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.

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WRITING STORIES - The Lawless Early Days of Print

 

I doubt you could have missed the pair, seated in the Swan tavern on Fleet Street in London, that 28 March,  1716.  Last to arrive was the infamous publisher, pornographer and plagiarist Edmund Curll, a scarecrow of a man, tall and thin, splayfooted, and with gray goggle eyes that threatened to burst from his pale face like a cartoon character. He was so ugly no image of him survives.

Waiting for him like a spider on his web was one the greatest poets in history, the oft quoted and revered deformed genius Alexander Pope (above), with a Roman nose and a spine so twisted he stood barely four feet six inches tall from his stylish shoes to the top of the hump on his back. 

Curll (above, right) thought he had been invited to settle their disagreements. Pope (above, left) intended upon doing just that, by poisoning his guest's beer. 

Later Pope joyfully wrote a mocking obituary of his victim (above), under the name of an Eye Witness. It was titled   “A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison on the Body of Mr. Edmund Curll, bookseller...To be published weekly”. Curll was not killed, but he did projectile vomit until he wished his was dead. It was like a scene from Animal House. Ah, good times among the 18^th century London literati. 

Publishing was in its youth, as young as the internet is today, and just as chaotic, dishonest, unregulated, and unencumbered with a functional business model. 

In 1688 there were only 68 printing presses in London, all controlled by members of the Stationer's  Guild.  But in 1695 Parliament refused to renew that company's monopoly, setting off a decade of pure anarchy. 

Daniel Defoe (above) of "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moll Flanders" fame, noted, “One man studies seven year(s), to bring a finished piece into the world, and a pirate printer....sells it for a quarter of the price ... these things call for an Act of Parliament".  

In 1702 Defoe himself was fined and sentenced to be pilloried (above), but his fans threw flowers instead of rotten fruit. Then, finally, in 1710 Parliament obliged with The Statue of Anne - she was queen at the time - which created a 14 year copyright for authors. 

Still, six years later one author felt required to poison a pirate printer – by making him vomit for 24 straight hours, and then attacking him again in print with his obituary set to rhyme .

“Next o'er his books his eyes begin to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole;
How here he sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug,
And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug.”

Alexander Pope (above)  The Dunciad (1728)

Pope's public justification for the poisoning of  Edmund Curl was as revenge for embarrassing him in eyes of the smart and lovely Lady Mary Montagu (above). 

The morally pompous and socially inept poet Pope (above, right), so famous for his version of Shakespeare and translations of Homer that he was nicknamed “the Bard”, was smitten with the lady. They even maintained a correspondence.  And then Pope privately published one of her poems, under a pseudonym of course, since  nobility were not supposed to engage in actual writing or publication – it smacked of stooping to actually earning a living.  But copies of the ladies' poem were discretely passed about the English court. 

But soon, Curll was selling bootleg copies on the streets for 3pence, humilating the lady and by extension, Pope who had set her up for this dishonor. So Pope could claim he was defending the lady;s honor, and not his own when he poisoned Curll.

Pope then attacked Curll  again (among others) in an epic insulting poem, published under the title of “Dunciad”.  

Curll responded by pirating the poem about his own attempted murder, even publishing an annotated version, also called a “key”. Mocked Curll, “How easily two wits agree, one writes the poem, one writes the key”.

Of course, Edmund Curll was not quite the “shameless Curll” Pope portrayed – not quite. He was infamous for keeping a revolving stable of struggling quill drivers “three in a bed” in the “low-rent flophouses, brothels, and coffeehouses” jammed into Grub Street (above), just off the Fleet Street when his own offices were. 

Originally “grub” referred to the roots and insect larval uncovered when the street was originally scrapped out. Eventually the address was adopted as a badge of honor by the poverty stricken occupants (above), like the eventual great biographer Samuel Johnson, or Ned Ward, who considered his own profession as “scandalous...as whoring....”.

These grubs were hack writers, named after the ubiquitous horse drawn Hackney cabs that plied London's streets, going where ever their paying passengers demanded. 

Which usually meant, obscenity, which as today, always sold well, as did insults and visual attacks on the pompous and well to do - like Pope (above). The occasional advance, paid to a hungry writer was called a “grub stake”, and the pitiful meals they could afford were “grub”.  

The Irishman Jonathan Swift (above), eventual creator of “Gulliver's Travels”, grandiosely referred to this literary sub-culture as "the Republica Grubstreet-aria." But like Johnson, Swift was clever enough and lucky enough to eventually escape the life as a mere grub.

