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Facebook LIVE from Vicksburg, Today through Thursday!

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vicksburg-live-graphicWe’re hitting Facebook LIVE again this week, this time from the banks of the Father of All Rivers. Yep—ECW is heading to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to broadcast live!

Emerging Civil War is pleased to once again partner with the American Battlefield Trust and the National Park Service for two and a half days of programs that highlight Grant’s overland campaign through central Mississippi to the outskirts of the “Gibraltar of the South.”

ECW co-founder and Trust Education Manager Kris White will emcee, with ECW’s Chris Mackowski as co-host. Also joining us will be historians Timothy B. Smith, Susan McCaa, and Parker Hills, NPS historians Scott Babinowich and Terry Winschel, and others.

For more details, read the letter Kris sent to Trust supporters yesterday: 

Dear Friends,

You have been asking us for a while, and we have been promising. Now, it’s official. We are heading into the Western Theater of the Civil War for our next series of Facebook Live broadcasts. What better place to visit than Vicksburg National Military Park? Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis viewed Vicksburg, Mississippi, as the key to controlling the vital Mississippi River.

Join the American Battlefield Trust as we bring you, virtually, to one of the epochal military efforts of the Civil War—the Vicksburg Campaign. During these live, virtual events, you can “visit” hard-to-reach, iconic sites with leading experts on the campaign. We will be in Champion Hill, Jackson, Raymond, Grand Gulf, and many other places bringing history, commentary, and fun right to your computer or mobile device. You will even get to take a look at some of the land you have helped to save.

The full schedule of events is listed here.

Head over to the American Battlefield Trust’s Facebook page to keep up with the action, May 15-17. While you are there, check out our recent Live broadcasts by clicking on the video tab.

This is just our first venture to the Western Theater this year and the latest in our Facebook Live series. We owe a great deal of thanks to our partners: Vicksburg National Military Park, Battle Focus, Grand Gulf Military Park, and Emerging Civil War.

To learn more about this pivotal campaign, our Vicksburg Animated Map brings the history to life with army movements and battle re-enactments. If you are looking to virtually explore the battlefield, our free Vicksburg Battle App will guide you to key sites, from Port Gibson to the Siege of Vicksburg. Download it today to access historian videos, audio accounts of soldiers from the battle, photos, orders of battle, chronologies and key facts.

See you on the battlefield!

Kristopher White
Education Manager, American Battlefield Trust

P.S. Starting Tuesday, join us live on Facebook as we take you to Mississippi and visit many of the locations tied to the campaign and siege of Vicksburg.


Scenes from Vicksburg, Day 1 (part 2)

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part of a series

We landed in Jackson, Mississippi, yesterday to kick off our Facebook LIVE events from the Vicksburg campaign. Although we presented the campaign a little out of order, we wanted to take advantage of being there, so Jackson became our first program.

Jackson Park 01

The sign at Battlefield Park explaining the action. The earthworks are mislabeled, though: they were built by Federals during the siege of Jackson in July 1863, not by Confederates during the May 1863 battle.

Jackson Park 03

A little bit of spray on the UDC monument looks like the slash of a highlighter marking the dates of the war.

Jackson Park Cannon

A pair of World War-era artillery pieces are placed at the park to represent the Confederate position. Confederates had four guns here during the (short) battle.

Scenes from Vicksburg, Day 2 (part one)

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part of a series

On Wednesday, we started off our Facebook LIVE events at Bruinsburg, the site where Ulysses S. Grant landed his army on the east bank of the Mississippi April 30-May 1, 1863, to kick off his overland campaign to take Vicksburg. It was “Grant’s D-Day,” but with no Germans waiting for him, Kris White said. Historian Parker Hills brought us (with permission) onto private property so we could get to the actual site itself.

As I did yesterday, I wanted to share a few images from the day’s adventures (even as we’re out making new ones today!). Our thanks to our partners at the American Battlefield Trust for inviting us to co-host this series!

Bruinsburg Flood Plain

The landing area today is a wide flood plain, but in 1863, the riverbank ran right along the edge of the brown grass in the foreground.

Bruinsburg Landing Site

This road trace is the path Grant’s men took from their disembarkation point along the river onto the eastern shore of the Mississippi.

Bruinsburg Dike

High water necessitated that Grant’s men march along a dike to get away from the riverbank. The spit of grass in the center of the picture shows the remains of that dike, which has slowly been obliterated by agriculture in the 155 years since. The river would have been behind the camera.

Bruinsburg Dike 02

The dike as it runs through the forest before the road begins its climb away from the river—note how the ground slopes away on either side of the dike, which is the green strip right down the middle of the image. The river would have been to the left of the camera.

Bruinsburg Dike-Parker

Parker Hills, Brig. gen. (ret.), co-hosted today’s segments. Parker, the former chair of Mississippi’s Sesquicentennial Commission, runs “Battle Focus” tours–and man, does he really know his stuff!

Witness Tree

A witness tree stands at the intersection where the historic Bruinsburg road meets the modern road that runs back into Port Gibson.

Scenes from Vicksburg, Day 2 (part three)

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part of a series

We followed the route of Grant’s supply train from the Mississippi up toward the modern Raymond battlefield. One of the myth’s of the campaign is that Grant lived off the land, a la Sherman’s later March to the Sea, but in fact, he had a well-protected supply line.

At Raymond, we did a two-part Facebook LIVE (parts one and two) so that we could visit the two ends of the battlefield, which is maintained by a great Friends of Raymond Battlefield group. Historian Parker Hills is a former president of the group.

Raymond-Parker

Parker Hills lays out the battle for Kris White, while the Trust’s social media guru, Connor Townsend, broadcast’s the program.

Raymond-Confederate

The Confederate artillery position has a reconstructed Whitworth cannon and two Napoleons. The Whitworth had a range of six miles, although no artillerists could actually see that far.

Raymond-Whitworth back

Whitworths were breech-loading pieces, so Parker opened up the breech to offer us a look inside.

Raymond-Whitworth front

Whitworths had hexagonal rifling to allow for greater accuracy over its longer range. This piece was loaded with “birdshot”–filled with birds nests!

Raymond-Federal

The Federal position at Raymond is marked by a line of 22 cannon (Ruggles’ battery at Shiloh, by contrast, has only 14). Spaced 12 yards apart, they would have normally been deployed with 15 yards between them, but space limitations required improvisation.

 

 

The Civil War and General Jim Mattis: A Closer Look at Call Sign Chaos (Part 1)

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The first time I heard Jim Mattis speak was in 2007.  As an Education Director for the U.S. Marine Corps, I attended then Lieutenant General Mattis’ seminar on the 1st Marine Division at the First Battle of Fallujah (2003).  This was a Marine lecture—interactive, with “oorahs” and “yeah, let us see that video clip again”!  I loved it and even joined in the hoopla.  From then on, I paid attention every time the name ‘Jim Mattis’ came up; and, in the fall of 2019, I got the chance to learn a lot more when I read Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by Jim Mattis (Gen. USMC, Ret.) and Bing West.  I didn’t read it for blog ideas, but the list of ideas kept coming.  In addition to the stand-alone blog I wrote about Generals Jim Mattis and Robert E. Lee (“Be not ashamed to say you loved them”), I was motivated to write a two blog series.  This is the first of the series in the form of a closer look at the book and how and why it inspired me.

Call Sign Chaos is a primary source and is a teaching tool for current and future leaders, as well as students of history, leadership, and politics.  The book illustrates how Mattis learned to lead, applied historical lessons, used different leadership approaches, and either overcame, or could not overcome, frustrations.  The authors succinctly cover these subjects by dividing his forty-four years in the U.S. Marine Corps into the three phases: direct leadership covers twenty-nine years; executive leadership spans seven years; and strategic leadership traverses eight years.  What the reader gets is a behind-the-scenes tour—from second lieutenant to a four-star general.  Mattis credits his success to his mentors (commanding officers and Vietnam veterans) and his love of reading history.

With 9,000 books in his library, “warrior-scholar” should be added to the list of monikers for Mattis.  Though partial to studying Roman leaders and historians, he also enjoys reading works on the American Civil War and broader military subjects as well.  When he reads, he critically thinks, and he encourages others to do the same. “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.  History lights the often dark path ahead even if it’s a dim light, it’s better than none.”  The authors expand on this quote by providing numerous examples of how historical leaders and events guided Mattis through complex, volatile situations.  There is not time or space to look at all the commanders, but herein is how a Roman general and several Civil War generals lit that dark path for him.[1]

General Jackson by John Adams Elder (Image by © The Corcoran Gallery of Art/CORBIS)

Mattis was a critical thinker at an early age.  As a second lieutenant, his company commander encouraged him to read Strategy by Liddell Hart and Lee’s Lieutenant’s by Douglas Freeman.  He absorbed the lessons.  He learned from Major General Thomas Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign (1862) that audacity coupled with thorough planning could prevail over numbers.  It was not, however, a principle he put into action as a junior officer.  In fact, he did not see much combat during these years.  He instead bided his time, training and reading books—including ones about Union generals.

Opportunity to put leadership lessons into a battle scenario arrived during Desert Storm in August 1990–February 1991.  Mattis had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel and commanded 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.  He not only looked to Lee when he tried to balance his love for his men against the need to order them into harm’s way but also Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.  How?  When Mattis’ battalion was ambushed, he emulated Grant’s ability to remain unyielding as all was “flying apart” and to maintain the “mental agility to adapt when [his] approach” was not working.[2]  Using Grant’s command style allowed Mattis’ battalion to gain the upper hand and push forward with the main assault.  The Americans and their allies destroyed the enemy forces in just 100 hours.   Desert Storm was over.

The next ten years were spent preparing for the next war.  That came in 2001.   In November, Brigadier General Mattis was given command of Task Force 58 and sent into southern Afghanistan to work with a Special Forces unit.  The operation was dubbed: Operation Rhino.  TF 58 opened a base of operations and went on the offensive, controlling the roads in their sector, isolating and threatening Kandahar.  The mission confounded the enemy leadership in northern Afghanistan, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda were forced to divide their attention and resources between defending the north and south.  Rhino reminded Mattis of the way Major General William T. Sherman’s fast-moving campaigns developed.  He would threaten two objectives, and once the Confederates split their forces, he struck hard and fast at his intended target.  Like Sherman, Mattis’ task force and other supporting units took advantage of their enemies’ confusion and within six weeks Kandahar was captured.

Upon his return to the states in 2002, Mattis was promoted to major general and given command of the 1st Marine Division.  One of his first directives was to assign his division a motto: “No better friend, no worse enemy.”  A phrase he appropriated from an inscription on General Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s tombstone.  (Sulla was a Roman statesman and soldier.)  Now, in the planning phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), Mattis turned again to the Civil War.  He remembered during the Vicksburg Campaign (1863) Grant reduced the number of tents his army carried, allowing them the freedom to maneuver and move rapidly.  Mattis took this idea and directed his men, including the officers, to give up all “creature comforts.”  This allowed more room for food and ammunition, as well as gave the 1st Marine Division the ability to move faster toward their objective inside Iraq.  In just three weeks, the division accomplished their main objective: the liberation of Baghdad.

The march into Iraq is the last time the authors mention a Civil War general, but Mattis’ career was far from over.  He continued to apply history’s lessons as he rose through the ranks.  In 2004, he earned the rank of lieutenant general and accepted command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps Forces Central Command.  He then was nominated for the rank of general in 2007.  He served as U.S. Joint Forces Command and NATOs Supreme Allied Commander.  In 2010, he took command of U.S. Central Command.  He retired from military service after forty-four years as a Marine Corps officer in 2013.

While it was a treat to hear first-hand how Mattis used history to his advantage, I also thought about the three leadership components that aided and hindered him in his career: trust, respect, and communication.  He used these elements with skill from second lieutenant to general.  No matter what rank he held, he trusted, respected, and communicated with the military personnel below and above him.  That said, the politicians he dealt with from brigadier general on up (2001-2013), were not as respectful, sometimes even rude, arrogant, and many times did not trust or listen to his professional advice or communicate with him.  Hmm…is there a Civil War example that illustrates what occurs when a political-military relationship achieves trust, respect, and communication?

Stay tuned for Part II.

Sources:

[1] In my undergraduate days, I was a History and Latin major.  I took Latin (and some Greek history) so I could study the generals in the classical era.

[2] Jim Mattis and Bing West, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead (Random House, New York, 2019), 31.

Question of the Week: 6/15-6/21/2020

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Last week’s question featured the Gettysburg Campaign, and we’re also in the Vicksburg Campaign/Siege season, so…

In your opinion, what’s the key event of the Vicksburg campaign before July 4th?

