The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian

  He was on his own, however, in a way he had neither intended nor foreseen. His plan had been to use Grand Gulf as a base, accumulating a reserve of supplies and marking time with Sherman and McPherson, so to speak, while McClernand took his corps downriver to cooperate with Banks in the reduction of Port Hudson, after which the two would join him for a combined assault on Vicksburg. But he found waiting for him today at Grand Gulf a three-week-old letter from Banks, dated April 10 and headed Brashear City—75 miles west of New Orleans and equally far south of Port Hudson—informing him of a change in procedure made necessary, according to the Massachusetts general, by unexpected developments in western Louisiana which would threaten his flank and rear, including New Orleans itself, if he moved due north from the Crescent City as originally planned. Instead, he intended to abolish this danger with an advance up the Teche and the Atchafalaya, clearing out the rebels around Opelousas before returning east to Baton Rouge for the operation against Port Hudson with 15,000 men. He hoped to open this new phase of the campaign next day, he wrote, and if all went as planned he would return to the Mississippi within a month—that is, by May 10—at which time he would be ready to co-operate with Grant in their double venture.… Reading the letter, Grant experienced a considerable shock. He had expected Banks to have twice as many troops already in position for a quick slash at Port Hudson, to be followed by an equally rapid boat ride north to assist in giving Vicksburg the same treatment. Now all that went glimmering. Some 30,000 men poorer than he had counted on being, he was on his own: which on second thought had its advantages, since the Massachusetts general outranked him and by virtue of his seniority would get the credit, from the public as well as the government, for the reduction of both Confederate strongholds and the resultant clearing of the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf. Grant absorbed the shock and quickly made up his mind that he was better off without him. Banks having left him on his own, he would do the same for Banks. “To wait for his cooperation would have detained me at least a month,” he subsequently wrote in explanation of his decision. “The reinforcements would not have reached 10,000 men after deducting casualties and necessary river guards at all high points close to the river for over 300 miles. The enemy would have strengthened his position and been reinforced by more men than Banks could have brought. 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.”

  So much he intended, though he had not yet decided exactly how he would go about it. One thing he knew, however, was that the change of plans called for an immediate speed-up of the accumulation of supplies, preliminary to launching his all-out drive on the rebel citadel two dozen air-line miles to the north. A look at the Central Mississippi interior, with its lush fields, its many grazing cattle, and its well-stocked plantation houses—“of a character equal to some of the finest villas on the Hudson,” a provincial New York journalist called these last—had convinced him that the problem was less acute than he had formerly supposed. “This country will supply all the forage required for anything like an active campaign, and the necessary fresh beef,” he informed Halleck. “Other supplies will have to be drawn from Milliken’s Bend. This is a long and precarious route, but I have every confidence in succeeding in doing it.” Accordingly, he ordered this supply line shortened, as soon as the river had fallen a bit, by the construction of a new road from Young’s Point to a west-bank landing just below Warrenton. “Everything depends upon the promptitude with which our supplies are forwarded,” he warned. He had already directed that two towboats make a third run past the Vicksburg guns with heavy-laden barges. “Do this with all expedition,” he told the quartermaster at Milliken’s Bend, “in 48 hours from receipt of orders if possible. Time is of immense importance.” Hurlbut was ordered to forward substantial reinforcements from Memphis without delay, as well as to lay in a sixty-day surplus of rations, to be kept on hand for shipment downriver at short notice. To Sherman, hurrying south across the way, went instructions to collect 120 wagons en route, load them with 100,000 pounds of bacon, then pile on all the coffee, sugar, salt, and crackers they would hold. “It is unnecessary for me to remind you of the overwhelming importance of celerity in your movements,” Grant told him, outlining the situation as he saw it now on this side of the river: “The enemy is badly beaten, greatly demoralized, and exhausted of ammunition. The road to Vicksburg is open. All we want now are men, ammunition, and hard bread. We can subsist our horses on the country, and obtain considerable supplies for our troops.”

  With all this paper work behind him, he left Grand Gulf at midnight and rode eastward under a full moon to rejoin McPherson, who had reached Hankinson’s Ferry that afternoon and had already dispatched cavalry details to probe the opposite bank of the Big Black River. From his new headquarters Grant kept stressing the need for haste. “Every day’s delay is worth 2000 men to the enemy,” he warned a supply officer, and kept goading him with questions that called for specific answers: “How many teams have been loaded with rations and sent forward? I want to know as near as possible how we stand in every particular for supplies. How many wagons have you ferried over the river? How many are still to bring over? What teams have gone back for rations?” His impatience was such that he had no time for head-shaking or regrets. Learning on May 5 that one of the two towboats and all the barges had been lost the night before in attempting the moonlight run he had ordered, he dismissed the loss with the remark: “We will risk no more rations to run the Vicksburg batteries,” and turned his attention elsewhere. This touch of bad luck was more than offset the following day by news that Sherman had reached Hard Times, freeing McPherson’s third division from guard duty along the supply route, and was already in the process of crossing the river to Grand Gulf. The red-haired general was in excellent spirits, having learned that four newspaper reporters had been aboard the towboat that was lost. “They were so deeply laden with weighty matter that they must have sunk,” he remarked happily, and added: “In our affliction we can console ourselves with the pious reflection that there are plenty more of the same sort.”

