USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 25
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
Hitherto, loss and gain, success and failure, if they had not been equal, had alternated with tolerable regularity, and the soldier had done the soldier's legitimate work,-marching and fighting and standing guard, with a moderate amount of starving and freezing and sickness. Now began a series of gropings in the dark, warring with earth itself, and with disease, which seemed to be confederate with the foe, while over everything was pronounced the harsh verdict, loss.
Immediately after the destruction of Arkansas Post, Gen- eral McClernard's forces moved down to Young's Point, which is on the western side of the Mississippi, about nine miles above Vicksburg, and nearly opposite the mouth of the Yazoo. A few days later, the army of Grant, (except a por- tion of the Twelfth and the Sixteenth corps, which were left in West Tennessee to protect the rear and keep the river open,) having embarked at Memphis, landed at the same place. The force then numbered fifty thousand, and consisted of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth and part of the Thirteenth corps. Several iron-clads were added to the naval force.
286
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Grant, though utterly undaunted by the Tallahatchie and Chickasaw failure, saw reason to make future advances from the south, and as it was impossible to send his troops directly down the river in the face of the batteries on the bluffs, he lost no time in endeavoring to form water communications by which, without exposure, his army could be landed below Vicksburg. He set on foot a system of internal improve- ments, so divided and extensive that the failure of one route would not by any means necessitate change of plan or in- volve serious delay.
Williams' unfinished canal across the peninsula offered the readiest mode of access to the Mississippi below Vicks- burg, and, although it was unfortunately located, its head being opposite an eddy which turned the current of the river from the bank, and its terminus within range of the lower batteries of the city, it was adopted as part of Grant's system.
A circuitous and difficult route was prospected from a point seventy-five miles above Vicksburg, where Lake Provi- dence is separated from the Mississippi by a neck of land but a mile in width. Lake Providence is in the old bed of the river. It is six miles long and is the head of the Tensas river, which, through the Black and the Red, is a tributary to the Mississippi. Port Hudson, now strongly fortified, is be- low the mouth of the Red, but, through the Atchafalaya, which flows from the latter river into Lake Plaquemine, com- munication with General Banks at New Orleans would be no difficult matter.
A lower entrance into Tensas river was marked out through the bayous which run from near Milliken's Bend.
On the eastern side of the Mississippi, Grant undertook to make a passage into the Yazoo from a point still higher up than Lake Providence, for the purpose of destroying Confed- erate transports in that stream, and gunboats on the stocks, and possibly of gaining the rear of Vicksburg.
In labor on the several routes the troops found abundant occupation. In dysentery and fever, produced by incessant rain and a protracted freshet, they underwent intolerable suffering. The deaths at Young's Point averaged eighty-five a day. In less than two months more than a hundred of our
287
CANALS AND BAYOUS.
Sixty-Ninth died. Three hundred at a time were on the sick list. February 5, the aggregate strength of the Sixteenth was five hundred, of whom but three line officers and one hundred and fifty men were fit for duty. The other Indiana regiments, which were engaged digging in the mire and clay of Williams' canal, were the Forty-Ninth, Fifty-Fourth, Six- tieth, Sixty-Seventh and Eighty-Third. Their measure of suffering was the samc.
Burials were all made in the levees, as they furnished the only dry land deep enough. Miles of graves furrowed the bank of the Mississippi. The troops were literally walled in on one side by the dead.
The camps were on the west side of the canal, and they were protected by a huge embankment, nevertheless they were, night and day, in imminent and manifest danger from the swelling floods of the river.
The dreary monotony was now and then relieved by ex- cursions into the interior. One of the most important was made by Burbridge's brigade in the latter half of the month of February. Steaming up the Mississippi, the brigade landed at Greenville, marched nine miles, and routed a party of guerillas who annoyed boats passing on the river. Pro- ceeding up the river, it routed another party, and captured a battery.
McPherson's corps was employed on the Lake Providence canal. The Twenty-Third Indiana, landing here February 22, did stout work with pick and spade.
The clearing of the Yazoo route was performed by a por- tion of the Helena troops, among which were the Eleventh, Twenty-Fourth, Thirty-Fourth, Forty-Sixth and Forty-Sev- enth Indiana, and a detachment of the First Cavalry, under General Washburn.