“Praise the Lord and Admiral Porter”: Running the Vicksburg Batteries

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“We still live,” wrote Lieutenant Elias Smith of the USS Lafayette. “The whole gunboat fleet passed the Vicksburg batteries on Thursday night [April 16, 1863], without receiving material damage. All praise to the Lord and Admiral Porter.” As far as he knew, no Union lives had been lost; about a dozen were wounded, two seriously out of some two thousand men.

The U. S. Navy now had six ironclads, one wooden gunboat, and two troop transports in the river below the city. “How we escaped the firing ordeal as well as we did, is a mystery to us all. We were under fire for over an hour : and such fire! Earthquakes, thunder and volcanoes, hailstones and coals of fire ; New York conflagrations and Fourth of July pyrotechnics—they were nothing to it.”

Smith’s observations were recorded in letters to friends and then published in the New York Times. The ironclad ram Lafayette—converted from a 280-foot sidewheel steamer—was a mainstay of Rear Admiral David D. Porter’s Mississippi River Squadron supporting Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in his campaign to take the Gibraltar of the West with the Army of the Tennessee.

The admiral and the general made a powerful team, melding maritime mobility and firepower with hard fighting on land. It had been a long slog, however. In late December 1862, Grant sent Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman downriver with a major amphibious force landing at Chickasaw Bayou northwest of Vicksburg only to be repulsed with heavy casualties.

Rear Admiral David D. Porter, (Library of Congress)

Porter’s attempt to send gunboats up the Yazoo River and outflank the Confederate army facing Grant also failed, losing the ironclad USS Cairo to a Rebel torpedo—the first ship to be sunk by an electronic explosive device detonated remotely by hand.

During the winter and spring of 1862/63, Grant and Porter conducted a series of intense operations to outflank the city from north and east by digging canals, blowing up levees, flooding the Mississippi Delta, and pushing ironclads, gunboats, and transports through tiny, choked, and sluggish channels and swamps. All fruitless.

Grant’s final option was to march the army through the swamps down the west bank of the Mississippi, cross south of and get behind Vicksburg.

Admiral Porter would have to sneak his gunboats and fragile transports downriver past powerful and plentiful enemy batteries on the bluffs with enough vessels surviving to suppress opposition and get the army safely back across the Big Muddy.

Porter assumed this was a one-way, one-time run down; it would be suicidal to creep back up against strong current. If the navy failed, the Army of the Tennessee could be trapped on the wrong side.

It had been unthinkable in previous centuries for delicate wood and canvas men-of-war—dependent on fickle wind and armed with smaller weapons—to take on shore emplacements. Steam, iron, and increasingly powerful naval artillery had evened the odds between ship and shore. Ironclads were still vulnerable, however, especially to plunging shot.

The Union navy first successfully ran Rebel batteries at Island Number 10 upriver just the previous month, but only with two ironclads (and no transports) against less formidable batteries on low sand banks.

At about 9:30 p.m. on a clear, moonless night, Lafayette slipped her moorings. The wooden gunboat USS General Price and a heavily laden coal barge were lashed alongside to starboard where Lafayette’s armored casemate would at least partially shield them.

Armored ram USS Lafayette in Mississippi River (Naval History & Heritage Command)

Just ahead of Lafayette was the big ironclad USS Benton, lead ship in the column with Admiral Porter aboard; the rest of the squadron followed. In the swirling river, the cumbersome Benton “persistently refused to point her head down stream,” continued Smith. “It was an hour later before the fleet were under way in her wake.”

Porter recalled: “We started down the Mississippi as quietly as possible, drifting with the current. Dogs and crowing hens were left behind.” Engines silent. Chains, cotton and hay bales, and logs piled along the decks provided additional protection.

A grand ball was to be held in the city that night; the admiral hoped “sounds of revelry” would mask their approach. “As I looked back at the long line I could compare them only to so many phantom vessels. Not a light was to be seen nor a sound heard throughout the fleet.”

Benton’s low, dark shadow crept around the point below the heights looming up 280 feet. “We will, no doubt, slip by unnoticed,” The admiral remarked to the ship’s captain, “the rebels seem to keep a very poor watch.”

Lafayette’s men silently stood to their weapons. Portside guns—9” and 11” Dahlgren smoothbores and a 100-pounder rifle—were ready, some at decreased elevation against lower Rebel emplacements, others elevated to strike middle and upper tiers.

Wood Gunboat USS General Price in Mississippi River (Naval History & Heritage Command)

“The whole heavens were suddenly illuminated,” wrote Smith. “The lurid flames, as they shot up from the opposite shore, almost to mid heavens, converted the star-lit night into the brightness of noonday.” On the west bank, a railroad station, outbuildings, and prepositioned barrels of tar burst into flames, backlighting the fleet.

“We had not surprised them in the least,” noted Porter. “The upper fort opened its heavy guns upon the Benton, the shot rattling against her sides like hail….” But the blistering deluge made little impression on four inches of iron plating over forty inches of oak. “There being no longer any concealment possible, we stood to our guns and returned the enemy’s fire.

Admiral Porter’s Fleet Running Rebel Batteries at Vicksburg, April 16th 1863. Currier & Ives Lithograph, New York, 1863. (Naval History & Heritage Command)

“Every fort and hill-top vomited forth shot and shell, many of the latter bursting in the air and doing no damage, but adding to the grandeur of the scene. As fast as our vessels came within range of the forts they opened their broadsides, and soon put a stop to any revelry that might be going on in Vicksburg.”

“At 11.20, the first shots greeted us from the batteries,” continued Smith. “The ‘Lafayette’ seemed to attract particular attention.” Tall chimneys and wheelhouse with a steamer alongside made her a good mark, “two birds with one stone.”

“Standing there amidst that silent group of rough but earnest men, periling their lives for their country, I thought of the kindness of our ‘dear Southern Brethren,’ as shot after shot swept over us with the scream of tigers eager for prey….

“Five hundred, perhaps a thousand, guns were discharged, but not more than one in ten struck, or did any damage to the fleet. They mostly went over…. In such a case, it was hard to ‘turn the other cheek ;’ in fact, it was more satisfactory to give than to receive.”

The Union column hugged the east bank to get under the line of fire, so close they could hear Rebel gunners shouting orders while shells zinged overhead.

Through open gun ports, Lieutenant Smith had a good view down enemy barrels, “which now flashed like a thunder-storm along the river as far as the eye could see ; but the incessant splatter of rifle balls, the spray from falling shot, the thunder of steel-pointed projectiles upon our sides, did not incline one to take a very protracted view of the scenery.”

Lafayette’s gunners got off a few discharges of grape, shrapnel, and percussion shell “in the very teeth of the Confederate batteries…. At each round the rebel artillery-men gave a shout, which seemed surprisingly near.” The ironclad wafted by not one hundred yards from Vicksburg wharves.

Lafayette became almost unmanageable, swinging in river eddies until she was “looking the batteries in the face.” Roiling gun smoke and the glare of burning buildings blinded the pilot. Bursting shells singed his hair but left him unhurt.

“The enemy, supposing we were disabled, set up a fiendish yell of triumph. We soon, however, backed round, and once more presented our broadside to them, and slowly drifted past, as if in contempt of their impotent efforts.” Shells sank the barge, “thus relieving us of one great obstacle to our movements.”

Wrought iron and steel-pointed missiles, 18-24 inches long, 6 to 8 inches in diameter, and about 100 pounds “were thrown by some of the heaviest rifle guns known to modern warfare,” continued Smith. “Nine shots struck the ship, and several of them penetrated the casemates, making large holes and scattering their fragments, and that of the wood-work….”

Lafayette’s armor was 2.5” of plate and 2” of India rubber (which proved useless) over 3” of oak plank, but the armor thinned to 1” plate and 1” rubber aft where most shots came through.

One round smashed through the pilothouse just missing the pilot. A 100-pounder skimmed over the boiler, obliterated a wood partition, and showered wood chips over Lafayette’s captain. Another passed through the paddlewheel housing, clipped the crank arm, and buried itself two feet into solid shaft supporting timber.

Smith’s stateroom was wrecked. He found his mattress sacking tuned to pulp amongst two bushels of corn shucks—finely ground—along with piles of pine chips, the ruin of a straw hat, blankets and clothing, “all covered with the debris of the room, which had been most elegantly ventilated.” And yet not one of the two hundred crewmen received a scratch.

On Benton, a gunner had his leg taken off; another crewman was wounded by a rifle ball through a gun port. Down the line, the transport Henry Clay was hit hard, recorded Admiral Porter, but “the courageous pilot…stood at his post and, with his vessel all ablaze, attempted to run past the fleet.” Men jumped into the water while the vessel floated until she burned up. The pilot was rescued.

Blazing cotton-bales blanketed the river, “looking like a thousand lamps.” Superstructure of the Forest Queen was nearly cut in two but she made it through in repairable condition. The other transport, Silver Wave, suffered minor damage.

“The enemy’s artillery fire was not much to boast of,” concluded the admiral, “considering that they had over a hundred guns firing at us as we drifted down stream in such close order that it would seem to have been impossible to miss us.

“The sight was a grand one, and I stood on deck admiring it, while the captain fought his vessel and the pilot steered her through fire and smoke as coolly as if he was performing an everyday duty. The Vicksburgers must have been disappointed when they saw us get by their batteries with so little damage.

“We suffered most from the musketry fire. The soldiers lined the levee and fired into our port-holes, -wounding our men, for we were not more than twenty yards from the shore. Once only the fleet got into a little disorder, owing to the thick smoke which hung over the river, but the commanding officers, adhering to their orders ‘to drift only,’ got safely out of the difficulty.”

On the night of April 22, six more transports loaded with supplies made the run with little damage. Then under cover of naval artillery, General Grant ferried his army across the river, surrounded and laid siege to Vicksburg, which surrendered on July 4, 1863.

It was one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war, at least as important as the simultaneous victory at Gettysburg. Admiral Porter and the Mississippi River Squadron transported the army, controlled the river, blockaded the city from the west, and provided continuous heavy shore bombardment.

Sources:

Admiral Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1885), 175-177.

H. Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States, on the Southern and Western Waters During the Years 1861, 1862 and 1863 with the History of that Period (New York: F. R. Reed & Company, 1877), 353-359.

“You can do a great deal in eight days”: Ulysses S. Grant’s Forgotten Turning Point (part one)

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Grand Gulf Military Monument Park preserves the site of one of the most monumental–but overlooked–turning points of the Civil War.

Part one of two

Ulysses S. Grant had envisioned his arrival in Grand Gulf, Mississippi, under other circumstances. A week earlier, he had targeted the landing as the ideal spot to cross his army from the west bank of the Mississippi River to the east, and from there, he would launch an overland trek to “the Gibraltar of the Confederacy,” Vicksburg, some thirty-five miles to the north. But on April 29, after a five-hour battle, Federal naval forces proved unable to reduce the Confederate fortifications at Grand Gulf or dislodge the garrison’s defenders.

Grant improvised and switched his landing spot to Bruinsburg. The navy shuttled Grant’s army across on April 30 and, the very next day, Grant threw his men into combat. By May 3, his forces had advanced far enough inland to outflank the Grand Gulf garrison, which abandoned its post lest the men find themselves trapped. When Grant finally arrived in Grand Gulf, it was by horseback from the east rather than by boat from the west, making a seventeen-mile ride from an inland crossroads called Hankinson’s Ferry.

“I had been in the saddle since we crossed the river, three days before,” he later recalled, “and had not had a regular meal or any sleep in that time.”[1] And perhaps worst of all, because he’d been without his baggage “since the 27th of April,” he “consequently had had no change of underclothing. . . .”[2]

But his arrivals at Grand Gulf on the night of May 3, under trying circumstances large and small, would lead Grant to one of the most consequential decisions of the Civil War—an oft-overlooked turning point that illustrated his determination, resilience, and willingness to make calculated risks.

Grant had been trying to take Vicksburg for months. Six separate attempts had all led to naught, although the resulting operations spread Grant’s forces over an arc of more than sixty miles on the Louisiana side of the river. “The division of your army into small expeditions destroys your strength, and, when in the presence of an enemy, is very dangerous,” complained Grant’s boss, General in Chief of the Army Henry Halleck, in early April from his desk in Washington. “What is most desired, and your attention is again called to this object, is that your forces and those of General Banks should be brought into co-operation as early as possible.”[3]

Banks, based in Baton Rouge, had been assigned to capture Port Hudson, twenty-five miles north of the Louisiana capital and, by at least one estimation by Grant, some 300 river miles south of Vicksburg.[4] Port Hudson, like Vicksburg, was a riverside stronghold that sat atop high bluffs and controlled traffic on the river.

Grant had no desire to join forces with Banks, though, either for a move against Vicksburg or Port Hudson. Banks, a political general who’d once been speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, outranked Grant, so Grant knew any junction of their forces would mean he’d take a back seat to the less-able Banks.

