VICKSBURG Chapter Seven 5th Week in May

FRIDAY MAY 29, 1863

Today in Georgia, the Macon Telegraph delivers the latest news from Vicksburg (above). It is already a week old. “From the Northern accounts as well as our own, it is clear that all our defenses on the Yazoo were abandoned to the enemy...and that the town proper is held only by Pemberton and his little force, closely invested by the Yankee fleet to the front and by Grant's army on the other three sides. We have not the slightest intimation of the whereabouts of General Johnston and the main Confederate Army...Unless Johnston can raise the siege by defeating Grant, or cutting his communications, it is evident that the fall of Vicksburg is a question only of time.” The next day the same newspaper will carry the Georgia Governor's call for citizens to collect weapons for home defense.

SATURDAY MAY 30, 1863

General John McClernard (above) issues his General Order 72.  It begins,  “Comrades: As your Commander, I am proud to congratulate you upon your constancy, valor and success. 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....” He continues in this vein for several paragraphs, recounting the campaign exploits of his corps.

But then, running short of superlatives, McClernard begins to compare his men's exploits favorably over efforts by soldiers in the rest of the army. “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...General Logan's division came up in time to gallantly share in consummating the most valuable victory...The Forlorn Hopes of the Twenty-second ascertained, to their cost...they were still a long way from victory....and after a sanguinary and obstinate battle, with the assistance of Gen. McPherson's corps...”

It was classic McClernard; bombastic, hyperbolic, verbose and clumsy. But he was merely trying to raise the spirits of his own men, after their failed attacks on the 22nd. His General Order 72 closes with,  “I join with you, comrades, in your sympathy for the wounded and sorrow for the dead. May we not trust...that history will associate the martyrs of this sacred struggle for law and order, liberty and justice, with the honored martyrs of Monmouth and Bunker Hill. JOHN A. McCLERNAND, Major-General Commanding.”

Almost immediately, copies of the proclamation are then carried back up the Mississippi River to the newspapers nationwide. The staffs of General Sherman and McPherson are infuriated at the slights to their own men  in the proclamation. And as if in a choreographed dance, over the next week, several groups prepare infuriated protests. Sherman and McPherson each file their own personal denunciations of McClerand. Grant writes, "I cannot afford to quarrel with a man with whom I am obliged to command.” Still he patiently waits until June 18th, when excepts from McClernand's proclamation appear in the New York Times. Then Grant publicly takes the position that McClerand's proclamation is a direct violation of his standing order – clearly aimed at  McClernand – that all press releases are to be made through Grant's staff.  It is an unfair charge, as McClerand did not directly release his proclamation to the press. But the Illinois-politician-turned-General has played these games himself for two years. And now, like Vicksburg itself, he has been isolated and trapped. On June 18, 1863 Grant finally uses the power given to him by Hallack back in January, and relieves General McClernand. Lincoln's doppelganger and a thorn in Grant's hide,  is finally gone.

SUNDAY MAY 31, 1863

On this day, in a letter to his father, William Christie, serving in a Minnesota artillery unit, describes the siege of Vicksburg. “This morning at three o'clock, the batteries of Gen. Grant's army...opened at once on the doomed city... Now, just stand with me on the point where our battery is placed, and see the vivid flashes of the fuses, like lightning, and the showers of shell, as they made their quick curves through the air, hissing and hurtling, and finally exploding with a report almost as loud as the gun. The air waved like the sea, and vibrated with a hoarse murmuring sound...Boats on the river and the flash of their shots, were seen on the background exactly like lightning...we kept up the cannonading for over an hour....” William is not describing another grand assault, just the routine, methodical, daily, deadly business of a siege. The navy alone fires 22,000 shells into the city over the next 43 days. The army fires far more.

