At Grand Gulf on May 3 Grant made the crucial decision of the campaign. His instructions from Washington emphasized the importance of subduing the Confederate base at Port Hudson, 100 miles downriver, before assaulting Vicksburg. Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, commanding at New Orleans, was to push north and assist, after which the two armies would tackle Pemberton.
Shortly after he arrived at Grand Gulf, Grant received a letter from Banks, written on the Red River three weeks before, informing him that developments in western Louisiana would prevent any move northward by his troops until at least May 10. Grant had assumed the attack on Port Hudson could begin immediately and that Banks could deploy 30,000 troops for the effort. Instead, Banks numbered his strength at half that. Grant, who was determined to maintain the momentum of his advance, decided he would be better off without Banks. “To wait for his co-operation would have detained me at least a month,” he wrote later. “The enemy would have strengthened his position and been reinforced by more men than Banks could have brought. I therefore determined to move independently of Banks, cut loose from my base, destroy the rebel force in the rear of Vicksburg and invest or capture the city.”208
For the next four days Grant acted as the quartermaster he had been in the Mexican War, firing off logistical instructions to subordinates, stockpiling ammunition, and dispatching foraging parties into the countryside. Rolling stock for the army’s train was in particularly short supply, but scavenger teams returned from their raids with an abundant array of farm vehicles, ranging from long-tongued wagons designed for hauling cotton bales, to elegant plantation carriages, upholstered phaetons, and surreys. The vehicles were drawn by an equally odd assortment of horses, mules, and oxen—probably the most unmilitary military train ever assembled. But the pickings were bountiful. “We live fat,” wrote Private Isaac Jackson of the 83rd Ohio Infantry. “Plenty of the best beef and mutton,” to say nothing of the bags of sweet potatoes, sacks of corn, honey, and fresh strawberries. If the South was starving, there was no evidence of it in central Mississippi.209
From his position on the Big Black, Grant could have moved due north against Vicksburg. But the broken terrain was easily defended and access roads few and far between. “This part of Mississippi stands on edge,” Grant wrote later. “The hillsides are covered with timber and the ravines with vines and canebreakes. This makes it easy for an inferior force to delay, if not defeat, a superior one.”210 Instead of attempting to crash through, Grant shifted the axis of his advance 90 degrees and moved east toward Jackson. His aim was to place his army between Pemberton and Johnston, defeat each in turn, and then assault Vicksburg from the east. With Jackson in Union hands, Vicksburg’s rail link to the eastern Confederacy would be severed. The Mississippi River fortress could then be taken by storm, or besieged until it surrendered.
On May 6 Grant asked Halleck whether Rosecrans might be stirred into action to prevent Bragg from rushing reinforcements to Vicksburg.211 Otherwise he kept Washington in the dark. By noon on the 6th, Sherman’s corps had completed its crossing of the Mississippi. That brought Grant’s total strength to about 40,000. The advance on Jackson commenced the following day: McClernand on the left, Sherman in the center, McPherson on the right. Sherman, who eighteen months later would march through Georgia and the Carolinas with no supply line whatever, was still the orthodox West Pointer in 1863, and he continued to worry about Grant’s logistics. From his vantage point near Grand Gulf he could see the confusion caused by too few vehicles making too many shuttles on too few roads. “Stop all troops until your army is partially supplied with wagons,” he wrote Grant in considerable agitation on May 9.212
Grant, who had not yet informed his corps commanders of his plans, was keeping his own counsel. If his principal subordinates did not know his intentions, then it was safe to assume that Pemberton did not either. Grant tipped his hand slightly. “I do not calculate upon the possibility of supplying the Army with full rations from Grand Gulf. What I do expect however is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee & salt we can and make the country furnish the balance.” Grant told Sherman that to wait for wagons would “give the enemy time to reinforce and fortify.” He hoped to be in Vicksburg in seven days and the rations on hand would last until then.213 Grant fretted about his lack of cavalry214 and took care to insure that plenty of ammunition was on hand,215 but he knew the army could feed itself.
