Chapter Seventeen THE STRONGEST PLACE I EVER SAW
The great Confederate citadel stood high atop massive, unscalable bluffs that overlooked the Mississippi, the first high ground below Memphis that lay on the east bank of the river. Towering two hundred feet above the Mississippi, and bristling with many heavy guns sited both on the heights and at water level, the Vicksburg fortress dominated a hairpin curve of the mighty river as it streamed southward along the base of the precipice. The finest army that Sherman or Grant ever commanded could not have landed below those heights and taken the stronghold by assault from the riverfront.
As for the land side—north, east and south—the terrain everywhere was ideal for defense. The Walnut Hills, on which the fortress rested, were cut by numerous ravines and gullies. Those ravines, sometimes forty or fifty feet deep and running in various directions were snarled with thick, entangling brush and fallen timber. Confederate engineers skillfully enhanced the natural defenses with extensive earthworks, strengthened with abatis, and providing excellent fields of fire. Despite the formidable Rebel land defenses, the only hope of taking Vicksburg was with a large army moving against it on the solid ground east of the fortress, while naval vessels, supported by infantry, were positioned to choke off any possible supplies and reinforcements from the trans-Mississippi, as Confederate territory west of the river is frequently designated.
The importance of Vicksburg was not only that it dominated the legendary river. Vicksburg was also the sole railroad and river junction between Memphis and New Orleans. Through Vicksburg ran the western Confederacy’s single east–west rail connection with the trans-Mississippi. The Vicksburg, Shreveport & Texas line extended west of the river, while the Southern Mississippi Railroad ran east from Vicksburg to Jackson, there intersecting the north–south railroad to New Orleans, before continuing east through Meridian. At Meridian, the Southern Mississippi crossed the Mobile & Ohio rails coming south from Corinth. Control of the Mississippi River certainly was the Union’s top priority, but breaking the Rebel east–west rail connections through Vicksburg would by no means be a minor achievement.
The U.S. military forces, both army and navy, required time and experience to fully appreciate the difficulties inherent in attempting to reduce the Vicksburg bastion. Their learning process began during the late spring and early summer of 1862. Some Union leaders then anticipated—not very realistically in historical hindsight—that Vicksburg would fall to the combined naval forces of David Farragut, steaming upriver from New Orleans, and the fleet of Charles Davis moving downriver from Memphis. Had not Farragut taken New Orleans, and received the surrender of Baton Rouge and Natchez, while Davis forced the capitulation of Memphis? Army assistance might not even be necessary to capture Vicksburg. General Halleck wrote Secretary of War Stanton on June 12, “If the combined fleets of Farragut and Davis fail to take Vicksburg, I will send an expedition for that purpose.” On June 25, Halleck again wrote to Stanton: “It is hoped that the two flotillas united will be able to reduce [Vicksburg].”1
Beginning the last week of June, the naval commanders made a determined effort to subdue the mighty fortress. Their combined strength boasted more than two hundred guns and a score of mortars, with which they bombarded the Confederate citadel day after day. The Rebel stronghold showed no sign whatsoever of cracking. In fact the Southern heavy batteries fiercely dueled the Federal naval guns on at least equal terms. At one point Farragut and Davis engaged a crude Confederate ironclad, called the Arkansas, which unexpectedly emerged from the mouth of the Yazoo River and caused quite a stir as its ten guns damaged more than one of the Union vessels. Farragut was disappointed that he did not destroy the ship, but within a few months her failing engines compelled the crew to blow her up in order to prevent capture.2
VICKSBURG OPERATIONS AREA
By late 1862, the capture of Vicksburg became the primary Union objective in the western theater of the war. Map by Jim Moon Jr.
Realizing that naval guns alone could never overcome Vicksburg, Farragut put to work the 3,000 soldiers he brought with him from New Orleans in an attempt to divert the channel of the Mississippi River. The plan was to dig a canal, out of range of the fortress guns, which would change the course of the river, leaving Vicksburg high, dry and useless in blocking the Mississippi. But the great stream refused to cooperate, while hundreds of Yankees, both sailors and soldiers, were dying of disease. The river level was also falling and Farragut rightly feared his deep-draft ships might be stranded. In late July he gave up the campaign, heading downriver, while Davis steamed northward. Halleck had long since committed his forces elsewhere and, as noted earlier, Lincoln had summoned him to Washington as general-in-chief of all the armies.3
Thus the daunting task of reducing Vicksburg fell upon the shoulders of Grant, supported enthusiastically by Sherman. After Farragut and Davis ended their campaign to take the fortress, the Rebels continued to strengthen its defenses. The Confederates also reclaimed control of the Mississippi River from Vicksburg to Port Hudson, a distance of perhaps 120 miles in a straight line—some 200 miles when measured by the winding river. The Red River emptied into the Mississippi not far north of Port Hudson, while the railroad from Texas ran eastward through Shreveport and on to Vicksburg. Both by water and rail, all manner of supplies and munitions could be transported to the armies of the western Confederacy as long as that great stretch of the Mississippi remained in Southern hands. Actually, Confederate supplies from west of the Mississippi never reached the quantities that President Lincoln and some other Americans assumed. But perceptions, whether correct or erroneous, often motivate action, and Vicksburg was widely perceived as a great gateway through which poured war materials from the trans-Mississippi. From the Union perspective, that gateway must be sealed off, simultaneously securing the great river for United States trade and transportation.4
