“More Than Forty Richmonds”
The eyes and hopes of the whole country are now directed to your army. In my opinion the opening of the Mississippi river will be to us of more advantage than the capture of forty Richmonds.
Grant’s aggressive decision to press forward toward Vicksburg in November 1862, stood in stark contrast with the tentativeness of other major Union commanders. McClellan hesitated after his incomplete victory at Antietam on September 17, allowing Lee to cross back over the Potomac into the safety of Virginia. Buell, following his strategic victory at Perryville on October 8, did not pursue a bloodied Bragg.
Both paid a price for their caution. Buell was replaced by Rosecrans as commander of the Army of the Cumberland on October 24. The day after Democratic victories in the November 4 midterm elections, Lincoln signed papers to remove McClellan, turning over command of the Army of the Potomac to Ambrose Burnside. Of the main Union commanders at the beginning of 1862, only Grant remained. With criticism simmering in Congress, not certain where he stood with Halleck, Grant surely wondered if he would be the next to fall.
WITH NO REPLY from Halleck to his October 26 request for a plan of operations, Grant moved forward on his own initiative on November 2. He telegraphed the general in chief that he had “commenced a movement” on Grand Junction, a sought-after prize in West Tennessee that took its name from the intersection of the east–west Memphis and Charleston and the north–south Mississippi Central railroad lines. Grant intended to assemble five divisions there and move south into Mississippi toward Holly Springs and Grenada.
With Grant in motion, Halleck finally responded. “I approve of your plan of advancing upon the enemy as soon as you are strong enough for that purpose.” Halleck offered his typical cautious response; Grant knew that if he waited until he was “strong enough,” he would never advance.
Grant’s soldiers were eager to march. Throughout October, they wrote home that their most upsetting battles were “the annoyance of flies, mosquitoes, ticks, ants, worms, spiders, lizards, and snakes.” Many thought battling Confederates could be no worse than fighting ever-present lice.
Worse than physical annoyance, the results of the 1862 midterm elections took their toll on morale. Grant’s troops interpreted gains achieved by Democrats, with their anti-Lincoln and anti-Republican rhetoric, as antiwar. Democrats picked up twenty-eight seats in the House, won the governorship of New York, and gained majorities in the legislatures of New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. Iowa soldier Seymour D. Thompson captured the response of soldiers around him: “When the results of the Northern elections became known, it cast a gloom over the great majority of our regiment.” He continued, “A crushing defeat of our main armies would not have had so chilling an effect on the morale of our troops.”
AS GRANT PLANNED a long overland campaign, he knew he needed to once again work closely with the navy to succeed. He appreciated his joint effort with Andrew Foote at Forts Henry and Donelson but heard that David Dixon Porter did not hold a high opinion of West Point generals. In November, Porter told Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox, “I don’t trust the Army; it is very evident that Grant is going to try and take Vicksburg without us, but he can’t do it.”
Porter, son of a famous navy leader, became a navy midshipman at seventeen. Carrying himself erectly, this wiry man with a mat of black hair and dashing brown eyes seemed taller than his five feet six inches. At the beginning of the war, he received more criticism than acclaim when he went around the navy chain of command to present Lincoln with a plan to sail the Powhatan to Pensacola harbor, where he saved Fort Pickens, when Lincoln wanted it to be part of the expedition to save Fort Sumter. His proclivity to speak quickly and act impetuously landed him in trouble more than once.
In October, when Porter was appointed commander of the Mississippi Squadron, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles confided privately to his diary what others thought publicly: Porter “has stirring and positive qualities, is fertile in resources, has great energy, excessive and sometimes boastful of his own powers.” By comparison, “He has not the conscientious and high moral qualities of Foote to organize the flotilla.” Welles mused, “It is a question, with his mixture of good and bad traits, how he will succeed.” Grant was about to become a most interested party in the answer to this question.
Even with his suspicion, Porter wrote Grant requesting a meeting. Porter was enjoying a dinner of roast duck and champagne when an aide ushered Grant in. The admiral, dressed immaculately in blue coat and white vest, with burnished boots and an impressive sword, was taken aback by Grant’s appearance. He described his guest as “a travel-worn person dressed in civilian clothes.”
Grant, hungry and tired from his travels, got right down to business: “When can you move your gun boats, and what force have you?”
NEXT, PROMISED UP to twenty thousand additional troops by Halleck, Grant telegraphed General James M. Tuttle on November 9 requesting information on units passing through Cairo. The district commander replied, “I find some Regts with a kind of loose order to report to Gen McClernand.” This response puzzled Grant. McClernand had departed for Illinois on a leave of absence on August 28, but Grant had heard only rumors of his activities.
In Illinois, McClernand became outspoken in his criticism of the way the war was being fought. He asserted that West Pointers liked to use the word strategy as a pretext for not fighting: “Any commander who relies wholly upon STRATEGY must fail. We want the right man to lead us; a man who will appoint a subordinate officer on account of his merits, and not because he is a graduate of West Point.”
Believing he was the right man, at the end of September McClernand traveled to Washington, where he met cabinet secretaries Chase and Stanton, both from the West, who he hoped would be sympathetic with his plan to open up the Mississippi River by an assault on Vicksburg. In a September cabinet meeting, when Chase asked the president for his estimation of McClernand, Lincoln responded that McClernand was “brave and capable, but too desirous to be independent of everybody else,” as Chase recorded in his diary.
Finally, McClernand met with Lincoln to present his plan. On October 21, Stanton summoned McClernand to the War Department to receive confidential orders authorizing his organization of troops from the Midwest that “an expedition may be organized under his command to attack Vicksburg.” Lincoln attached a note: “I add that I feel deep interest in the success of the expedition, and desire it to be pushed forward with all possible dispatch, consistently with the other parts of the military service.”