The citizens of Vicksburg dig 500 caves, large and small, into the sides of the gullies along the river shore. Union troops take to calling Vicksburg "Prairie Dog Town."  Food inside the city runs short. The garrison eats its horses and mules and dogs, and,  eventually,  even its shoes. Only about a dozen civilians are killed in the bombardment. But the anxiety and lost sleep drains the defenders. But in the end,  the ultimate limiting factor is water. The siege lasts 43 days. There is no sustained rain during that entire period.

General Johnston slowly gathers men in Jackson and eventually edges towards the Big Black River. But along the river he is faced by Sherman's reinforced corps. Johnston is cautiously probing for an opening in Sherman's defenses when Vicksburg surrenders, on July 3, 1863. Five days later Port Hudson also surrenders. And two weeks after that, General Sherman's men retake Jackson, Mississippi for the final time. For Grant it is a clean sweep.

In the siege of Vicksburg, Union causalities were about 10,000 dead and wounded, mostly because of the costly early assaults. Rebel dead, wounded, missing and captured were almost 33,000 .  Grant has also won 172 cannon and 60,000 rifles, which could never again be used to defy Federal authority. In one exhuberant month of movement and aggression, Grant has achieved what seemed 5 weeks earlier to be impossible.

Grant began his own account of his campaign with the following words; “The campaign of Vicksburg was suggested and developed by circumstances.”  There was no detailed plan. There was only Grant's reasoned determination to come to grips with his enemy and fight him. When matched with Grant's mastery of the fundamentals of logistics - supplying and supporting troops in the field - it was simply an unbeatable combination.

Others have been more impressed. “During the 17 day period after the landing at Burinsburg, Grant’s Army…marched 180 miles and won five major engagements…inflicting 7,200 casualties to 4,300 of his own, pinned Pemberton’s army inside the defenses of Vicksburg, and with his right flank now anchored on the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers north of the city, reestablished his communications and supply…Those who think of Grant as a butcher need to examine this masterpiece of operational art.” (Mackubin T. Owens, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.)

Grant would later observe; “All of (Pemberton’s) troops had to be met. We were fortunate, to say the least, in meeting them in detail…”  This was, of course no fortunate accident. Grant achieved this amazing feat because he never lost sight of his objective. Grant could not have known before he crossed the Mississippi that Pemberton would play into his hands, although he may  have suspected it,  given Pemberton’s reactions to Union maneuvering during April.  Still, the resolve to make the crossing was all Grant's. And the drive to move and keep moving after the initial landing, was all Grant's as well.

There was a fundamental mistake made in the defense of Vicksburg, and (among others) General Joe Johnston; thought he knew what it was  “An immense entrenched camp requiring an army to hold it, had been made,  instead of a fort requiring only a small garrison." But Port Hudson had been just such a small fort with a small garrison, and it met the same fate as Vicksburg.. 

The core problem in defending Vicksburg is the same faced by all fortresses, even Gibraltar itself. They require an army in the field to defend them – generals and soldiers and teamsters and railroads supply trains carrying all the sinew of war. And Vicksburg had little of that sinew. The destruction of so much as one mile of irreplaceable track on the Vicksburg and Jackson railroad reduced the value of Vicksburg. Pemberton knew this. But why did he not abandon the position, as General Joe Johnston urged him to do?

What hindered Pemberton was Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In the words of a recent historian, Davis was, “a poor judge of character…” I would go further and say that Davis was a martinet, with a blind adherence to the form rather than the function of command. All that Davis could see was that Vicksburg must be held. And if that was an impossible task, it was still a task the Confederate President was required to ask of his generals. But Davis had been in Washington when the war had started. In the words of Bruce Catton, he was one of those men who helped to bring on the firestorm, but could do little once it had arrived.

Once the fire had been started there were impossible choices Davis would face, choices he was responsible for creating. In the pantheon of “Southern Heroes” Jefferson Davis should not be praised. If, as he said, the Confederacy died of a theory, it was his theory. It was the theory he had determinedly built the entire structure of the Confederacy upon. His only excuse for being so blind and foolish, was that the irrational immoral defense of slavery denied him a rational morality. All the dead of Vicksburg, on both sides, can be laid at the front door of every slave holder's mansion, even more than at the doorstep of  their enabler generals like Pemberton,  Johnston or Lee.