Sherman, as anyone aware of his reverence for the Mississippi River might expect, had been urging General Grant to move against Vicksburg ever since Grant took command when Halleck departed for Washington. Sherman favored advancing an army down the Mississippi Central Railroad, thereby keeping constant pressure on the Confederate Army in the northern part of the state, while another Union force moved south on the Mississippi, to the mouth of the Yazoo.5 Flowing from the northeast, the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi about ten miles north of Vicksburg. From a landing on the Yazoo, Sherman believed the Federals could advance successfully against the Vicksburg fortifications. Convinced that the majority of the enemy forces that could defend Vicksburg were north of the Tallahatchie River, a tributary of the Yazoo, Sherman wrote Grant on October 21: “Now is the time to strike at the Yazoo and the Mississippi Central.” Of course Grant knew as well as Sherman that Vicksburg must be taken at some point, but he did not act until well into November.6
Grant was understandably reluctant to take aggressive action against Vicksburg—or anywhere else, given his history with General Halleck—until he was positive he had both the approval of Halleck and the necessary forces and supplies to ensure success. During the first two weeks of November, several communications between Grant and Halleck give insight to Grant’s perspective. Particularly significant are the exchanges of November 10 and 11. Responding to a query from Grant about reinforcements, Halleck told him that new regiments would soon be arriving in Memphis from Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky. “Memphis,” said General Halleck, “will be made the depot of a joint military and naval expedition on Vicksburg.”7
Grant had been hearing rumors that John A. McClernand was raising an army, with the approval of President Lincoln, for operations on the Mississippi against the Vicksburg fortress. “Am I to understand,” Grant asked Halleck on the evening of November 10, “that I lie still here [his headquarters at La Grange, Tennessee] while an expedition is fitted out from Memphis, or do you want me to push as far south as possible? Am I to have Sherman move subject to my order, or is he and his forces reserved for some special service?” Halleck, like Grant and Sherman, was no advocate of a non–West Point politician such as McClernand leading a campaign to reduce Vicksburg. Halleck gave Grant the clearance for which he no doubt had hoped: “You have command of all troops sent to your department, and have permission to fight the enemy where you please.” On November 14, Grant shared with Sherman the information Halleck had sent about the mounting of an expedition from Memphis against Vicksburg, also noting “the mysterious rumors of McClernand’s command.”8
The next day Grant sent a brief order to Sherman: “Meet me at Columbus, Kentucky, on Thursday next. If you have a good map of the country south of you, take it up with you.” Sherman embarked on a steamboat and headed north from Memphis. Grant explained that he intended to move against the Confederate forces commanded by John Pemberton in north Mississippi, which were entrenched on a line south of the Tallahatchie. James McPherson, who commanded the Union troops at Corinth, was to rendezvous with Grant at Holly Springs, Mississippi, coming up on his left flank, while Sherman, leaving a proper garrison in Memphis, would advance into Mississippi with the majority of his command and join up on Grant’s right flank. The initial objective would be Pemberton’s army; the ultimate objective, said Grant, was to reduce Vicksburg and open the navigation of the Mississippi River.9
The plan may not have been all that Sherman wanted, but the important thing was that Grant had decided to take action—action pointing toward reducing the fortress at Vicksburg. Sherman was pleased and, hurrying back to Memphis, he prepared to move out as soon as possible. In late November Grant advanced down the Mississippi Central Railroad, while Sherman moved southeastward from Memphis, leading approximately 16,000 soldiers and drawing close to Grant’s troops as both forces neared the Tallahatchie River. Pemberton refused to engage, retreating farther into the interior of the state. The weather turned bad, with pouring rain, streams swollen and difficult to cross, while some roads were nearly impassable. Grant revised his plans, especially after learning that Halleck’s interest now focused on Vicksburg, with a campaign projection somewhat reminiscent of Sherman’s. “Your main object,” Halleck instructed on December 5, “will be to hold the line from Memphis to Corinth with as small a force as possible, while the largest number possible is thrown upon Vicksburg with the gunboats.” On December 7, Halleck clearly gave Grant a green light to proceed: “You will move your troops as you may deem best to accomplish the great object in view.”10
Grant summoned Sherman to meet him at Oxford, Mississippi. On an overall basis, Grant now favored the plan Sherman had advocated: a two-pronged advance by land and river against Vicksburg. Sherman was to return to Memphis, marshal all the new regiments arriving from the Midwest, many of which John McClernand was directing south, and with 40,000 men (the number Grant quoted to Halleck) proceed down the Mississippi by steamboat to move against Vicksburg from the Yazoo. The entire gunboat fleet, under the command of David D. Porter, would cooperate with the army. Meanwhile, Grant would advance to keep pressure on Pemberton’s army, preventing the Confederate general from sending reinforcements to the Vicksburg defenders, whom Sherman and Grant anticipated would be outnumbered. Sherman’s forces were to enter the Yazoo, land at a suitable disembarkation point and ascend the Chickasaw Bluffs southeast of the river. After gaining the plateau east of Vicksburg—considered the best ground from which to attack—Sherman would seize the great citadel from the rear. It was hoped that Nathaniel P. Banks would be advancing from the south, placing yet more pressure on the Rebels. Essentially, the Vicksburg campaign would be the one Sherman favored, and Sherman himself was being positioned as the key leader in taking the formidable bastion.11
