USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 23
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"Wednesday. Reached Alton, and found the regiment all right. When General Davidson got to the town, he found about sixty Rebels there, and took them all prisoners.
"Thursday. I half-soled my boot this evening, out of a piece of a cartridge box.
"Saturday, twenty-first. Moved to Cave Springs, and as soon as we had dinner, set to work and built a chimney. It
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wasn't long till chimney-building was going on all through the camp.
Tuesday. Marching orders. This is rather working against us, for we don't like to leave such a nice, comfortable fire- place; but when orders come, they must be obeyed.
Twenty-eighth. Marched at nine through Alton, sixteen miles, to a fork of Spring river. I had to go on guard, which went against the grain, for I was very tired, and thought I had to do without my supper, but the trains came up in good time, and the boys sent my supper out to me.
"Twenty-ninth. Marched sixteen miles. They won't al- low us to burn rails. I suppose they think a Union man lives here.
Thirtieth. Marched eight miles to West Plains. Things look about as they did nine months ago, when we were here before.
"January 31. We draw only half rations. This is what I call, cutting the matter pretty slim."
On the nineteenth of March, 1863, General Carr, with ar- tillery and infantry, embarked at St. Genevieve, on the Mis- sissippi, and proceeded toward Vicksburg. On the twenty- sixth, he landed at Milliken's Bend.
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ยท FIRST BOMBARDMENT OF VICKSBURG.
CHAPTER XIII.
OPERATIONS AGAINST VICKSBURG.
"Providence, in order to accomplish its doings, is prodigal of courage, virtues, sacrifices-finally, of man; and it is only after a vast number of attempts apparently lost, after a host of noble hearts have fallen into des- pair-convinced that their cause was lost -- that it triumphs."-Guizot.
Shortly after the occupation of New Orleans and of Mem- phis, Captain Farragut went up and Captain Davis went down the Mississippi, to meet before Vicksburg, midway between Cairo and the mouth of the river. They approached within three miles of each other without opposition, and after Farragut had landed four thousand troops under Gen- eral Williams, who had joined him at Baton Rouge, they commenced a bombardment. General Williams' position was opposite Vicksburg on a peninsula, which is three miles long and one mile wide. He armed with pick and spade more than a thousand negroes flocking to him from the vicinity, and while his coadjutors bombarded, he fell to work to dig a canal which should lead the uncertain Mississippi from its bed and leave Vicksburg an inland town, high and dry among its hills.
The firing was entirely between batteries ou one side, and boats on the other, until the fourteenth of July, when three boats, the Queen of the West, the Carondelet and the Tyler, the last under Captain Gwin, encountered a massive hippo- potamus-like iron clad vessel, the Arkansas, in the Yazoo river, six miles from its mouth. It was a monster of hideous mien, and though they fired upon it they fled before it. The Tyler, the hindmost in the flight, and necessarily the foremost in the fight, fought bravely, until, after two hours' run, she was able to round to under the stern of the Essex. The Arkansas steamed down through the Union fleets which were now united, Farragut having passed the batteries. Lieutenant
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Gwin lost eight killed and sixteen wounded in this encoun- ter. Several other unsuccessful engagements occurred with the Arkansas.
The bombardment was a failure, as was also the canal. The old Father of Waters not only obstinately refused to turn out of his bed; but fell to such a degrec that the vessels were in danger from sand bars. In consequence of these various unfavorable events and circumstances the siege, if such it might be called, was relinquished. The last of July Farragut went down the river, and Davis went up.
It was not until the next November that approaches were again made to Vicksburg. The delay was with good rea- son, but it enabled the Confederates to strengthen a position strong by nature, and already fortified.
Vicksburg, like Shakspcare's Helen, is little, but fierce. She had proved herself capable to cope with every emer- gency in the past. When infested by a gang of gamblers, who made the boats and shores of the Mississippi their prey, rather than submit to the delay of regularly instituted civil courts, she boldly resorted to lynch law, and hung twenty or thirty by the neck until they were dead. With Murrel- lites her course was not less summary. In duelling, and encounters in which cow-hides or bowie-knives flourished, Vicksburg held no mean rank among southern cities. Largely descended from the old Tories of the Revolution, who were glad to hide their diminished heads on the verge of civiliza- tion, she never had any love for the Union, and surrounded by the richest cotton region in America, she was devoted to slavery. Such a city could not but back every extreme of the Confederate Government, and would not but arm herself to the teeth in her own defence.