No copy of the order was sent to Grant or Halleck. Stanton may have initially kept Halleck in the dark, knowing his lack of enthusiasm for McClernand. Still, the final paragraph of the orders stated: “The forces so organized will remain subject to the designation of the general-in-chief, and be employed as the service in his judgment may require.” This meant Halleck and Grant could exercise the power of review over McClernand’s plans.
As McClernand left Washington, The New York Times editorialized, “Gen. McClernand has inspired the whole West with enthusiastic faith in his courage, uniting energy with military skill.” By the end of November, McClernand organized forty-two infantry regiments, six artillery batteries, and six cavalry regiments. Nearly all were green recruits, so he proposed drawing 25 percent of his final force from Grant’s army, including specific veteran officers and regiments.
Grant, surprised by reports of troops passing through Cairo and Memphis assigned to McClernand, sought clarification from Halleck: “Am I to understand that I lay still here while an Expedition is fitted out from Memphis?”
Forced to decide between McClernand and Grant, Halleck made his choice. “You have command of all troops sent to your department, and have permission to fight the enemy where you please.” This time Halleck came down firmly behind Grant.
IN PUSHING FARTHER south, Grant encountered more fleeing slaves. “Citizens south of us are leaving their homes & Negroes coming in by wagon loads.” They would gather by the road, hoping they might be pressed into service as servants by passing soldiers.
Grant faced a humanitarian crisis. The army was prohibited from expelling slaves from their camps when they came in voluntarily. In September, he had sent slaves to Cairo, Illinois, and Columbus, Kentucky, where charitable groups took them up north. But in the North, Democrats spread fears that Southern slaves were about to throng Northern cities and take away jobs. Grant could absorb some of the men as workers; he could use others to pick cotton on abandoned plantations and farms. But still they came.
On November 13, Grant set in motion a new policy to deal with these contrabands. He authorized Chaplain John Eaton of the Twenty-seventh Ohio to assume charge of the slaves who came into camp.
Eaton, born in New Hampshire and a graduate of Dartmouth College, had become superintendent of schools in Toledo, Ohio, in 1856. He left in 1859 to study for the ministry at Andover Theological Seminary. Upon his graduation in 1861, he immediately enlisted in the Union army. Friends described Eaton as “filled with the true missionary spirit.”
Not sure he wanted the assignment, and believing he might be laughed at by fellow soldiers for working with newly liberated slaves, Eaton hurried to Grant’s headquarters. He arrived “with such unpleasant memories of former experiences with our commanders.” By contrast, in their interview Eaton found himself struck by this commander’s bearing of “moderation and simplicity.”
Both Grant and Eaton knew that many white soldiers, harboring racist stereotypes, believed slaves would not work on their own. Grant did not accept this assumption. As Eaton recited some problems he was sure he would face, especially soldiers resenting him for employing slaves who had worked for them for free, Grant assured Eaton that he would stand behind him. Eaton accepted.
Starting south along the route of the Mississippi Central Railroad, Grant had another foe to contend with—men within his own army whose wanton behavior he struggled to restrain. Angered by guerrilla activities, soldiers took out their resentment on the local populace. Their actions became indiscriminate as they foraged for food and supplies from Union as well as Confederate sympathizers. They delighted in provoking slave owners through such thievery as taking dresses from women and presenting them to slave women. Union soldiers demolished furniture, defaced family photographs, and went so far as to dump excrement within homes.
Grant tried to rein in these barbarous activities by issuing Special Field Orders No. 1 to combat “gross acts of vandalism” reported to him: “Houses have been plundered and burned down, fencing destroyed and citizens frightened without inquiry as to their status in this Rebellion.” His response: “Such acts are punishable with death by the Articles of War and existing orders.” Furthermore, “They are calculated to destroy the efficiency of an army and to make open enemies of those who before if not friends were at least noncombatants.”
ON NOVEMBER 13, Grant’s cavalry seized Holly Springs, Mississippi, with little resistance. Troops put up their white tents in groves around the town. Believing his long supply line vulnerable, Grant decided to make Holly Springs his advance supply base. Mountains of provisions arrived in succeeding days. Julia joined him, taking up residence at the Harvey Washington Walter house, the last of the great Southern mansions built in Holly Springs, completed in 1859.
By December 1, Grant’s cavalry crossed the Tallahatchie River and reached Oxford, thirty miles south of Holly Springs. After conferring with Sherman, on December 8 Grant sent Halleck his plan for a two-pronged attack. Sherman would command an expedition down the Mississippi while Grant would approach overland. Grant’s intent: He hoped to hold the Confederates in front while Sherman came in from the rear.
Grant now faced a new Confederate leader. John C. Pemberton, a forty-eight-year-old native of Philadelphia, had relieved Earl Van Dorn. Married to a Virginian, Pemberton became one of the few Northern officers who joined the Confederacy—and did so against the wishes of his family.
Pemberton established his headquarters at Jackson, forty-five miles from Vicksburg, on October 14. From the beginning, the brusque Pennsylvanian labored under a dual handicap: for many, his previous military experience did not justify his new command; he could also not escape misgivings over his Northern nativity. He entrenched his smaller army of twenty thousand behind the Yalobusha River at Grenada, 150 miles north of Vicksburg.
In yet another Confederate reconfiguration, Jefferson Davis assigned command of a new Department of the West to Joseph Johnston, now recuperated from wounds he suffered at Seven Pines, Virginia, in May. Davis placed Johnston, small of stature but large of dignity, in charge of an immense territory from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. In the strangeness of the Confederate command structure, Pemberton continued to report to Davis in Richmond.