In fact, Curll employed no more Grub Street warriors than any other Fleet Street baron. But he was particularly adept at supplying what the public wanted - licentious sex, and manufactured controversy. Curll paid grubs to engage in a “pamphlet war” - much like the Fox News' war on Christmas and on American democracy.

...as in the 1712 trial of Jane Wehham (above) for witchcraft - she was convicted and executed several times over on grub street and with much profit on Fleet street.

Curll also printed cheap pirated books that sold for a mere shilling, thus undercutting the actual author's authorized editions. Acknowledged one critic, Edmund Curll, “...had no scruples either in business or private life, but he published and sold many good books.”  The dirty and stolen books he published illegally paid for the good books he published legally. 

With Pope's urging, Curll was convicted of obscenity in 1716, and twice more in 1725. In 1726, Curll struck back by befriending the mistress of a Pope confident. 

She passed to Curll several letters in which the arrogantly moral Pope admitting to lusting after the Blount Sisters, Terresa and Martha. In one purloined missive Pope wrote,  “How gladly would I give all that I am worth, for one of their maidenheads.” Embarrassed and angered, Pope helped engineer yet another Curll conviction in February of 1727. 

This time the outrage could not be hushed up and the frustrated and exasperated royal court fined Curll and ordered him pilloried for an hour. At the mercy of the mob, Curll was spared the usual bombardment of rotted food and manure when, before he made his appearance, a pamphlet was read to the well armed crowd, claiming Curll was being punished for defending the recently departed Queen Anne. Thus misinformed, the mob threw nothing and after his hour in the block, carried Curll home on their shoulders. Pope was infuriated and determined to even the score.  Which was probably the real reason he poisoned Curll. 

One of Edmund Curll's most profitable ventures was what came to be called “Curlicisms”. When a well known figure died, Curll would advertise a forthcoming biography, and ask the public for any anecdotes about or letters from the deceased. Then, without validating the submissions Curll would hire a Grub street hack to string them together into an instant and usually inaccurate biography, creating what one potential subject described as “one of the new terrors of death.”

Curll had done this when the Duke of Buckingham died in 1721. But Buckingham had been a peer, a member of the House of Lords, and that body summoned Curll for interrogation. 

Curll was unrepentant, since it was not a crime to publish writings of a peer without their permission. So the Lords made it illegal, and in this Pope saw a new opportunity to again injure Curll.

In 1731 Curll announced a upcoming “Curlicism” of Alexander Pope, himself; “Nothing shall be wanting,” Curll assured his potential readers, “but his (universally desired) death.” Again Curll called for submissions and a mysterious figured identified only as “P.T.” offered letters written by Pope to the Lord of Oxford.  

In 1734 Curll published his vicious biography of Pope which quoted from the Lord of Oxford letters. The next year Pope published his own “Literary Correspondence for Thirty Years”, including the same letters to Oxford.  But the details in Pope's version did not match those published by Curll, as Pope pointed out when he alleged Curll had violated the privilege of a member of the House of Lords and worse, slandered the Lord of Oxford while doing it. The trap was sprung.

The only problem was, Curll again refused to repent. Called again before the Lords, Curll quipped, "Pope has a knack of versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him.” And in fact as well. 

The Duke of Oxford (above) still had the original letters in his files and Curll was able to call them to be examined by the Lords.  Surprise! The texts of the originals did not match those supplied by the mysterious P.T.  So, asked Curll, where had P.T.'s inaccurate versions come from? Curll produced P.T.'s letters so the Lords could judge for themselves who was implicated by the handwriting. 

For a few days, the city of London, or that section that cared about such things, held its breath. And then an ad appeared in a small newspaper offering 20 guineas if P.T. would come forward to admit he had “acted by the direction of any other person.”  

P.T., of course did not collect the reward. And the ploy fooled no one – Pope had written the originals and the fakes and even the ad, and everybody knew it. The House found a political solution; since the published letters were fakes, the law had not been broken. Case closed, except Pope now had even more egg on his face.

Wrote Curll, “Crying came our bard into the world, but lying, it is to be feared, he will go out of it.”.

And so he did.  Pope died on 30 May, 1744, and Edmund Curll followed him in December of 1747.

Thus, Curll earned the last word. He described his relationship with Pope this way, “A fitter couple was never hatched, Some married are, indeed, but we are matched”.

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