Numerous carefully posted and powerful batteries made her river front impregnable, while fortifications on all her countless hills rendered her land front formidable, if not also invulnerable. Her position, if chosen in reference to war and a siege, could not, on the Mississippi, have been more secure. A line of high bluffs extends fifteen miles above and below, terminating on the north in Haines' bluff, which touches the Yazoo. Rivers at different distances form a whole circle
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NATURAL DEFENCES.
of outer defences-the Mississippi, on the west, close at her foot; the Yazoo, flowing in a south-west direction, and into the Mississippi twelve miles above the city, protecting the north; and nearly parallel with the direction of the Yazoo, and perhaps, on an average, fifty miles distant, the Big Black, forming an eastern and southern line, which is made double on the south by Bayou Pierre.
The Big Black, with its tributaries, waters a rolling coun- try, which is generally cultivated in vast cotton fields. The Yazoo lies in a wilderness, only here and there broken by a plantation. It is formed by the Tallahatchie and the Yalla- busha, and fed by the Funigusha and the Big Sunflower. Sucked out and filled up at the same time, as it is, by lazy but persistent bayous, and connected with the Mississippi once or twice above its mouth, it would, in any other region, be as peculiar as it is perplexing. Here nearly all bodies of water are anomalous. Swamps are half lakes, and lakes arc bordered with swamps. Bayous, which hang to all the rivers like leeches, at intervals swell to independent rivers or inland scas, and rivers dwindle to the size and assume the capricious course of bayous. Much of the ground seems but escaping from a general overflow. Vegetation is exuberant. Tall trees are tied to each other by clutching vines, which, finding no support equal to their ambition, drop from the topmost boughs again toward the earth. Misletoc clusters on the oak, and from oak, gum and cypress Spanish moss waves its melancholy gray. The country west of the Mississippi, though more opened, possesses the same natural character. These complications of water and woods add incalculably to the strength of Vicksburg. Its relation to railroads, being connected by rail with Jackson, forty-four miles cast, and through Jackson with every important point east of the Mis- sissippi, and on the west with Shreveport, Louisiana, made it invaluable to the Confederacy, even after the loss of upper and lower Mississippi, as with its distant out-work, Port Hudson, it kept open a long stretch of river for the passage of supplies and men.
The siege of Vicksburg, with its preliminaries, occupied a
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period of eight months, and may be divided into three parts, according to the character and direction of the operations.
First. Approaches from the north-east, north and west, continuing from November 2, 1862, to March 29, 1863.
Second. Approaches from the south and east, and at- tempts to effect an investment, from March 29 to May 19.
Third. The siege, from May 19 to July 4.
The first period was mainly a strife with nature, and con- sisted, almost without exception, of a series of costly failures. The second was marked by battles, which were all costly successes. The third was occupied by the usual operations of a siege.
General Grant hoped, by moving down the Mississippi Central Railroad, to cause the evacuation of Vicksburg. General Pemberton, who had superseded Van Dorn, lay in his way, strongly fortified, on the Tallehatchie, and with his advance reaching as far north as La Grange and Grand Junction. Of the fortifications General Grant knew nothing. The army he expected and desired to meet. He set out on the second of November, and the enemy withdrawing before him, he took peaceable possession of La Grange and Grand Junction, and at these points concentrated his forces. They amounted to thirty thousand men, General McPherson com- manding his right wing, General Hamilton his left.
Hc had five regiments, the Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fifth, Forty-Eighth, Fifty-Ninth and Fifty-Third, and one battery, the Ninth, of Indiana troops.
He made preparations for a long and severe campaign, cutting down encumbrances to such a degree, it is said, that his personal baggage, as an example, was reduced to one article, a toothbrush. He gave orders for the advance of co- operating forces,-from Memphis, under General Sherman, to Oxford, on the Tallehatchie; from Helena, under General Hovey, to cut the railroad in Pemberton's rear, and threaten Grenada. He renewed his march November 28, repaired the road as he moved, and pushed the enemy back in spirited encounters. The next day he reached Holly Springs. Con- tinuing, he crossed the Tallchatchic, the enemy having evac- uated his works, and on the fifth of December he reached
Lug aby & F. Perme & TONY
TEEM MODONER,
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GRANT'S ADVANCE.
Oxford, twenty-eight miles beyond Holly Springs, while his cavalry advanced to Coffeeville.
