Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  He made his headquarters for the moment at Young’s Point a few miles upriver, feeling good to be active again and away from the constant harassment of administrative details in Memphis. “Vicksburg will be a hard job,” he told Julia on January 31. “I expect to get through it successfully however.”93 A first step was dealing with McClernand, who the day before accused Grant of subverting his authority by giving orders directly to his corps commanders without going through McClernand himself. Reiterating his authority from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Halleck, with Lincoln’s endorsement, he asked that the question be referred to Washington. “Two Generals cannot command this army,” he argued. Grant agreed, and the next day assumed immediate command of the Vicksburg expedition, effectively returning McClernand to command the XIII Corps, which he assigned to garrison the west bank of the Mississippi around Helena, Arkansas. McClernand demanded clarification, again citing his earlier orders from Halleck and Stanton. Grant responded dispassionately but succinctly that McClernand now commanded only his own corps. As for Lincoln’s desires, the president was commander-in-chief and Grant vowed to obey any order of his, but he had seen nothing from Lincoln to prohibit his assuming command, and had Halleck’s positive authorization to do so. McClernand agreed for the moment to abide by Grant’s orders, but again asked that his protest be sent to Washington for official action. Seeking another way to regain independence, he asked to take his corps up the Arkansas to Little Rock and beyond, then move south to cooperate with Banks against Port Hudson, after which the combined forces could move against Vicksburg.94

  Grant ignored McClernand’s proposal and notified Washington that having seen the situation in person, he concluded that he did not feel McClernand could manage the expedition successfully. Lincoln and Stanton chose not to interfere, and there the matter rested, though McClernand had one more arrow in his quiver: his useful associate William Kountz. Late in February Kountz met with Stanton on McClernand’s behalf, and on March 15 McClernand gave him an introduction to call on Lincoln. On the back of the document handed to the president Kountz had written that Grant had been “gloriously drunk and in bed sick” on March 14, and that “if you are averse to drunken Genls I can furnish the Name of officers of high standing to substantiate the above.”95 The accusation availed neither Kountz nor McClernand of any benefit. Kountz troubled Grant no more, and McClernand was demoted from threat to irritant.

  When Grant’s engineer saw the Williams canal, he found an unfinished ditch one and a half miles long that was too narrow and shallow. Worse, its entire length was within range of enemy batteries on the river bluffs at Vicksburg. When engineers commenced widening and deepening it, they counted on river water diverted into the upper end to deepen the channel. By the end of January water ran five feet deep in the canal but too slowly to scour it deeper, and the lower exit was still under enemy guns. On February 4 Grant decided the canal offered nothing for his strategic aims, but he continued the work since he needed to keep his army occupied to keep it fit, and because it forced the enemy to keep some of their guns occupied covering the exit, weakening the main batteries at the city.96 The river broke through levees and dams, and by the latter part of March the Confederates had the range, and their fire forced him to close the work. Even then, had the ditch succeeded, his transports could only have used it after dark.

  A template was set, however, and in fact Grant was refining it well before he abandoned the canal. He personally inquired about alternative water routes to get his army south of Vicksburg, and soon learned of Lake Providence, at one time a bend of the Mississippi forty miles north of the city, but now isolated by a shift of the river’s course. Sluggish Bayou Maçon flowed southward from it into the Tensas River. That in turn fed into the Washita, which emptied into the Red River, whose waters coursed into the Mississippi more than 150 miles below Lake Providence. From that confluence Grant could choose myriad spots upriver to land his army on the east bank as close to Vicksburg as he dared. It needed only a short canal to connect Lake Providence with the Mississippi. Though the overall route would be close to 400 miles, he believed by January 30 that “some advantage may be gained by opening this,” and sent a gunboat and a brigade of McClernand’s to test the route’s feasibility.97