The hero of this story is much simpler to identify, Ulysess Grant.  Between April Fools day and July 4 of 1863, the two opposing armies suffered 19,232 dead and wounded, a slight majority of whom were Union dead.  But at Vicksburg, six weeks after Grant and Sherman achieved Haynes Bluff , a Confederate army of 31,600 men, with 172 cannon and 60,000 muskets were surrendered to the Union. And Grant was the man who conceived and directed that campaign and who eventually brought the entire war to an end.  He was quite simply a military genius, far the superior to any rebel commander he faced.  The Mississippi River now ran, unvexed, to the sea.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-One

Sunrise on Sunday, 3 May 1863 found a new and odd looking crossing of the 5 food deep south fork of Bayou Pierre - a 166 foot long by 12 foot wide floating raft bridge. It had been constructed - 20 yards upstream from the old suspension bridge at Askamalla ford - from the fences, pig sties, stable enclosures and sidewalks of Port Gibson, Mississippi. It was an amazing structure requiring constant repair, but over the next week it would endure the passage of nearly 45,000 Federal soldiers, their cannon, wagons and cavalry. Such herculean effort was deserving of a Julius Caesar to praise its construction. Instead it received a mere footnote in the history of Captain Patterson's Kentucky Company of Mechanics and Engineers - a regiment despite its name - ably assisted in this effort by work teams from the 78th Ohio Volunteer Regiment.

The 78th (above, in Zanesville) was an example of how the war was evolving into something larger. The regiment had been formed in October of 1861 at Camp Gilbert on the outskirts of Zanesville, Ohio. Unlike the 90 day provincial and insular regiments formed in the heady rush before the battle of First Battle of Bull Run, these men were drawn from all over the state, and had enlisted for 3 years. But their Colonel, 42 year old Mortimer Dormer Leggett, was an amateur soldier - being a lawyer and superintendent of the Zanesville public schools before the war.

The self described "Jayhawkers" had fought at Fort Donaldson and had lost a man killed and 8 wounded on the second day of Shiloh. They had participated in the siege of Corinth, Mississippi, and the assault on Chickasaw Bayou. They stormed the trenches at Fort Hindman, and helped dig the failed Lake Providence Canal. They had come to Mississippi as part of the 2nd Brigade, under General John A. Logan's 3rd Division, XVII Corps. And they were practical enough to know that building a floating bridge was just part of their job as soldiers.

Bursting the cork at Port Gibson, Grant now had two roads to choose from. To Grant's left the road ran west for three miles before crossing the mainstream of Bayou Pierre on a second suspension bridge. The road then forked. A turn south would lead to the fortress of Grand Gulf. But follow the road north across the Big Black River and a traveler would reach Warrenton and Vicksburg beyond. This crossing was protected by Colonel Cockerel with just 3 battle weary Mississippi regiments and 6 cannon.

Or Grant might choose to advance for 8 miles northwest up the road to his right, which crossed the north fork of Bayou Pierre on a third suspension bridge. Continuing north this road led to Willow Springs and yet another fork, guarded by the remnants of Colonel Garott's Alabama brigade. The left turning here lead northwest to cross the Big Black river at Harkinson's Ferry, before reaching the village of Mount Vernon and then Warrenton.  Take the right fork and you would trend northeast through Cayuga and Auburn before crossing 14 mile Mile Creek and reaching Raymond - and beyond, the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi.

Lieutenant General Pemberton (above), now in Vicksburg,  might have sent troops from the city to bolster the defenses along Bayou Pierre.  But the Pennsylvanian in gray was painfully aware that Grant's XVth Corps, under General William Tecumseh Sherman, with most of the Federal gunboats for artillery support, was still poised at Miliken's bend, less than a day's sailing time  north of Vicksburg. Pemberton dare not strip the cities' defenses else the aggressive Sherman launch a coup de main. Besides, it was not in Pemberton's nature to rush to the battlefield.