A cut in the levee was made by the explosion of a mine. The pass was cleared by chopping and hauling, the troops working waist deep in water, and in incessant rain. Drift- wood and leaning trees, which locked the water in their giant embrace, were the least of the difficulties. Rebels, at a safe distance, felled huge oaks, sycamores and elms, whose weight imbedded them in mud, and they made rafts or dams
288
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
a mile or more in length. A distance of nearly four miles, with a few open spaces, was barricaded with trees which reached across the stream.
While the troops were engaged in digging canals and clearing bayous, a portion of the naval force endeavored to lessen the amount of Rebel supplies received from the south- west by means of the bayous and rivers connecting with the Mississippi, between Port Hudson and Vicksburg. The ram steamer, Queen of the West, with the gunboat De Soto, ran the batteries on the second of February, captured and burned three small steamers laden with supplies, and went fifteen miles up Red river. The Queen returned for a supply of coal, which she received, a flat boat loaded with coal having been cast loose in the stream above, and having passed the batteries in safety. Without delay she then resumed her oc- cupation of sweeping the rivers of Rebel craft.
February 13, at ten o'clock, on a pitch black night, the Indianola started from the mouth of the Yazoo to join the Queen. The Indianola was one of the finest iron-clads of the squadron. She was one hundred and seventy-four feet long by fifty broad. She had seven engines and five boilers, and hose for throwing scalding water from the boilers, reach- ing from stem to stern. She was ironed all round, was thor- onghly shielded in every part, and was armed with two eleven- inch and two nine-inch guns. Her commander was Lieu- tenant George Brown, formerly of Indianapolis.
As the Indianola turned to the east to round the peninsula she shut off steam, and drifted with the current at the rate of four miles an hour. She swung close below the batteries, and with no sound above the rush of the heavy waters, came almost within reach of a close line of Rebel sentinels, and fully within the sound of citizens' voices. At the moment a blaze, flaring up from a smouldering camp-fire, cast its long light on the river, and revealed the floating vessel. A senti- nel fired. Soldiers along the bluffs sprang to arms. A bat- tery near the centre of the city discharged a gun. But the Indianola, in a moment, floated beyond the line of light into impenetrable darkness. Five minutes profound silence rested on river and shore. Then the wheels were started to steer
289
NAVAL OPERATIONS.
the steamer. The quick roar of artillery followed. Again silence and darkness wrapped the boat. She drifted on. Once more her wheels beat the water. Once more the loud uproar of guns fiercely waked the echoes. Under full pressure of steam the Indianola swept boldly down the stream, while all the batteries of Vicksburg impotently bellowed and yelled after her.
A short distance below Natchez the Indianola was hailed by a boat, which was scarcely discernible through a heavy fog, and which was slowly making its difficult way up the stream. It was the Era, a Rebel vessel, captured by Colonel Ellet, of the Queen, and now bearing Ellet and his crew. The Queen had been unfortunate. At Gordon's landing, fifty miles up Red river, she was run aground, fired into and captured, the crew escaping on cotton bales to the De Soto, which was just below. A short distance down the river the De Soto was run into the bank and destroyed, the crew now finding refuge on the Era. Through fog and storm, with a traitor pilot, and fuel of cypress wood, which was saturated with water, and of corn, which had formed the cargo, the vessel was worked out of the Red and up the Mississippi at the rate of two miles an hour.
Lieutenant Brown went to the Red, chasing before him, part of the way, the swift Rebel gunboat Webb, which es- caped in fog. For want of pilots, he could not ascend the Red, and remained in its mouth, effectually blockading it, until, after four days, he learned that the Queen of the West, as good as new, was out in search of him. He then procured cotton, and filled up the space between the casemate and wheel house with it, so as the better to repel boarding parties, and went up the Mississippi, moving slowly on account of the tide, and in consequence of having coal barges alongside.
On the night of the twenty-fourth,-a very dark night,-, he became aware of the swift approach of the Webb, the. Queen and two smaller gunboats. He promptly cleared for action, turned and stood down the river, to meet them. They mounted ten heavy guns, which were manned by sev- eral hundred men, and moved to a vigorous and almost
19
290
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
simultaneous attack with their rams, under the fire of field pieces and small arms. The first blow of the Queen was partially broken by a coal barge, through which she was forced to act. The Indianola met the Webb running at full speed, and with a tremendous crash. She fought all four of the vessels with all her might and all her skill, neither of which was small; but she was shattered after the seventh blow, which struck her fair in the stern. Lieutenant Brown kept her in deep water until there were two and a half feet of water over the floor; then he ran her bows on shore and surrendered.