And indeed, Banks had been proving his less-ableness for months. Not only had “Commissary Banks” been embarrassed out of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862, he’d most recently run into grief in March in a first stab at Port Hudson. Just as Grant looked for ways to bypass Vicksburg, Banks looked for ways to bypass Port Hudson, and in late March, began an effort that took him up the Red River. This would prove fortuitous to Grant.

By that point, Grant had begun to develop his next plan for attacking at Vicksburg. He would cross the Mississippi somewhere south of Vicksburg and, subsisting off the land and whatever supply chain he could safely maintain, he would approach the river city from its landward side. But Halleck’s pressure to unite with Banks threatened to undermine the effort. Initially, Grant told his boss he would “send an army corps to Port Hudson to operate with General Banks” in the reduction of Port Hudson, detailing the 17,000 men of Maj. Gen. John McClernand’s corps for the task.[5]

Grant promised the detachment by April 25, but by the 19th, he began to equivocate. “This will now be impossible,” Grant told Halleck, but added that he would get the men to Banks as soon as possible. “There shall be no unnecessary delay . . . in my movements.”[6]

Grant’s relationship with McClernand was certainly fraught, and so that no doubt informed his decision to send the difficult subordinate away. McClernand, like Banks, was also a politician-turned-general, and Grant may have felt the two birds of a feather deserved each other. But McClernand did have a credible force and so would be of legitimate assistance. (McClernand had around 20,000 men; McPherson had around 17,000 men; Sherman, still defending the Federal supply depot at Milliken’s Bend but soon on his way to Grand Gulf, had around 20,000 men.)

But the more Grant considered the situation on the Mississippi side of the river, the less he wanted to give up any of his men; the more success he met with in his operation, the less he wanted to attend to Port Hudson.

Orders were orders, though. “Up to this time my intention had been to secure Grand Gulf, as a base of supplies, detach McClernand’s corps to Banks and co-operate with him in the reduction of Port Hudson,” Grant later explained.[7] He rode into Grand Gulf on the evening of May 3 knowing he couldn’t put off his obligation to Halleck and Banks any longer.

(to be continued….)

————

[1] John Russell Young, Around the World With General Grant (New York: The American News Company, 1879), Vol. 2, 620.

[2] Ulysses S. Grant, “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant,” Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters, Mary Drake McFeely and William S. McFeely, editors (New York: Library of America, 1990), 326.

[3] Halleck to Grant, 2 April 1863, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 25.

[4] Grant, memoirs, 328.

[5] Grant, memoirs, 327.

[6] Grant to Halleck, 19 April 1863, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 30.

[7] Grant, memoirs, 327.


“You can do a great deal in eight days”: Ulysses S. Grant’s Forgotten Turning Point (part two)

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Rear Admiral David D. Porter, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Mississippi River Squadron, was a man Grant came to trust implicitly (LOC)

Part two of two

With an escort of twenty cavalrymen, Ulysses S. Grant rode on the evening of May 3, 1863, into the newly captured town Grand Gulf, Mississippi. He passed the now-abandoned Confederate forts, Cobun and Wade, and made his way to the river where four ironclads—Carondelet, Louisville, Mound City, and Tuscumbia—hunkered on the bank, yards away from the two forts they had unsuccessfully tried to reduce just days earlier. The navy had heard the sounds of the forts’ powder magazines going up, set off by the evacuating Confederates, and had sailed in to investigate.[1] Rear Admiral David D. Porter, from his flag ship, Louisville, invited Grant aboard.

Before they got down to business, though, Grant took a bath, borrowed fresh underclothes from a naval officer, and grabbed himself a good meal.[2]

When Grant and Porter finally consulted on the night of May 3, Porter presented news that changed Grant’s situation entirely. Nathaniel Banks had sent a message about his expedition up the Red River, where he’d faced resistance from Confederate Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor. As a result, Banks “could not be at Port Hudson before the 10th of May and then with only 15,000 men.”

“To wait for his co-operation would have detained me at least a month,” Grant realized.[3]

Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks

And then, when he did arrive, Banks would not be able to bring more than 10,000 reinforcements “after deducting casualties and necessary river guards at all high points close to the river for over three hundred miles,” Grant figured. Pemberton, meanwhile, would use the month’s delay to fortify his position at Vicksburg and bring in more reinforcements than Banks would be able to bring.[4]

If Grant rewrote his plan and moved on Vicksburg rather than on a junction with Banks, he might secure a decisive victory. He had the element of surprise. He had momentum. He had his independence. He faced an under-prepared foe.

And . . . he had a boss back in Washington who would most definitely say “No.”

But the operative phrase, Grant knew, was “back in Washington.”

To communicate with Halleck, dispatches had to go back across the river and retrace the army’s route of march along the west bank of the Mississippi back up to Young’s Point, near Milliken’s Bend, north of Vicksburg. From there, messages then traveled on a dispatch-boat to Cairo, the southernmost tip of Illinois, which was “the nearest point from which they could be telegraphed to Washington.”[5]

Even when Grant was still back up at Milliken’s Bend in early April, Halleck had reminded him about the difficulties communicating—and that was without the additional legs of the journey now be included in any relay. “In regard to your dispatches, it is very probable that many fail to reach here in time,” Halleck had warned. He wanted Banks kept in the loop in regards to Grant’s plans and reminded Grant “the only way he can get this information is through these headquarters.”[6]

As Grant calculated it, a message sent to Halleck and a reply sent to Grant would take eight days to make the full circle.

Eight days.

And that would be without any consultations between Halleck and Banks. Not that Halleck would bother. “I knew well that Halleck’s caution would lead him to disapprove of this course,” Grant later wrote; “but it was the only one that gave any chance of success.”[7]

Grant wrote a lengthy report outlining the details of the campaign thus far.[8] “The move by Bruinsburg undoubtedly took the enemy much by surprise,” he said, gearing up for his big reveal. He came to it indirectly, building, talking about the fine “health and spirits” his men enjoyed, how little straggling he witnessed, how nobly they’d all performed thus far. “The country will supply all the forage required for anything like an active campaign, and the necessary fresh beef,” he said.

By this point, Halleck might have started to wonder, What “active campaign?” but Grant plowed on.

“I shall not bring my troops into this place [Grand Gulf],” he finally announced, “but immediately follow the enemy, and, if all promises as favorable hereafter as it does now, not stop until Vicksburg is in our possession.”

“I therefore determined to move independently of Banks, cut loose from my base, destroy the rebel force in rear of Vicksburg and invest or capture the city.” — Grant, Memoirs

He sent the letter off, took care of other business—including a second, shorter report that went via Memphis detailing casualties from the fight at Port Gibson—then made the return trip to McPherson’s corps at Hankinson’s Ferry. “The time it would take to communicate with Washington and get a reply would be so great that I could not be interfered with until it was demonstrated whether my plan was practicable,” he recalled.[9]

Grant now had a window of a little over a week to push toward Vicksburg and either take the city or at least be so deeply involved in operations that it would be impossible to extract himself. Historian Parker Hills correctly summed it up as a “momentous decision to move fast, strike hard, and finish rapidly.”[10] It was a turning point not just in the campaign but a turning point for the war itself. Had Grant stuck to script, the Vicksburg campaign would never have unfolded as it did.

Grant soon plunged into the Mississippi interior. On May 11, anticipating the reply from Halleck, he sent a preemptive message: “As I shall communicate with Grand Gulf no more, except it becomes necessary to send a train with heavy escort, you may not hear from me again for several days.”[11] Battle at Raymond would erupt the next day.

As Grant prepared to cut communications, Halleck, in Washington, sent his reply to Grant’s May 3 dispatch. As anticipated, he argued strongly against Grant’s improvised plan and pushed the original one instead. “If possible, the forces of yourself and of General Banks should be united between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, so as to attack these places separately with the combined forces,” the general in chief wrote.[12] Halleck, at the time, had the battle of Chancellorsville demanding most of his attention, so his delay in replying to Grant is understandable, but that delay extended Grant’s anticipated eight-day window, effectively giving him even more time to get deeper into his overland campaign.

Grant’s May 11 communiqué was obviously intended as cover, for he still managed to keep up a stream of almost daily updates to Halleck as the campaign wore on. He never forgot to plant seeds in support of his mission, though. On May 15, writing to announce the capture of the state capital, Jackson, Grant mentioned, “A dispatch from General Banks showed him to be off in Louisiana, not to return to Baton Rouge until May 10. I could not lose the time.”[13]

His correspondence dried up shortly after that as he fought his way westward, from Champion Hill to the Big Black River to the outskirts of Vicksburg—and, from there, to an eventual July 4 victory, command of all armies in the West, promotion to Halleck’s job as general in chief, Appomattox Court House, and two terms in the White House. In retrospect, the decision he made on Porter’s flagship at Grad Gulf could not have come with higher stakes.

“I remember how anxiously I counted the time I had to spare before that response could come,” Grant later said. “You can do a great deal in eight days.”[14]

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[1] Michael Ballard, Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 2004), 247.

[2] Ulysses S. Grant, “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant,” Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters, Mary Drake McFeely and William S. McFeely, editors (New York: Library of America, 1990), 326.

[3] Grant, memoirs, 327.

[4] Grant, memoirs, 328.

[5] John Russell Young, Around the World With General Grant (New York: The American News Company, 1879), Vol. 2, 621.

[6] Halleck to Grant, 9 April, 1863, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 28.

[7] Grant, memoirs, 328.

[8] The quotes that follow come from the report, written 3 May 1863 in Grand Gulf, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 33.

[9] Grant, memoirs, 328.

[10] J. Parker Hills, “Roads to Raymond,” The Vicksburg Campaign: March 29-May 18, 1863, Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, editors (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press,  69.

[11] Grant to Halleck, 11 May 1863, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 36.

[12] Halleck to Grant, 11 May 1863, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 36.

[13] Grant to Halleck 15 May 1863, O.R. XXIV, Pt. 1, 36.

[14] Young, 621.

Sherman’s “Demon Spirit”

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Sherman’s “Demon Spirit,” John McClernand

In a letter written on April 29, 1863, to his wife Ellen, William T. Sherman privately expressed his misgivings about the Vicksburg campaign Ulysses S. Grant was just then launching. “My own opinion is that this whole plan of attack on Vicksburg will fail must fail, and the fault will be on us all of course,” he wrote.

The entire letter is quite extraordinary, but what really jumps out at me is the venom Sherman holds for fellow corps commander John McClernand. McClernand, a highly influential political general commanding the XIII Corps, was the most senior of Grant’s subordinates. Sherman despised McClernand, who had temporarily replaced him following Sherman’s suspension from command following the Federal defeat at Chickasaw Bayou in late December 1862. That replacement, Sherman later admitted, was “the severest test of my patriotism.”

“The Noises & clamor have produced their fruits. Even Grant is cowed & afraid of the newspapers,” Sherman wrote, suspecting machinations behind the outcry.

Should as the papers now intimate Grant be relieved & McClernand left in command, you may expect to hear of me at St. Louis, for I will not serve under McClernand. He is the impersonation of my Demon Spirit, not a shade of respect for truth, when falsehood is easier manufactured & fitted to his purpose: an overtowering ambition and utter ignorance of the first principles of war. I have in my possession his orders to do “certain things” which he would be ashamed of now. He knows I saw him cow at Shiloh. He knows he blundered in ignorance at the Post & came to me beseechingly, “Sherman what shall we do now?” And yet no sooner is the tempest past, and the pen in hand, his star is to be brightened and none so used to abuse, none so patient under it as Sherman. And therefore Glory at Sherman’s expense.

“Demon Spirit”! Can you believe that? He calls out McClernand as a liar and a coward, too, with “Overtowering ambition.” Harsh words.

Sherman’s reference to “the Post” was Arkansas Post, a Confederate garrison at the mouth of the Arkansas River. Federal forces captured it on January 11, 1863, as part of their operations against Vicksburg (see more, here, from the American Battlefield Trust). McClernand wrote a self-adulatory report of the battle, ignoring Sherman’s key role, further insulting the bruised feelings of the resentful Sherman.

Even after Grant arrived from Memphis in early February to take personal command of operations in the field, tensions between Sherman and McClernand continued to simmer, and Sherman became convinced it was only a matter of time before McClernand slipped him a Brutus-like dagger. “I avoid McClernand, because I know he is envious & jealous of everybody who stands in his way,” Sherman told Ellen earlier in April. “He knows I appreciate him truly and therefore he would ruin me if he could.”

“Appreciate” here serves as a euphemism for “see through him clear as day and recognize him as the smarmy political snake he is.” While that’s my translation, not Sherman’s exact words, he does express a similar sentiment on a February 6 letter to Ellen. “[H]e is a most deceitful man, taking all possible advantage and having no standard of truth & honor but the public clamor,” he wrote.