  One thing Grant did find time for, though, amid all his exertions at Hankinson’s Ferry. On the 7th he issued a general order congratulating his soldiers for their May Day victory near Port Gibson, which he said extended “the long list of those previously won by your valor and endurance.” He was proud of what they had accomplished so far in the campaign, he assured them, and proudest of all that they had endured their necessary privations without complaint. Then he closed on a note of exhortation. “A few days’ continuance of the same zeal and constancy will secure to this army the crowning victory over the rebellion. More difficulties and privations are before us. Let us endure them manfully. Other battles are to be fought. Let us fight them bravely. A grateful country will rejoice at our success, and history will record it with immortal honor.”

  Pemberton at this stage was by no means “badly beaten.” Neither was he “greatly demoralized,” any more than Vicksburg’s defenders were “exhausted of ammunition.” Nor was the road to the city “open,” despite Grant’s suppositions in his May 3 note urging Sherman to hurry down to get in on the kill. It was true, on the other hand, that the southern commander had been acutely distressed by the news that the blue invaders were landing in force on the east bank of the river below Grand Gulf, for he saw only too clearly the dangers this involved. “Enemy movement threatens Jackson, and, if successful, cuts off Vicksburg and Port Hudson from the east,” he wired Davis on May Day, before he knew the outcome of the battle for Port Gibson, and he followed this up next morning, when he learned that Bowen had withdrawn across Bayou Pierre, with advice to Governor Pettus that the state archives be removed from the capital for safekeeping; Grant most likely would be coming this way soon. Another appeal to Johnston for “large reinforcements” to meet the “completely changed character of defense,” now that the Federals were established in strength on th
is side of the river, brought a repetition of yesterday’s advice: “If Grant crosses, unite all your troops to beat him. Success will give back what was abandoned to win it.”

  If this proposed abandonment included Vicksburg, and presumably it did, Pemberton was not in agreement. He already had ordered all movable ordnance and ammunition sent to that place from all parts of the state, in preparation for a last-ditch fight if necessary, and he arrived in person the following day, about the same time Grant rode into Grand Gulf with a twenty-trooper escort. For all his original alarm, Pemberton felt considerably better now. Davis and Seddon had promised reinforcements from Alabama and South Carolina—5000 were coming from Charleston by rail at once, the Secretary wired, with another 4000 to follow—and Sherman had withdrawn from in front of Haines Bluff, reducing by half the problem of the city’s peripheral defense. Johnston moreover had agreed at last, now that Streight had been disposed of, to send some cavalry under Forrest to guard against future raids across the Tennessee line. Much encouraged, Pemberton telegraphed Davis: “With reinforcements and cavalry promised in North Mississippi, think we will be all right.”

  His new confidence was based on a reappraisal of the situation confronting him now that Bowen, with his approval, had fallen back across the Big Black River, which curved across his entire right front and center. Not only did this withdrawal make a larger number of troops available for the protection of a much smaller area; it also afforded him the interior lines, so that a direct attack from beyond the arc could be met with maximum strength by defenders fighting from prepared positions. Presumably Grant would avoid that, but Pemberton saw an even greater advantage proceeding from the concentration behind the curved shield of the Big Black. It greatly facilitated what he later called “my great object,” which was “to prevent Grant from establishing a base on the Mississippi River, above Vicksburg.” Until the invaders accomplished this they would be dependent for supplies on what could be run directly past the gun-bristled bluff, a risky business at best, or freighted down the opposite bank, along a single jerry-built road that was subject to all the ravages of nature. As Pemberton saw it, his opponent’s logical course would be to extend his march up the left bank of the Big Black, avoiding the bloodshed that would be involved in attempting a crossing until he was well upstream, in position for an advance on Haines Bluff from the rear and the establishment there of a new base of supplies, assisted and protected by Porter’s upper flotilla, which would have returned up the Yazoo to meet him. But the southern commander did not intend to stand idly by, particularly while the latter stages of the movement were in progress. “The farther north [Grant] advanced, toward my left, from his then base below, the weaker he became; the more exposed became his rear and flanks; the more difficult it became to subsist his army and obtain reinforcements.” At the moment of greatest Union extension and exposure, the defenders—reinforced by then, their commander hoped, from all quarters of the Confederacy—would strike with all their strength at the enemy’s flanks and rear, administering a sudden and stunning defeat to a foe for whom, given the time and place, defeat would mean disaster, perhaps annihilation. Such was the plan. And though there were obvious drawbacks—the region beyond the Big Black, for example, would be exposed to unhindered depredations; critics would doubtless object, moreover, that Grant might adopt a different method of accomplishing his goal—Pemberton considered the possible consummation of his design well worth the risk. Having weighed the odds and assessed his opponent’s probable intentions from his actions in the past, he was content to let the outcome test the validity of his insight into the mind of his adversary. “I am a northern man; I know my people,” he was to say. Besides, he believed that the Federals, obliged to hold onto one base to the south while reaching out for another to the north, had little choice except to act as he predicted. It was true that in the interim they “might destroy Jackson and ravage the country,” he admitted, “but that was a comparatively small matter. To take Vicksburg, to control the valley of the Mississippi, to sever the Confederacy, to ruin our cause, a base upon the eastern bank immediately above was absolutely necessary.”