The Rebels hauled up the partially sunken vessel the next day, and fell to work to repair and resuscitate her. While the work progressed, a nondescript boat was seen to leave the Union fleet, and to float fearlessly on the current, unchecked and unaffected by the angry play of the Vicks- burg batteries.
Notice was sent to the Indianola and the Queen. The one, in the language of Admiral Porter, "turned tail and ran down the river as fast as she could go;" the other, with every gun, was blown to pieces.
The vessel which did so effectual a work, was an old coal barge, with pork barrels on top of each other for smoke- stacks, furnaces built of mud, and two old canoes for quar- ter boats. "The soldiers shouted and laughed like mad," according to Admiral Porter, as they watched her dauntless and triumphant progress.
Captain Brown and his comrades remained prisoners dur- ing several months, much of the time leading an itinerant life, and in consequence becoming acquainted with different prisons. Their first term was at Jackson, where they were incarcerated in a bridge. They ended the period at the Libby. They experienced none of the severity which was the fate of captives taken at a later period.
With the Indianola, on the twenty-fourth of February, efforts to clear the rivers of Rebel craft ended. The canals, however, still progressed. Toil the most untiring, and vigi- lance absolutely sleepless, won deceitful promises of success, in spite of miry earth and rainy skies.
291
FAILURES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS.
Williams' canal was the first failure. It was eight feet below the surface of the river, and needed but a few days' more work, when, on the eighth of March, the waters burst the dam at its head, poured in, broke the levee and spread far and wide across the peninsula. The workmen fled for their lives, leaving their tools where they had used them, and their tents on the rapidly submerged plain.
The canal to Lake Providence was finished, and on the sixteenth of March was opened, the river rushing in with great velocity, and in such volume as to overflow a large dis- triet of country. But as the intricacies and involutions of the Tensas river, in connection with its length, made the pas- sage undesirable except as a last resort, and as the Yazoo- Pass expedition now gave great promise, it was relinquinshed without a trial.
February 25, a rainy, inauspicious day, the large gunboats Chilicothe and DeKalb, the former commanded by Lieuten- ant Foster, an Indianian, five light draft gunboats and eight- een transports, with about five thousand infantry and a battery of artillery, commenced the tortuous voyage to the Yazoo, under command of General Ross.
The Indiana regiments which had been employed in open- ing the pass were now in the expedition.
Passing through the cut the troops entered a rapid chan- nel which led them a mile to Moon lake, the former bed of the river. Here was fast and smooth sailing to the mouth of the Yazoo Pass, where progress became exceedingly slow and laborious. Now the stream was narrow and the current arrow-like in its swiftness, tearing the vessels through sturdy cypress and sycamore boughs, plunging them on abrupt, pro- jecting banks, or jamming them against roots and logs. Again the flow was scarcely perceptible, and the waters dif- fused themselves far over bottom lands. In three days the expedition advanced twelve miles, and reached the Cold Water, a far less difficult stream, nevertheless, narrow, crooked and sluggish, and filled with obstructions.
March 11, the boats halted at the mouth of the Tallahat- chie, held in check by a raft with an old steamboat sunk be- hind it, and by a formidable fortification across a peninsula
292
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
which entirely commanded the river. The Chilicothe at- tempted to proceed, but after engaging the enemy's guns an hour, retired. The Forty-Sixth Indiana then marched for- ward to reconnoitre. It was followed by the Forty-Seventh.
Skirmishers deployed in advance under Colonel Bring- hurst, met the enemy's skirmishers and drove them, after a sharp fight, beyond a slough into their works.
The regiments hastened to join in the skirmish and pur- suit, but being unable to cross the slough, they returned to the boats. In the afternoon, the Chillicothe again engaged. During the twelfth, General Ross erected a land battery, facing the cnemy's works, west of the slough, in the edge of the forest. The next day the batteries and the gunboats opened on the cnemy and checked the fire, but not suffi- ciently to effect a landing. Unsuccessful efforts were con- tinued until the sixteenth, when General Ross concluded to move back. At the mouth of the Pass, General Quimby, of McPherson's corps, reinforced him with troops from the Thir- teenth, Fourteenth and Seventeenth corps. Our Forty- Eighth, Colonel Eddy, and Fifty-Ninth, Colonel Alexander, were included in the newly arrived force.