A MORE IMMEDIATE threat came from an unlikely source—Nathan Bedford Forrest, the only private in the Confederate army who rose to become a general. A striking man of powerful build, with gray-blue eyes and iron-gray hair, Forrest had enlisted in his hometown of Memphis one month before his fortieth birthday. He had no military education—indeed, he despised West Point strategies, which he believed were too defensive—but he knew the territory well.
On December 10, Forrest left Bragg’s army and started west across Tennessee. His goal: to so disrupt the Union line of supply and communication that Grant would be forced to withdraw from Mississippi. Forrest’s cavalry, some of whom had never been in battle before and were armed only with shotguns and squirrel rifles brought from their homes, willingly followed him wherever he led.
Grant feared the abilities of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who with no military training led his Confederate cavalry in raid after raid against Union positions in the South.
Forrest frightened Grant. He wrote Porter that Forrest was now on the west side of the Tennessee River “with from 5,000 to 10,000 men,” an overstatement calculated from reports of alarmed field commanders. Although Forrest picked up recruits as he rode west, he was never able to assemble more than two thousand men at one time. Yet Grant worried that small cavalry detachments, well led, could harass larger forces and inflict considerable damage. Deducing Forrest’s goal, Sherman speculated, “I rather suspect it is designed to draw us back from our purpose of going to Vicksburg.”
JUST AS FORREST’S cavalry captured Grant’s attention, Van Dorn, disgruntled at being replaced at Vicksburg, planned with Pemberton’s approval a surprise attack. On the morning of December 16, leading twenty-five hundred cavalry and keeping his mission secret even from his own men, he forded the Yalobusha and rode an indirect route to the northeast.
At dawn on December 20, his cavalry burst into Holly Springs with full-throated rebel yells. On a day locals would call “the Glorious Twentieth,” women in nightclothes cheered as Confederates helped themselves to rifles, food, and clothing. Van Dorn’s raiders destroyed shops, depots, and warehouses, setting fire to the three-story Masonic building, which exploded in flames that proceeded to burn down the entire north side of the town square. Citizen Martha Strickland wrote her husband, “I don’t think the Yanks will be here anymore. There is nothing to come for.”
Responding to reports that Julia Grant was lodging at the Walter mansion, local lore told the story of the chivalric Van Dorn ordering that she not be disturbed. The truth: Julia had left the previous evening to join her husband in Oxford.
ON DECEMBER 20, Sherman departed Memphis with an army of twenty thousand men. Sherman had heard reports of Van Dorn’s raid before his departure, but with telegraph lines cut, the reports were not yet confirmed. He remained convinced Grant would keep Pemberton’s army behind the Yalobusha River, away from Vicksburg. Of immediate concern, with news of McClernand in his mind, Sherman believed himself to be in a race against the Illinoisan and time as he moved rapidly on Vicksburg.
Unknown to Grant and Sherman, on December 19 Davis and Johnston had arrived in Vicksburg. Davis’s interest in visiting his native state stemmed from his desire to learn firsthand about the war in the west and reassure those who thought Confederate leaders far away in Richmond had forgotten them. Pemberton was entertaining Davis and Johnston in Grenada when he heard that Grant might be retreating after Van Dorn’s raid and that Sherman was advancing down the Mississippi; he immediately dispatched two brigades 135 miles southwest to Vicksburg.
Sherman arrived at the mouth of the Yazoo River, twelve miles northwest of Vicksburg, on Christmas Day. He made plans to proceed directly up the Yazoo to the Mississippi, go ashore, and attack the defenders at Haynes Bluff. Porter’s gunboats would supply cover.
Unfortunately, Sherman hadn’t considered the vicissitudes of nature. As soon as he disembarked at Chickasaw Bayou on December 26, he found himself battling dense terrain—wooded and wet, intersected by winding streams and bayous, and with few open spaces. Forced to slow down, he used the next two days for reconnaissance, all the while waiting for communication or support from Grant.
Finally, on December 29, Sherman unleashed his four divisions. As Union soldiers tried vainly to ascend the bluffs, defenders fired downhill upon them. Within two hours, the fighting was over. Sherman’s forces, even with more than a two-to-one advantage, suffered a violent repulse. Union casualties mounted to 1,776, while the dug-in Confederates suffered only 187.
On January 3, 1863, Sherman wrote Grant, “I assume all responsibility and attach fault to no one.” One prong of Grant’s two-pronged attack had ended in failure.
FOR GRANT, THE last days of 1862 marked a personal nadir in the war. Halleck telegraphed on December 27, “I think no more troops should at present be sent against Vicksburg. I fear you have already too much weakened your own forces.”
A week after the Holly Springs debacle, Grant admitted defeat and prepared to return to Tennessee to regroup. During his withdrawal, cut off from supplies, his army reduced its rations and foraged off the land. “I was amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded. It showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months instead of two weeks.” This was a lesson he would employ in the future.
With Sherman’s defeat, Grant readied himself for renewed criticism. He brooded to his sister, “I am extended now like a Peninsula into an enemy’s country.”
But condemnation threatened to engulf him from a different direction. Throughout the fall of 1862, as Grant continued to contend with the problems of illegal trade, complaints mounted against Jewish traders. Although they had lived in the New World since 1654, by 1860 Jews numbered only 150,000 in a population of over 31 million. Their numbers tripled in the 1850s, immigrants arriving from German-speaking states in Europe, even as “nativism,” a self-proclaimed movement to protect the interests of native-born citizens, grew popular. Jewish numbers were not large enough to incite the virulent nativism faced by Catholics, but anti-Jewish attitudes were on the rise.
