by Bruce Catton
It was at this moment that the plan for a combined push at Port Hudson went out of Grant’s mind forever. He would go for Pemberton and Vicksburg alone; if Banks could come along sometime and help, that would be fine, but Grant was going to send no army corps down the river, nor was he going to spend one day waiting at Grand Gulf for Banks to join him. After May 3, 1863, the Vicksburg campaign would be Grant’s and Grant’s alone.
As a matter of fact, the plan for a joint move against Port Hudson had always been more the expression of a pious hope than the precise formulation of a working military program. Even Halleck himself apparently did not count too greatly on it; when Grant started down from Milliken’s Bend, the most Halleck had said to Banks was that Grant was going to attack Grand Gulf “and perhaps co-operate with you against Port Hudson,” and he had warned Banks that Grant’s primary object must be “to concentrate his forces so as to strike the enemy an important blow.”13 The Port Hudson plan contemplated one of the most delicate of all military operations—the bringing together of two widely separated armies, far down in hostile territory, in the presence of an active, vigilant enemy—and with communications between Grant and Banks as imperfect as they necessarily were it is doubtful that either Halleck or Grant had ever felt deeply bound to the Port Hudson idea. The notion that Grant was breathing defiance in the face of the General in Chief by abandoning the Port Hudson venture is, quite simply, a fiction. The one person who was deeply offended by Grant’s change in plan was Banks himself, and Banks’s displeasure was something Grant could easily live with.
Forgetting about Banks, Grant for several days did not even bother to let that general know that he had forgotten. (His dispatch telling Banks that the Port Hudson date was broken was not written until May 10.) He did, however, take pains to keep Halleck posted; and, indeed, throughout the Vicksburg campaign Grant was extremely careful to keep a steady flow of dispatches going to Washington, although it took several days for messages he sent from this part of the country to reach the War Department. (From Grand Gulf they had to go overland to Milliken’s Bend and then by steamer via Memphis to Cairo, where they could be put on the telegraph wire.) He had already told Halleck that he was going to follow up the advantage gained at Port Gibson, Dana had given Stanton equally clear notice—and now Grant waited only for Sherman and for the wagons from upriver before plunging into action.
Even though the luckless farmers of Mississippi were going to have to provide most of the army’s food, some sort of wagon train was necessary. The number of army wagons that could be brought down from Milliken’s Bend was limited; a staff officer reported that there would be only two wagons to a regiment, in which all ammunition, rations and equipment must be carried, and he soberly noted that “it will be impossible to keep the army from suffering.” It was necessary to improvise—for, as Grant noted, even if the soldiers could get food and forage from the plantations, they had to bring all of their ammunition, and the quantity a foot soldier could carry on his back was limited. And so even before the fighting around Port Gibson had ended Grant had detachments swarming all over the countryside, collecting every four-wheeled vehicle, and every draft animal capable of pulling such vehicles, to make up a fantastic, unmilitary wagon train: fine carriages, long-coupled wagons made to carry cotton bales, farm carts, anything at all on wheels, pulled indiscriminately by horses, mules and oxen, many of them wearing makeshift harness put together from whatever was at hand. With these, and with such Army wagons as could be brought down the river and ferried over to the Mississippi shore, his army could carry the things it had to have in order to live and fight.14
While Grant prepared to move, his advance guard kept up a ceaseless movement of reconnaissances and skirmishing thrusts to give Pemberton the notion that a direct advance on Vicksburg was in preparation. Grant’s attention, however, was primarily centered on the railroad which ran from Vicksburg to Jackson. This town was, in effect, Vicksburg’s connection with the rest of the Confederacy. At Jackson the railroad from Vicksburg crossed the north-and-south line that came down to New Orleans from West Tennessee; through this place, troops and supplies meant for Pemberton would move; to Jackson, as Grant would presently learn, Joe Johnston in person was coming, to arrange for the formation of a relieving army. A hard blow to break the railroad connections, destroy military supplies and disperse the gathering reinforcements would isolate Pemberton and doom both his army and Vicksburg itself.
At the end of the first week in May, Grant’s troops were placed to threaten both Jackson and Vicksburg. The left was at Hankinson’s Ferry, on the Big Black, and the right, under McClernand, lay half a dozen miles to the east, behind Big Sandy creek. McPherson could move eastward toward Jackson while McClernand and Sherman moved to break the railroad at Edwards Station and guarded the Big Black crossings against a sudden thrust by Pemberton.
For Sherman was on the scene by now, and Grant had thirty-five thousand men, with eight thousand more marching down to join him. Sherman reached Grand Gulf on May 6, spent the next day bringing his troops across—except for Frank Blair’s division, which was still on the march from Milliken’s Bend—and promptly moved up to Hankinson’s Ferry. Sherman was still uneasy about this campaign, and he reflected now that the entire army would have to be supplied by one inadequate road running north from Grand Gulf. Eighteen months later, he would be world-famous as the general who marched unconcernedly off into the unknown with no supply line at all, but he had not reached that point yet; he could be the most unorthodox of soldiers, but in the spring of 1863 the textbook formula still held him, and he sent a quick warning to Grant: “Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road.” Back from Grant, who had his headquarters five miles east, at Rocky Springs, came the reply: “I do not calculate upon the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf. I know it will be impossible without constructing additional roads. What I do expect, however, it to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee and salt we can and make the country furnish the balance.… A delay would give the enemy time to re-enforce and fortify. If Blair were up now I believe we could be in Vicksburg in seven days.”15 As he read that dispatch, Sherman advanced a long stride in his military education.