The march was not without its hardships, as may be seen by the following passage from a letter written by private Carsc:
"WATERFORD, December 5.
" We had to go on picket the night we got here. It was the worst night I ever put over in my life. It rained the hardest, and was very cold. We were out in the middle of a cotton field; the mud was knce-deep; we could not find the fences it was so dark, and we had no fire. I turned my gun up and stuck the bayonet in the ground, and sat down on my knapsack, with my gum blanket over my shoulders, and done better than you might think. We were all very tired, and some of the boys lay down in the mud, and slept nearly all night. I could not do that." He adds in a note at the close of liis letter, "I would like if the war was over, and we could all meet again."
General Sherman left Memphis, November 26, with about twenty-five thousand men. Six Indiana regiments and one battery were included-the Sixth battery, Mueller's, which had been on garrison duty since June, once during the period actively engaging the enemy; the Ninety-Seventh regiment, Colonel Catterson, in Memphis since September; the Twelfth, Lieutenant Colonel Kempton, Colonel Williams not having arrived; Ninety-Ninth, Colonel Fowler, the One Hundredth, Colonel Stoughton, which had just arrived, and the Eighty- Third, Colonel Spooner.
The following passages from the letters of Edward P. Williams, Adjutant of the Hundredth, describe the march:
" MEMPHIS, November 25.
" The plan is to go south to Grenada, thence to Jackson, and take Vicksburg by taking Jackson as Columbus was taken by the fall of Donelson. With Grant's army, ours, and another from Helena, it is expected that we shall be able literally to clean out the Mississippi Valley, and sweep the enemy into the Gulf. We leave the sick behind. The sick list is now one hundred and ten. Three died since we
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
arrived, nine days ago. Among all the Secesh here there are at least a few good Union women, as their faithful at- tendance at our hospital testifies. We take no tents, not even shelter tents. Wagons carry only cooking utensils and provisions. All else the men must carry on their backs."
" CHULLAHOMA, November 30.
" We left Memphis Tuesday morning, the different divis- ions taking different roads, and meeting the next day about ten miles out. First day marched seven miles and encamped in the woods. Our train was much behind, and we all slept in the open air. With my feet to the fire and my saddle for a pillow, I never slept warmer, or better, although it was cold enough to freeze. Next day marched seventeen miles to Cold Water. Rather a hard march for our green regiment. On the way were joined by Smith's and Lawrence's divis- ions. Next day marched about fifteen miles to Red-Sand Bank Creek. Excellent water and good camping ground. Spent yesterday at this place resting. Moved again to-day, eight miles, to our present camp. Our brigade is to-day in the lead of the division (Denman's) and of the whole army. The Rebel pickets are daily retreating before us. Five hun- dred Rebel cavalry were in the village this morning. We advanced cautiously, and just before halting our cavalry dis- covered in the front Rebel horsemen. We took a strong position and encamped in line. Have heard cannonading all the afternoon in the direction of the Tallehatchie, some twelve miles distant. Messengers and negroes report fight- ing between Grant's and Price's forces. We subsist on the enemy. Our division Quartermaster presses in all the mules, horses, wagons, cattle, &c., that we need, and gives receipts to be paid when the owners prove loyalty to the Govern- ment, which, of course, they never can do. Contrabands are coming to us in great numbers. We live well on chickens, turkeys, hogs, beef and everything that the country affords.
" Some of the regiments, I am sorry to say, have behaved badly. One burned down a very nice little church, the first night out, also a crib of corn sufficient for the whole division one day. Colonel McDowell says our regiment is one of the
-
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SHERMAN'S CO-OPERATION.
best new regiments in discipline he ever saw. Water is scarce and not very good.
" The Rebels have lately been scouring the country burning cotton. Saw in several places large piles of it ready for burning, but the Rebels were in too big a hurry to attend to it. The roads arc excellent and the weather everything we could wish."
"IN THE FIELD, " MISSISSIPPI, December 2. 5
"Left Chullahoma this morning, and encamped about a half mile from the Tallehatchie a little after noon. It has rained nearly the whole day, and the roads are getting very bad. 'It is quite cold and disagreeable. Our men stood the march well, and have made for themselves shelter tents from their rubber blankets. They are learning fast to accommo- date themselves to circumstances. We are on the ferry road, some miles below the railroad bridge. The Rebels skedad- dled from here last Sunday after burning the railroad bridge and sinking the ferry boat. Heard cannonading this after- noon. Afterwards learned that Grant had crossed the river and was pursuing the enemy near Abbeville, some six or seven miles from us. Our troops are busy building a bridge. The Twelfth Indiana is encamped about a half mile back of us."