While Sherman’s troops had maneuvered in north Mississippi, discipline problems among the soldiers, although not as bad as they once had been, continued to aggravate him. One soldier wrote his wife about the General’s coming upon some troops who had appropriated an elegant carriage from a nearby plantation. They were enjoying their fine mode of transportation, as they traveled down the road in a style to which they likely were not accustomed—certainly not since they had been in the army. Sherman probably had no particular concern about who might be the owner of the carriage and the horses pulling it. The problem, as he saw it, was the manifestation of a lack of regimen in his command. Men on the march who acted like these troops could not be depended upon to do their duty in battle. At once Sherman ordered the men to get down from the carriage. When one of them refused, Sherman became enraged, grabbed a rifle from a soldier near at hand and perhaps would have shot the defiant fellow, but the weapon was not loaded. Thereupon he resorted to a measure that made more sense than shooting a soldier anyway. Unhitching the four horses that pulled the carriage, he forced the men to get into the harness and pull the carriage back to the plantation from which they had stolen it.12
Sherman was also annoyed by soldiers pretending to be sick. “In course of time we may get an army,” he sarcastically remarked to brother John, but for the present, he claimed that “at the moment of Marching a fearful list of sickness develops and one fourth [of the Army] has to be left behind. . . . The Great Evil is absenteeism,” he wrote, “which is really Desertion & should be punished with Death.” Sherman was back in Memphis by December 13, where he learned of the bloody, awful repulse suffered by the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Ambrose Burnside had launched frontal assaults against the virtually impregnable Rebel position on Marye’s Heights, costing the Union forces almost 13,000 casualties. Many observers thought the outcome of such a battle was clearly foreseeable, and Sherman predicted to John that General McClellan “will be recalled [to command] sooner or later.” Sherman still held a favorable opinion of McClellan’s ability, although Ellen continued to see him, as noted previously, in a dark light. She informed her husband: “Father writes that Secretary Stanton told him you were ‘by far the best general we have—administratively and in the field’—So do not provoke me again by putting yourself below McClellan.”13
By the time Ellen penned those words, Sherman was already on his way down the Mississippi to attack Vicksburg, armed with a carte blanche order from Grant to reduce “that place in such manner as circumstances and your own judgment may dictate.” Sherman had written John, “The move is one of vast importance, and if successful will remove the chief obstacles to the navigation of the Mississippi.” Sherman well knew that he had a tough assignment. Several factors bothered him, and he told John that “things are not exactly right.” Grant commanded east of the Mississippi, Samuel R. Curtis west of the river and Admiral Porter on the river itself. “All ought to be under one head” he said, acknowledging unity of command, one of the nine principles of generalship recognized today by the U.S. Army. As the action developed, however, it involved neither Grant nor Curtis in any direct or meaningful manner. The relationship between Sherman and Porter, who would have to work effectively with each other if the mission were to succeed, was the critical factor. Only on the eve of the expedition did the two men meet for the first time. Fortunately, they liked each other. Porter was a few years older than Sherman. A longtime navy man who had gone to sea when he was ten, he spoke his mind readily and had a hearty manner about him—if he approved of you. Sherman and Porter meshed perfectly, experiencing no problems in coordinating army-navy operations.14
Sherman was also concerned about keeping in touch with Grant. Rail and river communication would be long, time-consuming and uncertain, while communication by land was basically unreliable. “The Country is full of Guerilla Bands so that the couriers cannot be relied on across the country 75 miles,” he informed John. Telegraph lines, while instantaneous, were highly vulnerable—and sometimes were cut by a single person. Probably Sherman and Grant would be unable to communicate, a situation both anticipated. All Sherman could do, realistically, was try to reach Vicksburg by a designated date—December 25—which Grant would be expecting as he maneuvered to pressure Pemberton’s Confederates. Sherman knew too that he was not going to have 40,000 troops, telling John, after he saw the new regiments in Memphis, “I cannot count on more than 30,000.” He would have that many only after picking up a 10,000-man division under Frederick Steele at Helena, Arkansas.15
“The preparations were necessarily hasty in the extreme,” Sherman wrote in his memoirs, “but this was the essence of the whole plan, viz., to reach Vicksburg as it were by surprise,” he claimed, “while General Grant held in check Pemberton’s army . . . leaving me to contend only with the smaller garrison of Vicksburg and its well-known strong batteries and defenses.” Actually, surprise was unrealistic, and both Sherman and Grant had to know it. Nearly seventy troop transports steaming down the Mississippi, carrying approximately 32,500 men, and accompanied by a gunboat fleet—“a magnificent sight,” according to Sherman—could not escape detection. Furthermore, when snipers fired on the vessels from a small settlement on the eastern shore, Porter’s gunboats shelled the town, and Sherman landed troops who burned some buildings in the area. Long before Sherman reached the Yazoo, the Confederates knew that large numbers of Federal troops were moving south on the Mississippi. And they had to know that Vicksburg was the only possible objective that warranted such an impressive force.16
