Dixie Victorious: An Alternate history of the Civil War

by Peter Tsouras

  He arrived in the rear of Brigadier General Adley Gladden’s brigade shortly before 9.00 a.m. Johnston immediately ordered Gladden to conduct a bayonet attack. Gladden’s line surged across the Spain field and sent the Yankee line rearward. Johnston followed them as they swept into an abandoned Union camp. Scores of hungry rebels broke ranks to feast from the hot but untouched breakfast kettles. Others began looting the tents. Johnston saw an officer emerge from a tent with an armload of trophies. He spoke sharply, “None of that, sir; we are not here for plunder!”

  A dejected look crossed the officer’s face and his shoulders sagged. Johnston reached from his horse to take a tin cup from a table. He softened his tone and said, “Let this be my share of the spoils today.”7

  The general continued through the camp. All around him were wounded and suffering soldiers, most of whom belonged to the enemy. Johnston summoned Doctor Yandell: “Doctor, send some couriers to the rear for medical officers. Meantime, look after these wounded people, the Yankees among the rest. They were our enemies a moment ago, they are our prisoners now.”

  “General,” Yandell protested, “others can attend to these men. My place is with you.”

  “Go ahead and begin your work, doctor. I’ll advise you when I am moving on.”

  As Johnston turned to confer with an aide, Yandell heard Captain Wickham speaking softly to him: “Doctor, disregard what he says. You’ve seen the way he takes terrible risks. This army depends upon him and he may have reason to depend upon you. Follow him wherever he goes, just stay a little ways behind. He never looks backward.”8

  Soon Johnston was off to the front again. Shortly before noon, one of Beauregard’s aides observed the general “sitting on his horse where the bullets were flying like hail stones. I galloped up to him amid the fire, and found him cool, collected, and self-possessed, but still animated and in fine spirits.” Another officer found Johnston observing the successful charge of Chalmers’s brigade. As the Rebel line disappeared beyond a nearby ridge line, Johnston remarked with satisfaction, “That checkmates them.”9

  Indeed, from Johnston’s vantage point it seemed like the Confederates were driving General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee backwards all along the front. But looks were deceiving. At several places Grant’s men defended their positions tenaciously. Nowhere was this more true than on the Union left, in the area of a peach orchard. Here, Brigadier General John C. Breckinridge’s Confederates struggled to advance for more than an hour. Breckinridge became distressed with his inability to make the Tennessee regiments in Colonel W.S. Statham’s brigade press the attack vigorously and galloped up to Johnston to complain that he could not make the brigade charge. Breckinridge was a former Vice-President of the United States and remained an influential Southern political leader. Johnston knew that he had to be handled with kid gloves. He gently replied, “Oh, yes, General, I think you can.”

  The emotional Breckinridge nearly broke down. “I can’t, General. I have tried repeatedly and failed!”

  “Then I will help you, we can get them to make the charge.” Johnston firmly said.10

  Johnston galloped down a ravine toward the Tennessee soldiers. Among his aides, only Captain Wickham remained. Wickham glanced backward. With relief he saw that Doctor Yandell was still shadowing the general.

  Johnston rode among the battered and discouraged Rebels. His sword remained sheathed in its scabbard. Instead, he held the tin cup he had taken from the Union camp in his hand. Wielding the cup as if it were a sword, he gestured toward the Union line. “We must drive them!” Then he rode in front of his men, reached with his cup to touch their bayonets, and said repeatedly, “Men, they are stubborn; we must use the bayonet.” He took station at the center of Statham’s brigade, turned and shouted, “Men! I will lead you!”11

  Like an attack dog poised and waiting for the command, the entire Confederate line seemed to tremble with anticipation. One soldier recalled that Johnston gave them “irresistible ardor.”12 At the signal they cheered mightily and charged. It was a few minutes before 2.00 p.m.