"Friday, December 5. Stormed all night, closing with a sprinkling of snow. Hard night on soldiers. Marched to-day nine miles through terribly muddy roads to College Hill. Four miles and a half from here is Oxford. Grant's advance guard is there. It is expected we shall have the railroad finished and running to that point shortly. We shall then have direct communication with the North.
"About two miles from here we passed unfinished earth- works which the Rebels had thrown up only last week, and for which purpose they had pressed in all the negroes through- out the country. Our camp is upon the college ground. The men are making sad havoc cutting down the beautiful gum for firewood."
"December 6. Heard to-day that General Stecle had marched from Helena and taken Granada, driving out Van
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Dorn's forces. The Rebel army is therefore between Steele and us. Don't know when we shall leave, nor where we are going. Some think we will march across the country to the Mississippi and take boats for Vicksburg, while a portion of Grant's forces move upon Jackson."
The Helena force started November 27, and, crossing the Mississippi, directed its course to the Rebel rear. It con- sisted of seven thousand men, mostly cavalry, under Wash- burn. A company of Illinois cavalry was advance guard. Two companies of the First Indiana formed the rear guard. The Twenty-Fourth and Forty-Third Indiana, with the Twenty-Sixth Iowa, formed the infantry advance. The Forty- Sixth Indiana and Second Ohio battery, temporarily under Colonel Bringhurst, of the Forty-Sixth, moved next in order. Two other brigades, with a section of the Peoria battery, com- pleted the force. The cavalry pressed on rapidly, capturing a Rebel camp and laying a pontoon bridge on the Cold Water, destroying many miles of the Memphis and Tennes- see railroad, crossing the Mississippi Central road and tear- ing up the rails near Granada. The infantry pressed after, in one day making twenty-six miles of swampy road. At Cold Water, General Hovey halted, sending beyond the Yockeney the Eleventh and Twenty-Fourth, under Colonel Spicely, who marched on fifteen miles. After encamping Colonel Spicely sent Major Darnell with a company from each regiment, back three miles to guard a ferry. The re- turning cavalry reached Spicely's encampment the same day. Scarcely had it arrived when firing was heard in the direction of the ferry. The horsemen lost no time in hastening toward the sound. The Eleventh and Twenty-Fourth followed with all their speed. They found Darnell bravely holding out, and relieved him from the pressure of a superior force. Hovey, to whom tidings had been hastily despatched, reached the ground at the close of the engagement, having ridden twelve miles in forty minutes. He brought up the remain- der of his force and held the Yockeney while the cavalry made one more dash against the railroad and an attack on the boats on the Tallahatchie. Hearing that Pemberton was alarmed for his communications and was in consequence fall-
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DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
ing back, Hovey concluded his task was accomplished, and returned to Helena. His men were well satisfied to get back, as the cold, wet weather made the march anything but agree- able. Captain Walker, who commanded the Indiana cav- alry in the expedition, and who was in the saddle day and night, exposed to rain and cold, died of pneumonia shortly after his return. He was a gallant soldier, a courteous gen- tlemen, and a sincere patriot.
General Grant being now advanced to Oxford, with a de- pot of supplies at Holly Springs, between which and Colum- bus, Kentucky, every mile of the railroad was under the guard of our soldiers, felt himself ready to take the second step in his plan of progress. He prepared to hold Pemberton near the Tallahatchie while General Sherman, returning to Mem- phis, should advance therefrom and make a rapid and heavy attack upon Vicksburg; then, in the event of Pemberton breaking loose from him and hurrying to the relief of the as- saulted city, to follow him up closely. General Sherman took back one division of his command, and adding rein- forcements, which had arrived at Memphis during his absence, he started down the river December 20, with twenty thou- sand men, nearly all Western troops. At Helena he was re- inforced by twelve thousand more. At Milliken's Bend, on the Arkansas side, and twenty miles above Vicksburg, he landed Burbridge's brigade and delayed two days.