While undeniably both Sherman and Grant were in a hurry for the Vicksburg expedition to weigh anchor, their true motivation was to thwart John McClernand’s plans to take command of the operation. This Grant confessed in his memoirs: “I feared that delay might bring McClernand, who was [Sherman’s] senior and who had authority from the President and Secretary of War Stanton to exercise that particular command. . . . I doubted McClernand’s fitness; and I had good reason to believe that in forestalling him I was by no means giving offense to those whose authority to command was above both him and me.” Grant knew that General Halleck also distrusted McClernand’s abilities. He knew too that Halleck held Sherman in high regard. Both Halleck and Grant were determined that Sherman would lead the expedition against Vicksburg.17
The inception of the campaign did indeed involve a bit of a surprise, although the Confederates were not the ones victimized. John McClernand, having just married the sister of his deceased wife, arrived in Memphis shortly after Christmas. Accompanied by his new spouse, as well as the bridal party, McClernand expected that he would at once assume command of the troops he had raised, and with them set forth to reduce Vicksburg. Instead, he learned to his consternation that William Tecumseh Sherman had embarked for Vicksburg on December 19, taking with him all the men who were available. McClernand was convinced that he had been betrayed. “Either accident or intention,” he wrote the President, had thwarted the plans, as well as allegedly undermining the authority of both Lincoln and Stanton. A few days later, he decried “the clique of West Pointers who have been persecuting me for months.” The major villain, he eventually concluded, was Halleck. On December 30, McClernand steamed after Sherman, on the Tigress, still accompanied by his new bride and her party, as well as an amazing gaggle of forty-nine staff officers. McClernand’s high-handed bungling in the weeks to come contributed greatly toward establishing the term “political general” as a byword for military incompetence.18
ON THE EVENING of December 20, Sherman arrived at Helena, Arkansas, where he picked up Frederick Steele’s division the next morning. From upriver came a disturbing report. Union soldiers arriving in Memphis after Sherman departed said that Grant’s newly established forward supply depot at Holly Springs had been captured. “I hardly know what faith to put in such a report,” he wrote Grant, “but suppose whatever may be the case, you will attend to it.” Unfortunately, the report was true; worse, Holly Springs was not the whole story. The Rebels had struck in both Mississippi and Tennessee. Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn’s cavalry swept around Grant’s eastern flank and destroyed the great supply base, while Nathan Bedford Forrest’s troopers tore up nearly fifty miles of railroad and telegraph lines north of Jackson, Tennessee, also burning a large quantity of provisions. Grant had to pull back. With the railroad wrecked, he could not bring up more supplies for some time. Nor could he get word to Sherman. The Rebels were free to send reinforcements to Vicksburg, and they did.19
Sherman faced a tough decision. He knew nothing of the destruction in Tennessee, and the information about Holly Springs was unconfirmed. If the Holly Springs report were not true, and Sherman halted the advance based solely on unsubstantiated information, his decision would at best be judged excessively cautious. Even if the report were true, Grant might deal with the setback and continue the campaign. If in the meantime Sherman had pulled back to Memphis, he would have failed his commander. Also, the troops aboard the transports were primed for the mission and a number of the gunboats were already moving up the Yazoo. Furthermore, if Sherman halted or even delayed, John McClernand quite possibly would arrive and take command. War, by its very nature, involves uncertainty and risk. Sherman did not have the luxury of awaiting further information and considering the matter at leisure. Given what he knew when he had to make the call, his decision to continue is understandable.
CHICKASAW BAYOU AND STEELE’S BAYOU OPERATION AREA
U. S. Grant’s first offensive against Vicksburg envisioned Sherman advancing by water to attack the Confederates at Chickasaw Bayou (Chickasaw Bluffs). Map by Jim Moon Jr.
Arriving at Milliken’s Bend on Christmas Day, Sherman detached a brigade from Andrew Jackson Smith’s division, sending it to break up a stretch of the railroad leading from Vicksburg toward Shreveport. The next morning, while Smith awaited the return of the railroad destroyers, Sherman proceeded to the mouth of the Yazoo with his other three divisions, commanded by Brigadier Generals Morgan L. Smith, George W. Morgan and Frederick Steele. Several gunboats had steamed upriver days before, penetrating the narrow Yazoo for some fifteen miles, and clearing the muddy water of torpedoes (mines). One of the navy’s ironclads struck a torpedo and sank in less than ten minutes, although all of her crew did manage to escape.20
While preparing a safe passage for Sherman’s men on the transports, the naval vessels also scouted for suitable landing sites, which were few. Sherman never before had seen the wild, swampy area of the Yazoo, or the Chickasaw Bluffs. He gathered some information before mounting the expedition, but it proved insufficient. It seems doubtful that anyone could have perceived the region’s foreboding complexities without actually seeing them firsthand—all the more so when such maps as Sherman possessed were inadequate. “Low boggy ground, with innumerable bayous or deep sloughs,” to quote Sherman, mingled with dense woods covered by Spanish moss, and stretched for miles along the Vicksburg side of the Yazoo.21
After conferring with Porter and learning that the Yazoo above the mouth of Chickasaw Bayou was not yet cleared of mines, Sherman disembarked his troops at Johnson’s Plantation, a parcel of cleared ground in a swampy area on the south bank of the river, approximately a dozen miles upstream. The place was not ideal, but perhaps as good as anything available. On December 27 and 28, Sherman personally reconnoitered the whole area, attempting to determine the best ground for an attack. The region was cut up by bayous. “We get across one only to find ourselves on the bank of another.” Both days saw widespread heavy skirmishing, and sniper fire presented a danger everywhere. In fact, a sniper took out one of Sherman’s division commanders.
