Born to Battle

by Jack Hurst

  BATTLE OF VICKSBURG

  Sherman’s charge began with lusty cheers that soon died in a valley of cane, brush, fallen timber, and grass-hidden sinkholes. Fierce return fire sent his men diving for cover. Sherman had ordered his Second Brigade commander, Thomas Kilby Smith, to get his men up to the parapet and jump in when the Confederates yielded, but the Confederates did not yield. Hidden in trees, their sharpshooters picked off Union officers, and the parapets were too high to scale without ladders. Smith huddled below the parapets until dark, when the Confederates set houses afire to see how to throw explosives into the ditch protecting the Federals. A colonel realized the danger just in time and ordered a pullback from the ditch. By the time the Thirteenth US Infantry made it back to the Federal line, it had taken fifty-five bullets to its flag and lost 43 percent of its men.3

  Around nightfall, Grant aborted the effort. He had suffered 942 casualties and gained only a few better positions from which to attack next time.4

  The next Federal attempt came three days later. Grant was better prepared—and he quickly became even less satisfied with John McClernand than he had been before.

  Like Grant, McClernand had to feel that the long Vicksburg campaign was nearing its climax. Unlike Grant, he had little reason for joy. Grant, Sherman, and McPherson had robbed him of leadership of the West’s most momentous campaign. With that command went the political fruits of the looming victory. The final Vicksburg battle would likely be McClernand’s last chance to share in the opening of the Mississippi, commercial lifeline of the Midwest. If he distinguished himself in the battle to come, his renown could induce fellow Illinois Democrats, who had won power in the legislature in 1862, to name him a senator, replacing incumbent William A. Richardson, in the upcoming 1864 elections. An Illinois governor’s race was also in the offing, and glory at Vicksburg might put McClernand in a race against Governor Richard Yates. It would also reinforce his ties to Lincoln, who faced growing Democratic clamor for peace and would benefit from a bellicose Democratic running mate. A victorious general might even be able to win the Democratic Party’s nomination to oppose Lincoln himself. Only battlefield fame could actualize such pipe dreams.

  So McClernand remained a manic, recalcitrant pest. In Grant’s zeal to press Pemberton while keeping Johnston off his rear, he sent a May 20 order to a McClernand subordinate, General Alvin Hovey, to hold Black River Bridge. McClernand, uninformed of Grant’s order and seeking all available force for the attack on Vicksburg, ordered Hovey to join him in front of the city. Hovey obeyed but notified Grant to make sure the commander had okayed the McClernand directive. Hovey reminded Grant that the bridge was now unguarded.5

  The usually cool Grant waxed hot. He had written Sherman on May 17 that he did not think Johnston would attempt a rescue of Vicksburg, but after his repulsed attack on May 19, he was no longer sure. Now his furious outburst over McClernand’s abandonment of the Black River Bridge spawned a rumor that he had relieved the Illinois politician-general. He had not, obviously still respecting McClernand’s Lincoln ties, but he was angry. McClernand, too fixated on his own advancement to heed Grant’s ire, kept hyping his own deeds and denigrating others’. He informed Grant that he had “suffered considerable loss” getting his men into position on May 20 and heard “nothing” from McPherson and Sherman to his right. Concentration on a particular point would best assure success, he advised in one of five presumptuous dispatches he sent Grant on May 20 alone. The only other alternative, he said, was a siege.6

  Grant quickly readied another attack, but with less ebullience than he had shown for that of May 19. In his order for the new assault, he justified this second try on the ground that it might be less costly than delaying further. Each passing day allowed Confederates to strengthen their defenses and increased the chance of aid from their comrades.7

  Grant’s second Vicksburg attack began early on May 22. It opened with a four-hour bombardment by more than two hundred land cannon plus others on Admiral David Porter’s gunboats. At 10 a.m., the barrage decreased to pinpoint shelling, and the infantry surged forward behind detachments carrying scaling ladders.8

  McClernand’s men advanced along the Jackson railroad against three bastions in the Vicksburg defense line: the so-called Square Fort to the left, the Railroad Redoubt in the center, and, to the right, a crescent-shaped lunette manned by the Second Texas Infantry. Beyond the lunette, McPherson’s men aimed for the so-called Great Redoubt on the Jackson Road. Still farther right, on Graveyard Road, Sherman confronted the Stockade Redan.9