General Burbridge, with the Sixteenth, Sixtieth and Sixty- Seventh Indiana, and one or two other regiments, on the twenty-fifth made a rapid march into the interior, incident- ally destroying vast stores of cotton and corn collected for the Confederacy, and directly attacking the Vicksburg and Shreveport railroad. He cut the road at Dallas, thirty miles from the place of landing, and burnt several long trestles and bridges, making it impossible for reinforcements to pass from the West to the river. Having marched sixty-five miles in thirty-six hours, swimming two bayous, the brigade re-embarked, went up the Yazoo twelve miles, and set to work at the construction of rafts to cross Chickasaw Bayou.
Sherman having landed on the bank of the Yazoo on the twenty-sixth, was already engaged. He had before him a
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task whose difficulties he was to learn only through defeat. First of these difficulties was the bottom land between the bluffs above Vicksburg and the Yazoo, a triangular swamp six miles wide at its lower extremity, and nine miles long. Second, Chickasaw Bayou, which puts out from the Yazoo, crosses the swamp, and turning sharply, follows the base of the bluffs to the Mississippi. It has but fifteen feet breadth of water, but quicksands are interspersed in the space be- tween its banks, which are two hundred feet apart. Third, a jungle of low, stiff, tangled cedars, which formed abatis ready to the hand of the Confederates. Fourth, was the bluff itself, grim from foot to summit with every appropriate work of defence, and held, in addition to the regular garrison of Vicksburg, by the army which Grant was to keep en- gaged on the Tallahatchie.
The first attack was made by gunboats. On the twenty- seventh, six gunboats, under Lieutenant Commander Gwin, now of the Benton, cautiously reconnoitred the Yazoo to Haines' Bluff. They removed five torpedoes before they gained a position opposite three Rebel batteries, placed at different heights on the bluffs, which are ninety feet above the river. Gwin opened fire at four in the afternoon. All his boats engaged with spirit, but the Benton alone was fully exposed to the enemy's artillery. Twenty-five shots struck her; twelve went into her. At half-past five, while her commander stood on the hurricane deck, looking through a marine glass, a ball struck him in the breast. The Benton at once withdrew. The other vessels followed.
Although the reconnoissance developed the strength of Haines' Bluff, as entailing the death of one of the best offi- cers in the navy, it could not but be regarded as an unhappy affair.
Lieutenant Gwin lingered in great suffering until the third of January. His body was sent to his relatives in Indiana, and afterward to New York, to his wife, to whom he had been married but eleven weeks. He was thirty years old, was a well-educated, and, as has been shown, a brave and skillful officer.
General Sherman laboriously surmounted the natural ob-
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ASSAULT ON CHICKASAW BLUFF.
stacles, and by the twenty-ninth was ready for a general ad- vance and assault. General Steele had his left, having landed, and re-embarked and landed a second time, before he had been able to find a footing. General Morgan had his left centre. General M. L. Smith's division had his right centre, and General A. J. Smith his right. His whole front struggled to advance; some portions of it gained the first and second lines of the enemy's rifle-pits. Our Forty-Ninth, de- fached from the left of Morgan's division in support of Blair's brigade, found itself apparently broken from the line of as- sault within fifty yards of the cnemy's rifle-pits. "Soldiers of the Forty-Ninth," cried Colonel Keigwin, "you are in the native State of Jefferson Davis, the slanderer of Indiana. Vindicate the fair name of your own State." The soldiers proudly moved on a few paces, opened fire, and held their ground. They were under a deadly rain of lead, and fell faster than the minutes passed. Fifty-six men in forty-five minutes.
Scarce a regiment in the uneven line but was decimated. One hundred and thirty-two fell from the ranks of our Fifty- Fourth.
With all possible speed the murderous struggle was ended by the withdrawal of the assailants.
A rainy and dark night followed this desperate assault. Without fire, which would have exposed them to the enemy's artillery and sharpshooters, and without shelter, the troops, too wet and cold for sleep, watched and waited for morning.
General Sherman, the next day, communicated with Ad- miral Porter, and made arrangements to land higher up the Yazoo in the night, and make a combined naval and land attack upon Drumgoulds' Bluff, the attention of the enemy to be occupied by demonstrations along the bayou. All was prepared, but a heavy fog kept the boats immovable, and made it impossible to discern any object at the distance of a few paces. The next night the moon lighted up land, and swamp, and river, scarcely less perfectly than the sun, reveal- ing to the enemy every object and movement. Accordingly Sherman sent in a flag of truce, buried his dead, and dropped
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