With Grant pressing his corps commanders, the Army of the Tennessee moved quickly. The four dreary months encamped in the mud across the river from Vicksburg had forged the army into a well-oiled machine. Like Washington at Valley Forge, or Zachary Taylor in more salubrious climes, Grant had used the time to perfect the army’s discipline and responsiveness. By May 11 lead elements were within twenty miles of Jackson and had yet to encounter serious opposition. A young soldier in McPherson’s corps was moved by the march: “O, what a grand army this is. I shall never forget the scene today, while looking back upon a mile of solid columns, marching with their old tattered flags streaming in the summer breeze, and harkening to the firm tramp of their broad brogans keeping step to the pealing fife and drum, or the regimental bands discoursing ‘Yankee Doodle’ or ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me.’ ”216
That evening Grant wrote Halleck that he had advanced as far as he could without bringing on a general engagement. Belatedly he informed the general in chief that he was cutting loose. “I shall communicate with Grand Gulf no more except it becomes necessary to send a train with heavy escort. You may not hear from me again for several days.”217 Grant did not inform Halleck of his plans and once again he did not ask for approval. In fact, his message did not reach Washington until the following week. As he noted in his Memoirs, “I knew well that Halleck’s caution would lead him to disapprove this course; but it was the only one that gave any chance of success. The time it would take to communicate with Washington and get a reply would be so great that I could not be interfered with until it was demonstrated whether my plan was practicable.”218 Like Lord Nelson at the battle of Copenhagen, who put the telescope to his blind eye so as not to see the flagship’s signal to withdraw, Grant was pressing ahead on his own.
After writing to Halleck, Grant put his army in motion. McClernand was instructed to move cautiously but rapidly at first light “so that your entire corps will arrive at Fourteen mile creek simultaneously and in compact line.”219 Sherman was ordered to arrive there at the same time. McPherson was also told to push ahead, seize the village of Raymond, and take possession of whatever commissary stores might be located there. “We must fight the enemy before our rations fail, and we are equally bound to make our rations last as long as possible.”220
As Grant’s troops moved out on the morning of May 12 they were uncertain what to expect. The Mississippi capital of Jackson lay dead ahead, yet there was no way of judging what Pemberton had deployed to defend it. In reality, very little, because the Confederate commander was convinced that Grant intended to strike north from the Big Black and assault Vicksburg directly, and that the Union push toward Jackson was a feint. Consequently, Pemberton arrayed his troops, some fifteen brigades, in defensive echelon behind the Big Black. The Confederate force was roughly the same size as Grant’s, and Pemberton was ready for a replay of the autumn confrontation on the Yalobusha. The only rebel troops between Grant and Jackson were a single brigade commanded by Texas brigadier John Gregg, bivouacked in the vicinity of Raymond. Pemberton believed that once battle was joined at Vicksburg, Gregg would be operating behind Grant’s lines. Thus Gregg was instructed to fall on the Union flank or rear if the opportunity presented itself.221 He was not informed that the entire Army of the Tennessee was bearing down upon him.
At mid-morning on the 12th Gregg received word that an undisclosed number of Union troops were approaching. It was Logan’s division, out in front of McPherson’s corps. Believing he was facing a small rear guard, Gregg readied his brigade to attack. He and his troops had surrendered to Grant at Donelson, and they were thirsting for revenge. The result was a sharp and surprisingly hot encounter in which seven Confederate regiments took on a whole Union corps. Gregg stood his ground for two hours but eventually gave way, losing one man in every six. McPherson entered Raymond late in the afternoon and halted for the night.
Grant was with Sherman when he learned of the fighting at Raymond. With the enemy in the field in front of him, he decided to press ahead at full throttle to take Jackson as soon as possible. Based on past performance, Grant judged that Pemberton would not venture from his position on the Big Black to attack, but the window of opportunity might close quickly. Accordingly, Grant ordered Sherman and McClernand to close on Raymond at daylight.222
On May 13 Grant’s army converged. McPherson was now in the lead, with Jackson six miles away. Sherman was deployed to the right with orders to move abreast of McPherson, while McClernand was instructed to face west to guard against an attack by Pemberton, and to be ready to lead the advance on Vicksburg once Jackson had fallen.
By mid-morning on Thursday, May 14, the troops of McPherson and Sherman, sloshing through a torrential rainstorm, reached the outskirts of Jackson. Grant felt sufficiently secure at this point to inform Halleck of the situation, knowing it would be several days before the message arrived in Washington. “McPherson took [Raymond] on the twelfth after a brisk fight,” wrote Grant. “McPherson is now at Clinton, Sherman on the main Jackson road, and General McClernand bringing up the rear. I will attack the State Capital today.”223
The attack proved to be a ritual exercise. General Joseph E. Johnston, who had arrived in Jackson the day before, recognized the futility of attempting to defend the city with the 6,000 troops that were available. Rather than lose them he ordered the city evacuated, leaving a small rear guard to slow Grant’s advance. Johnston informed the Confederate government in Richmond that the Union army was between him and Pemberton, and that he had arrived in Jackson “too late.”224 He sent a second message to Pemberton stating that he expected another 12,000 or 13,000 troops from the East. When they arrived the two armies should link up and make a combined effort to defeat Grant. “Can he supply himself from the Mississippi?” asked Johnston. “Can you cut him off from it, and above all, should he be compelled to fall back for want of supplies, beat him?”225 Johnston was as effective a commander as the South produced, yet even he could not appreciate that Grant had cut loose from the Mississippi River and was supplying himself from the countryside. Indeed, with the capture of the rebel larder at Jackson, Grant’s immediate logistical problems were all but over.
