 October (above) the Yankees counter attacked and regained all the ground they had lost, and Van Dorn was defeated in yet another 2 day battle. "I was not defeated", Van Doren insisted, "but only failed in my intentions".
Jefferson Finis Davis, 54 year old President of the Confederacy, was not anxious to replace the pugnacious serial adulterer.  He was, after all a general who fought, and a fellow Magnolia State resident. But Van Doren's subordinate officers were grumbling and eventually Davis decided he had no choice.  The problem was, who was to replace Van Dorn?  Davis did not consider any of his 

grumbling subordinates, as that would have been encouraging insubordination

The obvious choice was 38 year old Major General Thomas Johnathan Jackson (above), who had earned his nickname because his division stood "like a stonewall" blocking Federal advance at the First Battle of the Bull Run. But it was very unlikely the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia,  General Robert E. Lee, would release his "good right hand".  

Nor did it seem likely Davis could pry away 42 year old General James Longstreet, whom Lee called "My old war horse".  Since a mistake in Virginia could lead to lead to the immediate loss of the war, Davis dare not fiddle with the most successful army in the Confederacy.

The first hero of First Bull Run, 44 year old General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was available, but he never attempted to hide his disdain for Jefferson Davis, who returned those feelings. 

In fact the only Rebel general Davis disliked more than Beauregard was 55 year old General Joseph (Old Joe) Eggleston Johnston.  He had commanded the Confederate army during the Peninsula Campaign, and had saved Richmond by his attack at the Battle of Seven Pines. But at that battle Johnston had been severely wounded in the chest and neck, and while he was hospitalized, Davis had eagerly handed his army over to Robert E. Lee.  Davis felt these events confirmed his distrust of Johnston,  and the more people suggested Johnston as the new commander in Mississippi,  the more Davis despised the man. But that left only one officer of sufficient rank  who could take command in Mississippi. 

He was a 48 year old Quaker born and raised in Philadelphia, John Clifford Pemberton (above), who had received his appointment to West Point with the assistance of President Andrew Jackson, graduating in 1837 in the middle of his class.

After his  "..Gallant Conduct" at the Battle of Monterrey (above) in the Mexican War Pemberton had received a brevet (temporary) promotion to captain, and a second promotion to brevet Major after the battle of Molino de Rey. John Pemberton was no coward, but he learned that he preferred staff work to leading men in battle. 

Returning home John married Martha O. (Patty) Thompson (above), of Norfolk, Virginia. Her father, William Thompson, had made a fortune in shipping, trading with the Dutch West Indies,  Ireland and Nova Scotia.  As successful southerners the Thompsons owned slaves, and as a wedding present the new couple received a human slave who served as their cook. By the time the war broke out they had three children, and when Pemberton had hesitated to pledge  his allegiance to the south, Patty had written him,  “My darling husband, why are you not with us? Jefferson Davis has a position for you.”

John's own family urged him to remain in the U.S. Army - his two younger brothers wore blue, and his elder brother Israel Pemberton, who was a successful civil engineer for railroads, begged John  not to betray his nation  - but on 29 April, 1861 John Pemberton resigned his commission and in January of 1862  became a Major General in Command of the Department of South Carolina (above) and Georgia. 

It was in that post that Pemberton had revealed his abrasive personality. Charleston  business leaders sought assurances he would defend the city, and it's central patriotic symbol, the battered and broken remains of Fort Sumter, where the war had begun. Instead of reassuring the nervous civilians Pemberton had explained that if forced to chose between saving the remains of the fort and the city, or his army, Pemberton would protect his men.

The resulting uproar meant Davis was pressured to remove Pemberton.  So Beauregard was sent to South Carolina, and on 10 October, 1862,  General John Clifford Pemberton was promoted over Van Dorn.  The new commander's orders were concise. He was, to "... consider the successful defense of (Mississippi)... as the first and chief object of your command." Pemberton arrived at his new headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi, on Tuesday, 14 October 1862.

Under Pemberton the army was fed more regularly. Blankets magically appeared.  Ammunition began to arrive where it was needed, as did replacements. Medical care even improved slightly.  Said a Jackson newspaper, "No officer ever devoted himself with greater assiduity to his duties. Late and early he is at his office, laboring incessantly.” However, the army never saw Pemberton, since he remained in Jackson while Van Dorn stayed with the men.

The problem was, even though bolstered by reinforcements The Army of Mississippi now contained only some 24,000 men, dug in along a defensive line south of the Tallahatchie River,  centered around the village of  Abbeville. 

Van Dorn's forces were built around the four Mississippi and Alabama brigades of the cantankerous Major General William Wing Loring's (above) division... 

...and the orphaned Missouri brigades and Louisiana troops of the equally troublesome politician and Major General Sterling Price's division. Just getting these two men to coordinate their retreat was a difficult task.  So when  2,000 Federal infantry and 1,500 cavalry appeared near Granada, Mississippi, burning bridges and railroad equipment behind the rebel lines, Pemberton issued orders , on 2 December, for the army to fall back to new entrenchments south of the Yalobusha River, 60 miles closer to Jackson. 

It was the logical military decision, but a lousy way to introduce a new commander to the army. And then, early in December, Lieutenant Colonel John Summerfield Griffiths, came up with suggestion how to turn the tactical situation around. 

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