  Grant personally inspected the lake on February 5 and believed it to be the best means to bypass Vicksburg. He ordered McPherson to commence the canal, returned a week later to hurry the project in person, and by the end of the month had a river dredge on its way.98 By March 7, however, he concluded that it would fail. The channel widened into cypress swamps choked with trees that had to be removed, and high water impeded the task. Still, he allowed the work to continue to keep McPherson’s men busy, and by mid-March small steamers could enter the lake from the Mississippi and move down the bayou and rivers to the Red River.99 Nevertheless, Grant concluded that the route was simply too long and vulnerable. Watchful for opportunities, he thought that he might later use it to send 20,000 men to cooperate with Banks.100

  By this time all of his transport was committed to yet another simultaneous exploration. Back on January 22, noting the slow rise of the Mississippi’s level, it occurred to him that the Yazoo Pass “might be turned to good account in aiding our enterprise.”101 Some 325 miles upriver from Vicksburg a levee cut Moon Lake off from the river, and a stream called the Yazoo Pass connected the lake with the Coldwater River, which flowed to the Tallahatchie River running southward more than fifty water miles to Greenwood. There it emptied into the Yazoo River, which was fully navigable to its confluence with the Mississippi just a few miles upstream from Vicksburg. It might allow him to get his army to Haynes’ Bluff, high ground ten miles north of the city, which he could attack without fear of the batteries facing the river. All he need do was cut the levee. On January 29 he ordered it done, sending a party to explore the route’s practicability, followed days later by Porter and some gunboats, along with 600 soldiers.102

  It was typical of Grant to regard the newest alternative as the most promising thus far. “I expect great results,” he told Porter on Saint Valentine’s Day, providing the gunboats could make the trip.103 Yet there were serious drawbacks, not least being that his troops stationed at Milliken’s Bend would have to travel a total distance of nearly seven hundred miles to reach Haynes’ Bluff. By February 23 a division was ready to board Porter’s gunboats for the first phase of the operation, cutting trees to clear the channel, and a few days later he had a dredge on the way to clear the bottom. On March 5 Grant ordered McPherson to take his 25,000-man corps through the pass and head for Yazoo City, less than thirty miles from Haynes’ Bluff, a force Grant believed sufficient to take the northern approach to Vicksburg, while Sherman would handle the rest.104

  Meanwhile, Grant sent gunboats up the Yazoo River as close to Haynes’ Bluff as possible, and near midnight on March 6 one fired a signal gun to let him know they were in position. They were to draw enemy fire in their direction while McPherson approached from the land side after navigating the waterways. Now all Grant had to do was wait for McPherson to reach his landing. While waiting, Grant confidently wrote Washburne on March 10 that “the Yazoo Pass expedition is going to prove a perfect success,” and that “we are going through a campaign here such as has not been heard of on this continent before.”105 By March 17, however, he learned that Confederates had left Vicksburg and gone up the Yazoo to try to stop McPherson. He also could not get enough light draft steamers to convoy as many regiments as he had hoped, circumstances that determined him to countermand his orders and bring McPherson back to Milliken’s Bend. A few days later he learned that Confederates had fortified the Yazoo above Greenwood and on March 11 the gunboats found they could not safely pass.106

  Typically, Grant was already exploring one more option. On March 13 Porter took a gunboat up Steele’s Bayou, which connected with Black Bayou a dozen miles upstream; Black Bayou connected with Deer Creek, which in turn linked with the Rolling Fork. That stream flowed into
the Sunflower River, which ran back south to enter the Yazoo a dozen miles above Haynes’ Bluff. Grant might use that route to send forces up the Yazoo to cooperate with McPherson in getting past Greenwood, or go downstream to Haynes’ Bluff. He personally inspected the route on March 15 and immediately realized its potential. At 130 miles, it was shorter than the Lake Providence or Yazoo Pass alternatives, by now all but abandoned. At once Grant ordered Sherman to reconnoiter the route thoroughly and clear the channel where necessary; he awaited only Sherman’s word that the route was open before sending several brigades up the Mississippi to a spot where Steele’s Bayou flowed barely a mile east of a river bend. There he would march them overland and board them on Porter’s transports for the rest of their journey.107 By March 17 Grant believed that here, finally, he had his route to high ground behind Vicksburg. Five days later, however, his hopes faded when he learned that Porter feared they might get no farther than Rolling Fork, which presented unanticipated problems for passage.108 Six days later Grant confessed that “I cannot promise success to this expedition,” and on March 27 admitted defeat when Porter said that Confederates had blocked the Sunflower almost within sight of the Yazoo, making clearing the route too dangerous to proceed.109