General Quimby assumed command of Ross' division and went toward the mouth of the Tallahatchie, reaching the vicinity of the fort on the twenty-third. Increased defences necessitated increased caution in approaching.
An accident which occurred about three o'clock Sunday morning, the first of April, in the camp of the Forty-Seventh, cast a gloom over the entire army. A storm of wind tore up by the roots a large tree, one branch of which fell upon a tent containing six men, and killed four and seriously if not fatally injured the two others. The burial, which took place at noon, impressed with solemnity hundreds who regarded death in battle or in the hospital with indifference.
The weather was inclement, floods of rain falling and storms of wind blowing most of the time. The troops were occupied in reconnoitring until the fifth of April, when they were withdrawn. After many delays they reached Milliken's Bend, where confusion seemed to rule. Our Forty-Sixth is described as during three days obeying alternately the con-
293
THE CLIMAX ATTAINED.
tradictory orders to "Take everything off the boat," and "Put every thing on board," the first preparatory to going into camp, which it was not allowed to do, and the second in order to go up the river, which also was not allowed.
Before the close of the Yazoo Pass expedition another en- terprise commenced, under the united supervision of Admiral Porter and General Sherman. Five gunboats, with a number of small transports undertook to reach the Yazoo below Fort Pemberton and above Haines' Bluff. A pioncer corps preceded to remove overhanging trees. General Sherman moved from Eagle Bend through mixed land and water. With toil and trouble the force passed through Cypress Bayou, Steele's Bayou, Cypress Lake, Little Black Fork, Deer Creek, Roll- ing Fork and into the Big Sun Flower. But all these wan- derings occupied so much time that the enemy was able to checkmate progress, when free and open navigation to the Yazoo was but a few hundred yards ahead.
One more failure ends the series. The route through the bayous, which run from near Milliken's Bend and New Car- thage through Roundaway Bayou into Texas river, was made practicable, but by a sudden fall of the river was rendered again impracticable and at the same time unnecessary.
The country grew exceedingly impatient under these un- precedented failures, and loudly expressing and reiterating its dissatisfaction, besought that General Grant might be re- moved. The popular feeling is expressed in the Indiana- polis Journal of April 5, 1863, in a leader entitled,
"GETTING NO BETTER FAST."
"Grant is getting along at Vicksburg with such rapidity that, in the course of fifteen or twenty years, he will be ready to send up a gunboat to find out whether the enemy hasn't died of old age. His canal opposite the town is a failure, as we stated some days ago. His canal at Lake Providence is a failure. His expedition up Steele's Bayou is a failure. His expedition down Yazoo Pass is not a suc- cess. His attempts to run three rams past the Rebel batter- ies was a failure. In fact, Grant is a failure himself. He never was anything else.
294
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
"We presume he will keep on digging, and that his next strategic attempt will be to tunnel the Mississippi, and come up under the Rebel works."
Prominent citizens from nearly every State went to Wash- ington, to represent General Grant's incompetency, and to plead for his removal. But Mr. Lincoln said: "I rather like the man. I think I will try him a little longer."
295
A NEW START.
CHAPTER XI.
OPERATIONS AGAINST VICKSBURG.
"Soldiers, in a fortnight you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one pairs of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont; you have made fifteen thousand prisoners, and killed or wounded more than ten thousand men. * Destitute of everything, you have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches with- out shoes, bivouacked without brandy, and often without bread. The repub- lican phalanxes, the soldiers of liberty alone could have endured what you have endured. ** * The two armies which so lately attacked you boldly are fleeing affrighted before you; the perverse men who laughed at your distress, and rejoiced in thought at the triumphs of your enemies, are confounded and trembling."-Napoleon's proclamation to his soldiers after his first Italian campaign.
During the development of the last failure General Grant began the concentration of his forces at Milliken's Bend, and set on foot a movement to New Carthage, where he hoped to effect a passage across the Mississippi, below the Vicks- burg batterics.