The context of the April 29 letter, though, stand out because it seems to be written while Sherman was sunk in one of the dark moods he was sometimes prone to. He did not have confidence in Grant’s overall plan for crossing the Mississippi and making an overland attempt on Vicksburg from the rear. Sherman’s own part of that plan entailed making an up-river demonstration against Confederate forces near the Yazoo River to keep their attention fixed there while Grant moved downriver and crossed. “I think Grant will make a safe lodgment at Grand Gulf,” Sherman confided to Ellen,

but the real trouble is and will be the maintenance of the army there. If the capture of Holly Springs [on December 20, 1862] made him leave the Tallahatchie, how much more precarious is his position now below Vicksburg with every pound of provision, forage and ammunition to float past the seven miles of batteries at Vicksburg or be hauled thirty-seven miles along a narrow boggy road?

Sherman himself would eventually supply the answer to this very question. Grant would assign the division of Maj. Gen. Francis Preston Blair of Sherman’s XV Corps to oversee the movement of supplies from Grand Gulf up to the rest of the army as it moved through the Mississippi interior. Sherman characterized Blair in the same category of political general as McClernand, “mere politicians who come to fight not for the real glory & success of the nation, but for their own individual aggrandizement.” Yet Blair would rise to the challenge and keep Grant’s army supplied as it moved, even as the army’s successes made a believer of the dutiful-but-pessimistic Sherman along the way.

Those successes, though, did nothing to soften Sherman’s attitudes toward McClernand, who performed solidly during the overland campaign and at least as well as the other corps commanders in the assaults against Vicksburg itself. Sherman condemned him, by his own actions, as a man “full of vain-glory and hypocrisy” and enamored by a “process of self-flattery,” and there was no changing his mind.[5] The venom Sherman expressed toward his “Demon Spirit” in his letter to Ellen only concentrated over time, as McClernand would come to regret.

————

You can read the full text of Sherman’s April 29, 1863, letter to Ellen at General Sherman’s Blog, created by a “JJ Brownyneal” during the Civil War Sesquicentennial to offer a day-by-day account of Sherman in the war. Other correspondence is also reprinted there, although the blog’s first-person “voice of Sherman” is a fictional construct.

BookChat with Steven Woodworth and Charles Grear, editors of Vicksburg Besieged

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I have been spending a lot of time lately with the latest volume in Southern Illinois University Press’s “Civil War Campaigns in the West” Series, Vicksburg Besieged, edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear (see info on the book here). The volume caps off a three-volume study that began with 2013’s The Vicksburg Campaign, March 29-May 18, 1863, and continued with 2019’s The Vicksburg Assaults, May 19, 22, 1863.

Drs. Woodworth and Grear were kind enough to answer a few questions about their most recent work.

CM: In some respects, the siege of Vicksburg tends to get overlooked. People lump the six weeks into “the siege” without taking a particularly close look at it. Why do you think that is?

 Grear: There were so many moving parts with Vicksburg. Grant had several movements going on all the same time in addition to three major cavalry raids. There were several battles over a large area. It is much easier to comprehend a campaign if it is geographically static. The goal of the campaign was to capture the city of Vicksburg, so that is where people focus their attention. Not Jackson, Big Black River Bridge, Newton Station, Port Hudson, etc. The more people read about the Civil War more they can appreciate the nuances. There are plenty of people that do that outside of historians. Every time I give a talk to a Civil War Roundtable, their members teach me something new or provide a different perspective. Their input is always appreciated.

CM: Your collection demonstrates that there are a number of fascinating components to examine. How did you go about peeling back the onion to decide what facets to look at and what stories to tell?

Grear: We simply asked the contributors what they wanted to examine. Historians tend to produce better studies on the topics that interest them. All we did was make sure none of them overlapped with one another. All the credit goes to the contributors; we just said thank you.

Woodworth: Exactly right.

CM: Are there other aspects you’d have covered if you’d had more space available?

Grear: Personally, I would have liked to see a comparison with the Gettysburg campaign. We looked at the impact on the Trans-Mississippi, but I would be interesting to dig deep and see what people in the East had to say. From my personal studies of Texas in the Civil War, the Texas Brigade was not held up to the same esteem during the war and immediately afterwards as it was decades later. Instead, men such as Tom Green were celebrated for staying to protect the Lone Star State. I would be interested if people in the east at the time viewed Vicksburg as more important than Gettysburg. As you can read in my chapter, the men in the Texas Brigade viewed Vicksburg as a more devastating loss than Gettysburg.

Woodworth: Good points. I would have liked to have dived deeply into the question of possible Confederate relief of Vicksburg. Joseph Johnston and Jefferson Davis had an epistolary argument afterward about whether or not it would have been possible. I would have liked to have explored the possibilities and come to a well researched conclusion not only about whether or not it was possible but laying out the specific reasons why or why not.

CM: As an editor, I’m always delighted when an essayist writes something that surprises me. Are there instances in the book where your writers brought up something that gave you one of those moments?

Grear: The one chapter that pleasantly surprised me was Richard Holloway’s. He told the story of the fighting at Jackson between William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Relief through the songs played by the troops of the 19th Louisiana and Washington Artillery. Specifically, a piano in the trenches that was played during the Union siege of the Confederate lines. The piano still exists and is housed at the Confederate Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans. My one regret was the pictures of the piano, an older and recent photograph, did not have a high enough resolution to be included in the book.

CM: The book caps a three-book series on the Vicksburg campaign, the assaults, and the siege. How did that sequence help you, individually, better understand the overall story of Vicksburg?

Grear: It would be tough to imagine, but we are not done with Vicksburg. We have two more volumes planned that look at the failed attempts to capture the City on the Hill. We intentionally broke up Vicksburg into multiple volumes to emphasize the importance and complexity of this campaign. Compared to other major campaigns this one is multi-faceted. Every branch of the Union military played an important role from the navy, engineers, cavalry, commanders, etc. It has a major Southern city cut off from the rest of the world and citizens played an active role in the events. There are numerous battles, movements, assaults, sieges, trenches, tunnels, etc. Militarily it is only missing alpine soldiers. You can see aspects of future battles in Vicksburg such as the tunnel explosion at Petersburg. In short, by spreading Vicksburg over several anthologies, we can focus more on the nuances of the campaign while placing it in the context of the campaign and overall war.

Woodworth: Exactly. And when you consider how thoroughly some of the eastern campaigns have been studied — and rightly so — it becomes clear that a campaign such as Vicksburg, spanning eight months and deciding the control of the central part of the continent, offers more than enough good material for several volumes.

CM: How do you think it helps readers understand the overall story?

Grear: I think it helps the common reader understand the complexity and importance of the campaign. Too many people just focus on the siege and have little understanding the trials and tribulations Grant went through to even get close to the city. Vicksburg was a tough nut to crack.

CM: What’s next for the series?

Grear: The next volume will examine the campaigns against Fort Henry and Donelson. We are still collecting chapters. As with past volumes we have a healthy collection of established historians and emerging Civil War historians ; ). Included in Forts Henry and Donelson is Brooks Simpson and Brian Steel Wills. Also, to note Jonathan Steplyk will be contributing as well. Jonathan will be taking over my role as series co-editor since this next volume will be my last. Between him and Steven Woodworth, the series will be in excellent hands and can only improve.

Woodworth: The Henry and Donelson volume will be another good one. And thanks, Chuck, for your work on these volumes. Couldn’t have done it without you!

And here are a few short-answer questions: 

CM: What was your favorite source you worked with while writing the book?

Grear: For most of my studies I rely heavily on primary sources, especially soldier’s letters, journals, diaries, and reminisces. My office has a large filing cabinet full of Texas soldier’s letters. To give you an idea, while working on my dissertation I spent three days a week for an entire year scanning the bulk of these letters from the Texas Heritage Museum in Hillsboro, Texas. Also, copies were collected from around the state. In short, I probably have the largest collection of Texas Civil War soldier primary sources in the world. All are copies, though it would be interesting to own one but that is too much responsibility. As I tell my students, being a historian is a morbid profession. We read dead people’s mail.

Woodworth: I’ve especially enjoyed using the short articles by veterans in National Tribune.

CM: Who, among the book’s cast of characters, did you come to appreciate better?

Grear: My perspective of Civil War history has always been from the bottom up. What the common soldier endured always amazes me. The Confederates defending the city with dwindling supplies and being creative with what little they had. The Union soldiers digging the trenches and engineering unique ways to protect themselves while enduring the hardships of the Mississippi weather. Amazingly both sides had the same ultimate goal, to get back home.

Woodworth: I’ll second that.

CM: What’s a favorite sentence or passage you wrote or edited?

Grear: I have two, an expression and a joke. My all-time favorite expression, which I use as often as possible comes from J. B. Polley’s friend Tom at the Battle of Chickamauga (4th Texas Infantry, Texas Brigade). Tom wanted out of the Eastern Theater so he stood behind a tree waving his arms up and down hoping an extremity would be hit by a bullet. Polley asked him what was doing, and Tom replied, “Just feeling for a furlough” and Polley commented that, Tom “continued the feeling as if his life depended on it.” It really captures some humor but also how desperate some men were to return home without deserting. The other is a joke from another Texan that I love to repeat because it shows that Texans have been disdainful of our neighboring states for a long time. When E. P. Petty (17th Texas Infantry) arrived in Arkansas he wrote his sweetheart, “I didn’t come to Arkansas to die—I think that God would never resurrect me here.” Additionally, there are numerous Union quotes that reflect peoples’ views of Texans (some of which people outside the state still hold) such as they were surprised Texans could read and they are not more animal than man. Civil War soldiers are humorous.

CM: What modern location do you like to visit that is associated with events in the book?

Grear: Vicksburg would be the obvious choice. It is embarrassing that I do not get to visit that many battlefields because my family does not enjoy history as much as me. When I graduated from college, over 20 years ago, Dr. Donald S. Frazier took me on a week-long trip from Abilene, Texas, to Pensacola, Florida. We visited every Civil War battlefield and museum there and back. I learned more that week than we could over an entire year. On the way back we spent two days at Vicksburg National Military Park. It would be great to go back to Vicksburg with everything I know now to get a better understanding of the assaults and siege. Also, two days is never enough.

CM: What’s a question people haven’t asked you about this project that you wish they would?

Grear: This is the toughest question in the entire interview! Does Steven Woodworth know everything about Vicksburg and the Civil War? My answer would be yes and if he happens to not know it, it must not be important. It has been a pleasure working with him on these books. My departure from the series was not an easy decision but it was made in the spirit of why it started. A few graduate students at TCU and myself approached Dr. Woodworth to propose this series to Southern Illinois University Press hoping to give emerging scholars a platform to present their research. Similarly, I wanted to give this opportunity to Dr. Jonathan Steplyk.

Woodworth: Thanks, Chuck. Actually, there’s a lot I don’t know about the Civil War. I’m learning more all the time. I have been great having you as a co-editor on this series, and I’m looking forward to working with Jonathan.

————

(NOTE: The “Civil War Campaigns in the West” Series was formerly called the “Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland” Series. In 2016, I talked with Chuck about the series—a conversation you can read here.)

Arkansas’s Role in the Vicksburg Campaign (part one)

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ECW is pleased to welcome guest author Carson Butler. Part one of two.

The Mississippi River is one of the most defining features of the North American continent, and during the American Civil War, it proved to be vital in dictating who would win the conflict. Both President Abraham Lincoln and President Jefferson Davis commented that controlling the Mississippi River was critical for the war effort. Not only did the river serve as a route to transport military supplies to different armies during the war, but it also divided the states of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri from the rest of the south. With the fall of New Orleans and other Confederate strongholds along the Mississippi during 1862, the Federal army had its eyes set on controlling the entire river; by 1863, the Confederacy found itself controlling only a small portion of it, beginning with the fortified position at Port Hudson, Louisiana, and ending with the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. This led Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to launch a campaign to capture Vicksburg and the fortifications at Port Hudson, effectively cutting the Confederacy in two.

The state of Arkansas sent a number of regiments to aid with the defense of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The regiments sent to Confederate Gen. John Pemberton’s army defending the stronghold at Vicksburg were grouped into a single brigade commanded by Gen. Martin Edwin Green. These Arkansans quickly became known as Pemberton’s shock troops in the Confederate Army of Mississippi, mainly because they were hard-fighting soldiers who bore the brunt of the combat during the Vicksburg Campaign. At Port Hudson, the Arkansan regiments were placed under the command of Confederate Gen. Franklin Gardner, and they would defend the fortifications there until forced to surrender after a 48-day siege.