  Grant found that the work had kept his men cheerful despite the wet weather, and he felt better himself than he had in months.110 On Saint Valentine’s day he told Julia “I am remarkably well.” He ate heartily and slept soundly every night, though accidental loss of his false teeth made meals a bit of a challenge.111 No doubt part of his good cheer came from the turnabout his salary made in his financial status, enabling him in February to invest $12,000 in United States bonds.112 Even McClernand was quiet for a change. Still, Grant chafed at the passing time, though the only outward sign was the eighteen to twenty cigars he smoked every day.113 Early in February, acknowledging that it would be some time yet before he could attack Vicksburg, he railed against rising river and heavy rain that threatened to flood not only his camps but also his works. Nonetheless, he told Hillyer that “I hope yet to fool the rebels and effect a landing where they do not expect one.” Then “there will be a big fight or a foot race.”114 A week later, revealing much of his mental process with any problem, he told Julia that “we are not much nearer an attack on Vicksburg now apparently than when I first come down, but still as the attack will be made and time is passing we are necessarily coming nearer the great conflict.”115 He worked; so long as he worked he progressed; so long as he progressed he would reach his goal. “The reduction of Vicksburg is a heavy contract,” he said late in February, “but I feel very confident of success.”116 It was all the same dynamic, whether digging potatoes in Oregon or canals in Louisiana.

  Through the multiple setbacks, Grant never forgot something that happened weeks before on February 2. That morning before dawn, one of Porter’s fleet of armored boats boldly ran down the river right under the guns of Vicksburg’s batteries to ram a Confederate vessel and then moved on south past the remaining batteries to safety below. “This is of vast importance,” Grant wired Halleck that afternoon, though for the moment he saw the main effect being severing Vicksburg’s communications west of the Mississippi.117 Seven weeks later on March 25 two more of Porter’s rams ran the gauntlet in daylight. One fell almost to pieces when hit by a rebel artillery shot, but the other came through in good condition despite several hits.118 This was no idle event. The fastest and most direct way to get below Vicksburg was to run past the city on gunboats and transports, yet Grant and Porter had assumed that the formidable batteries on the eastern bluffs were too deadly. Now two of three vessels had passed them relatively unharmed. Some truths became obvious. River current ran at four or five miles an hour, and a steamboat’s engines could boost that to seven or eight miles an hour or more. Heavy cannon on the bluffs might get in only one shot as a target passed and could not reaim fast enough to try again with accuracy. If the vessels risked passing in the night, the chances of success mushroomed.

  Late in February Grant ordered a reconnaissance in the direction of Warrenton, a likely landing ten miles below Vicksburg, where batteries covered the southern end of his first canal.119 Almost a month later he decided to destroy them. He sent two gunboats and several small sailboats and transports past Vicksburg under cover of darkness; he then marched troops down the west bank to meet the small flotilla across the river from Warrenton, where the boats would ferry them over for the attack. After that the infantry would be ferried back to the west bank and return northward. It was a raid and nothing more.120 Instead, the two rams ran past by themselves the morning of March 25 without notifying Grant, intending to do the ferrying themselves. He was irked, but not for long. “It may all be providential,” he told Porter, “and I shall expect a change of apparent luck soon.” For Grant that meant changing his luck himself.121

  Within hours his concept shifted to something dramatically different. He sent a requisition north to forward to him “for purposes, that are of the highest importance,” at least twenty-five flat boats, thirty or more yawls, a barge capable of carrying artillery and soldiers, and four or five Chicago tugboats for towing, all to be sufficient to carry up to 50,000 soldiers and artillery, with supplies, equipment, ordnance, and two regiments of cavalry.122 By this time he had all but abandoned the Haynes’ Bluff option. On March 22 Grant revealed an uncharacteristic concern. Having placed so much faith first in the Yazoo Pass gambit, and then in the stalled Steele’s Bayou approach, he confided to Sherman that “I have made really but little calculation u[p]on reaching Vicksburg by any other [route] than Hains Bluff.”123 To his other confidant, Julia, he was even more open. “I am very well but much perplexed,” he wrote her. “Heretofore I have had nothing to do but fight the enemy. This time I have to overcome obsticles to reach him.”124 On April 2 he made a final personal reconnaissance of Haynes’ Bluff and concluded that any attack there would meet with “immense sacrifice of life, if not with defeat.” That settled his mind, and he abandoned any idea of taking Vicksburg by its upriver flank. That same day he asked Porter to prepare to run gunboats and transports past the batteries as soon as possible.125

