The hinge of victory in the west would be Vicksburg, and as the Cobbs moved toward it, always striving to join up with their parent regiment already in position at Vicksburg, they could hear their soldiers grousing: ‘We still ain’t got no horses, and that’s a disgrace. And we still ain’t got enough rifles, and that’s a disaster. And we’re bein’ led by a Northerner, and that’s disgusting.’
Yes, the army which was to defend Vicksburg was commanded by a Philadelphia Quaker who despite his pacifist religion had attended West Point, where he had acquired a fine reputation. Marrying a Southern belle from Virginia, he considered himself a resident of his bride’s family plantation, where he became more Southern than Jefferson Davis. A man of credibility and power, he had not wavered when the great decision of North or South confronted him; he chose the South of his wife’s proud family and quickly established himself as one of the abler Confederate generals. Now General John C. Pemberton had a command on which the safety of the South depended, and his men, who had been born in the South, did not approve.
‘With all the superb soldiers we have,’ Reuben growled, ‘why do we have to rely on a Northerner of doubtful loyalty? If Vicksburg falls, the Mississippi falls, and if that river goes, the Confederacy is divided and Texas could fall.’ He lowered his voice: ‘And if Texas falls, the world falls.’
He was also having trouble with a new officer assigned to his unit, Captain Otto Macnab, who had reported to the bivouac area with guns and pistols sticking out in all directions. Some men in Cobb’s force had Enfields of powerful range, some had the old Sharps that could knock down a house, and a few had old frontier single-shot rifles which their grandfathers had used against Indians.
But there were nearly two dozen in the company who had no armament at all, and Major Cobb fumed about this, dispatching numerous letters to Austin begging for guns. None were available, he was told, and so he moved among his men, trying to find any soldier who had more than one, and of course he came upon Captain Macnab, who had an arsenal, but when he tried to pry guns loose from him, he ran into real trouble: ‘I don’t give up my guns to anybody.’
‘If I give you an order …’ Cobb suddenly remembered from Macnab’s enlistment papers that he had been a Ranger, and Somerset had warned: ‘Reuben, never tangle with a Ranger. My brother Persifer had Rangers in his command and he said they were an army of their own, a law to themselves.’
‘They’re in my command now,’ Major Cobb had replied, ‘and Macnab will do what I say.’
‘Don’t bet on that,’ Sett had said, and now when his cousin tried to take one of Macnab’s guns, the red-headed warrior met real opposition.
‘Isn’t it reasonable,’ Cobb began, ‘that if you have two rifles and the next man has none …?’
‘I know how to use a rifle, maybe he don’t.’
There might have been an ugly scene had not Somerset intervened: ‘Aren’t you the Macnab who served in Mexico with my brother?’
‘Colonel Persifer Cobb?’ Macnab asked, and when Sett nodded, Macnab said: ‘He knew how to fight. I hope he’s on our side now,’ and Cobb replied: ‘No, he’s tending our family plantation in Carolina.’
A month before, that statement would have been correct, for Persifer Cobb, like many of the great plantation managers throughout the South, had been asked to stay at home, producing stuffs required for the war effort, but as the fortunes of battle began slowly to turn against the South, men like him had literally forced their way to the colors, sometimes riding far distances to enlist, and as a former West Point man, his services were welcomed.
So now three Cobbs of the same generation were in uniform: Colonel Persifer in northern Virginia; Major Reuben in charge of replacement troops for the Second Texans; and Captain Somerset. There were also five Cobb sons from the three families, while at the various plantations the wives of the absent officers endeavored to hold the farms and mills together: Tessa Mae at Edisto, Millicent at Lakeview, and Petty Prue at the newly christened Lammermoor. The Cobbs were at war.
Major Cobb wisely withdrew his attempt at forcing Macnab to surrender one of his guns, but he was gratified when his tough little officer came into camp one day with seven rifles of varied merit which he had scrounged from surrounding farms. ‘They’ll all fire,’ he told Cobb. ‘Not saying how straight, but if you get close enough, that don’t matter.’
When the contingent crossed over to the east bank of the Mississippi, Major Cobb saw that his Texans would have to fight their way into Vicksburg, for a strong Union detachment was dug in between them and the town. He could have been forgiven had he turned back, but this never occurred to him. Acting as his own scout and probing forward, he identified the difficulties and gathered his men: ‘If we make a hurried swing to the east, we can circumvent the Northern troops, then dash back and in to Vicksburg.’
‘What protects our left flank if they hear us and attack?’ Macnab asked, and Cobb said: ‘You do.’
‘Give me a couple dozen good shots and we’ll hold them off.’
Through the dark night Otto coached his team, and at two he said: ‘Catch some sleep,’ but he continued to prowl the terrain over which they would fight. Just before dawn a Galveston volunteer asked: ‘If we do get in to Vicksburg, can we hold it, with a general like Pemberton in charge?’ and Otto gave him a promise solemnly, as if taking a sacred oath: ‘When we set up our lines at Vicksburg, hell itself won’t budge us.’