To the soldiers from Arkansas, keeping the Mississippi River in Confederate hands was very important and personal for them. They did not want their state to be cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. In order to stop the Federal invasions into Arkansas, the state needed the flow of supplies and manpower from the other southern states east of the Mississippi River to thwart the Federal campaigns. However, with the Mississippi River completely in the hands of the Federal army, there would be no help or support from the rest of the Confederacy. Arkansas and the rest of the Trans-Mississippi region would be isolated and forced to deal with the advancing Federal armies on their own.

With these thoughts in mind, the Arkansans embarked upon the Vicksburg Campaign with a steadfast determination to not yield the city of Vicksburg, the stronghold at Port Hudson, and ultimately the Mississippi River to the Federals. By trying to achieve this goal, the soldiers from Arkansas would find themselves in almost every major engagement of the campaign, and as a result, they would suffer horrendous casualties.

The opening battle of the Vicksburg campaign began on May 1, 1863, at a place called Port Gibson, south of Vicksburg. After multiple failed attempts to bypass the strong Confederate river batteries and fortifications at Vicksburg, General Grant decided the best way to attack the city would be by marching his army down the Louisiana side of the Mississippi and crossing the river at a location south of the city. To stop the Federals from achieving a beachhead or foothold on the Mississippi side of the river, Pemberton sent General John Bowen’s Division to prevent the crossing. General Martin Green’s Arkansas Brigade was a part of Bowen’s Division, and thus was ordered to dig in at Magnolia Church, a mile west of Port Gibson, to await the advancing Federal columns.

At midnight on May 1, 1863, the first shots of the Vicksburg campaign were fired from the rifled muskets of the 12th Arkansas Sharpshooter Battalion. Lieutenant John S. Bell of the 1 Battalion wrote about this tense moment before chaos erupted on the battlefield. “We could hear the enemy forming,” he stated, “and it was so still we could hear every command given. Our men had orders not to fire until word was given. Soon we could see their line of skirmishers coming down the road and could hear them say there was no one here. . . . When they were within 50 yards, the word ‘fire’ was given.”[1]

For the next three hours under the cover of darkness, the Arkansans defended their position at Magnolia Church despite multiple Federal attacks on their lines. When the fighting resumed in the morning’s light and more Federal reinforcements arrived on the battlefield to bolster the already engaged Federal regiments, Bowen realized his situation was hopeless and ordered a withdrawal through the town of Port Gibson back to the fortifications around Vicksburg. At the battle of Port Gibson, the Arkansans alone suffered 13 men killed, 51 wounded, and 86 missing.[2]

(To be continued….)

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Carson Butler, born and raised in the state of Iowa, is a junior majoring in history, with minors in Civil War Era Studies and Public History, at Gettysburg College. He has worked as a summer intern with the National Park Service at Appomattox Court House NHP and Vicksburg NMP for the past two summers and has hopes to apply for a position in the NPS within the next couple years. He will also be working with the NPS at Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania NMP this upcoming summer. While he enjoys early American military history spanning from the Revolutionary War to the American Civil War, his main area of interest and focus is the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the Civil War. 

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[1] Edwin C. Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign: Grant Strikes a Fatal Blow, vol. 2 (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside Press, 1986), 355.

[2] Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, vol. 2, 402.

 

Arkansas’s Role in the Vicksburg Campaign (part two)

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Col. Thomas Dockery of the 19th Arkansas

ECW is pleased to welcome guest author Carson Butler. Part two of two.

Following victory at Port Gibson, Grant pushed his forces north-eastward, and ultimately marched his army towards Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. After defeating a Confederate force under Gen. John Gregg at Raymond on May 12, 1863, his pathway to Jackson was uncontested. Despite some Confederate resistance, Jackson fell on May 14. Pemberton realized he had to do something about Grant’s army, and decided to sally out from his fortifications at Vicksburg to launch a surprise attack on the Federal forces. The Confederate and Federal forces ran into each other on May 16, 1863 at a place between Vicksburg and Jackson called Champion Hill.

After initial success atop Champion Hill, the Confederates defending the hill were soon forced to retreat after numerous Federal attacks on their position. The retirement of these Confederates put Pemberton in an awkward position, as his army’s escape route back to Vicksburg was cut off by the Federal forces. Pemberton then ordered Bowen’s Division to counter-attack the Federals to reopen his retreat route, and Green’s Arkansas Brigade was ordered to charge. Private A. H. Reynolds of the 19th Arkansas Infantry described the scene:

With a forward march we passed those troops that were falling back, and then we were ordered to charge. We had caught the enemy with empty guns, and they gave way easily. We were charging up the long slope from the negro quarters to the highest peak of Champion Hill and almost parallel with the public road to Bolton. At the top of the hill we met another long line of blues climbing the steep hill. They were within eighty feet of us when we gained the top of the hill, and without orders it seemed as if every man in our ranks fired at once. Never before nor since have I ever witnessed such a sight. The whole line seemed to fall and tumble head-long to the bottom of the hill. In a moment they came again, and we were ready and again repulsed them.[3]

Colonel Thomas P. Dockery, also of the 19th, wrote:

The formation of the country was such that the troops could scarcely advance faster than a walk, and many of the hills were ascended with great difficulty; notwithstanding, the command pushed impetuously forward, driving back in confusion the many fresh lines formed to meet our gallant troops. The enemy had been driven over a mile, all the artillery captured from Major-General Stevenson’s division recaptured, and several pieces taken from the enemy. I notified General Green, commanding brigade, that my ammunition was about exhausted. He replied that the ordnance train had been ordered from the field, and it would be impossible to refill the cartridge-boxes; that the men must use the ammunition of our and the enemy’s killed and wounded; that the enemy must be driven as long as it were possible to advance the lines, [even] if it had to be done with empty guns. . . .[4]

While sustaining heavy losses, the Arkansans held their position for as long as they could. However, after multiple Federal attacks on their position, the Arkansas Brigade was sent fleeing from the battlefield back towards the defenses at Vicksburg.

The battle of Champion’s Hill, or Baker’s Creek, would not be the final engagement the Arkansans participated in during the Vicksburg campaign, as a day later, Green’s Brigade was ordered to man earthworks east of the Big Black River to cover the retreat of the rest of the Army of Mississippi. On the morning of the May 17, the Federals attacked the Confederate positions. After three minutes, the Confederate line was broken. Since the Arkansans’s backs were to the river, there was no opportunity for the entire brigade to make it safely back to the fortifications at Vicksburg. As a result, part of Green’s Brigade was captured at the battle of the Big Black River, while many other Arkansans had to swim across the river to safety, leaving behind those who could not swim to be captured by the enemy or to die drowning in the attempt.

Despite taking heavy casualties at the battles of Port Gibson, Champion’s Hill/Baker’s Creek, and Big Black River, the Arkansans continued to fight on, playing an important role in plugging the holes in the defensive lines that had been broken or damaged by artillery or infantry attacks during the two Federal attempts to take the city of Vicksburg on May 19 and 22, respectively.

With these attacks unsuccessful, Grant ordered his army to besiege the city. Similarly, 150 miles to the south, the Federal army under Gen. Nathaniel Banks began to besiege the Confederates at Port Hudson under Franklin Gardner. For the remainder of both of these sieges, Arkansans stabilized weak sections of the Confederate works, helping to drive off the Federal attempts to take their positions.

However, by July 4, 1863, the starving Confederates at Vicksburg had had enough, and Pemberton surrendered the city to Grant. As a result of the surrender, the Arkansans of Green’s Brigade, as well as the other 30,000 Confederate soldiers at Vicksburg, were paroled and allowed to go home until they were exchanged. A few days later, on July 9, Gardner surrendered Port Hudson to Banks, and the 6,500 men under his command were paroled and allowed to go home, as well.

In December 1863, the Arkansans who served in the Vicksburg campaign either at Vicksburg or Port Hudson were exchanged and reorganized in the following months to serve in the Trans-Mississippi theatre of operations. With the loss of the Mississippi River, Arkansas suffered from being cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. With the defeat of Confederate forces at the battle of Helena, Arkansas, on July 4, 1863, there were no major campaigns to retake the Confederate territory lost to the Federal forces in Arkansas other than Confederate Gen. Sterling Price’s campaign to take back Missouri in 1864. While some Arkansans continued to fight until the end of the war, when the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department surrendered on May 10, 1865, others deserted the Confederate army and traveled back to their homes in Arkansas to try to pick up their civilian lives again.

When thinking about the grandeur of the Vicksburg campaign, the courage and bravery of the Arkansas soldiers should not be forgotten, and by remembering them, we can assure that their personal sacrifices will not be lost to the pages of history.

“Holding the Line at All Hazards” by William Gilbert Gaul, Birmingham Museum of Art (https://www.artsbma.org/collection/holding-the-line-at-all-hazards/)

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Carson Butler, born and raised in the state of Iowa, is a junior majoring in history, with minors in Civil War Era Studies and Public History, at Gettysburg College. He has worked as a summer intern with the National Park Service at Appomattox Court House NHP and Vicksburg NMP for the past two summers and has hopes to apply for a position in the NPS within the next couple years. He will also be working with the NPS at Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania NMP this upcoming summer. While he enjoys early American military history spanning from the Revolutionary War to the American Civil War, his main area of interest and focus is the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the Civil War. 

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[3] A. H. Reynolds, “Vivid Experiences at Champion Hill, Miss.,” Confederate Veteran 18 (January 1910), 21.

[4] United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols. in 128 parts (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), Series I, volume 24, part 2, p. 116 (hereafter cited as O.R., I, 24, pt. 2, 116).

That Other Cavalry Guy: Benjamin H. Grierson

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Benjamin H. Grierson

April is a significant month in Civil War history. Some argue that the war both began and ended in Aprils four years apart. Lincoln was assassinated in April. The war’s first really bloody battle—the foreshadowing of what was to come—occurred in April at Shiloh, in Tennessee.

April also marks one of the most decisive mounted operations of the entire war, and certainly one of the most successful raids. Here I am talking about April 1863, when Union Brigadier General Benjamin H. Grierson with 1,700 Illinois and Iowa cavalrymen rode the almost the full length of the state of Mississippi from north to south, departing LaGrange Tennessee on April 17, and riding into Baton Rouge on May 2.

Designed to distract Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, commanding the Confederate defenses of Mississippi (and especially Vicksburg) while Ulysses S. Grant attempted passage of the Mississippi River below the Rebel fortress, Grierson’s expedition proved wildly successful. “We killed and wounded about of the enemy,” Grierson reported, “captured and paroled over 500 prisoners. . . destroyed between 50 and 60 miles of railroad and telegraph . . . over 3,000 stand of arms, and other army stores . . . to an immense amount. We also captured 1,000 horses and mules. Our loss . . . was three killed, seven wounded, five left on the route sick, . . . and nine men missing. We marched over 600 miles in 16 days.”

Even more importantly than the material damage, Grierson diverted an entire infantry division of Pemberton’s forces to try and defend the railroad, while, as historian Tim Smith pointed out, during the five most crucial days of Grant’s campaign, virtually all of Pemberton’s telegraphic message traffic was focused instead on Grierson’s movements.

Few cavalry operations in history have had such a strategic impact. No other Civil War cavalry operation proved as decisive to a larger campaign.

And yet, Benjamin Grierson is not well known to the average Civil War enthusiast. Many have heard of his raid, but few really know about the rest of his career during the war. When stacked against more sensational names like Forrest or Stuart, he fades into the background.

Like Nathan Bedford Forrest, Grierson lacked any professional military background. Born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, by the time of the war he was a music teacher and storekeeper in Jacksonville, Illinois, west of Springfield. He began the war as an aide to Union General Benjamin M. Prentiss but was commissioned as a major of the 6th Illinois Cavalry in October 1861. He rose to command the regiment the next April.

Unlike the Union Army of the Potomac in Virginia, the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee, or their counterparts in Confederate service, Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee never really consolidated its mounted forces into a single corps command. Though the organization existed on paper, it was not used inf the field. Instead, Grant continued to follow the early war practice of attaching smaller cavalry forces to his infantry commands, or scattering them in brigades; as a result, the mounted officers in his army rarely had a chance at higher command.

Grierson and his staff, 1864



Grierson, who spent his entire war operating in this theater, never commanded more than a division of cavalry. That does not mean he was sidelined. After his spectacular raid against Pemberton, he served under Nathaniel Banks during the subsequent siege of Port Hudson; and then, in 1864, was involved in repeated efforts to defeat Nathan Bedford Forrest in Mississippi—to mixed success.