Criticism of Jewish traders permeated the military. Thus Sherman wrote Grant from Memphis, “I found so many Jews and speculators here trading in cotton…that I have felt myself bound to stop it.” Generals Samuel Curtis, Leonard Ross, and Alvin Hovey all criticized Jewish involvement in the cotton trade. The New York Tribune reported Colonel C. Carroll Marsh “has expelled a dozen Jewish cotton buyers for dealing in Southern money and depreciating United States Treasury notes.” Although non-Jews participated widely in illegal trading, the military newspaper in Corinth called Jews “sharks” feeding upon soldiers.
In the midst of this growing anti-Jewish feeling, Grant issued General Orders No. 11 on December 17, 1862. Article 1 stated, “The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department…are hereby expelled” from his department. The words Jews, as a class leapt off the page as Grant, fueled by his frustration with particular Jewish businessmen, issued an indictment of Jews as a people.
In the tumult that followed, a story circulated that the order had been written by a member of Grant’s staff, perhaps Rawlins, or that the word Jew was simply shorthand for shrewd merchants. No. Grant alone had been responsible for the sweeping order.
Lincoln may not have initially seen the order, for he spent the last days of December defending the Emancipation Proclamation he was scheduled to sign on January 1, 1863. The Memphis Daily Bulletin, a Lincoln supporter, printed the documents one above the other, portraying the irony of the president freeing the slaves while General Grant expelled the Jews.
When Halleck learned of the order, he was not sure what to make of it. He telegraphed Grant on January 4, “A paper purporting to be a Genl Order No. 11 issued by you Dec 17 has been presented here,” then got straight to the point: “If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked.”
When Congress reconvened in January, Democrats, fresh off gains in the November elections, sought to win political points with criticisms of Grant’s order.
Halleck informed Grant of Lincoln’s sentiments: “The President has no objection to your expelling traders & Jew peddlers, which I supposed was the object of your order, but as it in terms prescribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it.”
The impetus for issuing this public order may have been partly personal. Grant’s father arrived in Holly Springs in December intent on cashing in on the profitable cotton trading. Acting as agent for Mack & Brothers, a prominent Cincinnati Jewish clothing manufacturer, Jesse promised to get a permit in return for 25 percent of the profits.
When Grant learned of his father’s plan, he was furious, both at Jesse’s attempt to profit once again from his son’s position and at the Mack brothers, who he believed had used his father. Grant turned down the request and sent his father and the Macks packing on the first train north.
Whatever the motivation—from harboring anti-Semitic feelings to long-standing anger at illegal trading by Northern speculators who ended up aiding the South—Grant’s colossal misstep would haunt him for years to come, even as he would try to come to terms with what he had done.
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AT THE BEGINNING of 1863, the protracted rumors about General John McClernand were confirmed. He reached Memphis on December 29 with his new wife, Minerva Dunlap, twenty-four years his junior, expecting to meet Grant. Instead, he found a letter from Grant assigning him command of one of four corps “to form a part of the expedition on Vicksburg.” Upset, McClernand replied, “I regret that the expectation I would find you here is disappointed.” To be sure Grant understood his authority, McClernand attached documents from Halleck and Stanton, along with Lincoln’s “endorsement.”
McClernand arrived fifteen miles north of Vicksburg on December 31. On January 2, 1863, he invited Sherman to meet with him. The next evening, McClernand and Sherman joined Porter on his flagship to discuss strategy.
Two days later, McClernand, who outranked Sherman, issued General Orders No. 1, by which he took command of Sherman’s force, now designated the Army of the Mississippi, signaling its independence from Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Sherman reluctantly accepted command of one of the two newly created corps.
GRANT RETURNED TO his headquarters at Memphis on January 10, displeased. He wrote McClernand that same day: “Since General Sherman left here I have been unable to learn anything official from the expedition you now command. Your wants and requirements all have to be guessed at.” With this letter, Grant accomplished two ends: he indicated his willingness to support McClernand, and in a reprimand he reminded McClernand that he, Grant, had ultimate command of the mission.
Though many believed Grant shared Halleck’s animosity toward McClernand, the fact was that during this period he respected the Illinois political general, appreciating how well he had fought with Grant at Belmont, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh. Nevertheless, he told McClernand in the strongest terms, “This expedition must not fail. If there is force enough within the limits of my control to secure a certain victory at Vicksburg they will be sent there.”
Despite Grant’s wishes, McClernand set his initial sights on Arkansas Post, fifty miles upstream from the mouth of the Arkansas River. From the recently completed Fort Hindman, Confederates hindered shipping on the Mississippi. The McClernand-Sherman army attacked on January 12. They won a battle against Confederate general Thomas Churchill at a cost of approximately one thousand Union casualties; about five thousand Confederates surrendered.
Grant, not waiting to hear the results, wrote Halleck, “Genl. McClernand has…gone on a wild goose chase.” He also fired off a telegram to McClernand: “I do not approve of your move on the ‘Post of Arkansas’ while the other [Vicksburg] is in abeyance. It will lead to the loss of men without result.” Grant remonstrated that everything should be directed “to the accomplishment of the one great result, the capture of Vicksburg.”
Halleck, out of patience, wrote Grant on January 12, “You are hereby authorized to relieve General McClernand from the command of the expedition against Vicksburg, giving it to the next in rank or taking it yourself.”
Halleck’s telegram solved Grant’s deepening dilemma. He knew McClernand had Lincoln’s blessing, but now he knew he had Halleck’s confidence. Within twenty-four hours, he wrote James McPherson, “It is my present intention to command the expedition down the river in person.” No more double-pronged attack; instead he would lead a single thrust.