Instead, the overall he remained in the city, strengthening trench lines around Vicksburg while allowing General Loring (above) to assemble all troops recalled from northern and central Mississippi along the Big Black River. What Pemberton and Loring both needed now was time.

And it seemed he might get it. At Millikin's bend General Sherman was suddenly cautious. Separated from his friend Grant, the ginger headed Ohioian (above) was looking at the 70 mile long tattered cordoryed road to Hard Times Landing. It had almost been destroyed by the 30,000 men who had already marched down it. And should his own corps make that passage "Cump" must leap his 15,000 men across the Old Man River and into the yawning abyss of central Mississippi, where the entire Federal army might be cutoff and devoured. No wonder then that Sherman was worried. On 29 April, just before Grant crossed the Mississippi, he wrote his wife that "...when they take Grand Gulf they (will) have the elephant by the tail."  But Grant had no intention of stopping or even waiting.

Grant's ordered Sherman, ""I wish you to collect a train of 120 wagons . . . and send them to Grand Gulf; and there load them with rations, as follows: One hundred thousand pounds of bacon, the balance coffee, sugar, salt and hard bread . . . The enemy is badly beaten, greatly demoralized, and exhausted of ammunition. The road to Vicksburg is open. All we want now are men, ammunition, and hard bread. We can subsist our horses on the country, and obtain considerable supplies for our troops."  Sherman set to work fulfilling his orders, but he was convinced Grant's plan was leading the army into disaster.

The first division of the McClernand's XIII Corps to cross the floating bridge over the south fork of Bayou Pierre that Saturday morning, 3 May 1863, was the 12th, commanded by the humorless patrician, 42 year old Hoosier, Brigadier General Alvin Peterson Hovey. 

Hovey had an undeserved reputation as a populist, and a history as a pro-union Democrat. Both of these traits convinced Republicans to make him a Colonel. Hovey was then transformed into a radical Republican once he was confronted with the ugly reality of slavery, and the realization that his political future depended on his support of the war.  He assured a superior, "I want all the cotton burned north and south....I want all the women and children, especially of rebels, reduced to starvation and want."  A modicum of military skill and conspicuous bravery at Shiloh convinced Grant to promote Hovey and give him a division. Once across the bridge, the 12th division turned left, toward Grand Gulf.

The second division across the bridge was the 10th, commanded by the short - both physically and in patience - was the cranky 48 year old career cavalryman, Brigadier General Andrew Jackson Smith (above). The irascible Smith had never commanded infantry before the civil war, but he was immensely popular with both his superiors and his troops, because he rarely complained, had little time for pomp or speeches, and because he shared his soldier's hardships. He was also dependably and reliably professional, later becoming Grant's "go-to" officer whenever a crises arose. And in an ocean of political generals,. as far as anyone knew, General Andrew Jackson Smith had no strong personal political opinions, at all.

Cyrus Hussey (above), on the other hand, was a man with plenty of opinions. A rigid and judgmental 24 year old Quaker school teacher, Cyrus opposed slavery on religious grounds. He enlisted in the 48th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1861, as a sergeant, but by spring of 1863, Cyrus was the Colonel. He was a respected officer even by the many who did not like him. For relaxation, he did algebra and diagrammed sentences, or just complained in letters to his wife about the moral failings of his superiors.  Once Cyrus had chosen a side, he never wavered in his beliefs. Falling in love with an Episcopalian, Rebecca Hodson, Cyrus married her in December of 1859, even though he was immediately disowned by his own congregation.  But it was about the only rebellious thing he ever did,

The 48th Ohio crossed the south fork about 9:30 that Saturday morning. As they marched through the now open, rolling Mississippi countryside, Cyrus heard what he thought was cannon firing off toward Grand Gulf. In fact it was General Bowen setting off the ammunition he could not escape with, as he evacuated the forts overlooking the river.  Grant heard the same sound in Port Gibson and knew immediately what it meant. The Rebels had no intention of fighting to hold onto the Bayou Pierre line, and were retreating all the way back to the Big Black River. The deep thunder of the exploding Confederate munitions meant he would soon have that elephant by the tail,  and Sherman's Corps could now cut short their voyage down the river, and disembark at Grand Gulf. 