Forrest was transferred out of the Confederate Army of Tennessee at his own request in November, 1863; returning to his home state to help defend it in the wake of the Vicksburg disaster. Forrest led a semi-independent cavalry corps of between 8,000 and 10,000 men throughout 1864, facing off against various Union commanders. Forrest’s most spectacular victory, Brice’s Crossroads, was won in June against Union General Samuel Sturgis, with Grierson leading Sturgis’s cavalry force. Badly trounced in that encounter, the Federals fell back to Memphis, only to try again in July. This time the Union commander was A. J. Smith, with Grierson again commanding the cavalry. The Battle of Tupelo, fought in mid-July under a sweltering Mississippi sun, resulted in a Confederate defeat. It severely damaged Forrest’s command and—most importantly—kept Forrest tied down in Mississippi instead of raiding Sherman’s lengthy supply line; the railroad from Louisville to Nashville, Chattanooga, and into North Georgia.

The Buffalo Soldier Monument, Fort Leavenworth, KS



Surprisingly, even though Grierson was a pre-war music teacher and storekeeper with no military experience and an outright fear of horses, he chose to make the army his career after the war. He also undertook to cross the color line, commanding the 10th United States Cavalry Regiment, one of four black regiments (one other cavalry, the 9th, and two of infantry, the 24th and 25th) in U.S. Service after the war. Commanding a Negro regiment came with a certain amount of ostracism from his fellow white officers, but Grierson respected the black troops who fought alongside him in Mississippi during the war, and willingly embraced the command.

Ben Grierson is worth a second look.

Sources:
Timothy B. Smith, The Real Horse Soldiers, Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid through Mississippi. Savas Beatie, 2018.

Robert H. Leckie, Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and his Family. University of Oklahoma Press, 1984.

Bruce J. Dinges and Shirley A. Leckie, eds. A Just and Righteous Cause: Benjamin H. Grierson’s Civil War Memoir. Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.


A Hoosier at Port Gibson

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ECW is pleased to welcome back guest author Daniel A. Masters.

The 8th Indiana Infantry was among the first troops from the Hoosier State to enlist in the Civil War, but it wasn’t until the battle of Port Gibson on May 1, 1863, that the regiment came under serious fire. As related by Capt. Samuel H. Dunbar of Co. B, the regiment was among Grant’s vanguard in the thrust across the Mississippi River that marked the opening land operation of the Vicksburg campaign. The regiment was in the midst of a night march aiming to take the Rebel riverside batteries at Grand Gulf when four Confederate cannons lit the night. Federals formed into line and the battle of Port Gibson began.

Dunbar related the story in this letter published in the May 28, 1863, issue of the Hancock Democrat:

Black River, Mississippi
May 8, 1863

I take pleasure at this, my earliest convenience, informing our friends of the part taken and loss sustained by Co. B in the fight near Port Gibson on the 1st instant. Grand Gulf, a strong Rebel fortification on the left bank of the Mississippi River, was bombarded by the gunboats on the 29th instant. From the opposite side, the army witnessed the whole affair which you may rightly conjecture was quite interesting. The batteries, however, were so well constructed and the guns so well protected that the powerful fleet had but little effect and finally ceased firing and drew off without silencing a gun. The same evening, the army moved on the Louisiana shore to a point below the fortifications. At night the gunboats and transports ran the blockade without injury. The morning following, the divisions of Generals [Eugene A.] Carr and [Peter] Osterhaus embarked and were told that they must run the blockade, land upon the bluff, and storm their works. This looked hazardous and would have resulted in ruin though I did not hear a single murmur or dissent. All seemed resigned to the sacrifice.

But it seemed that General John McClernand had no idea of doing any such thing, for our surprise was great when our boats steamed down the river leaving the frowning Gibraltar in the rear. We landed on the Mississippi side seven miles below at about noon. General William P. Benton commands the First Brigade in General Carr’s division which is the right of General McClernand’s corps. The First Brigade immediately upon disembarking took the road to Port Gibson with orders to gain the hills about four miles from the river and hold them until the balance of the corps could draw rations and moved forward. About 4 or 5 p.m. we halted for rest and to cook our supper. After which and after darkness had set in, we resumed the march. Between midnight and 1 a.m., having marched twelve miles from the river, our skirmishers were fired upon. Advancing a little further we were hailed by a battery of 12-pdr Rebel howitzers planted upon a hill in front of us, raking the road we were pursuing. This was the first positive salute of the kind that Co. B had ever received.

Notwithstanding the obstruction, the column moved steadily on. The 1st Indiana Battery took position and opened upon the enemy to aid us in making the advance. After we got in range, the shot and shell came thick and fast booming and bursting on both sides of us and above our heads. The regiment happened to marching left in front; consequently Cos. A and B were longest exposed to the fire and should have suffered more, but fortunately did not lose a man. Ike McGee of our company had his nose skinned by a piece of shell. When the regiment neared the battery, it filed right and went down into a hollow out of direct range but was still followed by the missiles of the infernal guns. After getting into the ravine, we were drawn up on the brow of the hill under cover of which we remained until morning.

At sunrise, we opened on their pickets and skirmishers and the 8th Indiana was assigned its position on the extreme right of the line of battle. The battlefield, and indeed the country, is but a succession of hills, ridges, and ravines. The enemy was, of course, concealed in the timber. Their position was well chosen and strong. Our regiment began the musket fire. We were upon one ridge and the enemy upon another with a deep ravine dividing us. We fought there for some time when we were ordered to charge down into the ravine and up the hill from which the enemy was firing. The charge was executed in fine style and with alacrity notwithstanding the difficulties; cane and grape vines covered the sides of both ridges. Arriving upon the hostile hill, the Rebels were not there but had gone we knew not whither. At this time, the battle was raging furiously on the left and center.

By noon, the Rebels were driven from the first position which was taken and the Rebel battery which had scared us so badly the night before was charged and taken by the 18th Indiana. In the afternoon, General [George F.] McGinnis’ brigade was holding a hill upon the right and was engaged by a large force of Rebels. His men being handled very roughly, he came to General Benton very excited and said he would be compelled to give up the point unless reinforced. The 8th Indiana, tired and weary from constant exertion from early dawn, was at that moment doing nothing and at the command promptly hastened on the double quick to the relief of the suffering.

The hill occupied by the enemy was covered with heavy timber but the side next to us was clear. At its base lay the 29th Wisconsin fighting with vengeance, but its dead and wounded were piled up everywhere. Above and in the rear of them was another hill upon which was the 11th Indiana and 11th Wisconsin. When we came to the ravine with the 29th, we were greeted by a deadly volley of musketry—a melancholy introduction to the work before us. We had, as understood, been sent to the support of the regiment there, but to our surprise, they considered themselves entirely relieved and left us all alone in our glory. Standing at the base of the hill, we were fast promising to be cut to pieces when Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Parrish drew his sword, took the advance, and ordered a charge up the hill with a yell that reverberated afar. Up we went and poured such a deluge of bullets into them that they broke and ran in the wildest confusion. This was a whole Rebel brigade driven from an advantageous position by the impetuous 8th. Our company fought gloriously. Five men were wounded in less than five minutes; none of these are at all dangerous and all except McGee and Roney are now with the company. Many narrowly escaped; John Underwood’s cap box was shot through, Eli Stevens’ had an oil cloth wrapped around him which caught a bullet, and Wallace Alexander was shot through the haversack. I am proud, now doubly proud of the boys. There is no discount on any of those actually engaged.

At sunset the battle closed and we sank to sleep on the field. In the morning the bird had flown. We immediately began pursuing them through the town of Port Gibson, but by burning the wire suspension bridges over the bayou the Rebels succeeded in getting away, leaving most of their dead and wounded. We went to Grand Gulf which had been hastily evacuated. We are in nearly three miles of the Black River on the opposite side of which the enemy is strongly posted. I presume we are waiting the auspicious moment to pounce upon them. Everything is cheerful here. The prospect seems bright and we are ready and anxious to make the grand trial.

Yours respectfully,

S.H. Dunbar
8th Indiana Infantry


The Fearful Squadrons and the Decrees of Providence

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On May 10, 1863, as Ulysses S. Grant moved his army into the Mississippi interior on his eventual way to Vicksburg, the the newspaper in the state capital, Jackson, attempted to bolster the flagging spirits of residents. “The prospect in Mississippi grows more encouraging from moment to moment,” The Mississippian proclaimed, more with gusto than with evidence.

“Every hour of delay and hesitation renders Grant’s situation the more precarious,” the paper wrote.

His very number embarrass him. Where is he to obtain his supplies? . . . Memphis is really his remote, his precarious base of supplies. His transports must steal down the Mississippi, like midnight thieves, past the grim and ever-watchful batteries of Vicksburg. . . .

Whilst he delays, General Starvation, General Disease, General Despondency, will marshal their fearful squadrons, and league with Confederates soldiery to carry out the decrees of Providence.

Two days later, on May 12, Grant would defeat a Confederate force in Raymond, and two days after that, on May 14, he would capture the state capital itself.

So much for the “decrees of Providence.” Starvation, disease, and despondency, though, would all make appearances in the days and weeks to follow, although those “fearful squadrons” would take a greater toll on Mississippians than on the Federals—as the siege of Vicksburg would demonstrate.

“Sublime but Dismal Grandeur”: The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi

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S.C. Miles as sketched for his biography of “Old Abe” the War Eagle

“There are some slight errors in history in regard to the capture of Jackson, which I will take opportunity to correct,” declared Samuel C. Miles, a veteran of the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, in a 1893 letter to the National Tribune. Miles was an inveterate letter writer, and among veterans of the regiment, he in particular loved to refight their old battles. Between 1893 and 1897, Miles took up his pen no fewer than 15 times to correspond with The National Tribune’s “Fighting Them Over” section, a column where veterans could refight with pen the battles they first fought with rifles.

In the summer of 1893, Miles turned his attention to the regiment’s action during the battle of Jackson, Mississippi. The Tribune printed the reminiscences as a two-part account on July 27 and August 3.

Miles’s hyperbolic writing style is, in its way, a delight to read. His accounts are expansive, grand, larger than life. Everything seems bigly.

Miles’s regiment, the 8th Wisconsin, served in Brig. Gen. Joseph Mower’s Second Brigade in Brig. Gen. James Tuttle’s Third Division in Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s XV Corps. The regiment had as its mascot a live bald eagle named “Old Abe,” named after the president of the United States, which gave the regiment and the brigade its “Live Eagle” nickname. Miles—in a biography he published of Old Abe, described the eagle as a “fine specimen of our national emblem . . . [who] so grandly shared all the privations, exposures and perils of the grand and triumphant campaigns and over thirty battles. . . .”

On the night of May 13, Sherman’s corps advanced northeast from Raymond, Mississippi, toward the state capital—“Fighting Joe Mower’s invincible Second (Live Eagle) Brigade in the lead, skirmishing with the enemy and steadily driving them toward Jackson,” crowed Miles. To the north, Maj. Gen. James McPherson advanced on Jackson from the northwest. The two wings of the army had coordinated closely to time their arrival in Jackson as simultaneously as possible.

Awaiting them were about 6,000 Confederates under the titular command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, recently arrived from his headquarters in Tennessee. But no sooner had Johnston disembarked from his train than he took one look at the situation and immediately set to work on plans to evacuate the city. As Johnston packed up, he appointed Brig. Gen. John Gregg to command of the defenses and buy as much time for Johnston and the army’s supplies to make their escape as possible.

Battle finally opened in earnest just after dawn. The day’s heaviest fighting occurred on McPherson’s front, but to read Miles’s account—told in a voice that would make later pulp novelists proud—Sherman’s men experienced the full drama and trauma of war. Just after dawn, the men in Sherman’s column could hear “the heavy booming of cannon away to the left, where McPherson was engaging the enemy,” Miles wrote, “with the shells bursting around us, the rapid fire of musktey [sic] and a storm of leaden hail sweeping by, blending with the almost incessant lightning and thunder crash of heaven’s artillery, with the down-pouring torrents from the clouds—all combine to make a scene of sublime but rather dismal grandeur.”

Confederates made a smart defense along a rain-swollen creek Sherman’s men could not cross, forcing a bottleneck at the bridge where the road crossed the stream. Sherman’s troops forced passage when the Confederates failed to torch the bridge, perhaps because the wood was too drenched from the storm. As Federals flooded across the span, the Confederates fell back to the works at the edge of town. A number of artillery pieces bolstered the works, manned by eager if slightly trained citizen volunteers.

Rather than attack head on, Sherman sent a flanking force that eventually made its way unopposed unto the city. At about this time, the skies began to clear, and the situation directly in front of the Confederate works looked clearer, too. “The rain is now over, and the bright sun begins to pierce the fast-fleeting clouds and cheer the thoroughly-drenched soldiers with his bright rays,” wrote Miles, apparently ebullient that his Vitamin D deficiency would soon be alleviated.