  Three Rebel brigades assailed the Union position. On the left, Statham’s men passed the Sarah Bell cabin and charged directly toward the Yankees in the peach orchard. As had occurred twice already, this effort stalled against fierce Union opposition. On the right Jackson’s brigade became ensnarled in a wooded ravine and managed to contribute only two regiments to the attack. The attack’s success depended upon the center brigade commanded by Brigadier General John Bowen. Bowen’s Arkansas and Missouri infantry proved equal to the task. A Union defender recalled, “The Rebels came on us before we knew it. The undergrowth was so thick we could not see them until they got within twenty yards of us.”13 In a wild, confused fight, Bowen’s brigade broke the Union line.

  Finally, Johnston’s relentless series of charges began to produce dividends. The Union left crumbled, thereby exposing adjacent units to enfilade fire. Masses of Rebel infantry pushed through the peach orchard to exploit the situation. Worse still, from the Union perspective, few fresh troops stood between the triumphant Rebels and Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.

  But the breakthrough was not without cost. Bowen went down with a severe wound. Hundreds of Confederate infantry likewise fell dead, dying, or wounded. General Grant later remembered this part of the field was “so covered with [Confederate] dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.”14

  Amidst the carnage, an elated Albert Sidney Johnston watched his plan succeed. Tennessee Governor Harris appeared. Johnston smiled and pointed to his left boot, which had been struck by a bullet, and said, “Governor, they came very near putting me hors de combat in that charge.”15 The general then sent Harris and all but one of his aides coursing the field to carry orders to complete the victory. Only Captain Wickham remained with Johnston.

  When Harris returned from his mission to report to Johnston he suddenly saw the general sink in his saddle and begin to reel to his left. Harris saw that Johnston’s face was deadly pale. “General, are you wounded?”

  Johnston replied, “Yes, and I fear seriously.”16

  Harris and Wickham propped Johnston in his saddle and led him to shelter behind a small knoll. They saw that Johnston’s horse, Fire-eater, had been struck twice by bullets or shrapnel. As they lifted Johnston to the ground, Wickham looked up with relief to see Doctor Yandell. Wickham told the doctor that Johnston had been hit in the boot but that there was no other obvious sign of a wound. Yandell untied Johnston’s cravat, unbuttoned his collar and vest, and pulled his shirt open. He could not find a wound. The general lost consciousness. Yandell pulled off Johnston’s left boot. Nothing. He pulled off the right and it was full of blood. Hastily, Yandell slit open Johnston’s trouser leg. He found a profusely bleeding wound behind his right knee joint. Apparently a lead ball had struck the calf and torn, but not severed, the popliteal artery, and lodged against the shin bone. It was an ugly, dangerous wound which, if left untended, would quickly kill.

  Yandell reached into Johnston’s pocket where, at the surgeon’s behest, Johnston kept a field tourniquet. Yandell expertly tied it in place to stanch the flow. Colonel William Preston galloped onto the scene. He dismounted rapidly, took out a flask, and cradled Johnston’s head in his arms. He poured whiskey into Johnston’s mouth and asked desperately, “Johnston, do you know me?”

  The general’s eyes opened. He recognized Preston and smiled weakly. In a faint voice he said, “Tell Beauregard to drive the Yankees into the river.”17 And then he lost consciousness again.

  Davis’s Generals

  In Richmond, an anxious President Jefferson Davis awaited news from his friend, Sidney Johnston. During the Mexican War, Johnston’s quick-thinking reaction to a dangerous confrontation had probably saved the lives of both men. Thereafter, Davis’s admiration knew no bounds. A few months before, when some Tennessee politicians protested that Joh
nston had abandoned valuable Tennessee soil and was “no general,” Davis had replied that if Johnston was not a general, “we had better giveup the war, for we have no general.”18 On the eve of Johnston’s offensive against Grant, Davis sent a telegram saying, “I anticipate victory.”19

  The absence of news from Johnston troubled Davis greatly. He told his aides that if his friend were alive he would have heard something. April 6 passed, and then April 7. Finally news came about the Confederate defeat. After Johnston’s wounding, Beauregard had been unable or unwilling to capitalize upon the Confederate advantage during the remainder of the day. The next day, the Union forces counterattacked and drove the rebels from the field. Beauregard ordered a retreat to Corinth.