The army moved, slipping to the northeast, with the Big Black River winding down across its left flank: a shield for Pemberton’s army, as that general supposed, but also a curtain, blotting out knowledge of what the invader was up to. About fifteen miles to the north, the Southern Railroad of Mississippi, going due east from Vicksburg, crossed the river near Edwards Station and then went on thirty miles east to Jackson, and as Grant’s marching columns drew closer to this railroad, General Pemberton’s perplexity increased. He had supposed, after Bowen was driven out of Port Gibson, that Grant would move straight up the Mississippi to Warrenton; then he guessed that a raid on Jackson was being attempted; then it struck him that what Grant really was intending might be a blow at the railroad bridge over the Big Black River near Edwards Station; and from Vicksburg, on May 12, he sent an unhappy dispatch to Jefferson Davis:
“I am obliged to hold back large forces at the ferries on Big Black, lest he cross and take this place. I am also compelled to keep a considerable force on either flank of Vicksburg, out of supporting distance of Edwards, to prevent his approach in those directions.”16
Pemberton, as a matter of fact, had four problems, and taken all together they were far too much for him. The first problem was Grant himself. The second problem was President Davis, who believed that both Vicksburg and Port Hudson must be held at all costs and who kept sending Pemberton orders based on that belief. The third problem was Joe Johnston, Pemberton’s immediate superior, who felt that Pemberton ought to abandon all fixed positions, concentrate his forces so as to beat Grant in the open field, and then regain the places he had given up. And the final proble
m was the great imponderable that bore on every Confederate commander in this war—the fact that the Federal government, with its vast advantage in man power, economic strength, and the materials of war, was bound to win whenever it found a general who would relentlessly and steadfastly put all of those advantages to the fullest use. The Confederacy had few generals unluckier than John Pemberton.
Grant was traveling light, in this campaign, but he did have his oldest son with him—Frederick Dent Grant, the bouncy twelve-year-old who had been allowed to make the overland trip down from Milliken’s Bend and who had no intention of missing any of the fun. When the army made the crossing at Bruinsburg, Fred had been left in bed on the headquarters boat, but he roused himself and followed on foot—joining forces, as he trudged after the Commanding General, with the War Department’s Mr. Dana, who also wanted a front-row seat. Fred wore the sash and sword which his father never bothered to use, and he and Dana followed the sound of the guns. Somewhere along the way some staff officers presented the pair with a couple of somnolent plantation horses, and Grant remembered meeting them, “mounted on two enormous horses, grown white with age,” just after the close of the battle of Port Gibson. They stuck with headquarters for the rest of the campaign, and Grant loyally recorded that Fred’s presence “caused no anxiety to me or to his mother, who was at home.”17
There was plenty for a small boy to see. Forty years later Frederick Dent Grant remembered riding into Willow Springs and joining his father and other officers on the porch of a little house just as an indignant plantation owner, mounted on a mule, rode up to complain that marauding Federals had robbed him of everything he owned. The troops, he said, belonged to the command of Brigadier General A. J. Smith, who had a division in McClernand’s corps; Smith, a blunt and salty character, happened to be present, and he was told to talk to the man. He listened to the planter’s complaint, then asked: “Whose mule is that you rode up on?” His own, said the planter. “Well,” said Smith, turning away, “those men didn’t belong to my division at all, because if they were my men they wouldn’t even have left you that mule.”18
Now the army was picking up speed; and as it moved Grant kept spurring his subordinates to forget about rations and supplies and keep crowding forward. When McClernand sent him a note, protesting that he had so few wagons that his corps could not carry all the foodstuffs and cooking utensils it needed, Grant curtly replied that he had seen McClernand’s corps on the march, and that it was accompanied by plenty of horses and mules to carry a full five days’ rations “if relieved of the knapsacks, officers, soldiers and Negroes now riding.” To McPherson, Grant sent word to move for the town of Raymond, fourteen miles west of Jackson: there was reported to be a Confederate brigade there and Grant wanted it driven out—“We must fight the enemy before our rations fail, and we are equally bound to make our rations last as long as possible.” And finally, on May 10, Grant found time to send a letter to Banks explaining the new campaign plan:
It was my intention on gaining a foothold at Grand Gulf, to have sent a sufficient force to Port Hudson to have insured the fall of that place with your co-operation, or rather to have co-operated with you to that end. Meeting the enemy, however, as I did, south [west] of Port Gibson, I followed him to the Big Black and could not afford to retrace my steps. I also learned, and believe the information to be reliable, that Port Hudson is almost entirely evacuated. This may not be true, but it is the concurrent testimony of deserters and contrabands.