Shortly after noon General Smith's division arrived to find the third suspension bridge over the north fork of Bayou Pierre burning, like the other two. But upon inspection 25 year old engineer Lieutenant Colonel James Harrison Wilson was able to report that although the rebels had set fire to the wooden roadbed, even it had not burned completely. The iron cables - actually iron chains held together by rope - and the iron towers they draped from,  had suffered no significant damage. By early evening the Kentucky Engineers and Mechanics were at work repairing the damage. And at the first light of dawn, Sunday 4 May, 1863, the 10th Division would be able to cross the Bayou, and advance on Willow Springs.

The cork was now, truly, out of the bottle.  And so was Grant!

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty

The dawn of Saturday, 2 May, 1863, illuminated the golden haired "frat boy" of the Army of the Potomac, 49 year old Major General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker (above), standing atop the pinnacle of success.  He looked the part - handsome, athletic and audacious, a candle burning brilliantly at both ends. H is diligent attention to the welfare of his soldiers had rebuilt the army after the twin disasters at Fredricksburg and the Mud March. 

At the same time his alcohol soaked headquarters became so infamous for its female contingent that forever after prostitutes bore his name. But in the previous 24 hours, "the inevitable" Major General Hooker had achieved what every other Federal general had failed to. He had stolen a march on Robert E. Lee.

The man who had boasted, "May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none" had planted 70,000 men and 108 cannon facing south and east at Chancellorsville clearing, 11 miles in the rear of the 50,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia. His enemy was now trapped between his great host and the 40,000 Yankees of the VI Corps facing west on the Rappahannock River. One simple command, and the massive vice would snap shut, crushing the rebellion. And yet, for hour after hour that Saturday, the anxious Federal soldiers heard only silence from their Caesar. 

And the astounding rumor began to trickle through the ranks that their boastful, vain and beautiful Napoleon was cowering in Mister Chanellor's brick mansion "...in a crumpled trance, helpless, lethargic, entirely demoralized." His senior corps commander, 41 year old Major General Darious Nash Couch said later, "I retired from his presence with the belief that my commanding general was a whipped man.” This before a shot had been fired.

General Robert Edward Lee (above) was not going to wait for Hooker to recover his arrogance. First the Virginia aristocrat left 10,000 men to watch Major General John Sedwick's VI corps, and marched west to meet Hooker with the remaining 40,000. Forty thousand men against 70,000 -  it was a direct violation of Napoleonic generalship - never divide an inferior force in the face of a superior enemy. But having done it once, Lee now did it again. 

He fixated Hooker by dangling 13,000 men to his west, while sending 23,000 on a 12 mile, 10 hour eastward flanking march under the puritanical, lemon sucking 39 year old Major General Thomas Johnathan "Stonewall" Jackson. Lee's only hope for success was if Hooker stayed right where he was, with that handsome chin of his, daring the entire universe to strike it.

A thousand miles to the west, as eastern Louisiana turned to face that same morning, the sun revealed some 950 federal troopers of the 6th and 7th Illinois volunteer cavalry, swimming their mounts across a the rain swollen Comite River. Rising from the warm waters, their commander, 36 year old Colonel Benjiman Harrison Grierson (above), drove his men on another two hours southwestward before he allowed his weary troopers to dismount and collapse in sleep. However the one time civilian music teacher felt the need himself to stay awake and watch over his men. He discovered a piano in a nearby house, and startled his unwilling hosts by playing on it for some time. About noon a sentry alerted him to approaching cavalry. And for the first time in 16 days, he was not worried.