Despite the play of Confederate artillery, Mower, at the center of the Federal line, began to suspect that not all was as it appeared before him. Then came the sound of cheering from somewhere in the Confederate position—the huzzahs of the flanking force as it began to capture Confederate artillery positions from the rear. Gen. Tuttle decided to send his entire division—Mower, Matthies, and Buckland—forward.

“We meet the heavy artillery fire from the enemy’s line of city defenses along the ridges and high ground across the open fields,” Miles wrote, using present tense to underscore the immediacy of the action:

but without delay Fighting Joe issues orders to his regimental commanders to deploy in line as they advance under cover of the timbered ridges along the open fields. Above the battle’s din of booming cannons’ roar and bursting shell the command rings forth along the line, ‘Attention! Fix bayonets—Forward—Double-quick—Now, steady, boys! Keep your alignment—March!’ And now out upon the open field sweeps that invincible line of loyal blue and vengeful glistening steel . . . [toward] the unquailing, even line of valiant defenders. . . .

Mower’s four regiments made up the center of the attack. “[B]eneath one of those four stands of proudly-waving regimental banners,” recalled Miles, “the War Eagle Old Abe’s valiant form and spreading wings proclaim to that line of rebel gray that they are vainly resisting a foe who never knew defeat.” Another of Old Abe’s biographers (and there were a few, Miles among them) later described the eagle as “all spirit and fire. He flapped his pinions and sent his powerful scream high above the din of battle.”

In his account, Miles hits his stride during the sprint to the Confederate earthworks:

On sweeps the irresistible line of blue, undismayed and unchecked by the terrible storm of lead and iron which thins their ranks and strews the field with mangled slain. With their thundering Union cheer pealing clear above the battle’s horrid din, as their undaunted line sweeps up that last homestretch of bristling trench and parapet-crowned hights [sic], is it any wonder that when they leap over those defenses they find most of that chivalrous line in full flight for safer localities, while those brave men who choose to stay, either too brave to run away, that they may fight another day, or dare not leave the shelter of their trenches to turn their backs toward the charging foe, are gobbled within their defenses?

In fact, Confederates had largely abandoned the works already on Gregg’s orders, but that hardly mattered to Miles in his recollection of events. “Having cleared and captured the defenses of Jackson on the southwest,” Miles reported, “the Live Eagle Brigade pursues the retreating Confederates through the streets to the north . . . and the whole Confederate force is immediately in hasty retreat in the direction of Canton. . . .” By his account, the thundering success of Sherman’s assault, not Gregg’s orders, “compelled the hasty evacuation of those in front of McPherson’s Corps on the Clinton road. . . .”

The regiment’s route of march brought them to the Mississippi statehouse “where the Confederate flag is arrogantly waving above the State capitol dome,” Miles snarled. “It does not take the Color Guard of the Live Eagle regiment many minutes to enter the building and haul down the Secession rag, and . . . the Stars and Stripes of the 8th Wis. are proudly waving in its place.”

The Mississippi capitol

This incident, over time, became a source of great tension among veterans of the Army of the Tennessee. Many units claimed the honor of raising their flag over the city, and the National Tribune served as a key battleground for fighting over that particular distinction. Miles’s two-part piece was written as his salvo in the battle. “[A] capture of a State Capitol and a Confederate flag floating thereon was not a matter of such common occurrence as to be considered unworthy of record,” he insisted. Several other members of the regiment, in their own writings, corroborated Miles’s assertion, but no definitive proof has ever emerged.

As any soldier who has only a glimpse of the action on his immediate front, Miles’s account of the battle of Jackson gives great weight to the fighting by Mower’s brigade, even to the short shrift of other brigades in the division (Buckland’s brigade, for instance, sustained heavy, straight-on artillery fire). However, McPherson’s corps, fighting along the Clinton road, bore the greatest brunt of the battle. The Federals suffered exactly 300 casualties, with 265 of them on McPherson’s front.

The Confederates, meanwhile, suffered some 845 casualties and the stinging loss of 17 guns, most of which were captured by Tuttle’s division as it swept into the works following Gregg’s withdrawal.

Although the May battle of Jackson was not as pivotal as, say, Port Gibson or Champion Hill, it provided Grant with much-needed breathing room by dispersing Johnston’s potential threat in the Federal rear. It also hampered the Confederacy’s ability to reinforce or resupply the army in Vicksburg by cutting one of the necessary rail lines for moving in troops or supplies. Finally, the fall of the state capital—the third to fall in the war—provided a shocking blow to morale throughout the South.

“[T]he city still stands,” Miles wrote in 1893, capturing in present tense the moment of his brigade’s departure in 1863 but reflecting, through his sense of drama, something larger, too, “and her magnificent capitol, with all its valuable records, where foul treason was first ordained, is left unharmed, as a monument of their outraged country’s forbearance and the generosity of their hated Yankees and conquerors, a monument to their shame. . . .”

“Our Army Was Thoroughly Beaten”: An English Rebel Remembers Champion Hill

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At the very top of Champion Hill, a sign marks the peak of the “hill of death.”

ECW is pleased to welcome back Daniel A. Masters    

This extraordinary letter, written by former English army officer Stephen Edward Monaghan Underhill to his mother in Coldstream, Scotland in the waning days of the siege of Vicksburg, gives us an account of Underhill’s experiences during the campaign. At the time, Underhill was serving as an aide-de-camp to Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Lee. The 21-year-old Underhill had resigned his commission in the British army and entered the Confederacy through the blockade at Charleston, South Carolina in January 1863. From there, he journeyed to Mississippi and gained an appointment to Lee’s staff. Underhill gained favorable notice from Lee for his “gallantry and efficient service” during the Vicksburg campaign.

The letter had a rather twisted path to publication in the Guernsey Times of Cambridge, Ohio. Underhill wrote that he had entrusted the letter to a civilian in Vicksburg as he anticipated that the city would soon be captured and that his private communications would be limited. Underhill’s letter was evidently either found or intercepted by Lieut. John C. Douglass of the 78th Ohio Volunteer Infantry who was then serving as assistant adjutant general on Brig. Gen. Elias S. Dennis’s staff (Second Brigade, Third Division, XVII Army Corps). Douglass sent the letter home to Ohio, and the Guernsey Times ran Underhill’s letter in their August 20, 1863 issue.

Headquarters, Second Brigade, Stevenson’s Division, Trenches, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Sunday, June 28, 1863, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the 42nd day of the siege

Mrs. Underhill, Coldstream, my dear, dear mother,

It is with feelings of great doubt and uncertainty that I sit down to write this. To give you some idea of how matters have turned out as they have, I must go back until, say, the middle of April. General [Stephen D.] Lee and staff and troops had returned from the Deer Creek Expedition. The enemy, as usual, lay in force on the side of the river seven miles away and all was going on quietly and well, when one dark night six iron clad gunboats and as many transports well protected with cotton bales started to run down the river and past our guns. All were at their posts and all men could do was done. One iron gunboat was sunk, two others rendered disabled and helpless and two transports burned. The remainder, through frequently struck, got past. A few days after the enemy landed simultaneously at Snyder’s ten miles above us and at Bruinsburg 40 miles below. General Stephen D. Lee was sent to Snyder’s; he pronounced the landing a mere feint and returned to his own command. Next morning troops were dispatched to meet the enemy: Generals [John S.] Bowen and [Brigadier General Martin E.] Green’s Missouri brigades and General [Edward D.] Tracey’s Alabama brigade, numbering in all 6,000 men.

On the 1st of May our army 6,000 strong encountered that of the enemy which numbered some 30,000. This force had marched across the peninsula, had embarked opposite Warrenton to disembark at Bruinsburg on the opposite side from their point of embarkation and some 30 miles further down the Mississippi. The 1st of May, as I said above, saw a bloody fight at the small town of Port Gibson on a small creek called Bayou Pierre, where notwithstanding the overwhelming superiority of the enemy, they were held in check all that day. Our loss was frightfully heavy and included the death of General [Edward D.]Tracey, a young, brave, and able soldier whose loss is mourned universally. On the night of the 1st of May, our forces retreated meeting  [Brigadier General William E.] Baldwin’s and [Colonel Alexander W.] Reynolds’ brigades, say 3,000 men, coming to reinforce them, burning the bridges, and took up a strong position near Grand Gulf on this side of Bayou Pierre (General Lee was not with this army but I had ridden down to see the fight and General Lee had given me a letter to General Bowen, the senior brigadier in command).

On the evening of the 2nd of May, General [William W.] Loring arrived and took command and so did General [Lloyd] Tilghman with part of his brigade. General Loring, learning that the enemy had by means of a pontoon bridge crossed Bayou Pierre and flanked us, ordered a retreat which commenced at 1 a.m. on Sunday May 3rd. Our heavy batteries at Grand Gulf on the Mississippi River which had several times repulsed the Federal ironclads were blown up and abandoned and with the enemy only a short distance in our rear, we marched toward Big Black, a stream crossed by the railroad at Big Black Bridge, some 12 miles from Vicksburg. We met other reinforcements (Taylor’s and Barton’s brigades) and we then headed for Hankerson’s Ferry over the same stream but lower down and some 20 miles from Vicksburg. General Lee had been ordered out to take command of Tracey’s Alabamians, a fine brigade some 2,500 strong, consisting of five regiments and a battery (20th, 23rd, 30th, 31st, and 46th Alabama Infantry regiments, Waddell’s six-gun Alabama Battery). To our brigade, which I of course rejoined, was entrusted the duty of guarding the rear. We skirmished heavily with the enemy all the way and succeeded in procuring time for the passage of all wagons, stores, etc. when our brigade itself crossed over and destroyed the bridge all under the enemy’s fire.

From this time until the 10th the armies lay on either side of the river, the Federals constantly getting large reinforcements from below, while we, whose disparity of numbers was daily on the increase, were only able to hold the various fords and ferries and were quite unable to redress or avenge upon the enemy the destruction and devastation with which they visited the country they occupied. The enemy remained quietly opposite us recruiting their numbers and the health of the troops until on the 10th they moved off in the direction of Jackson, the capital of this state. We now heard that reinforcements were on their way from Charleston, South Carolina and Port Hudson, Mississippi to our relief and that General Joe Johnston himself was about to command us in person. We at once moved up on this side of the Big Black and crossed at the railroad bridge, following in the enemy’s track. On the 11th, the enemy tapped the railroad and cut the telegraph wires thereby cutting off all our communication.

On the 12th they came across Gregg’s brigade on its way up from Port Hudson at Raymond. It made a gallant resistance but after losing one half of its number, had to retreat to Jackson. The two days we lay in line of battle in strong position near Edward’s Depot awaiting the enemy. On the evening of the 15th we started toward Clinton where we heard the enemy had last been seen. Our division being in advance, General Loring’s division (Buford and Tilghman’s brigades) 5,000 strong came next, and then came Bowen’s and Green’s Missouri brigades. Smith’s division remained behind to guard. Lieutenant General [John C.] Pemberton now took command we brought our forced march of Friday evening May 15th to a close on Saturday about 2 a.m. when we bivouacked in an open field. We had no wagons with us, but the men were so exhausted that they soon forgot their hunger in sleep. By 4:30 next morning, a courier arrived from General [Joseph E.] Johnston directing us at once to make a junction with him and immediately afterward a scout came in to say the enemy was making a forced march to get in our rear and between us and Vicksburg. General Pemberton at once ordered a retreat. Our wagons, ordnance, hospital, trains, etc. were all sent off on the Vicksburg road while the troops after a five-mile march formed line of battle on a strong position near Baker’s Creek and Edward’s Depot on the Raymond and Clinton road, and there awaited the approach of the enemy.

It was now about 7 a.m. The men were completely broken down by hard marching and none had had anything to eat for nearly 36 hours. Under these auspices we awaited battle on a glorious May morning. General Loring’s division was on the right; Stevenson’s on the left extending nearly to Baker’s Creek and our brigade (Lee’s) was on the extreme left of our division (Stevenson’s). General Bowen’s division was in reserve and General Pemberton commanded in person. The battle commenced about 7:30 with heavy skirmishing on the right. It gradually rolled round to the left, however, and came to us, ceasing on the right entirely. By 9 o’clock the enemy had massed large bodies of troops in our front and Cumming’s on our right. General Lee had, six different times, moved his brigade that it might not be outflanked by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. Five separate times did I gallop at top speed upward of a mile and back bearing the same message from General Lee to General [Carter L.] Stevenson to the effect the enemy were outflanking him. Five times did I bring the reply, “Tell General Lee I know it and am moving my division accordingly.” Five times did we take a new position on our left, but the cry was “still they come.”