Many days cannot elapse before the battle will begin which is to decide the fate of Vicksburg, but it is impossible to predict how long it may last. I would urgently request, therefore, that you join me or send all the force you can spare to co-operate in the great struggle for opening the Mississippi river. My means of gaining information from Port Hudson are not good, but I shall hope, even before this reaches Baton Rouge, to hear of your forces being on the way here.19
On May 12, two days after he sent this letter to Banks, Grant began to cut the regular communication with Grand Gulf. McPherson got his advance up to Raymond, and McPherson’s men had a brisk fight there, driving the badly outnumbered Confederates out of the town. When the news reached Grant—who was some miles away, with Sherman’s corps—it brought him to his final decision. So far he had carefully guarded the lower crossings of the Big Black, to keep Pemberton from getting in his rear and breaking his sketchy communications with Grand Gulf. Now he would use everything in a drive straight at Jackson, maneuvering in the hope of destroying Pemberton’s army in the open field, and letting the lower crossings of the Big Black go unguarded—if Pemberton wanted to get in his rear and cut his communications he was welcome to try, since there would be no rear, and no communications. Grant got off a quick dispatch to Halleck, warning him that he would be out of touch for a while: “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.” Then he sent word to McPherson to push on for Jackson, and ordered Sherman to follow. McClernand was to take position along a stream known as Fourteen-Mile Creek, with his outposts near Edwards Station.20
McPherson put on the pressure. Men of the 20th Ohio remembered that they had halted just west of Raymond, to stack their guns and light fires to cook supper; the order to move on reached them just as the meal was cooked, but before anyone had had a chance to eat it, and the men went tramping through Raymond, coffeepots and frying pans in hand, trailing a tantalizing odor of fried bacon. They went on through Raymond, Sherman moved east on parallel roads, and McClernand disengaged his pickets from the Edwards Station line and followed after. It began to rain early in the morning, and on May 14 McPherson’s and Sherman’s men went splashing across the fields through ankle-deep water to attack the capital of Mississippi.
Joe Johnston, weak from a spell in sickbed, had reached Jackson the day before. He found 6000 soldiers in town, and since Grant had fully 25,000 men moving in to the assault Johnston could not hope to do anything but fight a delaying action. His men held Grant off for most of the day, but more than that they could not do; and what Johnston wanted was a delay of a week or more—that, and some chance to bring his own troops and Pemberton’s together in one solid mass. Reinforcements were on the way, from the east; Johnston would have 15,000 men in a few days, and 9000 more a little after that, and he sent word to Pemberton to meet him on or near the railroad line so that they could put up a real fight. But Pemberton, who conceived that he was not allowed to evacuate either Vicksburg or Port Hudson even for the sake of victory in the field, was unable to concentrate his own troops. With some 23,000 men he was now prowling forward in the Edwards Station area, hoping to compel Grant to retreat by striking his rear and his line of supply.21 Johnston moved his troops off to the north, and the Federals marched triumphantly into Jackson.
Among those who entered in triumph was Master Fred Grant, presumably still girt with sash and sword. He had been with his father and Sherman during the fight, and when the Confederates retreated Fred broke away and went trotting into the capital on his own hook, heading straight for the Statehouse. In the town he ran into a column of infantry in butternut—Confederate troops, marching out to the North—and he huddled in a side street until they had passed. Then he saw one of McPherson’s staff officers, riding hard for the Statehouse, carrying a United States flag. Sensing what the officer was going to do, Fred rode after him, but the officer was not cordial; he hurried on ahead, got into the Statehouse, and hoisted the flag. Fred saw a cavalcade of Federals approaching, and galloped to meet it—his father, with a cavalry escort, leading the infantry advanced into town.22
The soldiers were whooping with joy. They jeered mightily as they picked up copies of a local newspaper boasting that Yankee vandals would never pollute the streets of Jackson with their presence, and a gunner wrote: “If there ever was a jubilant army, Grant’s army in Jackson was that night.” The men began to realize that this campaign was something
special and that they were being led with cold audacity. Seizing Jackson, they had left a strong army in their rear and had cut it off from reinforcements; if things went on as they had begun, the Rebels would have to retire into Vicksburg, but if anything went wrong Grant’s whole army would probably be destroyed. Proudly, these Middle Western soldiers told one another how captured Confederates, who had fought heretofore in the Eastern theater, admitted that when the fighting in the Jackson works began the Confederates had quickly realized “they were not fighting New York troops.”23
There would be no lingering in Jackson. Grant knew as well as Johnston that strong Confederate reinforcements would show up before long and that it was up to him to settle the campaign before these could arrive. (He also enjoyed a stroke of luck, just here. A Union agent in Confederate uniform, riding as courier for Johnston’s troops, brought to Grant Johnston’s order telling Pemberton to meet him somewhere near the railroad line.) McPherson, accordingly, was sent doubling back to the town of Clinton, eight miles west of Jackson, and McClernand was told to move his corps to Bolton, another half-dozen miles to the west of Clinton.