That same Saturday morning, Major General John McClernand's troops edged down the Rodney Road and about 9:00am marched into the "Pretty little village" of Port Gibson (above). They found it filled with rebel wounded from Friday's battle. There was some gunfire from rebel pickets across the South Fork of Bayou Pierre, but a few cannon rounds drove them back out of range. The men then stacked their muskets on the sidewalk and under "fine weather" started dismantling buildings to construct a pontoon bridge across the river. 

Two divisions from General McPherson's corps also came down the road to filter through the town and move to the ford east of Port Gibson. It was Grant's intent to give Loring's men no chance to recover from their exertions of Friday. 

 As soon as it was dark he would push both corps across the river, to advance the 8 miles to Grindstone Ford over the North Fork of Bayou Pierre toward the Big Black River. On then would he allow his men to rest.

In Virginia, shortly after noon, scouts of the 25th Ohio regiment of the 2nd Brigade, First Division of the XI corps, stationed on the far right flank of the Army of the Potomac, spotted rebel infantry and artillery moving toward their front. 

They dutifully reported this to their commander, 38 year old Colonel William Pitt Richardson (above). That officer went to look at the situation himself, and raced back to deliver the alarming information to his division commander, 43 year old Worcester, Massachusetts lawyer and now Brigadier General Charles Devins Jr., 

The General (above), who had little respect for his mostly German Catholic immigrant soldiers, dismissed the information. He bluntly told Richardson, "I know that Robert E. Lee is retreating." He then turned to his aides and announced, "I guess Colonel Richardson is somewhat scared You had better order him to (return to) his regiment."

High above the Mississippi River at Grand Gulf, General Bowen (above) returned to the gunners who were still denying Federal transports access to Bayou Pierre. He added the weight of his star to the commandeering of horses and wagons from the merchants of the town and surrounding plantations. The river road ran from these bluffs 30 miles north to lower bluffs at Warrenton. Bowen knew the minute Grant crossed the North Fork of Bayou Pierre, this fortress which had defied the Yankees 48 hours earlier, must fall to an attack from the rear. So he also supervised preparations to destroy the heavy guns and the magazines filled with powder and shells, to prevent them falling into the hands Admiral Porter's Yankee sailors.

Colonel Benjiman Grierson rode just a half mile south of his sleeping men before meeting dust covered riders coming up the road from Baton Rouge. Grierson greeted them by waving a mud spattered white handkerchief. The approaching horsemen were 2 companies of the First Louisiana Cavalry - Federal. The single most important cavalry raid of the American Civil war was over. During a 600 mile ride through Confederate territory, Grierson's raiders had destroyed or damaged 60 miles of replaceable railroad tracks and telegraph lines, destroyed or damaged 3 steam locomotives and burned a dozen boxcars and their contents.

Back in Virginia, and almost three hours later, Major Owen Rice of the 153rd Pennsylvania regiment sent an even more alarming message back from his picket line on the Orange Turnpike to the commander of the 1st Brigade of the First Division, Colonel Leopold Von Gilsa. It read, "A large body of the enemy is massing in my front. For God’s sake, make dispositions to receive him!" 

Colonel von Gilsa personally delivered this message to General Devens (above). He again dismissed the information as merely more proof the rebels were retreating.  But von Gilsa persisted. 

He now delivered the warning to the commander of the XI Corps, 34 year old one armed Major General Oliver Otis Howard (above). This pious Protestant "Christian General" held his Germanic Catholic soldiers in no less contempt than Devens, and he dismissed von Gilsa with an insult.