At this time the enemy seemed to have completed their arrangements for they made a simultaneous and vigorous attack along our lines. They advanced in three lines and to each of our little brigades they opposed at least a division. We could only bring two brigades into the fight at this time for the others were guarding and holding important positions. At first our men stood up the work gallantly and vigorously returned the deadly fire than thinned their ranks. They went down by dozens before the Yankee artillery and musketry, but many a Yankee bit the dust. There were two distinct lines respectively of blue and brown, marking where the dead of either army lay where they had fallen when the fray began. This unequal contest lasted several hours but though wearied almost to death and though pressed by overwhelming odds, the Second Brigade still held out, patiently awaiting the arrival and aid of our other two brigades or those of Loring or Bowen. It did not come, however, and one of Cumming’s Georgia regiments being hard pushed broke and took shelter in the woods. It was like a bank crumbling away before the action of a torrent to watch our lines at this juncture. The panic seemed contagious and as it ran down the lines, regiment after regiment caught it till both brigades were in full retreat, leaving all their artillery and all dead and wounded in the enemy’s hands.

With some trouble the fugitives were rallied on the crest of a hill and again faced the now victoriously advancing enemy. Once more the men from Alabama and Georgia sent their missiles into the ranks of Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio, and the death yell of the Western men rang loudly out under the luxuriant magnolia groves in which they fought. Again, the Southern troops showed signs of wavering and General Lee, seizing the banner of the 30th Alabama and followed by his staff, rode down the line and led it to the charge. New life seemed to have been infused into the Southern troops. They rushed on with leveled bayonets, cheering wildly. The Northerners rapidly though steadily retiring and pouring volley after volley into their pursuers. At length a shout announced some triumph for the enemy who in a moment rallied and halted, as did also our men, and sure enough there lay General Lee upon the ground. Before any of us could reach him he had disengaged himself from his dead horse and mounting another once more led the charge. We were now passing over our old position when once more did Lee’s horse fall dead, amidst a triumphant shout from the enemy. This time our troops fairly broke and ran notwithstanding every effort and all example. General Lee stood for a moment in despair. A ball, and then a second, both fortunately spent, struck his left sleeve, penetrating it and bruising his arm but doing no further damage. Captain Elliott of our staff had his horse shot and a ball broke his sword. I escaped.

General Lee now mounted a third horse and followed his brigade which was once more formed in the magnolia wood upon the hill. He sent me to General Barton to ask for reinforcements. I took a short cut and the first thing I knew I was amongst a number of Yankee sharpshooters who demanded my surrender. I declined, and spurring my horse in another direction, some of them fired and killed my horse. I then jumped into a ravine. At the bottom I met a wounded Federal officer who when I wouldn’t yield, fired three shots of his Colt at me but would not face me with his sword. I got into a rye field and ran up it. Some of our men were at the top and fired several shots at me ere they discovered their mistake. When I got up to the road I caught and mounted a loose horse (which by the way died last week of the sixth shot, five balls having failed even to maim him), saw several aides riding about who all told me the day was lost. Barton’s brigade had been demolished and Green’s wild Missourians, after having completely routed one Yankee division, retaken all our artillery and made 560 Yankees prisoners, had been surrounded by two other divisions and had only cut its way out with frightful loss. General Tilghman had been killed by a chance shot and General Pemberton had ordered a retreat to Big Black Bridge. I tried to get back to General Lee but the Yankees intervened. I tried to get around them, lost myself in a wood, got fired at again, and finally escaped by swimming Baker’s Creek.

I was so hot, hungry, and tired to death that life was hardly endurable, but I rode sadly on with the tide of wagons and fugitives that poured along the road. At last, I came up with our headquarters wagon, hauled it on one side, and enjoyed a wash and some flour scorees and a drink of water. I now asked if it was near noon and was thunderstruck to find it was past six. At Big Black Bridge I saw General Pemberton, but he could tell me nothing. I heard General Lee was killed and his brigade taken and was in despair. From a gentle eminence I could see Edwards’ Depot and the fine plantations and country seats in a blaze, showing too plainly the advance of the pursuing foe. I had nothing to do at the bridge, so I rode on to Vicksburg, got there at midnight, and put up at our own headquarters. So ended the battle day.

Our army was thoroughly beaten. Our junction with Johnston was prevented and we lost 18 guns and several thousand stand of small arms and some 5,000 killed, wounded, and prisoners. Our own brigade suffered frightfully. Naturally Vicksburg was in great alarm. I heard that General Lee had been surrounded, lost one regiment, and had cut his way out with the remainder of his brigade; that our whole army, except Loring’s division, had crossed to this side and we held the Yankees at bay at our breastworks on the other side until 8 o’clock, though there was some very severe fighting when Vaughn’s brigade broke and run. Upwards of 2,000 of them were taken as well as a number of Missourians who could not get away. The enemy took 21 more guns, making our two days’ loss in artillery amount to some 39 pieces. We were obliged to burn the bridge, a very fine one, which with its trestlework extended nearly a mile.

I wrote you on Friday by a Federal prisoner going out and I hope you will get it soon. I will write you as soon as I can. I am naturally down spirited, so you must not expect me to say more. Before this reaches you the papers will have told you whether my hopes or fears will have been realized. Give my love to dear father. I was going to write him separately, but feel too sick and tired.

Love to dear Emily, Sarah, and Joe, and believe me my dear, dear mama, ever your affectionate son, S.M. Underhill, Lt. and A.D.C. to Gen. S.D. Lee, Second Brigade, Stevenson’s Div., Dept. Miss. & E. La.[1]

Lieutenant Underhill did get an account of the Vicksburg campaign into the hands of his family. A similar missive to the one captured by Lieutenant Douglass appeared in an August issue of the Edinburgh Scotsman in Scotland, which was later picked up and re-published by the New York Evening Post on September 7, 1863.

Following his parole at Vicksburg, Lieutenant Underhill was commissioned as a first lieutenant of cavalry and eventually became colonel of the 65th Alabama Infantry, serving in the defenses of Mobile until the end of the war. Underhill elected to remain in the United States, becoming a resident of Mobile and serving for a time as the city’s chief of police. He later moved to Austin, Texas where he died on February 6, 1904 at age 62.

————

[1] Stephen Edward Monaghan Underhill to Mrs. Underhill, Letter, in Guernsey Times, August 20, 1863.

 

Taking It Day By Day

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Hindsight often obscures our understanding of how events unfolded and their results became apparent. Because we know how it went, we lose something of the immediate perspective that both sides had, not to mention the fog of war.

To illustrate what I mean, take a look at this map of U.S. Grant’s advance on Vicksburg in 1863:

Seems neat and precise, right? Perhaps also inevitable?

Now go back and look at the map and imagine it unfolding day to day – the running of the batteries, the movement of the armies, the crossing of the river, then the plunge into Mississippi followed by a thousand daily decisions and considerations as Grant orchestrated this advance. Or look at it from J. C. Pemberton’s Confederate perspective, as this movement unfolds slowly and generates confusion about Grant’s destination and route. Neither commander got all their information at once, or knew exactly how things would progress. Their decisions were made based on their character and experience combined with the best available information. The campaign could have ended myriad ways, but combination of their choices over several weeks produced this exact drama and result.

Military operations (and many other events) unfold day by day – not, as hindsight tries to tell us, all at once. We should keep this in mind as we consider history and the perspectives of the participants.

A Bold Scheme and a Mysterious Coincidence in the Final Days of the Vicksburg Campaign

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By July 15, 1863, Gen. Joe Johnston’s “Army of Relief” suddenly found itself in need of relief of its own. Johnston’s impotent posturing during most of the Vicksburg Campaign had done little to alleviate Confederate misfortunes inside the besieged city, and following Vicksburg’s surrender, Federal commander Ulysses S. Grant decided to turn his full attention toward the pesky Johnston lurking vaguely in the Federal rear. Grant sent his pitbull, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, to deal with Johnston’s “Army of Relief” once and for all.

Sherman, with 40,000 men from his own XV Corps bolster by the IX and XIII Corps, moved eastward toward the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, where Johnston holed himself up with his 30,000 men. “Instead of attaching as soon as it came up, as we had been hoping, the Federal army intrenched itself, and began to construct batteries,” Johnston later wrote, somewhat defensively.[1] Johnston’s own fortifications invited a siege.

Siege of Jackson, Mississippi

Beginning on July 10, Sherman began to lob artillery shells into the city, hoping to demoralize and dislodge his adversary—but he quickly realized he was going to need more ammunition. “[W]e carried with us a good supply of ammunition, sufficient for an open field battle, but not for a siege,” Sherman reported; “and the moment I saw a siege was inevitable, I dispatched Captain McFarland, of my staff . . . to bring up a supply for such an event, and in the mean time our batteries were restricted in their use of ammunition so as to reserve at all times a sufficient quantity for an open field fight or a sally.”[2]

Sherman estimated that his artillerists used about 3,000 rounds over the two days of July 12-13, “all of which did great execution.”[3]

“I then only awaited the arrival of the ammunition train to open a furious cannonade on the town from all points of our line,” Sherman said.

Those supplies were soon in coming. On July 14, Johnston got wind that “a large train, loaded with artillery-ammunition, had left Vicksburg by the Jackson road,” he later wrote. “The enemy was observed to be actively employed in the construction of batteries on all suitable positions.”[4]

Johnston summoned Brig. Gen. William “Red Fox” Jackson to lead a cavalry force into the Federal rear “to endeavor to intercept and destroy the ammunition-train. . . .”[5] Jackson set out with a brigade of Texans, reinforced on the 15th by two additional regiments, and managed to get themselves into position for a strike.

And herein arises an interesting little puzzle.

“A man has just come into our lines from the rear, named A. Leroy Carter, representing himself to be of the Third Iowa Infantry, and just escaped from Jackson’s cavalry,” wrote IX Corps commander Maj. Gen. John Parke in a dispatch to Sherman.

The appearance of the Hawkeye was startling. His alibi? “This man states that he has been a prisoner since January 4, and detained because he was caught plundering,” Parke wrote. “He has since been kept under guard, and attached to the blacksmith’s or farrier’s department for Jackson’s division.”[6]

Even more startling than Carter’s appearance was the news he passed along to Parke: “He says Jackson is headed this way, and the idea among the men was that he would attack our rear, so that they could make a sortie simultaneously on our front.” Carter even provided details troop strengths of Jackson’s force.

“Certainly a bold scheme,” Parke decreed.

While the details Carter offered Parke proved accurate—and his report did allow Federals to foil Jackson’s planned attack—Carter’s alibi seems more suspect. As a captive farrier in the Confederate cavalry, possessing such key details seemed “quite an accomplishment for a prisoner serving in a support role,” notes historian Jim Woodrick.[7]

Woodrick confirms that a soldier by the name of Leroy Carter had, indeed, served with the 3rd Iowa.[8]

However, a July 18, 1863, report from Confederate scout Sam Henderson offers a strangely complementary tale.

On July 15, two scouts under Henderson’s command were waylaid by an ambush of “15 Yankees,” and while most of the Federal gunfire “fortunately missed,” one shot at least hit the horse of one of the scouts. “[T]hey overtook and captured him,” wrote Capt. Henderson, in charge of the scouts; “a very serious loss to my command—one of the best men I ever knew.”[9]

The name of the scout: Leroy Carter.

“Whether just an amazing coincidence, or whether Carter was an incredibly observant prisoner, a trusted scout or a Union spy may never be known,” Woodrick has concluded. “The fact is, however, a man named Carter provided incredibly detailed and important information at just the right time to Sherman. . . .”[10]

The foiled plan, lamented Johnston, allowed the ammunition train to safely reach Sherman, who later wrote that he used his artillery “pretty freely.”[11]

“This made it certain the abandonment of Jackson could be deferred little longer,” he concluded—and by July 17, he and his forces had (again) abandoned the Mississippi capital.[12]

“This seems to me a fit supplement to the reconquest of the Mississippi River itself,” Sherman later wrote.[13] And it might all be attributed to the puzzling appearance of an Iowan by the name of Leroy Carter—if, indeed, that’s who he really was.

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[1] Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, Directed, During the Late War Between the States, by Joseph E. Johnston, General, C.S.A. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1874), 206.

[2] Sherman, report, O.R. XXVI, Pt. 2, 535.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Johnston, 208.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Parke to Sherman, 15 July 1863, O.R. XXVI, Pt. 2, 554-555.

[7] Jim Woodrick, The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi (Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2016), 83. I want to give a shout-out to this great little book, which is packed with excellent details about the entire siege. The action was a coda to the Vicksburg Campaign, but it’s often overlooked. Jim’s book does the story real justice.

[8] Woodrick, 82-83.

[9] Henderson to Johnston, 18 July 1863, O.R. XXVI, Pt. 3, 1015.

[10] Woodrick, 83.

[11] William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875), 331.

[12] Johnston first abandoned Jackson on May 14, 1863, just hours after arriving in the city from Tennessee.

[13] Sherman, report, 537.

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