VICKSBURG SAT ATOP high bluffs on an abrupt hairpin turn on the east side of the Mississippi River. Methodist circuit rider Newitt Vick began selling lots of empty land covered by walnut trees in 1819. By January 1862, the town boasted a population of forty-five hundred, larger than the capital, Jackson. The town’s economic prosperity grew from its strategic port. Now, in January 1863, Vicksburg’s terraces of yellowish soil bristled with gray artillery positions, including thirty-seven large-caliber cannon and thirteen small fieldpieces. Nine earthen forts protected openings for the Southern Railroad of Mississippi and six roads.
Admiral David Farragut, David Porter’s foster brother, had mounted an attack on Vicksburg in the summer of 1862. When asked to surrender, James Autry, Confederate post commander, responded, “I have to state that Mississippians don’t know, and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy.” In response, Farragut and Porter bombarded the Confederate batteries throughout June and July, but Vicksburg’s dogged defenders proved difficult to defeat, and eventually the Union navy retreated. If in 1862 Vicksburg had managed to turn back Farragut in the summer and Sherman in the winter, what strategies could Grant employ in 1863 to breach the tenacity of its defenses?
On his way south, Grant conferred with Porter, McClernand, and Sherman at Napoleon, Arkansas. Sherman and Porter confided in him that “there was not sufficient confidence felt in Gen. McClernand as a commander, either by the Army or Navy, to insure him success.” Yet Grant added a sentence in his communication with Halleck that says much about his sense of decency: “As it is my intention to command in person, unless otherwise directed, there is no special necessity of mentioning this matter.”
On January 28, Grant set up headquarters at Young’s Point at the lower end of Milliken’s Bend. Along the lower Mississippi, January and February can be depressing months. The winter of 1863 brought far more rain than usual, flooding the few dry openings that soldiers sought for their tents.
As Grant studied his maps, he saw that the Confederates were close as the bird flies but far militarily because of their massive defenses. He contemplated several options.
His first plan called for digging a canal that would traverse the base of the slender peninsula of land at De Soto Point, where the Mississippi curled across from Vicksburg. With a canal, boats could pass the city’s defenses. Grant ordered four thousand of Sherman’s soldiers and two thousand freedmen to begin digging out the mud. Manning picks and shovels, soldiers toiled to build what they called “the ditch.” Halleck wrote Grant to convey encouragement from a higher power: “Direct your attention particularly to the canal proposed across the point. The President attaches much importance to this.” Lincoln, who navigated the Mississippi to New Orleans at age nineteen and again at twenty-two, had been fascinated by engineering projects all his life.
Despite great efforts, the Mississippi jeered at those who thought they could divert her powerful course, so in the end, Grant gave up on “the ditch.”
Next he explored building a channel from Lake Providence so boats could travel through bayous and rivers to come out at the mouth of the Red River 150 miles south of Vicksburg. It did not take him long to decide the narrow channels, built up with fallen cypress branches, made the plan impractical.
Then he sent the newest appointment to his staff, twenty-five-year-old James H. Wilson, chief of topographical engineers, to Helena, Arkansas, to explore blasting an opening through Yazoo Pass. The breach would create an inlet from the Mississippi through Moon Lake, one mile east of the river and two hundred river miles north of Vicksburg. Wilson led a work party of four hundred men wielding axes, shovels, and picks. Explosions sent water cascading into the widened opening. Porter’s boats moved through the breach, but Pemberton, anticipating Grant’s move, instructed his troops to fell cottonwoods and sycamores to obstruct the inlet, forcing Porter to turn back.
Finally, Porter took his gunboats up the Yazoo and turned north into Steele’s Bayou, thereby avoiding Confederate artillery on the bluffs. Grant went along for the first thirty miles. Porter posted sailors with brooms to sweep snakes off his vessels; when they reached Deer Creek, fleeing slaves from plantations swarmed his boats. But Confederates had cut down trees behind the boats in an attempt to trap Porter’s flotilla. Porter, covering the hulls of his boats with slime to keep them from being boarded by Confederates, was forced to head back down the channel.
By the end of March, Grant and Porter learned that what looked possible on maps could turn out quite differently in the treacherous Mississippi Delta. Although Grant’s attempts were criticized as half-baked schemes, he believed they served two important purposes. First, he lured Pemberton into a continual guessing game about his intentions, forcing him to move his men around to defend each option. Second, “I let the work go on, believing employment was better than idleness for the men.”
HALLECK PLACED HIS bet on Grant even as other commanders disappointed. Ambrose Burnside, after the defeat at Fredericksburg in December and an abortive “Mud March” in January 1863, was replaced by “Fighting Joe” Hooker, the fourth commander to lead the Army of the Potomac in less than two years. And Rosecrans, with a reputation for bold action, unaccountably succumbed to caution on his way to Chattanooga; having defeated Braxton Bragg in January at the Battle of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, he suddenly just…stopped.
With these military frustrations as a backdrop, Halleck wrote Grant, “The eyes and hopes of the whole country are now directed to your army. In my opinion the opening of the Mississippi river will be to us of more advantage than the capture of forty Richmonds. We shall omit nothing which we can do to assist you.”
IN THE SPRING of 1863, Grant encountered a new challenge. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, a provocative Vanity Fair cartoon depicted “The New Place,” but the caption, in African American dialect, wondered aloud what this would really mean for freed slaves. Critics pointed out that nearly all the slaves emancipated were outside the reach of the Union army. But the proclamation did contain this promise: “And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” Did Lincoln intend to have freed slaves join the Union army? The majority of Northern soldiers did not sign up to free black slaves or to fight beside them.
But if emancipation could be achieved, it would be by the marching feet of a liberating army. Until now, the Civil War had been a white man’s war. Most Americans had forgotten that African Americans fought in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The regular army, including West Point, did not recruit or enroll African Americans.
As Radical Republicans, abolitionists, and black leaders promoted recruiting black troops, the president was being encouraged by his secretary of war. In the months after the Emancipation Proclamation, he began to consider the arming of black troops.