  These Confederate defenses were daunting. The Railroad Redoubt consisted of a fort surrounded by a ditch ten feet deep and six feet wide with walls twenty feet high, its front protected by enfilading musket and artillery fire from both flanks. Under already-murderous volleys, McClernand’s Twenty-second Iowa formed atop a hill and advanced on the ditch fronting the redoubt. There the Iowans charged into both the enfilading and the head-on fire.10

  McClernand’s charge succeeded in penetrating the Railroad Redoubt. The deepest of minimal Union incursions, it was nevertheless superficial. Cannon fire had blown a hole where the redoubt jutted farthest toward the attackers, and twelve Iowans scaled the parapet and entered the breach. There, in a sort of foyer of the fort, they fought hand to hand with a small contingent of the Thirtieth Alabama, ejecting most of the Alabamans. Not all, though. A lieutenant and a dozen riflemen hid in a corner as the few survivors of the small group of Iowans planted their flag on the parapet and returned to the ditch. An hour later, after some fifteen more volunteers from the Thirtieth Alabama had tried and failed to drive the Federals from the ditch, some Iowans reentered the fort and captured the Alabama remnant. But that was as far as the Iowans would get.11

  On the other end of the Union line, Sherman’s men were even less successful. Under protective artillery fire, a 150-man volunteer scaling party went forward toward Stockade Redan in a northeastward bulge in the left of the Confederate battlements. The Thirtieth Ohio, behind the scaling detachment, ran forward in a hurrahing column of fours. A few of the ladder carriers got part way up the wall, and a private of the Federal Eighth Missouri planted there the headquarters flag of Sherman’s brother-in-law and foster brother Brigadier General Hugh Boyle Ewing. Then two ranks of Confederate infantry drove them back, killing 19 and wounding 34 of the 150. The surviving ladder carriers and the infantry in their rear shot every Confederate who crawled out to capture the flag. But the Thirtieth Ohio was stopped, its path clotted with dead and wounded piling up from the hot Confederate small arms fire. The fire and carnage blocked the rest of Major General Frank Blair’s three brigades to Sherman’s immediate left. They sought a better route, but without success.12

  Situated between Sherman and McClernand, McPherson’s Seventeenth Corps was not as busy. Just one of the four brigades McPherson had on the field, that of Brigadier General John Stevenson, saw heavy action. Stevenson reported that his orders were to advance with fixed bayonets without firing a shot, so his Seventh Missouri and Eighty-first Illinois advanced silently to the right into “volley after volley.” To the left, the Eighth Illinois and Thirty-second Ohio also advanced. Confederate fire forced their column farther leftward, but they pushed their way to the ditch fronting the Confederate fortifications.

  Confederate fire tore great holes in the ranks to the left, and the Illinoisans and Ohioans dropped prone until it slacked. When it did, they charged. Five bearers of the green flag of the Missouri Irishmen went down, but the sixth jabbed its staff into the slope of the Confederate works. That was as far as they got. Beside them, two-thirds of the Eighty-first Illinois were killed or wounded. Still, they obeyed the order not to fire. “It seemed like madness,” a member of the Thirty-second Ohio told his diary. By 10:30 a.m. Stevenson ordered the sufferers withdrawn. He had lost 272 men in half an hour.13

  Grant watched from a hill. Within an hour after the infantry went forward at 10 a.m., the failure was obvious. Grant was about to ride to Sherman�
�s headquarters to call it off when a courier arrived from McClernand. His message, penned at 11:15 a.m., said he was “hotly engaged” with enemy massing right and left and needed a strong assault by McPherson. McPherson had been minimally active up to then, but Grant had endured eighteen months of McClernand’s attempts to command his army, and he was plainly fed up. At 11:50, Grant wrote back and told McClernand to use reserves as well as units shifted from inactive parts of his line. He did not know that all but one of McClernand’s brigades were fighting for their lives.