McPherson and Sherman disposed of Johnston’s rear guard early on May 14 and swept into Jackson virtually unopposed—the third Confederate capital (after Nashville and Baton Rouge) to fall to the Union. Grant’s advance had been so sudden that many of the city’s residents did not realize what had taken place. That afternoon he and Sherman went on an inspection tour, in the course of which they came upon a factory where the mostly female employees were busy weaving tent cloth for the Confederate army. No one seemed to notice the two generals, who watched for some time in amused admiration. “Finally,” said Grant, “I told Sherman I thought they had done work enough. The operatives were told they could leave and take with them what cloth they could carry.”226 Once the workers were gone, Grant ordered the factory burned, a task that fitted Sherman to a tee.
Grant established his headquarters in the Bowman House, Jackson’s best hotel. From the lobby he had a clear view of the state capitol, where six months earlier Jefferson Davis had predicted that his fellow Mississippians would “hurl back these worse than vandal hordes.”227 Grant slept on a mattress for the first time in two weeks. General Johnston, he was told, had occupied the same room the night before.228 The respite was brief. That evening Grant received an intercept of a letter from Johnston to Pemberton, ordering the Vicksburg commander to cross the Big Black and join forces with him at Clinton, some ten miles west of Jackson on the main rail line. Johnston believed that once combined, the Confederate forces could break Grant’s supply line and deliver a crippling blow to his army that would relieve the threat to Vicksburg once and for all. Since Grant had no supply line he did not worry about Johnston disrupting it. But he was determined not to allow his adversaries to link up. Before retiring for the night he ordered McClernand to intercept Pemberton before he could reach Clinton. “Turn all your forces toward Bolton Station and make all dispatch in getting there,” said Grant.229 McPherson was told to move out of Jackson at dawn and join McClernand “with all possible dispatch.”230 Sherman was to remain in the city an additional day, wrecking railroad facilities and destroying foundries, arsenals, factories, machine shops, and anything else that might be of use to the Confederacy—a dress rehearsal that foreshadowed the Army of the Tennessee’s March to the Sea. Then he too would move west. At first light Grant rode toward Clinton, with McPherson’s 17th Corps following briskly.
Taking their cue from their commander, Grant’s army marched out of Jackson imbued with a sense of victory. For Pemberton’s troops it was just the opposite. A wary commander inspires little enthusiasm. Unlike Johnston, who was comfortable in fluid situations, Pemberton was a defensive practitioner par excellence. He preferred to meet Grant from a fortified position behind the Big Black and was uncomfortable maneuvering in open country. That attitude was amplified down the chain of command. As a result, Pemberton’s strike force, roughly 23,000 men, moved in fits and starts, crisscrossing and doubling back on itself, never sure of its route and vainly searching for Grant’s nonexistent supply line. It spent the night of May 15 huddled in march column, unaware that Grant was closing on it with 30,000 men deployed for battle.
By contrast to the confusion in the Confederate ranks, Grant’s approach march went off without a hitch. Staff officers and route guides marked the way and by dusk on the 15th he had concentrated seven divisions, ready to move at dawn against Pemberton. Johnston, who evidently assumed Grant would linger in Jackson, was still retreating northeast with his 6,000 infantry, moving further away from Pemberton with each step. When he learned the Union army was heading west, he inexplicably continued marching northeast.231 The following morning when Grant struck, the two Confederate forces were thirty miles apart.