This reckless promise did not apply to the battle next morning at Big Black River, for Grant was moving with such incredible swiftness that he overtook the Confederates before dawn, and launched such a powerful attack that he drove them right across the deep ravines and back to the gates of Vicksburg.
In previous battles and skirmishes Captain Macnab, now a man of forty-one and extremely battlewise, had not in even the slightest way tried to avoid combat—that would be unthinkable—but he had thoughtfully picked those spots and developing situations at which he could do the most good. However, this battle degenerated into such a hideous mess that plans and prudence alike were swept aside, and he found himself in such a general melee of Grey and Blue that in desperation he lashed out like a wild man, casting aside his rifles and firing his Colts with such abandon that he himself drove back almost a squad of Yankees. In those moments he was not a soldier, he was an incarnation of battle, and when because of their tremendous superiority the Northern troops began to sweep the banks of a little stream which the Texans were struggling to cross, he shouted to his men: ‘Don’t let it happen!’ When by force of ironlike character he had driven away the Northerners so that his troops could complete their escape, he contemptuously remained behind, searching the field the Yankees had just deserted, even though their sharpshooters still commanded it.
‘Macnab!’ Major Cobb shouted from a distance. ‘What in hell are you doing?’
‘Looking for my guns.’ And when he saw where he had discarded his rifles during the chase, he calmly stooped down, retrieved them, and headed into Vicksburg.
On 19 May, General Grant brought 35,000 Union soldiers before the nine-mile-long defenses of Vicksburg; there he faced 13,000 Confederate troops well dug in, with 7,000 in reserve. The Northern battle plan was straightforward: ‘Smash through the defenses, take the town, and deny the Mississippi River to the Confederates. When that happens, Texas will be cut off from the Confederacy and will wither on the vine.’ So every Texan fighting at Vicksburg knew that he was really fighting to defend his home state.
As soon as his massive army was in position, Grant ordered a probe of the Confederate lines, and to his surprise, it was thrown back. For the next two days he prepared the most intense artillery bombardment seen in the war so far. It would utilize every piece of ordnance—hundreds of heavy cannon—and it would start at six in the morning.
On the night of the twenty-first he assembled his commanders and issued an order which demonstrated the mechanical strength he proposed to throw against the Southerners: ‘Set your
watches. At ten sharp, the artillery barrage will cease. And your men will leave their positions, attack up that hill, and overwhelm the enemy.’ For the first time in world history, all units along a vast front would set forth at the same moment.
‘There’s bound to be some ugly skirmishing,’ an Illinois captain warned his troops, ‘but before noon we should have their lines in our hands. Then an easy march into Vicksburg.’
That last night, as the two armies slept fitfully, General Grant’s order of battle was awesome, studded as it was with distinguished names: the 118th Illinois Infantry; the 29th Wisconsin Infantry; the 25th Iowa; the 4th West Virginia; the 5th Minnesota; and then two names that symbolized the fraternal agony of this war: the 7th Missouri, the 22nd Kentucky. Their brothers would be fighting the next day as Confederates: the 1st Missouri, the 8th Kentucky.
To reach the Confederate lines, the Union soldiers had to sweep down into a pronounced valley, then climb a steep hill and charge into the teeth of cleverly disposed fortifications. These were of three types: the redoubt, a large square earthwork easy to hold if there were enough men; the redan, a triangular projection out from the line to permit concentration of fire upon an attacker; and the smallest of the three, the lunette, a crescent-shaped earthwork, compact, with steeply sloping sides and not easy to capture.
Tough Louisiana swamp fighters occupied the major redan. Detachments from various parts of the South held the Railroad Redoubt, and the 2nd Texas Sharpshooters, a name recently bestowed because of their great accuracy with rifles, held the key spot in the line, a lunette guarding the main road back to town. Here Major Cobb’s replacement detachment finally joined up with their fellow Texans.
During the furious cannonading on the morning of 22 May, Cobb’s men took what shelter they could, doing their best to survive until the attack began. ‘Why can’t our side fire back?’ a frightened boy of seventeen asked, and Cobb said bluntly: ‘Because they have the cannon and we don’t.’
At ten minutes to ten, all the Yankee batteries fired as rapidly as they could, in order to provide their troops with as much last-minute cover as possible. At ten o’clock the fiery monsters fell silent, and in that first awful hush bugles began to sound, first one and then another, echoing back and forth until the valleys facing the redoubts, the redans and the lunettes reverberated with their clear and stirring sounds.
Then came the infantry attack, down slight inclines at first, then across level ground, then straight up the steep flanks protecting the Confederate line. It required about eighteen minutes for the thousand or more blue-clad troops assigned to take the Texas lunette to advance across the open land, and to some who watched the solemn approach from inside the fortification, it seemed as if the Northerners would never reach their goal, as if they would march forever like dream figures across a timeless landscape. But quickly enough for both attacker and defender, the ominous blue line reached the steep flanks, scrambled up, and broke into the lunette, where a wild, confused struggle took place. With rifles, pistols, revolvers, even with bayonets and clubs, the Texas defenders threw back the Union attackers, South and North falling upon each other in bloody fury.