Vanity Fair published this cartoon only days before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation: it portrays an African American who, turning his back on the door of slavery, walks skeptically toward the door of emancipation.
To advance this new policy, Stanton dispatched Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas to the Mississippi Valley. The primary purpose of Thomas’s spring trip was to speak with Grant and his generals, inspect the troops, and inaugurate arming black soldiers. A second unannounced purpose was to report back to Stanton his assessment of whether Grant was carrying out the new policy.
Halleck wrote Grant on March 30 to tip him off about Thomas’s purpose. The tone of the letter—“I write this unofficial letter, simply as a personal friend, and as a matter of friendly advice”—signaled how much had changed between them. The administration was embarking on a new policy toward former slaves, and Thomas was coming west to see if Union generals were adhering to this plan. The enrollment of blacks would both enlarge the army and free white soldiers for frontline duty.
Halleck wanted Grant to know, “It has been reported to the Secretary of War that many officers of your command not only discourage the negroes from coming under our protection, but, by ill-treatment, force them to return to their masters.” He insisted, “Whatever may be the opinion of an officer in regard to the wisdom of the measures adopted…it is the duty of every one to cheerfully and honestly endeavor to carry out the measures so adopted.”
FOREWARNED WAS FOREARMED. Grant put his shoulder to Union policy. He responded to an inquiry from Frederick Steele, a West Point classmate now under his command, who wrote that “a great many negroes have followed the command.” Steele wanted “instructions as to what shall be done with these poor creatures.”
Grant’s response showed he had accepted Halleck’s counsel: “Rebellion has assumed that shape that it can only terminate by the complete subjugation of the South or the overthrow of the Government.” He instructed Steele, “You will also encourage all negroes, particularly middle aged males to come within our lines.”
Thomas came, saw, and reported to Stanton, “This army is in very fine shape, unusually healthy, and in good heart.” By the end of his trip, the usually restrained Thomas gushed he was now “a Grant man all over.” Grant had made clear to all that he embraced the rights and opportunities of African Americans in his theater of command.
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AT THE SAME time that Thomas was sent to report indirectly on Grant, Stanton dispatched Charles A. Dana on a direct assessment mission. The Harvard-educated Dana, previously managing editor of the New York Tribune, had been appointed assistant secretary of war in 1863, which qualified him to monitor payroll services in the field—and it was for this purpose, ostensibly, that he had been dispatched to Grant’s headquarters. But his mandate included one other directive: to “give such information as would enable Mr. Lincoln and [Stanton] to settle their minds as to Grant.” Lincoln had made it a policy to either invite his key generals to the Executive Mansion or visit them in the field. Since he had done neither with Grant, a proxy was sent instead.
Dana arrived at Grant’s headquarters on April 6. Grant, sensing his visitor’s mission from the start, welcomed him, expressing a willingness “to show me the inside of things” and making him almost one of the staff.
In his fifteen years with the Tribune, Dana had met all kinds of leaders—political, business, and military—but he said he’d never met anyone like Grant. As Dana watched and listened, he began to send back reports praising the western general. “An uncommon fellow—the most modest, the most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew, with a temper nothing could disturb.” Dana found Grant to be “not an original or brilliant man, but sincere, thoughtful, deep, and gifted with courage that never faltered.” Stanton trusted Dana’s judgment; as a result, he placed more confidence in Grant.
AS THE UNSEASONABLY wet winter finally turned to spring, Sherman worried that Grant, who did not concern himself with politics, did not understand the political pressure mounting on Lincoln and Stanton with respect to the Vicksburg Campaign. Cadwallader Washburn, Wisconsin congressman and now a major general of volunteers in Grant’s army, did understand. He wrote his congressman brother Elihu Washburne (the brothers spelled their last names differently), “All Grant’s schemes have failed. He knows he has got to do something or off goes his head.”
On April 1, Grant invited Sherman and Porter to join him on a reconnaissance beneath Haynes’ Bluff to consider one last option to turn Vicksburg’s right flank. After observing miles of Confederate earthworks, Grant told Porter such an attack “would be attended with immense sacrifice of life, if not with defeat.”
Instead, Grant announced a bold new plan. His strategy called for turning Pemberton’s left flank by placing his men east of Vicksburg on a high, dry plateau. He would come in by the back door. He wrote later that he’d had the plan “in contemplation the whole winter.” Since he could not put it into operation “until the waters receded,” and did not want to diminish his winter options, “I did not therefore communicate this plan” to anyone.
To accomplish this new strategy, he had to first get his army and his supplies south of Vicksburg. From there he would attempt to cross the Mississippi, but he knew that the task of running Vicksburg’s miles of batteries could court disaster.
Sherman strongly opposed Grant’s plan and suggested he ask his corps commanders for their opinions. Sherman knew that McPherson and nearly all the corps commanders opposed Grant’s plan as too risky. He advised Grant to pull up stakes, move back to Memphis, and start south again with the old plan of a two-pronged attack.
Grant’s response to his best friend revealed his resolve. He told Sherman that if he moved back to Memphis, “it would discourage the people so much that bases of supplies would be of no use.”
Grant turned to the one senior commander who did support him: he entrusted McClernand with the task of marching his Thirteenth Corps down the Walnut Bayou road to New Carthage, thirty miles below Vicksburg. If Grant’s officers opposed his plan, they were even more against McClernand leading the way. Sherman wrote his brother, “McClernand is a dirty dog, consumed by a burning desire for personal renown.”