Sunrise on May 16 saw three Union columns converging on Pemberton. The troops were from McClernand’s 13th Corps and were under orders to move cautiously with skirmishers out in front to feel for the enemy.232 McPherson followed closely on the Union right, while Sherman marched post haste from Jackson with another two divisions. Shortly before 7 A.M. Union pickets encountered Pemberton’s cavalry screen on the left. McClernand’s center column came under sharpshooter fire shortly afterward, as did Brigadier General Alvin Hovey’s division on the right. Grant had instructed McClernand not to bring on a general engagement until the rest of the army was in position.233 Accordingly, McClernand formed his troops in line of battle along all three approaches, loosed his artillery, but refrained from moving forward pending Grant’s arrival. McClernand’s unaccustomed caution gave Pemberton time to deploy to meet the Union onslaught. The sound of artillery to his front meant that Grant, not Johnston, was at hand and that he could either run or fight. Pemberton chose to fight. Demonstrating his natural bent for defense, he deployed his force along a wooded ridgeline dominated by a seventy-foot elevation known as Champion Hill, the highest point in the region. Grant wrote somewhat sarcastically that whether taken “by accident or design,” the position Pemberton chose was unquestionably well selected.234 The Confederate force was divided into nine infantry brigades, two cavalry regiments, and fifteen batteries of artillery. The troops were organized for battle in three divisions, commanded (from left to right) by major generals Carter Stevenson, Grant’s friend John Bowen, and William Loring. If given time to prepare, Pemberton possessed the strength to defend the position, which the topography rendered formidable.235
Grant recognized that immediately. Riding forward with McPherson, he arrived in front of Hovey’s division around 10 A.M. Hovey was taking a pounding from rebel artillery mounted high above on Champion Hill, and was eagerly waiting for the order to attack. By 10:30 two of McPherson’s divisions (Logan and Marcellus Crocker) had come up and Grant decided he had sufficient force to begin the assault. Hovey was unleashed up the steep incline of Champion Hill, while Logan moved right to extend the Union flank. Crocker brought up the rear. Within the hour Union skirmishers reached the main Confederate battle line, at which point Grant told McPherson to storm the hill. At the same time he ordered McClernand to move forward on the left. McPherson responded aggressively. Supported by Union artillery, twenty-one infantry regiments, 10,000 men in all, swept forward along a mile-and-a-half front. McClernand, for reasons never adequately explained, sat tight. His artillery boomed, but his infantry exerted no pressure whatever on Pemberton’s line. Twice more that afternoon Grant sent word to McClernand to attack, yet he failed to do so. As a result, the battle of Champion Hill was waged exclusively by the three divisions on the Union right.
By half past one Hovey’s division had taken the crest of the hill, capturing the eleven pieces of rebel artillery that had been pounding them. Logan meanwhile had worked around the Confederate left, blocking any retreat in that direction. Pemberton responded quickly. To his front, McClernand was inert. Gambling that he would continue to be, Pemberton ordered Bowen, who held the Confederate center, to sidle left, counterattack, and retake the ridge. At 2:30, as Union troops celebrated their victory, Bowen’s division of hard-fighting veterans swept forward from a fringe of woods and not only retook the lost ground, but surged down the forward slope of Champion Hill with irresistible force. The tide of battle changed ominously. Hovey said later his division “seemed to be melting under the intense Mississippi sun.”236 Grant’s right was in peril. McClernand still did not move and Sherman was six miles away. Confronted with impending disaster, Grant massed whatever artillery he could lay his hands on for another last stand. Then he turned to Crocker, whose second and third brigades were just now coming on line. “Hovey’s division are good troops,” said Grant. “If the enemy has driven them, he is not in good plight himself. If we can go in again here and make a little showing I think he will give way.”237 This was the Grant of Fort Donelson and Shiloh, focusing on the enemy’s weakness rather than his own. A soldier standing nearby said Grant was smoking the stump of a cigar. “I was close enough to see his features. Earnest they were, but signs of inward movement there were none.”238
Raked by Union artillery, Bowen’s drive ground to a halt. Crocker’s troops were emboldened by the heavy barrage and moved to the attack. Two regiments, the 17th Iowa and the 10th Missouri, 500 men in all, charged the butternut line. Bowen’s troops were fought out and, as Grant anticipated, the charge by fresh troops broke their spirit. They fell back in good order, but the battle’s momentum shifted irrevocably. Union soldiers watching the charge rallied for another attack. What was left of Hovey’s division joined in and Logan’s men moved left in the final assault. By 4 P.M. Champion Hill was back in Union hands and the Confederates were in headlong retreat. So complete was the victory that Pemberton’s rightmost division, fearing it would be cut off, marched to join Johnston, never to see Vicksburg again. In addition to the loss of an entire division, the Confederates suffered 3,840 men killed, wounded, or missing, along with the capture of twenty-seven irreplaceable field pieces. Grant lost 2,441 men, half of whom were from Hovey’s division. In his official report, Hovey said, “I cannot think of the bloody hill without sadness and pride. Sadness for the great loss of my true and gallant men; pride for the heroic bravery they displayed.”239
The battle of Champion Hill sealed the fate of Vicksburg. What appears so stark in retrospect is that the battle turned on a dime. On May 16, 1863, almost one million men were serving in the Union and Confederate armies. In a fight that some historians have called the decisive battle of the war, it came down to a struggle of less than 30,000 men—the Southern soldiers belonging to Stevenson and Bowen, the Northern troops in the divisions of Hovey, Logan, and Crocker.240 Grant believed that Vicksburg could have been taken immediately if McClernand had attacked the Confederate right and then cut off the enemy’s retreat. “Had McClernand come up with reasonable promptness,” Grant wrote later, “I do not see how Pemberton could have escaped with any organized force.”241 He also believed that Pemberton should have marched to join Johnston. “This would have given up Vicksburg,” said Grant, but “it would have been his proper move, and the one Johnston would have made had he been in Pemberton’s place.”242
With his remaining force, Pemberton retreated to the Big Black, ten miles west. This was the position he had previously prepared and where he wanted to meet Grant in the first place. Replete with rifle pits, cotton bale parapets, and prepositioned artillery, it provided the defenders with exceptional fields of fire against any enemy approach. Grant arrived in front of Pemberton’s position early on the 17th, took one look at the works, and decided that a frontal assault was out of the question. He deployed McClernand’s corps in line of battle opposite, but hunkered down to wait for Sherman, whom he had ordered to cross the Big Black five miles to the north. McClernand would hold Pemberton in place while Sherman came down on his flank.