  To Davis, it seemed that “Old Bory’s” retreat undid the victory that was there for the taking when Johnston fell. It cemented his dislike for the Creole general. In contrast, Davis had nothing but tender concern for Sidney Johnston. He inquired about his friend’s health, wished him a rapid recovery, and proposed that the general be moved to Davis’s own Mississippi plantation, Brierfield, to convalesce. Davis wrote movingly about the plantation’s beauty and charm. It was in a secluded backwater, far from the front, an altogether perfect place for the general to enjoy quiet and peace while regaining his strength.

  In Corinth, the staggering number of Confederate wounded overwhelmed the medical service. Moreover, the army’s return to the city quickly polluted the shallow wells that provided the region’s drinking water. The number of men on the sick list soared as typhoid, dysentery, and other waterborne diseases attacked the already weakened army. Among the afflicted was Albert Sidney Johnston.

  Fearful that the wounded general would succumb to disease, Doctor Yandell fought to overcome Johnston’s reluctance to move. “I should be with my men,” Johnston weakly protested.20 The president’s hospitable offer was like a lifeline for the worried doctor. So, on the last day of April, a locomotive pulled away from Corinth and headed south along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Three days later a horse-drawn ambulance pulled up before the white-posted veranda of Jefferson Davis’s plantation at Davis Bend on the Mississippi River, some 20 miles below Vicksburg. Here Johnston began a long, long convalescence.

  President Davis had placed the western theater in the hands of the general whom he most trusted. Johnston’s wounding left a command void. Any replacement would have found it difficult to measure up to Johnston in the grief-stricken mind of the commander-in-chief. When Beauregard yielded western Tennessee without a fight and then went off on sick leave without asking permission, Davis replaced him with Braxton Bragg. But shuffling commanders did not address the South’s strategic conundrum: a long defensive line, stretched so thin that it could be broken by the superior enemy forces most anywhere; yet to abandon territory, to concentrate, risked losing valuable assets forever. Indeed, this is what had taken place at the South’s greatest city. Stripped of its defenders for the grand stroke at Shiloh, New Orleans fell to an aggressive Federal fleet in the dismal spring of 1862.

  Davis examined the strategic map and saw that Tennessee remained vulnerable from the Mississippi to the Alleghenies. He was willing to take risks and the only solution he saw was the offensive-defensive. So, the president held high hopes for Bragg’s counteroffensive into Kentucky which began in the late summer of 1862. Bragg skillfully interposed his army between the Union army and its base at Louisville. For a few shining hours Bragg grasped potential victory, but at the critical moment he hesitated, declined battle, and permitted the Federals to pass his front and gain Louisville. The subsequent Union offensive drove him out of not only Kentucky but much of Tennessee as well. The president candidly told Congress that the South had entered “the darkest and most dangerous period yet.”21

  The disasters of 1862 taught Davis that his offensive-defensive required some form of mobile reserve. He explained to one of his generals, “We cannot hope at all points to meet the enemy with a force equal to his own, and must find our security in the concentration and rapid movement of troops.”22 Meanwhile, Grant was on the move again. He had collected a large army and a seemingly invincible fleet to spearhead a drive south down the Mississippi River, and the defending Confederate generals doubted their ability to stop him.

  Davis knew that Vicksburg was the key to controlling the Mississippi. It was one of the places the South needed to hold if it were to endure. The president responded to the crisis by redrawing department boundaries and appointing a new general to defend the city. Davis chose Lieutenant General John Pemberton, a Pennsylvania-born officer whose brothers fought for the North and whose birth state made him the focus of deep suspicion among the endangered people of Mississippi. Indeed, a Confederate sergeant observed his new general and wrote, “I saw Pemberton and he is the most insignificant ‘puke’ I ever saw.”23

  At Brierfield Plantation, Sidney Johnston knew little about the command frictions besetting the Confederacy. The blood loss from his wound had weakened him such that he fell easy prey to a prolonged, and nearly fatal, bout of typhoid fever. On rare days during the summer of 1862 his strength rallied and Davis’s servants, supervised by the fretful Doctor Yandell, carried him outside for a few hours of bracing sunshine.