“During the general reconnaissance of the 28th, Morgan L. Smith received a severe and dangerous wound in his hip,” recounted Sherman, “which completely disabled him.” Sherman feared that Smith’s wound would prove fatal, but he did survive. Sherman regarded Smith as one of his best officers. He also mourned the loss of William Gwin, commander of the ironclad Benton. Sherman had worked with Gwin back in March on the Tennessee River, in attempting to break the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. He told Ellen that Gwin was “my favorite in the fleet.” In a sharp engagement on the Yazoo, Gwin insisted that a commander’s place was on the quarterdeck, not the armored pilothouse. Struck by a solid shot in the chest and arm, which left a lung exposed and badly injured, while ripping away most of the arm—“the most fearful wound I ever saw,” said Porter—Gwin lingered in pain for a few days before finally relieved by death. “We of the army,” wrote Sherman, “had come to regard him as one of us.”22
By Monday morning, December 29, Sherman was ready to attack. He estimated the enemy’s total forces at 15,000—approximately twice their actual number, although more Confederates were arriving daily. Positioned on high ground atop the Chickasaw Bluffs, the Rebels also held a shelf of land extending along the base of the bluffs. With a road running along the shelf, some fifteen to twenty feet above the swampy lowland, and another road paralleling it at the top of the bluffs, the Southerners could quickly shift their defensive strength to any threatened point. Also, about a mile and a half from the Yazoo, Sherman’s forces, before they could assault the Confederates on the bluffs, first confronted the formidable natural obstacle of Chickasaw Bayou. The bayou, said Sherman, “was impassable except at two points—one near the head of [the] Bayou . . . and the other about a mile lower down.” The entire area, Sherman declared, “was as difficult as it could possibly be from nature and art.” He decided, as recorded in his memoirs, “to make a show of attack along the whole front, but to break across the bayou at the two points named.” One of the approaches, he reported, was across a narrow levee and the other over a sandbar. Both presented the enemy with an excellent killing field.
Brigadier General David Stuart, now leading Morgan Smith’s troops, was to launch one of the primary attacks, while George Morgan’s division made the other. Sherman ordered demonstrations against both flanks, while Andrew Jackson Smith’s command, as a further diversion, was to move out on the road leading from Johnson’s Plantation toward Vicksburg. When Sherman pointed out the ground where General Morgan was to attack, Morgan confidently asserted, according to Sherman: “General, in ten minutes after you give the signal I’ll be on those hills.” Division commander Frederick Steele reported that Morgan told him that “within thirty minutes” he would possess “the heights to a moral certainty”—bold words soon to be proven ingloriously empty.23
Sherman gave the attack signal at noon, his batteries opening a heavy artillery fire along the whole line. General Morgan, however, did not even get across the bayou, let alone assault the hills beyond. A brigade led by Brigadier General Frank Blair Jr. did make it across the bayou, but was devastated by Rebel artillery and rifled musketry. Another brigade moved out in a wrong direction and never came close to getting across the bayou. Men who did manage to cross, and charge to the base of the bluffs, were pinned down, surviving by, in Sherman’s words, “scooping out with their hands caves in the bank, which sheltered them against the fire of the enemy, who, right over their heads, held their muskets outside the parapet vertically, and fired down. So critical was the position,” he concluded, that “we could not recall the men till after dark, and then one at a time.”24
The attack had resulted in a bloody repulse, accomplished nothing and inflicted only minimal casualties on the Rebels. Sherman always believed that General Morgan handled his division incompetently, costing the Federals any chance of success, but he said nothing critical of Morgan in his official report, even though he was urged to do so by Frank Blair. “Our loss is about 1800, —say 300 killed, 400 taken prisoner, and over a thousand wounded,” Sherman estimated shortly after the attack. His figures were not far off, except for the number of U.S. soldiers killed, later calculated at 208. Confederate casualties totaled 207, of which 63 were killed. Sherman was not ready to give up, however. Consulting with David Porter, who agreed to cooperate, Sherman decided to move one of his divisions upstream to Haynes’s Bluff and launch a diversionary attack against the Confederate right flank. If the Rebels dispatched reinforcements to that flank, Sherman hoped, with his other divisions, to break through their weakened line in the center.25
Frederick Steele’s division was loaded aboard the transports for the diversionary endeavor. But early on the morning of January 1, 1863, a fog “so thick and impenetrable that it was impossible to move,” settled on the Yazoo, and the effort had to be abandoned. Rain also began falling. Sherman noticed watermarks on trees “ten and twelve feet above their roots.” He envisioned the entire region’s quickly becoming a quagmire, and his whole expedition literally mud-bound. No word had been heard from either Grant or Banks, and Sherman thought the sound of trains coming and going at Vicksburg probably signaled the arrival of enemy reinforcements. He was right. “I was forced to the conclusion,” he reported, “that it was not only prudent but proper that I should move my command to some other point.” On January 2 and 3 the rain came down in torrents. Sherman felt sure that he had escaped the swamps of Chickasaw Bayou in the nick of time, “for now water and mud must be forty feet deep there.”26
Nevertheless, Sherman agonized that his first independent combat operation, and his first major attack, had ended in failure. While George Morgan’s ineffective leadership played a part in the disaster, Sherman’s greater problem was the awful terrain. Although his total forces significantly outnumbered the Confederates, the nature of the ground over which the attack was made prevented him from using his superior forces to advantage. Moving across narrow and open ground, before they could even assault the bluffs, the Union sacrificed mass at the points where they hoped to break through the enemy defenses. Unless Sherman could have devised some way to strike the Rebels in flank, both with surprise and force, it is doubtful that he, or any other commander, could have won the battle. But with the enemy holding the high ground, a surprise attack anywhere would have been well nigh impossible. The terrain was so formidable in favor of the Southerners that quite conceivably Sherman never actually had a chance of defeating the Confederates at Chickasaw Bluffs.