  Grant rode to meet Sherman, arriving as another courier found him. The note said McClernand’s men were in enemy trenches “at several points, but are brought to a stand.” Grant replied that Brigadier General John McArthur, marching from Warrenton since a day before, was to McClernand’s left and should be used to best advantage. Grant obviously did not know McArthur was still three miles south of town.14

  A third McClernand note came just past noon. It said McClernand had “part possession of two forts” and that the Stars and Stripes flew over them. He demanded a “vigorous push . . . all along the line.” Grant’s 2:30 p.m. reply repeated his unwittingly irrelevant instructions regarding McArthur. He added that he had ordered McPherson to send Brigadier General Isaac Quinby’s division to McClernand’s aid if Quinby could not pierce Confederate defenses where he was. But if Quinby could make a successful charge on McClernand’s right, Grant said, it would aid McClernand as much as reinforcements.15

  Grant knew too well McClernand’s tendency to self-promote. During the morning attack, from his hilltop, he had seen no indication that McClernand had broken through Vicksburg’s defense line. But the hill from which Grant had been observing was a mile and a half from McClernand, and now, at Sherman’s position, Grant was even farther off. There was no time to gallop over for a look. In deciding what to do, Grant doubtless considered what McClernand would tell Lincoln: that McClernand had the battle won until Grant refused help. At 2 p.m., Grant ordered Quinby sent to McClernand.16

  McClernand’s claims were disingenuous and incomplete. The brigade of the hard-fighting Irishman, Brigadier General Michael Lawler, did battle to the very mouth of the Railroad Redoubt and plant flags there, but hails of Confederate fire from both sides prevented him from getting more than a dozen or so men inside it. The brigades of Brigadier Generals William Benton and Stephen Burbridge did more damage on the Second Texas lunette, Burbridge’s dragging up a cannon to fire into one of its gun windows and sow mayhem inside. At a critical moment, however, division commander Eugene Carr called away two of Burbridge’s four regiments to shore up Benton in a move endorsed by McClernand. Time was of the essence for capitalizing on the toeholds at both the redoubt and the lunette, and the easiest unit to reinforce them with would have been that of William Spicely, one of McClernand’s own. But McClernand did not order Spicely forward, and his unit did nothing in the fight.17

  There followed an afternoon of bloody, uncoordinated lunges to comply with McClernand’s demands for aid and stepped-up action by his fellow corps commanders. Sherman, hurrying to assist McClernand’s effort as fast as he could get units ready, launched separate assaults at different points along his front at 2:15 p.m., 3 p.m., and 4 p.m. All failed. The intervals between each gave Confederates time to react in turn. Action was similar in front of McPherson and McClernand. McPherson’s renewal of his minimal morning effort was even more lackluster.18

  Perhaps the best chance for a real breakthrough was south of town. By mid-afternoon, McArthur—still roughly three miles from the Union lines—had his men forty yards from the so-called South Fort on the Warrenton Road. He claimed to be close enough to downtown Vicksburg to read building signs, and Admiral Porter’s gunboats had the Confederates inside the fort so pinned down that they gave up trying to get artillery into position to resist a ground attack. McArthur had issued directions for an assault and was about to launch it when couriers arrived ordering him to go to McClernand. He did not arrive there until well after dark.19

  McClernand’s misleading messages had cost dearly. Hundreds more Federals had died and been wounded in the unnecessary afternoon actions. The day’s Union total—compared to an estimated, never officially reported Confederate sum of 500—was 502 dead, 2,550 wounded, and 147 missing. Grant was angry. He had the grit to send men to die when their deaths seemed likely to reap gain, but this afternoon’s carnage was sickening and hardly helpful to his own reputation. He considered cashiering McClernand on the spot.20

  But he held off. Two of his favorite subordinates, Sherman and McPherson, had not distinguished themselves on this day, so he likely did not want to invite attention to their performances. He himself could have better coordinated some of the afternoon attacks, and he did not need to bring attention to that either. So he would suffer the politician-general a little longer, perhaps until Pemberton raised the white flag. Vicksburg’s certain surrender, whenever it came, would bring cachet to counter McClernand’s Lincoln connection.