  Whatever else was desirable in the conflict now about to be resumed, he knew he would need all the soldiers he could get for the close-up defense of the line on the Big Black. In this connection, at the same time he informed Richmond of the pending evacuation of Grand Gulf he requested permission to bring the so-far unthreatened garrison of Port Hudson north for a share in the coming struggle. “I think Port Hudson and Grand Gulf should be evacuated,” he wired Davis on May 2, “and the whole force concentrated for defense of Vicksburg and Jackson.” Accordingly, in conformity with Johnston’s advice to “unite all your troops,” he ordered Major General Franklin Gardner, commanding the lower fortress, to strip the garrison to an absolute minimum and move with all the rest of the men to Jackson; those remaining behind would follow as soon as Richmond confirmed his request for total evacuation. On May 7, however, Davis replied that he approved of the withdrawal from Grand Gulf, but that “to hold both Vicksburg and Port Hudson is necessary to a connection with the Trans-Mississippi.” So Pemberton countermanded the order to Gardner. He was to return at once to Port Hudson “and hold it to the last. President says both places must be held.”

  Such discouragement as this occasioned had been offset in advance, at least in part, by the defeat three nights ago of Grant’s third attempt to run supplies downriver past the Vicksburg batteries. The sunken towboat and the flaming barges—not to mention the four Yankee journalists, who had not drowned, as Sherman had so fervently hoped, but had been fished out of the muddy water as prisoners of war—were evidence of improvement in the marksmanship of the gunners on the bluff, although it had to be conceded that the brilliant moonlight gave them an advantage they had lacked before. Another encouragement came soon afterwards from Johnston, who replied on May 8 to a report in which Pemberton explained his preparations for defense: “Disposition of troops, as far as understood, judicious; can be readily concentrated against Grant’s army.” If this was guarded, it was also approving, which was something altogether new from that direction. Then next day came the best news of all: Johnston himself would be coming soon to Vicksburg to inspirit the men and lend the weight of his genius to the defense of the Gibraltar of the West. Acting under instructions from Davis, Seddon ordered the general to proceed from Tullahoma “at once to Mississippi and take chief command of the forces, giving to those in the field, as far as practicable, the encouragement and benefit of your personal direction.” Johnston was suffering at the time from a flare-up of his Seven Pines wound, but he replied without apparent hesitation: “I shall go immediately, although unfit for service.” He left Tennessee next morning, May 10, having complied with the Secretary’s further instructions to have “3000 good troops” follow him from Bragg’s army as reinforcements for Pemberton.

  Pemberton took new hope at the prospect of first-hand assistance from on high; now he could say, with a good deal more assurance than he had felt when he used the words the week before, “Think we will be all right.” But there were flaws in the logic of his approach to the central problem, or at any rate errors in the conclusion to which that logic had led him. His assessment of Grant’s intention was partly right, but it was also partly wrong: right, that is, in the conviction that what his opponent wanted and needed was a supply base above Vicksburg, but wrong as to how he would go about getting what he wanted. By now Grant had nine of his ten divisions across the Mississippi and had reached the final stage of his week-long build-up for an advance, though not in the direction Pemberton had supposed and planned for.

  McPherson had been shifted eight miles east to Rocky Springs, leaving Hankinson’s Ferry to be occupied by Sherman, two of whose three divisions were with him, while McClernand was in position along the road between those two points. In connection with the problem of supply, Grant had been collecting all the transportation he could lay hands on, horses, mules, oxen, and whatever
rolled on wheels, ever since the Bruinsburg crossing. The result was a weird conglomeration of vehicles, ranging from the finest plantation carriages to ramshackle farm wagons, with surreys and buckboards thrown in for good measure, all piled to the dashboards and tailgates with supplies—mainly crates of ammunition and hardtack, the two great necessities for an army on the move—constantly shuttling back and forth between the Grand Gulf steamboat landing and Rocky Springs, where Grant had established headquarters near McPherson. Sherman, being farthest in the rear, had a close-up view of vehicular confusion that seemed to him to be building up to the greatest traffic snarl in history, despite the fact that there was still not transportation enough to supply more than a fraction of the army’s needs. It was his conclusion that Grant’s headlong impatience to be up and off was plunging him toward a logistic disaster. By May 9 he could put up with it no longer. “Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible,” he advised his chief, “for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road.” The prompt reply from Rocky Springs gave the redhead the shock of his military life. Previously he had known scarcely more of Grant’s future plans than Pemberton knew from beyond the Big Black River, but suddenly the veil of secrecy was lifted enough to give him considerably more than a glimmer of what he had never suspected until now. “I do not calculate upon the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” Grant told him. “I know it will be impossible without constructing additional roads. What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.”