While Grant was waiting, a hard-riding courier from General Banks’s staff at Baton Rouge rode up with a letter for him. It was from General Halleck, dated May 11, and had been sent by way of New Orleans. Halleck ordered Grant to return to Grand Gulf and cooperate with Banks against Port Hudson before moving on Vicksburg. The officer bearing the message insisted that Grant comply immediately. Grant replied that the order had come too late: that if General Halleck knew the present situation, he would never have issued it.243 At that point the conversation was interrupted by an enormous shout along the right of the Union line. McClernand’s troops, embarrassed by their poor showing the day before, were spontaneously charging the Confederate works. Led by sword-waving Brigadier General Michael Lawler, a massive Irishman from Illinois, four regiments from Eugene Carr’s division were moving forward on the double. Grant rode off in the direction of the charge and soon the entire Union line was surging ahead. In three minutes the rebel works had been stormed and the charge was over. A veteran reporter called it “the most perilous and ludicrous charge I witnessed during the war.”244 Pemberton’s troops, unnerved by the defeat at Champion Hill, retreated in disorder. Lawler lost 200 men killed and wounded; the Confederates 1,751, along with eighteen more pieces of artillery.
At noon the remnants of Pemberton’s force straggled back into Vicksburg. It was a Sunday, and parishioners returning from service were shocked by the exhausted appearance of the soldiers who streamed by. “I shall never forget the woeful sight of a beaten, demoralized army— humanity in the last stage of endurance. Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody, the men limped along unarmed, followed by siege guns, ambulances, gun carriages and wagons in aimless confusion.”245 Pemberton was the most distressed of all. His men had abandoned a fortified position of considerable strength. If they would not stand fast on the Big Black, where would they stand? Thirty hours before, his mobile force totaled 23,000 men. Less than a third that number tumbled back into Vicksburg. Despondently, he told an aide that his military career had begun on this day thirty years ago. “Today it is ended in disaster and disgrace.”246
Grant spent Sunday getting his men across the Big Black. Sherman, on the Union right, was ordered to march northwest, seize the high ground, and interpose himself between Vicksburg and the Yazoo. McPherson’s 17th Corps, in the center, was to push due west along the Jackson–Vicksburg corridor, while McClernand moved southwest to strike the Mississippi below Vicksburg. Porter’s gunboat flotilla controlled the river on the west. By nightfall on May 18 the city was invested. Grant rode with Sherman that day, somewhat in advance of the army, impatient to reach the bluffs that had eluded capture in December. The rebel works were deserted when they arrived, the heavy guns spiked, and the garrison withdrawn. Sherman looked down on Chickasaw Bayou where his corps lay helpless five months earlier. After several minutes he turned to Grant to express his admiration: “Until this moment I never thought your expedition a success. I could never see the end clearly until now. But this is a campaign. This is a success if we never take the town.”247 As news of Vicksburg’s investment filtered back to Washington, President Lincoln added his concurrence. “Whether General Grant shall or shall not consummate the capture of Vicksburg, his campaign from the beginning of this month . . . is one of the most brilliant in the world.”248
Grant hoped to take Vicksburg while the defenders were still in shock. On May 19 he ordered an attack all along the front. “Corps commanders will push forward carefully, and gain as close position as possible to the enemy’s works, until 2 P.M.; at which hour they will fire three volleys of artillery from all the pieces in position. This will be the signal for a general charge of all army corps along the whole line.”249 At the appointed hour the Union line sprang forward. They were met by a hail of rebel bullets that broke up the assault almost before it began. Ensconced behind the most formidable defensive works of the war, Pemberton’s troops had taken heart. Grant lost almost a thousand men, but still thought the Confederate position could be taken by storm.