To carry out his new plan, Grant asked Porter—he could not order his navy equal—to run his gunboats along with transports past Vicksburg’s batteries. Twice before, single gunboats had run Vicksburg’s batteries with no significant damage, but sending a large flotilla presented a completely different challenge. By now Porter did not hesitate to support this West Point general, but he cautioned, “I am ready to co-operate with you in the matter of landing troops on the other side, but you must recollect that, when the gunboats once get below, we give up all hopes of getting them up again.” Porter meant that the “turtles,” traveling at the slow speed of six knots, would not be able to return upstream.
PEMBERTON REMAINED UNCERTAIN of Grant’s plans and thus took heart from reports in early April that Union transports were seen steaming up the Mississippi. He telegraphed Richmond, “I think most of Grant’s forces are being withdrawn to Memphis.” Four days later, he wrote Simon Bolivar Buckner, Grant’s vanquished foe at Fort Donelson who was now commander of the Department of the Gulf, “I am sending troops to General Johnston, being satisfied that a large portion of Grant’s army is reinforcing Rosecrans.”
Union transports did indeed head up the Mississippi—empty. Responding to a request from Rosecrans, Grant discharged some of the smaller transports no longer needed once he had abandoned his unsuccessful operations in the bayous.
ON THURSDAY, APRIL 16, Major William Watts planned a ball in Vicksburg to celebrate the welcome news of the Union departures. After months of trepidation, music and dancing would be the order of the night. Many artillery officers planned to attend.
That same afternoon, Porter assembled his flotilla. The mission was considered so dangerous that the troops would be carried only in the gunboats, not in the steamers. Sailors lashed the gunboats with logs alongside the engines to protect them from shells. They fastened coal barges to the sides of the transports that would be facing the shore batteries and stacked them with hay and cotton to shield their machinery.
At eight forty-five P.M., Porter boarded his flagship, Benton. His pennant, with its white star and blue field, blew in the breeze. Julia had arrived recently with Ulysses Jr. and joined her husband and young Fred on the deck of the Henry von Phul to observe the unfolding drama.
At nine P.M., two white lanterns gave the signal for the flotilla to begin. Porter led the way. Henry Walke, in his new ironclad, the enormous Lafayette, followed. The Grants watched as in single file, fifty yards apart, followed the General Price, a captured Confederate ram; the gunboats Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburg, and Carondelet; the transports Forest Queen, Silver Wave, and Henry Clay, together carrying three hundred thousand rations for McClernand’s soldiers; and the new ironclad, Tuscumbia, bringing up the rear. Porter described them as “so many phantom vessels.” The boats ran with their lights out beneath the moonless night sky. Captains steered each vessel slightly to the port of the one ahead to avoid collisions. The hatches in the boats’ fire rooms were closed, the smoke rerouted through vents in the paddle box.
After turning the tip of De Soto Point, approaching the horseshoe bend in the river, Porter believed the boats might float past Vicksburg unnoticed. Suddenly a bright light illuminated the sky. Buildings in the village of De Soto on the Louisiana side were set on fire, including the depot of the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Texas Railroad station. Vicksburg appeared to be on fire also but was only alight with tar barrels burning along the bank to illuminate the river. Music and dancing at the Watts ball ceased. First small arms, then brass fieldpieces, and finally elevated large guns fired down upon the ghostly Union flotilla.
Immediately, every boat fended for itself. Gunboats opened fire from their bow guns and port batteries. Transports made for the Vicksburg shoreline, gambling that if they hugged the bluffs, the terraced guns would not be able to fire down upon them accurately. The ironclads, infamous for their poor steering abilities, found that the combination of barges lashed to their sides and capricious Mississippi currents made them thrash about like giant gray rhinoceroses in the water. Five of the eight gunboats at various times momentarily headed back upstream. The steamboat Henry Clay, hit by a Confederate shell, burst into flames; the crew and captain abandoned ship but were picked up by Union sailors stationed in yawls on the river. The fire on the Henry Clay actually became a diversion that benefited the remaining vessels. As the boats moved in close to the shoreline, the Benton, closing to forty yards, fired point-blank into water’s edge buildings, blowing them apart.
Shortly after midnight, the flotilla, with bunches of cotton ablaze, drifted to safety below the city. The Confederates fired more than five hundred rounds, and the Union boats suffered at least seventy hits. Grant wrote later, “The sight was magnificent, but terrible.” His bold new plan had succeeded.
To help get his army across the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, Grant asked Admiral David Dixon Porter to run the batteries past the Confederate fortress.
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TO DISTRACT PEMBERTON from his plan to attack Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, Grant sent Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson with three regiments of seventeen hundred cavalrymen on a daring raid through Mississippi’s interior. Grierson was an unlikely hero, an Illinois music teacher who disliked horses, having been kicked in the face by a horse as a child. Starting from southern Tennessee on April 17, Grierson and his raiders arrived at Newton Station, sixty-five miles east of Jackson, on April 24. Rather than turning back, Grierson’s horse soldiers plunged farther south, ripping up tracks, tearing down telegraph wires, burning bridges and water towers, fighting four engagements, and evading three converging columns of Confederate cavalry. Finally, on May 3, after a nonstop sixteen-day, six-hundred-mile raid, they reached the Union line at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the second Confederate capital captured by the Union. Grierson’s real accomplishment was not the track and telegraph wire he tore down, but the ruckus he stirred up. He forced Pemberton, who took personal control of the effort to stop him, to take his eyes off Grant’s movement. Grant telegraphed Halleck, “Grierson knocked the heart out of the state.”
AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL running of the Vicksburg batteries, Grant, accompanied by eight staff officers and twenty cavalry, repositioned his headquarters downriver. His son Fred described what happened when the large party came to a slough with a narrow bridge over which a wagon was just then passing slowly: “My father made one of his daring leaps, putting his horse at the opposite bank, which he just managed to reach.” Twenty-two years after his famous jump at West Point, Grant had lost little of his bold horsemanship.