  One such day occurred on August 4, when Johnston watched the Confederate ironclad Arkansas bravely steam south to attack Baton Rouge. He had no notion that the ironclad’s engines badly needed repairs nor that had she remained beneath Vicksburg’s fortified bluffs she might have prevented much of what was to come. It was fortunate as well for the general’s health that he was not present the next day to witness the death throes of the most active vessel the South had ever floated to defend the Mississippi.24

  Fall came and Johnston slowly regained his health. General Bowen, who had recently recovered from his Shiloh wound, visited Johnston. The conversation naturally reverted to a refight of Shiloh. Johnston said that many of the difficulties encountered in that battle stemmed from the soldiers’ inexperience and lack of discipline. Bowen agreed and then interjected, “But General, it is different now. If you could see my division, particularly Cockrell’s Missouri boys, you would see a brigade of perfectly prepared fighting cocks. I would lead them into the jaws of hell itself.”25

  After Christmas, news of Vicksburg’s successful defense against William T. Sherman’s landing at Chickasaw Bayou seemed the perfect tonic for Johnston. He began drafting a request to return to duty. But the cold, exceedingly wet winter brought on an incapacitating lung inflammation and again the general took to his bed. The first anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh found him still pale, drawn, and weak.

  Bowen Confronts Grant

  On the night of April 16, Admiral David Porter’s ironclads ran the batteries at Vicksburg. Whether Porter would have taken this risk if the invincible Arkansas had still been afloat is impossible to say. What is certain is that Porter’s success radically altered the strategic chessboard. General Grant resolved to march along the Mississippi’s western shore and bypass Vicksburg. Then, aided by a series of clever diversions, he planned for Porter to ferry his army across the river to attack the city from below. It was a bold and brilliant strategy, and it fooled Pemberton and nearly all the Confederate commanders.

  The exception was the commander of the fortified post at Grand Gulf, General Bowen. Bowen alone perceived the new situation caused by Porter’s success. On April 27 he concisely outlined in a letter to Pemberton the dire threat posed by Grant’s likely future maneuvers. He asked for reinforcements to help hold Grand Gulf. Pemberton neither attended to Bowen’s warnings nor sent him reinforcements.

  At 8.00 a.m., April 30, the greatest amphibious invasion heretofore in American history began. By noon, most of General John McClernand’s 17,000-strong XIII Corps had completed the unopposed landing below Grand Gulf. Grant later wrote:

  “I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since. Vicksburg was not yet taken it is true, nor were its defenders demoralized… But I was on dry grou
nd on the same side of the river with the enemy. All the campaigns, labors, hardships and exposures… that had been made and endured, were for the accomplishment of this one object.”26

  Bowen had previously selected a strong position at Port Gibson as the best place to try to stop Grant. It was to this position that he sent his available manpower at 1.00 a.m. on April 30, seven hours before the first Union soldiers landed on the Mississippi’s eastern shore. On the morning of May 1 came the first combat. The terrain was a bewildering mix of irregular ridges divided by deep and impassable ravines. The subsequent battle placed a heavy tactical burden on leaders on both sides. According to one historian, “From battle’s beginning to end, officers on both sides had trouble understanding their own position relative to supporting, friendly units and had even less comprehension of how lay the opponent.”27 Although outnumbered three to one, the Confederates fought extremely well. Bowen himself had four horses shot out from under him. But eventually valor gave way to superior numbers. That night Bowen retreated from the field and retired behind the North Fork of Bayou Pierre.

  Confederate Reactions

  General Joseph Johnston was nominally in command of all Confederate forces in the West. On May 1, before he learned of Grant’s movements, he advised Pemberton, “If Grant crosses the Mississippi, unite all your troops to beat him.”28 It was sound strategy, but Joe Johnston had no intention of taking any personal role in seeing it through. This left Pemberton in a difficult bind. He believed Vicksburg to be his sacred trust, all the more sacred because he knew that many Mississippians doubted his loyalty to the cause. Consequently, Pemberton was extremely loath to denude the city in order to muster a field force sufficient to challenge Grant. Furthermore, Grant’s multiple diversions had fooled the Pennsylvania-born general.