“Well, we have been to Vicksburg,” Sherman wrote Ellen, “and it was too much for us, and we have backed out.” He knew that “People at a distance” would ridicule the failure, but confidently asserted that “nobody who was there will.” He spoke of “the natural strength” of the position, offering some details supportive of historian John Keegan’s recent, perceptive assessment that basically Sherman “had been defeated by geography.” In a letter to his brother, Sherman spoke of the criticisms he must face from the press, also elaborating, as he had to Ellen, on the difficulties, many involving the terrain, that any commander would confront in attempting to overcome Vicksburg. However, he still acknowledged that “Vicksburg must be reduced,” and then declared, “It is the strongest place I ever saw, both by nature and by art.”27
The Ewing and Sherman families, not surprisingly, were unequivocally supportive of the General upon learning about the defeat. Maria Ewing probably expressed the consensus family opinion when she wrote Ellen of Sherman’s wisdom and skill in retiring when he did and thereby saving his army. Maria thus touched upon one of Sherman’s developing strengths—he could recognize when he was beat. Unlike some commanders in the heat of a battle, Sherman possessed a cool objectivity and, valuing the lives of his soldiers, would not keep throwing more men into a losing fight. Maria also elaborated interestingly, “Who could have imagined the strength of the enemy?” she asked, “their immense numbers, their defenses, . . . their fortifications—surely their Master, the devil, has helped them.” Vicksburg, she asserted, “had always been proverbial for its wickedness,” and Maria had long heard that the river city, with its infamous red-light district along the waterfront, was the devil’s own “headquarters.” There was “great cause to thank God” for Sherman’s safe deliverance from that wicked place.28
If God had saved Sherman from the devil’s own den, Maria Ewing’s son-in-law still had to deal with John McClernand. The Illinois political general arrived at the mouth of the Yazoo to take command just as Sherman was withdrawing his forces in defeat. The timing, for the volatile redhead, could hardly have been worse. Already low in spirit, the occasion proved bitter indeed. Sherman disliked McClernand intensely, declaring to brother John that the man was consumed “by a gnawing desire for fame & notoriety.” Without a doubt, McClernand was an obnoxious character; still, Sherman likely would have been a bit more indulgent of the man’s faults had he been a West Pointer and not a politician.29
Sherman next voiced his disappointment in the President. “Mr. Lincoln intended to insult me and the military profession by putting McClernand over me,” he charged in the January 17 letter to his brother, “and I would have quietly folded up my things and gone to St. Louis, only I know in times like these all must submit to insult and infamy if necessary.” Had the President “ordered a soldier here,” he continued, “I would not have breathed a syllable of complaint, but to put a politician who claims a knowledge he Knows he does not possess & who envies the earned reputation of every subordinate” was unacceptable. “I never dreamed,” he told John, “of so severe a test of my patriotism as being superseded by McClernand.” Sherman assured Ellen, however, that he did “submit gracefully” when McClernand took command. His deep respect for military protocol would not have countenanced any inappropriate behavior. Ellen’s view about the appointment of McClernand was that Lincoln “ought to be impeached as an imbecile.”30
McClernand named his new command the Army of the Mississippi and organized it in two corps, one under George Morgan and the second under Sherman. While McClernand did not blame Sherman for the Chickasaw Bayou defeat—writing War Secretary Stanton that Sherman “has probably done all in the present case that anyone could have done”—his appointment of Morgan to lead a corps had to be galling to Sherman, coming as it did in the wake of that officer’s poor performance on the Yazoo. From McClernand, Sherman learned that Grant was not advancing on Vicksburg, having retreated after the attacks on his supplies and communications. Sherman surmised that Confederate reinforcements truly were arriving at Vicksburg, just as he had thought. The wisdom of his decision to pull back from the Yazoo seemed confirmed. As for McClernand, Sherman did not think he had “any definite views or plans of action.” McClernand spoke only “in general terms, of opening the navigation of the Mississippi, ‘cutting his way to the sea,’ etc., etc., but the modus operandi was not so clear.”31
Since McClernand did not have a specific objective in mind, Sherman made a suggestion. Several days earlier the Union steamboat Blue Wing, heading south on the Mississippi with a cargo of mail and ammunition, had been captured by a Rebel gunboat near the mouth of the Arkansas River. The Arkansas emptied into the Mississippi on the west side of the great river, about halfway between Memphis and Vicksburg, and Sherman had learned that the enemy gunboat came from Fort Hindman (also known as Arkansas Post and as Post of Arkansas), a base about forty miles up the Arkansas. Sherman argued in favor of an attack on Fort Hindman, contending that Federal operations against Vicksburg would be harassed and hindered as long as the Confederates were free to steam down the Arkansas River and attack the Union supply line on the Mississippi. Sherman wanted permission to move up the Arkansas with his corps, and “clear out” Arkansas Post. Success would also offset, to a degree, Sherman’s failure on the Yazoo—although he certainly was not about to mention such a face-saving motive to McClernand—and boost the morale of the troops.32
McClernand seemed uncertain about Sherman’s proposal, according to Sherman, who then suggested that they put the matter to Admiral Porter, whose gunboats and transports would be essential to such an operation. Porter’s esteem for Sherman remained strong despite the Chickasaw Bayou repulse. The admiral thought Sherman “managed his men most beautifully” and attributed the defeat to Grant’s inability to carry out the original plan, the inadequate leadership of some subordinates and the rain, which had “drowned [Sherman’s] army out of the swamps.” Sherman and Porter had already talked about the possibility of attacking the Rebel fort. McClernand readily agreed to a meeting with Porter, whom he and Sherman aroused about midnight, aboard his boat the Black Hawk, anchored at the mouth of the Yazoo. Porter soon decided, if he had not already done so, that he did not like John McClernand any better than Sherman did. “McClernand has just arrived,” Porter wrote Andrew Foote on January 3, “and will take command; Sherman, though, will have all the brains.” Sherman claimed that at one point during the midnight meeting he had to pull the admiral aside and calm him down, so incensed was Porter at McClernand. Eventually the three men reached an understanding, and McClernand approved the operation to reduce Fort Hindman. McClernand also decided, which Sherman never had in mind, to go along himself and take the whole army.33
On January 10, the troops were landed three or four miles below the fort. During the night following, which Sherman said was “bitter cold,” although bright from the light of the moon, he made a personal, “close up” reconnaissance of the enemy position. Hiding behind a stump about 4:00 a.m., he heard a Rebel bugler “sound as pretty a reveille as I ever listened to.” Returning to his command, Sherman said he moved all the corps into “an easy position for assault.” The plan was for Porter’s three ironclads to open the fight, blasting the fort from the waterfront; they hoped this would silence the Confederate guns, thereby saving the infantry, declared Sherman, from artillery fire along the “only possible line of attack.”34
At 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 11, the gunboats opened fire and the army batteries immediately joined in the barrage. After a short time, Sherman ordered his artillery to cease firing and sent the infantry columns forward. His corps advanced on the right side of a road leading to the rear of the fort, while Morgan’s corps moved on the left. The intervening ground between the Federals and the Rebel fort was approximately one-third of a mile. With the exception of a few gullies, the ground was generally level, offering little cover other than some trees and scattered logs. Nevertheless, “the troops advanced well under a heavy fire,” declared Sherman, and slowly but relentlessly drew closer to the enemy’s position.