On May 22 he tried again. At dawn 220 field pieces supported by 100 guns on Porter’s ironclads launched the biggest artillery barrage yet seen. Four hours later the men of all three corps rushed forward, only to be met by even more furious rebel fire. “For about two hours we had a severe and bloody battle,” wrote Sherman, “but at every point we were repulsed.”250 At several places the Union troops actually effected shallow penetrations, but they were quickly expelled by Confederate counterattacks. For the second time in four days Pemberton’s troops held firm. This time Grant suffered more than 3,000 casualties. Total Union losses in the two days of fighting at Vicksburg amounted to almost as many as Grant had experienced during the previous three weeks’ campaign that had brought him to the city’s doorstep. Grant did not regret the assaults; he only regretted that they had failed.251 “The enemy are now undoubtedly in our grasp,” he wrote Halleck. “The fall of Vicksburg, and the capture of most of the garrison, can only be a question of time.”252 Later, in self-justification, Grant wrote that the troops thought they could carry the Confederate works, “and would not have worked so patiently in the trenches if they had not been allowed to try.”253
Convinced now that Vicksburg could not be taken by storm, Grant settled into a siege. He had seen General Winfield Scott effect one at Veracruz, where the defenses were at least the equal of Vicksburg’s, and he decided it was not worth incurring additional casualties. Pemberton saw the handwriting on the wall. “I will hold Vicksburg as long as possible,” he informed Johnston in a message smuggled through Union lines. “I still conceive it to be the most important point in the Confederacy.”254 But Pemberton realized that unless Johnston came to his relief, Vicksburg was doomed. Grant was receiving reinforcements from Memphis daily: not individual men, but whole divisions. Union strength would soon exceed 70,000 whereas his own garrison numbered less than half that. Grant had 220 field pieces, plus another hundred on Porter’s vessels. Pemberton had half that. Grant’s supply of ammunition was limitless; Pemberton’s was dwindling fast. Grant’s logistics were anchored once more on the Mississippi. As a consequence, his troops did not want for food, clothing, or the thousands of items upon which an army in the field depends. Pemberton was limited to the supplies on hand and those stocks were rapidly being depleted. In brief, Grant and Pemberton both knew that unless Johnston could break the siege, Vicksburg’s surrender was inevitable.
Initially, Vicksburg’s defenders were of stout heart, confident the Confederacy would not forsake them. “The undaunted Johnston is at hand,” proclaimed the Vicksburg Daily Citizen in early June. “We may look at any hour for his approach. . . . Hold out a few days longer and our lines will be open.”255 The Whig, shrunk to tiny tabloid size and printed on wallpaper, was even more optimistic, reaffirming that once Johnston arrived, Grant would be defeated and his army destroyed.256 As the days turned into weeks and Johnston did not come, spirits sagged. The army was reduced to half rations, then to a quarter, finally to one biscuit and a mouthful of bacon each day. By the end of June, half of Pemberton’s army was on the sick list, suffering from malnutrition and scurvy. It was no longer “Johnston is coming,” but “Where is Johnston?”257
Joseph E. Johnston did not share the Southern sentiment that Vicksburg should be held at all costs. Like Grant, he focused on the enemy army, and he believed his primary effort should be to link up with Pemberton, after which the two could fall on the Union army and, if they could not destroy it, at least render it incapable of further offensive action. But first, Johnston needed reinforcements. On May 29 he told Pemberton, “I am too weak to save Vicksburg. Can do no more than attempt to save you and your garrison. It will be impossible to extricate you unless you cooperate.”258 Johnston’s message was not delivered until June 13—so tight was the Union cordon. Pemberton replied two days later that the shelling of Vicksburg had become continuous. His troops were greatly fatigued but could hold out for another twenty days. “What aid am I to expect from you?”259 Johnston did not belabor the point. He now had 30,000 men but virtually no artillery and precious little transport. Grant’s army had grown to almost 80,000. To make matters worse, Grant had posted Sherman in his rear with six divisions to arrest any move toward Vicksburg Johnston might make.260 On June 22 Johnston told Pemberton the roads were blocked and that as a consequence he could do nothing to relieve the city. “Rather than surrender the garrison,” Johnston suggested that Pemberton attempt to escape across the river and go west—a pipe dream given the presence of Porter’s ironclads in the river.261
Toward the end of June, after being prodded incessantly by Richmond to take action, Johnston probed feebly toward Vicksburg but the effort lacked conviction, and in any event was too little and too late. “I think Johnston wisely abstained from making an assault on us,” Grant wrote later, “because it would simply have inflicted loss on both sides without accomplishing any result.”262 Johnston said much the same. “The defeat of this little army,” he told Richmond, “would at once open Mississippi and Alabama to Grant.”263 Later he wrote, “I did not indulge in the sentiment that it was better for me to waste the lives and blood of brave soldiers, ‘than, through prudence even,’ to spare them.”264
Pemberton faced the inevitable. On July 3, with one day of limited rations remaining and his men too weak to attempt a breakout, he asked for terms. At 10 A.M. white flags were broken out along a portion of the rebel works. The Union cannonade ceased and two Confederate officers, Major General John Bowen and Pemberton’s aide-de-camp, rode toward Grant’s lines. Bowen was selected because he had befriended Grant in Missouri. He carried a letter from his commander requesting an armistice “with a view to arranging terms for the capitulation of Vicksburg.”265 Grant replied there was no reason to discuss terms because the only term he would consider was unconditional surrender. “Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg, will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you will always be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war.” Grant softened the message by telling Bowen that if Pemberton wished, he would be happy to meet him between the lines in front of McPherson’s corps at three o’clock.266
Promptly at three o’clock Pemberton, Bowen, and several aides rode to meet Grant, whom they found standing on a hillside between the lines, a few hundred feet from the rebel breastworks. McPherson, Logan, and OrdX were there, together with several members of Grant’s staff. The introductions were cordial. “Pemberton and I had served in the same division in the Mexican War,” wrote Grant, “and I greeted him as an old acquaintance.”267 But when Pemberton asked what terms Grant proposed, the conversation turned sour. Grant said he had no terms to offer, other than unconditional surrender.