In Louisiana, Colonel Grierson's raiders were allowed to parade through Baton Rouge. (above) The cost of the 16 day raid was 3 men killed, 7 wounded, 9 missing and 5 men left behind because of illness. The profit for the Illinois troopers was 100 rebel soldiers and militiamen killed or wounded and 500 captured and paroled as prisoners. When Grierson's raiders rode into Baton Rouge they were still leading 100 POW's. During their 16 day 600 mile ride the Yankees also destroyed 3,000 muskets, pistols and cannon, and had stolen 1,000 fresh horses and mules. The troopers also led into the Federal lines 500 self-emancipated slaves armed with shotguns and hunting rifles, all on horseback and each leading 2 or 3 more horses. By the end of the year, most of these "contrabands" would be wearing Union Blue and fighting for their own freedom in Mister Lincoln's armies.

In Virginia, Colonel William Richardson had grown so certain that he and the 2nd Brigade was about to be outflanked, that he and his officers rode over to consult with von Gilsa and the staff of the 1st Brigade. When they realized Devens arrogance would permit no adjustments in their south facing lines, they returned to their regiments. 

One of them, Colonel Robert Reily (above) of the 75th Ohio regiment, 2nd Brigade gathered his men together and delivered an amazing speech. He told his men, "Some of us will not see another sun rise. If there is a man in the ranks who is not ready to die for his country, let him come to me and I will give him a pass to the rear, for I want no half-hearted, unwilling soldiers or cowards in the ranks tonight. We need every man to fight the enemy." Reily then told his men to lie down but to keep their guns close by.  Many of the other regiments began to prepare a last meal.

The most important act committed by the Grierson raiders in Mississippi was their approach to Union Church. Confederate Lieutenant General John Pemberton became so frantic to stop the Yankees he ordered the cavalry out of Grand Gulf to catch him. Grierson had preferred to avoid the fight and turned south, but the rebel troopers went galloping after his raiders across across southern Mississippi, just at the moment Grant's men were crossing the river and attacking Port Gibson and Grand Gulf. It had all worked so smoothly it might have been an intricate plan. But the truth was that after 2 years of warfare the Yankee professionals were at least as good as their Confederate enemies. Maybe better. And it was the quality of the Yankee soldier which helped make Grant a better general.

But the greatest prize Colonel Grierson brought out of central and southern Mississippi was a lesson which he shared with an admiring Yankee chapelin. He told the man, "The Confederacy is a hollow shell." In modern military vernacular, the South was over mobilized. Every available man had been swept forward to meet the invading Federal armies. But that left too few troops in the rear to maintain the supply line of food, ammunition and new recruits. And once the outer shell had been punctured, as Grierson had done, and as Grant was doing now, the South had little to defend itself.

Just before 5:30pm that Saturday evening, 2 May, 1863 the woods along the Orange Turnpike west of Chancellorsville, Virginia, spewed forth 28,000 rebels of the II Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, 4 divisions under Lieutenant General "Stonewall" Jackson. "‘Like a crash of thunder from the clear sky", they slammed into the 153rd Pennsylvania. The Lehigh Valley Germans fired off a single volley before the rebels washed over both their flanks. To their east, Colonel Reily just had time to order the 75th Ohio to deploy in line and charge into the attack. They managed to stem the Confederate tidal wave for a moment, but it cost them 150 causalities, including Colonel Reily, shot in the leg and left behind to die.  Every regiment in Deven's ill-prepared division collapsed and retreated. The shock and confusion spread until Howard's entire XI Corps was being driven back to Chancellors mansion.

Jackson's sledgehammer captured 4,000 prisoners and dove the Union troops back two miles before darkness finally brings the fight to a close. It was an overwhelming Confederate victory, confirmed even to the confused General Hooker after two more days of indecisive fighting. But the triumph is marred by tragedy. As the 18th North Carolina regiment reformed to continue the advance they spotted what might have been Federal Cavalry to their front and challenge them. The reply was unclear and the regiment fired a volley.  But it is not Union cavalry to their front but General Jackson and his staff. Many of the officers are killed, and Jackson was wounded three times. He was carried from the field on a stretcher.

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