Pounded from the river by the naval guns, while observing large numbers of Union infantry steadily crawling closer, many Confederates became convinced that further resistance was useless. Southern brigade commander Robert R. Garland, reported that between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m., the Union batteries and gunboats “had complete command [of his location], taking it in front, flank, and rear at the same time, literally raking our entire position.” As the Federals readied for a final rush against the fort, an enemy soldier appeared on the parapet, waving a large white flag. “Numerous smaller white rags appeared,” remembered Sherman, and the Rebels surrendered. Their total casualties were more than 5,500, the great majority of whom became prisoners. Northern casualties numbered 1,061, with 134 of them killed.35
The Confederate fort was rife with confusion as the surrender took place. Not all of the Rebels had been ready to give up, and some blamed Robert Garland for instigating the surrender without proper authorization from Thomas J. Churchill, his commanding officer. Apparently what really happened was that a number of soldiers simply decided, more or less simultaneously, that the time to raise the white flag was at hand. They proceeded to do so, and the action became contagious. But, wrote Sherman, “there seemed to be a good deal of feeling among the rebel officers against Garland,” and consequently, the Confederate colonel asked Sherman whether he could stay the night with him. Sherman readily consented and then borrowed “a battered coffee-pot with some coffee and scraps of hard bread” from one of his soldiers. “I made coffee [and we] ate our bread together,” remembered Sherman, “and talked politics by the fire till quite late at night.”36
The Union triumph at Arkansas Post “was not a battle, but a clean little ‘affaire,’” he told Ellen. Obviously pleased with the success, whatever it might be called, he overreached a bit, as he asserted, “This relieves our Vicksburg trip of all appearances of a reverse, as by this move we open the Arkansas and compel all organized masses of the Enemy to pass below the Arkansas River, and it will also secure this flank when we renew our attack on Vicksburg.” Additionally, whenever the water level of the Arkansas rose, the capital at Little Rock would be open to the destructive fire of Federal gunboats. Turning to family news, Sherman noted that Charley Ewing had been under fire for some time. Presumably Ellen’s brother was at last seeing all the action he desired. As for Sherman—whose war experience had now exceeded a year and a half—he offered a revealing comment about the perils of battle, declaring to his wife that “when danger is present, I feel it less than when it is in the remote future, or in the past,” an assessment consistent with the cool demeanor that seemed always to characterize him in the heat of an engagement.37
Sherman continued to be unimpressed by John McClernand. He saw him on board the Tigress soon after the capture of Fort Hindman, and the political general was “in high spirits.” Repeatedly McClernand exclaimed, “Glorious! Glorious! My star is ever in the ascendant!” While McClernand spoke in complimentary terms of the army, he “was extremely jealous of the navy,” observed Sherman. Tired and hungry, Sherman was unappreciative of McClernand’s self-congratulatory hurrahing. The exuberant Illinois politician said that he “had a man up a tree,” observing the action as it unfolded and promised he soon would “make a splendid report” about the battle. Sherman did not think much of the report, saying it “almost ignored the action of Porter’s fleet,” which Sherman believed had played the major role in the victory. “The Admiral led his fleet in person,” remembered Sherman, “and his guns silenced those of [the] Fort.” Shortly after the engagement, he wrote John, “The Gunboats were handled beautifully and without them we would have had hard work; with them it was easy.” Not to give Porter due credit, in Sherman’s view, was the petty act of a little man. “McClernand is unfit [to command],” he declared to Ellen, “consumed by an inordinate personal ambition.”38
For the record, McClernand did send Porter a two-sentence, congratulatory message, noting “the efficient and brilliant part taken by you, as commander of the Mississippi Squadron, in the reduction today of the Post of Arkansas.” Sherman was certainly right, however, about McClernand’s neglect of the navy in his official report. That report, fully nine printed pages in the War of the Rebellion records, scarcely mentions Porter’s contribution. Other aspects of McClernand’s report surely irritated Sherman as well. McClernand reported that Sherman “exhibited his usual activity and enterprise,” while George Morgan had “proved his tactical skill and strategic talent”—quite a remarkable turnaround for a man whose recent performance at Chickasaw Bayou, in the appropriate words of historian Steven Woodworth, had been “nothing short of abysmal.” Morgan, like McClernand, was a politician and a Democrat.39