Pemberton, obviously under great pressure, became irritable. “If this is all you have to offer, the conference might as well end,” and he turned as if to mount his horse.
“Very well,” said Grant, apparently content to let it go at that. Both men were playing showdown poker, and neither could afford to appear weak or conciliatory.
At this point General Bowen intervened, suggesting that he and one of Grant’s subordinates discuss certain technical matters while the commanding generals withdrew. It was a face-saving gesture that both Pemberton and Grant could embrace. The two retired to the meager shade of a stunted oak tree nearby while Bowen and McPherson discussed terms. In point of fact, by allowing Bowen and McPherson to talk, Grant was bending on unconditional surrender, and on his part, Pemberton was anticipating better conditions than had been offered initially. After thirty minutes it was clear that Bowen and McPherson could not reach agreement, but the informal chat under the oak tree between Grant and Pemberton broke the ice. Before adjourning, Grant agreed to announce his final terms by 10 P.M.
The sticking point was whether the Vicksburg garrison would be taken prisoner or paroled under their own recognizance. Prodded by his corps and division commanders, Grant yielded and informed Pemberton that he would accept parole rather than transport the men to Union prison camps.XI “As soon as the rolls can be made out, and paroles be signed by officers and men, you will be allowed to march out of our lines, the officers taking with them their side-arms and clothing. The rank and file will be allowed all their clothing, but no other property.”268
Sometime after midnight Pemberton replied. In general, the terms were acceptable. His troops would march out at 10 A.M., stack their weapons and colors in front of their lines, and turn the city over to Grant. But he suggested two additional provisions: first, the officers were to retain their personal property; and second, “the rights and property of citizens” was to be respected. Grant suspected that “property” used in that context meant slaves, and he promptly rejected the proposals. Pemberton acquiesced, and after holding out for forty-seven days Vicksburg surrendered.
July 4, 1863, was a memorable day for the Union. At ten o’clock, Pemberton ordered the Stars and Stripes hoisted over the principal Vicksburg battlement. White flags were then broken out along the eight-mile trench line, and regiment after regiment marched out in perfect order, their colors flying, their bands playing.269 So close were the battle lines in some places that Confederate troops stacked their arms on Union parapets. For their part, Federal soldiers watched with undisguised respect. There was little cheering, no triumphant exaltation. An almost reverential silence hung over the battlefield. A day earlier, twelve hundred miles away in Pennsylvania, the Army of the Potomac dealt Lee a resounding defeat at Gettysburg. The high tide of the Confederacy receded.
John Logan’s division was selected by Grant to lead the occupation, and it marched in about eleven. Shortly afterward the Stars and Stripes were hoisted over the Vicksburg courthouse for the first time in two and a half years. A Vicksburg woman who watched Logan’s troops captured the essence of the campaign. “What a contrast to the suffering creatures we had seen so long were these stalwart, well-fed men, so splendidly set up and accoutered. Sleek horses, polished arms, bright plumes—this was the pride and panoply of war. Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of these marching feet.”270 The good behavior of the Union troops mitigated the bitterness of defeat. Rations were shared, and the stores of speculators who had been hoarding food were broken open and their contents distributed.271
Grant rode in about noon to meet Admiral Porter at the levee. Porter’s new flagship, the Black Hawk, was ablaze with color, banners aloft and the crew nattily attired in white pants and blue jackets. Porter opened his wine locker to toast the victory. Grant joined in briefly but then moved away from the celebrants and sat alone, his thoughts to himself. Years later Porter recalled that, “No one, to see him sitting there with that calm exterior amid all the jollity . . . would ever have taken him for the great general who had accomplished one of the most stupendous military feats on record.”272
Grant was rewarded for the victory at Vicksburg by promotion to major general in the regular army, the highest rank the nation could bestow. The most notable accolade, however, came from President Lincoln:
MY DEAR GENERAL:
I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did—march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except in a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgement that you were right, and I was wrong.
Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN273
I. Captain Philip H. Sheridan, who was delegated to be Halleck’s mess officer, thought he was a fish out of water. “General Halleck did not know much about taking care of himself in the field. His camp arrangements were wholly inadequate, and in consequence he and all the officers about him were subjected to much unnecessary discomfort.” 1 Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan 137 (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1888).
II. On June 17, 1862, General Pope was ordered to Washington to replace Frémont in western Virginia. He was succeeded at Corinth by William S. Rosecrans.
III. Bragg enjoyed the distinction of being the only American officer fragged during the Mexican War, when a disgruntled cannoneer exploded a 12-pound shell under his cot. When the smoke cleared the cot was reduced to kindling, but Bragg emerged without a scratch. Grady McWhiney, 1 Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat 95–96 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).
IV. Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Army of Northern Virginia, was seriously wounded during the first day’s fighting at Seven Pines and was succeeded by Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis’s personal military adviser, on June 1, 1862.
V. Exact figures are elusive. Most estimates suggest McClellan brought approximately 75,000 men to the field, of whom 13,000 were killed, wounded, or captured. Lee’s force numbered approximately 40,000 and suffered about 10,500 casualties. Combined losses at Antietam were four times greater than those suffered by American troops on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom 544 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
VI. Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution provides that “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” But the clause fails to specify who, or which branch of government, shall make that decision. Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the Supreme Court in Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 101 (1807), asserted by way of dictum that the responsibility lay with Congress, but the text of the Constitution is ambiguous. Accordingly, on April 27, 1861, President Lincoln, confronted with disorder along the Philadelphia–Washington corridor, acted unilaterally to suspend the writ in that area, thus permitting military authorities to make summary arrests of persons believed to be aiding the Confederacy. The measure was of limited scope, but led to the finding of Chief Justice Taney (on circuit) in Ex parte Merryman, 17 Fed. Cas. 144 (No. 9487) (C.C.D. Md. 1861), that the president’s action was invalid. Lincoln ignored Taney’s ruling, but public reaction was such that the president, in his message to Congress of July 4, 1861, asked for specific authorization to suspend the writ. Congress complied almost instantly (12 Stat. 755), and on September 24, 1862, Lincoln acted, providing for military trial of “all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording comfort to the Rebels against the authority of the United States.” See Ex parte Vallandigham, 1 Wallace 243 (1863), cf. Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wallace 2 (1866). Also see George Clarke Sellery, “Lincoln’s Suspension of Habeas Corpus as Viewed by Congress.” 1 Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin 213 (1907).
VII. General Orders No. 11 was brought to the president’s attention by Cesar J. Kaskel of Paducah, Kentucky, who led a special delegation to Washington for that purpose. After explaining the matter, Kaskel reports the dialogue as follows:
LINCOLN: And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?
KASKEL: Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham’s bosom, asking protection.
LINCOLN: And this protection they shall have at once.
Bertram Wallace Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War 125 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951).
VIII. Elihu added an “e” to his last name. His brothers spelled their last names without an “e.”
IX. The day prior to receiving Grant’s request, Sherman wrote his brother, Senator John Sherman of Ohio, that he had “less confidence” in Grant’s Vicksburg strategy “than in any similar undertaking of the war.” Despite his doubts, General Sherman’s prompt compliance with Grant’s request bespeaks a loyalty that typifies the military service at its best. That Grant inspired such loyalty speaks for itself. William T. Sherman to John Sherman, April 26, 1863, in Rachel Sherman Thorndike, ed., The Sherman Letters 201 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894).
X. On June 18, 1863, after McClernand overstepped by issuing a dispatch exaggerating his role in the fighting of May 22, Grant relieved him of command of the 13th Corps and replaced him with Major General Edward O. C. Ord. Special Orders No. 164, 8 Grant Papers 385 note.
XI. In his Memoirs Grant indicated that the meeting of corps and division commanders that he called (“the nearest approach to a ‘council of war’ I ever held”) was almost unanimous against paroling the Vicksburg garrison and that he overruled them. Grant’s memory apparently deserted him, because the fact is the roles were reversed. After meeting with Pemberton on July 3, Grant wrote Sherman, “Pemberton wants conditions to march out paroled, etc. The conditions are such as I cannot give.” 8 Grant Papers 461. Cf. Grant, 1 Memoirs 560–61.