McPherson came down from Lake Providence and the Yazoo pass, whither he had lately despatched part of his corps. Sherman arrived from Steele's Bayou. Hurlbut sent forward every man who could be sparcd from the rear. Boats were brought from Chicago to Saint Louis.
By the twenty-ninth of March the roads by way of Rich- mond were considered sufficiently dried, as the distance was but about twenty miles, and on that day orders were issued for McClernand to move his corps without tents, blankets, or baggage of any kind.
Osterhaus took the lead with his division, sending a de- tachment in advance to capture Richmond, reported to be fortihed by a small force, and to explore the route. The detachment was under the command of Coloncl Bennett, for-
296
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
merly Major in the Thirty-Sixth, and always an officer of excellent ability and character, and consisted of the Sixty- Ninth Indiana, a section of artillery, and a portion of the Second Illinois Cavalry. Bennett started at seven on the morning of the thirty-first, directed his course toward the west, and gathering up, for future necessity, all the boats he could find in the watery region through which his road led him, reached Roundaway bayou at two in the afternoon. He dislodged the enemy from the further bank, took posses- sion of Richmond, and from that point turned his course southward. He was stopped by a break in the levee of Bayou Vidal, which, uniting with the Mississippi, encircled New Carthage, and made approach undesirable, as well as impossible. The Forty-Ninth soon came up. Explorations were at once instituted in search of a clue through the maze of water-courses. General Osterhaus, with Captain Garret- son's company, made a voyage on the Opossum, (a gunboat built by the Sixty-Ninth, and armed with two howitzers,) propelling it with oars through a forest to the Mississippi levec, gained a position on a plot of twenty acres, whose ele- vation had preserved it from the general overflow, and awaited there the arrival of the Forty-Ninth regiment, and of the res- idue of the Sixty-Ninth. But neither these regiments nor any other attempted to follow, and the little force remained on the isolated spot five days, protecting itself, by sham artillery, which it made from the smoke pipes of the Indian- ola, and by its two real howitzers, from a threatening gun- boat on the river, and a body of Rebels at Hard Times, a mile or two below.
Meantime General Osterhaus, continuing his explorations, met General Hovey, also on a voyage of discovery, with three men, in a skiff. The two Generals compared notes, and reported a practicable route round Bayou Vidal to Per- kins' plantation, on the Mississippi, thirty-five miles from Milliken's Bend.
Osterhaus and Carr made roads, as far as roads were made, at the beginning of the movement. The Eighteenth Indiana headed Carr's division, marching in single file on the levees, with water on either side, or moving on flatboats and rafts
297
RUNNING THE BATTERIES.
made with tedious delay. Hovey's division was in the rear when it started, but passed to the right of Osterhaus and Carr as the march progressed, and gained the van. It built more than two thousand feet of bridging in four days, and cut two miles of military road through an almost impassable swamp, men working for hours up to their necks in water. Captain George W. Jackson, of the Thirty-Fourth Indiana, with his pioneer corps, was distinguished in the Herculean labor.
MePherson followed McClernand, but on account of the tedious character of the march Sherman was directed to re- main at Milliken's Bend until further orders.
To carry the troops across the river and to protect their landing, eight gunboats and three transports ran the batteries. Although the night was dark, they were speedily discovered, and the river was made lighter than day by the glare of burn- ing houses on both shores, while all the artillery on both bluffs opened. Nobody was killed, and but few were wounded, though many of the boats were broken to pieces and men were picked up from pieces of floating wrecks.
Another night, April 26, six unprotected transports made the fiery voyage. As had been the case with the former ex- pedition, the crews refused to venture, and their places were promptly supplied by volunteers from the army. Logan's division, which had not yet begun the march, readily man- ned the vessels, our Twenty-Third furnishing seventy hands. Men seldom do a nobler thing than to volunteer a dangerous and untried service, in addition to known and allotted duties of the most exacting character.
The army, meantime, moved down to Hard Times Land- ing, making the distance traversed from Milliken's Bend sev- enty miles, and there awaited transportation.
General Grant now endeavored to distract the attention of the Rebels while he should effect a landing and gain a position in the rear of Vicksburg. He gave directions for an extended cavalry raid, and a demonstration in force on Haines' Bluff. The former was performed by Illinois soldiers under the lead of Grierson, and cut from LaGrange, through the centre of Mississippi to Baton Rouge. The latter was
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.