At New Carthage, with McClernand’s four divisions arrived, it became clear there would not be enough dry ground to provide a staging area for the thousands of men involved in crossing the Mississippi. Grant also concluded that McClernand’s men could not be supplied by a wagon train traveling over “an almost impassable road,” so he decided to run the batteries again.
With Porter downstream, Clark Lagow, one of Grant’s staff officers, volunteered to lead a second mission. With no gunboats, the civilian crews refused to serve on the unarmed transports. The call went out for army volunteers. “Black Jack” Logan, leading his Seventeenth Division, stepped forward. He barked, “I want no faltering. If any man leaves his post, I want him shot.”
Five stern-wheeler steamers and one side-wheeler, the Tigress of Shiloh renown, with twelve barges, started on the evening of April 22. They carried a main cargo of six hundred thousand rations. This time, as the steamers rounded De Soto Point, Vicksburg was waiting. The boats and their army crews received a hail of fire—391 rounds—sustaining far more losses than on April 16. The Tigress, carrying all the medical supplies, and half the barges were sunk.
AS GRANT’S OPERATION downstream slowed, he ordered yet another diversion. On April 27, he wired Sherman to begin a feint at Snyder’s Bluff, near where he had been repulsed four months earlier. “The effect of a heavy demonstration in that direction would be good as far as the enemy is concerned, but I am loath to order it.” He explained, “It would be hard to make our own troops understand that only a demonstration was intended that our people at home would characterize it as a repulse.” Confident in Sherman’s judgment, Grant wrote, “I leave it to you whether to make such a demonstration.”
Sherman, still skeptical about Grant’s decision to attack Vicksburg’s right flank, responded, “The troops will all understand the purpose and not be hurt by the repulse. The people of the country must find out the truth as best they can.” He saluted: “You are engaged in a hazardous enterprise, and, for good reason, wish to divert attention; that is sufficient for me, and it shall be done.”
Sherman held up his end of the bargain. On April 28 and 29, gunboats and transports moved up the Yazoo, then troops disembarked and put on a good show—making it seem there were many more. Pemberton shifted three thousand troops to counter what he thought was a second full-scale assault on Haynes’ Bluff.
AS APRIL DREW to a close, Grant sought to balance confidence and impatience. He informed Sherman that he and Porter had made a reconnaissance of the Confederate fortifications and batteries at Grand Gulf on the Mississippi side of the river. Grand Gulf had harassed the Union navy and posed a threat to Grant’s plan to come at Vicksburg through its back door. “My impressions are that if an attack can be made within the next two days the place will easily fall.” Although Grant was confident in Sherman, and increasingly so in James McPherson, he had been growing more impatient with McClernand.
Grant might turn a blind eye to McClernand’s outsize ego, but not his procrastination. His impatience is evident in an April 12 letter to McClernand: “It is my desire that you should get possession of Grand Gulf at the earliest practicable moment. Concentrate your entire corps there with all rapidity.” The observant Dana, alarmed, wrote Stanton on April 25, “I am sorry to report that there is much apparent confusion in McClernand’s command, especially about his staff and headquarters, and that the movement is delayed to some extent by that cause.” Dana was “astonished” McClernand “was planning to carry his bride with her servants, and baggage along with him”—all of which was forbidden.
With movement on Grand Gulf still delayed, Grant met with McClernand on Porter’s flagship, where he ordered him “to embark his men without losing a moment.” By the following morning, still sensing little movement, Dana reported that Grant “wrote to McClernand a very severe letter.” When Grant discovered later in the day that McClernand’s men were indeed finally moving into place, “he did not send” the reprimand.
ON APRIL 29, Grant prepared to launch the most ambitious American amphibious assault prior to World War II. From the river staging area Hard Times, ten thousand men boarded steamers, barges, flatboats, and yawls and waited behind the Coffee Point peninsula for Porter’s assault to begin. If the gunboats were successful, Grant’s army would cross the Mississippi and swing around to the east toward Vicksburg. Grant’s spy network told him that because of the diversionary actions of Grierson and Sherman, Confederate pleas for reinforcements had gone unheeded. Nonetheless, he knew Porter disagreed with him about the strength of the Grand Gulf defenses commanded by Vicksburg’s best general, John S. Bowen, Grant’s former neighbor at Hardscrabble.
At eight A.M., Porter led his seven ironclads in an attack that Grant observed from the tug Ivy.
Porter’s gunboats fired more than twenty-five hundred rounds. Grant was wrong and Porter right about the strength of Grand Gulf’s defenses. An Iowa soldier wrote, “The sight was grand, terrible…the circling shells, the deafening and ceaseless detonations, the black, diminutive fleet, the batteries covering the face of the bluff, tier upon tier, belching forth streams of flame.” After five hours, the Confederates, with only thirteen guns, fought the Federals, with eighty-one guns, to a standstill.
At one fifteen, Porter ended the bombardment. Rejoining Porter, Grant encountered a scene he would never forget: “The sight of the mangled and dying men which met my eye as I boarded the ship was sickening.”
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GRANT MAY HAVE been stymied, but he was far from deterred. Immediately, he devised a new plan: McClernand’s troops would march nine miles downstream to Disharoon’s Plantation and attempt to cross the river to Rodney, Mississippi.
In the middle of the night, while Federal troops were still a few miles above Disharoon’s Plantation, a slave was brought to Grant. He learned from this old man that there was a good road from Bruinsburg to Port Gibson. Grant knew from experience that a local person could mislead Union forces, but he trusted the word of the slave. He changed his Vicksburg Campaign plan yet again.
Morning light on April 30 would bring the long-delayed, long-hoped-for challenge of crossing the milewide Mississippi to Bruinsburg to mount an attack on Vicksburg.