Sherman always said that the attack on Arkansas Post originated with him. Writing to General Ethan Hitchcock, his friend from California days, he declared on January 25, “I planned & executed the move on the Post of Arkansas, but another had arrived at the critical moment [to] take the honor.” Also, conveying his displeasure with the President’s management of the war, Sherman told Hitchcock that he would “be rejoiced if Mr. Lincoln shall say ‘Young man we can do without you go home.’ Indeed I would.” Although Sherman never mentioned McClernand by name, the letter to Hitchcock clearly demonstrates the humiliation and disgust he had experienced when the Illinois politician superseded him. “There is no happiness to me in this mass of selfishness & I believe I serve my country with as pure a feeling as actuates any mortal, though I despise many of the tools that rule & control me.” Sherman also had written both Ellen and John, declaring unequivocally that he proposed the Arkansas Post expedition. “I led the columns, gave all orders, and entered [the fort],” when McClernand then “came along and managed the prisoners & the captured property.”40
To the utter annoyance of Sherman, John McClernand claimed to be the author of the attack on Fort Hindman. Early in his official report of that action, McClernand wrote, “I sailed . . . in execution of a purpose, the importance of which I suggested to General [Willis A.] Gorman at Helena, December 30, on my way down the river. That purpose was the reduction of Fort Hindman, . . . which formed the key to Little Rock, the capital of . . . Arkansas.” Just possibly, General Gorman himself might have inspired the idea of moving up the Arkansas. On December 19, a week before McClernand reached Memphis, Sherman wrote Grant that General Gorman “proposes to move all his forces from Helena to Napoleon at the mouth of the Arkansas.” He could then be positioned either “to bring all his men to Vicksburg or act up the Arkansas.”41
Regardless of McClernand’s claims, the evidence favors Sherman as the driving force behind the Arkansas expedition. When General Grant, upon learning of the Fort Hindman venture and thinking that it was conceived by McClernand, called it “a wild goose chase,” Sherman wrote his friend explaining the value, in his judgment, of eliminating the Rebel fort. If the Arkansas Post attack actually originated with McClernand, it’s doubtful whether Sherman, given his disdain of the Illinois politician, would have written in defense of the mission. Brigadier General Frank Blair’s corroborative statement to Sherman on February 1 is persuasive, all the more because Blair’s attitude toward Sherman was somewhat testy at the time. “I am well aware,” Blair wrote, “that you planned and in great measure executed the move against Arkansas Post, and I have not failed to say what I knew of it on proper occasions.”
Furthermore, the very fact that Sherman became obsessed with the issue of credit tends to confirm his initiation of the venture. He was the man who, after the disappointing repulse on the Yazoo, felt deeply the need to reap something positive from the expedition—as his January 12 letter to Ellen conveyed. John McClernand was not the general who had suffered a defeat. When Sherman realized that McClernand himself would take the army up the Arkansas and seize the credit for the victory—a triumph that Sherman had conceived and intended to engineer—his anger boiled. As early as January 4, several days before the success at Arkansas Post, he wrote Ellen that he had proposed attacking the fort, and said that he was on the way to do so even as he wrote. Finally, Admiral Porter’s statement in a February 3 letter to Sherman is forthright and convincing: “As to the Arkansas Post affair, it originated with yourself entirely, and you proposed it to me on the night you embarked the troops, and before it was known you had been relieved and that General McClernand had arrived.”42
Obviously, the question of who proposed the attack on Arkansas Post is of no consequence whatsoever in the broad picture of the Civil War. The significance lies in the further exacerbation of Sherman’s pronounced contempt for McClernand. It was as if the general now symbolized everything that was wrong with the way that the conduct of the war had evolved, both militarily and politically. As we have seen, Sherman criticized McClernand scathingly in letters to family members. He also lashed out at the deplorable judgment, as he saw it, of a president who would appoint such an unqualified man to a high military position. Seething with rage, he talked recklessly about leaving the army, writing Ellen that “the President’s placing McClernand here, and the dead Set to ruin me for McClernand’s personal Glory, would afford me a good chance to Slide out and escape the storms and troubles yet in reserve for us.” Again he wrote: “Should I conclude to quit, I will go to Memphis and then to St. Louis. That is the best harbor to bring up in.” The talk of “quitting” really alarmed Ellen.43
She feared—after Sherman’s defeat on the Yazoo, the elevation of McClernand and the wild assertions about leaving the army—that her husband might be slipping back into the despairing mind-set that overwhelmed him in Kentucky. However, there were major differences this time. Sherman was neither suffering self-doubt, which basically ended with Shiloh, nor experiencing a debilitating embarrassment, as in the Kentucky meltdown. Rather, in early 1863, Sherman was driven by anger—a deep-seated anger that the war might be lost by incompetent, partisan politicians, amateur generals, undisciplined volunteer soldiers, lying, self-serving news reporters and a nation either ignorant of or unwilling to pay the price demanded by victory. Sherman was angry, too, because he felt powerless in the face of potential disaster; that anger, above all, was fueled by the presence of John McClernand. But, McClernand’s ever ascending star was about to be dimmed.