  He knew what he was going to do. He would move 20,000 troops on shallow draft yawls down the west bank via a number of bayous he could open, establishing his camp at New Carthage, Louisiana, twenty miles downstream from Vicksburg. Then Porter would run gunboats and transports past Vicksburg by night to rendezvous at New Carthage and ferry his command over to take Warrenton, or else farther downstream at Grand Gulf just below the Big Black River. From there he would have a straight approach toward Jackson. By March 29 he had engineers at work making surveys for opening the bayous.126 The next day his confidence was returned entirely. “There has been some delay in the attack,” he wrote Julia, but “once landed on the other side of the river I expect but little trouble.”127

  Grant commenced one last canal connecting the Mississippi below Milliken’s Bend with Walnut Bayou half a mile west. It would connect inland to Willow Bayou, which led to Roundaway Bayou and south to New Carthage. A week later the canal was half finished, but thereafter problems mounted. Debris clogged the bayous and the Mississippi began falling dramatically. By April 25 there was barely half a foot of water in the canal in places, and the bayous held little more. Another effort had failed, but by this time it did not matter, for on his orders McClernand’s corps had cut a land route beside and across the bayous to New Carthage. That gave his army a road to take it below Vicksburg.

  The day after coming to his decision, Grant told Julia that “I am doing all I can and expect to be successful.”128 He justified his decision to Halleck by explaining that “this is the only move I now see as practicable.” For it to work he intended to hold his army compactly together and pay special attention to keeping his supply line open. Should he meet with a setback, it would not be “in any other way than a fair fight.” Once across the river he expected to find good roads both directly to Vicksburg, and also to Jackson, g
iving him an option of targets. “The greatest confidance of success prevails,” he told the general-in-chief.129

  Grant had hoped for Porter to run the batteries the night of April 14, with transports sufficient for two batteries of artillery and 6,000 to 8,000 men. He sent orders to McClernand to board his men on the boats immediately on their arrival and cross the river to take Grand Gulf after Porter silenced its batteries. Rather than pursue the Confederates if they pulled back, McClernand was to consolidate his corps on the east bank, then be ready to move south to support Banks at Port Hudson, though Grant soon changed his mind and decided he could not spare men to cooperate with Banks just yet.130 McPherson’s first division would cross next.131 Finally, on the night of April 16, Porter put a dozen boats in motion downriver in the night and though the Confederates discovered them and opened fire, hitting every one, all but one passed the batteries with only minor damage. Several nights later another eighteen barges and transports ran the gauntlet and eleven got through. It was enough. Almost everyone had opposed running the batteries, but Grant’s boldness was vindicated.

  “I am doing my best and am full of hope for complete success,” he wrote Julia late April 21. “I never expect to have an army under my command whipped unless it is very badly whipped and cant help it.”132 The next day he arrived personally at New Carthage, and on April 24 he and Porter made a reconnaissance of Grand Gulf and its batteries from one of the gunboats, Grant concluding that if they moved within forty-eight hours they could take it easily.133 The next day he sent one of his staff scouting up the Black River looking for a good route to high ground in the interior, once his army was across.134 On April 27 he began loading McClernand’s corps on their transports to be ready for a landing on the morrow. Porter would first bombard the batteries into submission, while transports full of infantrymen waited in the stream to go ashore. On landing they would form ranks, establish a beachhead on the best high ground available, and then reform to move forward into the interior.135 There was no room for unnecessary animals, so most officers’ horses, including Grant’s, remained behind.