  Grant settled in to wait beneath the boiling Dixie sun. On May 23, in answer to a Porter letter informing him of McArthur’s missed chance at South Fort, he praised Porter’s efforts and said Vicksburg was doomed; the only question was when it would fall. Until it did, he intended to lose no more men in bloody charges.21

  He waited until May 24 to write Halleck. When he did, he detailed the positions of his three corps and the completeness of their investment before mentioning the May 22 repulse. He said Vicksburg’s defenses had been too strong—by nature and human improvement—to storm; his men had not been defeated, just stopped short of victory.

  Then he got to McClernand. The Union loss had not been “very heavy” until McClernand called for aid and “misled me as to the real state of facts and caused much of the loss. He is entirely unfit for the position of Corps Commander both on the march and on the battlefield.” Grant could be sure that Halleck shared this opinion. Ever since Halleck and he had collaborated in hijacking McClernand’s army back in December, he knew for certain that Halleck disliked and distrusted McClernand as much as he himself did.

  Still, Grant assured Halleck, the prospects at Vicksburg remained favorable, McClernand notwithstanding. “The enemy,” Grant wrote, “are now undoubtedly in our grasp.” There was, of course, the matter of the Confederates gathering in his rear, but he would be ready for them. He and Sherman had seen to it that the railroad to Jackson was now badly damaged, so the enemy would have to haul arms and supplies over the forty-five intervening miles by horse or mule. His own army, meanwhile, was “in the finest health and spirits.”22

  Well, not all of it. Refusing to signal any weakness of resolve to Pemberton or Washington, Grant did not request a truce to collect wounded and bury dead. The sun-blistered, stinking slaughter lay in front of the trenches until May 25. Finally, Pemberton requested the truce, and Grant agreed to a two-and-a-half-hour cease-fire. Most of the surviving wounded, who had groaned between the two lines for three days, were by then not long for the world.23

  McClernand became, if anything, more confrontational after the botched May 22 attack. He wrote Illinois governor Yates on May 28 about rumors that he was being blamed for the attack’s failure and for Sherman’s and McPherson’s casualties; his letter seemed to angle for a government inquiry. Then, on receiving a Grant order in early June, McClernand exploded. Grant aide James Harrison Wilson handed him the directive, and McClernand howled, “I’ll be goddamned if I’ll do it—I am tired of being dictated to—I won’t stand it any longer; and you can go back and tell General Grant!” McClernand cursed Wilson, too, then backed off. “I am not cursing you,” he said. “I was simply expressing my intense vehemence on the subject matter.” The sentence became a recurring laugh line at Grant headquarters.24

  On June 4, McClernand wrote to Grant to protest in person. The army’s May 22 attack had failed, he said, despite “a determined effort, at least on my part,” to comply with Grant’s order “to carry and hold the works.” He demanded t
hat Grant quell whispering about him within the army—rumors that, he said, amounted to a “systematic effort to destroy my usefulness and character as a commander.”The last thing Grant cared to do was vouch for McClernand’s military effectiveness. He did not reply.25

  Two weeks later, though, McClernand overstepped again. This time, Grant pounced. On June 16, General Frank Blair saw in the Memphis Evening Bulletin a McClernand address congratulating his troops for their performance on May 22; in effect, McClernand was congratulating McClernand. The document also impugned Grant’s leadership, asserting that “massing a strong force in time upon a weakened point would have probably insured success.” Grant might well have coordinated the May 22 attack more efficiently, but McClernand would have done worse. He had divided up Quinby’s division when it was sent to him, the reverse of what he said Grant should have done, and he had not used one of his own brigades, Spicely’s, at all.

  McPherson saw the same document in the St. Louis Missouri Democrat that Blair had seen in the Evening Bulletin. Blair took the paper to Sherman, who forwarded it to Grant. McPherson did the same, and Grant shot McClernand a curt note asking whether the published version was “a true copy” of the document. If it was not, he wanted one “as required by regulations and existing orders of the Department.”

  McClernand crawfished. He replied that the published version was indeed authentic but blamed his adjutant for not sending Grant a copy. He could not resist, though, issuing a direct challenge to his superior. He was ready, he said, “to maintain its statements.”26