The struggle went on for an incredible number of hours, with the dogged Texans repelling first one assault, then another, then countless others. Each time the Yankees surged forward, up those steep final flanks, they did reach the top, and they did kill defenders, and always they seemed to have victory just within their grasp. ‘Follow me!’ shouted a lieutenant, waving his blue cap until a Texas rifle ended his charge and his cry and his life.
Otto Macnab kept his men from panic by constantly moving among them with gestures of encouragement—he used few words—and by leaping into the breach whenever a perilous weakness showed. Indeed, he stifled so many nearly fatal assaults that his survival was a miracle.
Well into the afternoon the Yankee assault on the lunette halted, to enable the batteries encased in the hills behind to throw down a savage curtain of fire, hoping thus to dislodge the weakened Texans, but when the cannonade stopped and the men in blue resumed their charge, the indomitable 2nd Texas repelled them yet again.
The slaughter now became obscene, a grotesque expenditure of life, Grey and Blue, on the sloping edges of a lunette which could never quite be taken. Loss came closest at about two-thirty, when a determined captain from Illinois led a charge with such bravery that he carried right into the lunette, with some nine or ten Yankees following, and had even a dozen more succeeded in joining him—and they tried, desperately—the Texans would have been subdued and Grant would have had the one foothold he needed to break the line.
But at this moment, while Macnab was engaged with a mighty assault on his little sector and Reuben Cobb was involved on his, Captain Somerset Cobb, with a courage he had not known he possessed, leaped directly at the Illinois leader and drove a sword clear through his body. The man staggered forward, thinking victory still within his grasp, clutched at the air and fell back, and the crucial charge faded.
But now a young boy, not over fifteen, ran screaming into the lunette from the southern stretch of the trench line: ‘Railroad Redoubt’s fallin’,’ and when the Texans looked across the short distance to the big fort on their right, they saw that the messenger was correct. This redoubt, big and loosely constructed, was protected by a much less severe slope than the Texas lunette, and against it the Yankees were having real success. Some were already in the fort and others seemed about to break through. If Northern guns occupied the redoubt, the Texas lunette was doomed.
It took Major Cobb and Captain Macnab about five seconds to see and to appreciate the peril in which the Confederate line stood, and without consultation these two plus some fifty of their men ran like dodging, frightened, low-clinging deer across the open space between the two projections. They arrived just in time to meet the day’s most furious battle, Blue and Grey in one tremendous tangle, with the former on the knife edge of victory.
‘Stop them!’ Major Cobb shouted to the men following him. ‘In there!’ Macnab never uttered cries in battle; he was always too busy managing his deadly guns, but this time the peril was so great that even he shouted: ‘Here!’
He and some fifteen others leaped directly into the foremost Yankee guns, and although several of his men went down in the dreadful fusillade, their sheer weight carried them forward. But as soon as this breach was stabilized, Otto saw that Federal troops were streaming in through a larger break farther on.
‘Cobb!’ he shouted, and the red-haired major, his cap lost in the battle, swung about to face some new enemy when a musket discharge caught him full in the face, blowing his head apart.
‘Men!’ Macnab cried, and his high voice was so compelling, so unique among the battle sounds, that his men formed behind him, and in a surge of slashing and firing, repelled the attackers from the wavering line.
Grant had been denied his victory. The Confederate lines had held firm, all the way from the Railroad Redoubt at the south, which Major Cobb and Captain Macnab had saved at the last moment, to the bloodied Stockade Redan at the north. Now the long, cruel siege would begin.
The terror of Vicksburg lay not in those wild charges of that first day, for then men from both sides fought in white heat, and death came so explosively, so suddenly that there was no awareness that it had struck until a companion fell silent amid the roar. The real terror began on that night of 22 May, because in the open space between the two battle lines lay several thousand Union wounded, and for reasons which have never been explained, General Grant decided to leave them there rather than allow the customary battle truce for the removal of the dead and the rescue of the wounded. Perhaps he thought that on the next day the Confederates would be so exhausted that his men could gain an easy triumph, and he did not want to give the enemy any respite. At any rate, he left his dying exposed to the cold night air; but what was worse, he left them there all during the next day, that fiercely hot May morning, that blazing May afternoon.
&n
bsp; Now some of the men dying on the dusty field were so close to the lunette that the Texans could hear them pleading for water, and others were so near the Federal lines that Union men could hear their companions’ pleas, but all across the vast battlefield the order stood: ‘No truce.’
Night brought no release, for now the battle wounds, some of them forty hours old, had grown gangrenous from the day’s prolonged heat, and both the pain and the smell were unbearable. It was unspeakable, the agony that came as a result of this hideous decision not to clear the battlefield. ‘If I ever see Grant,’ a Texan shouted into the night, hoping that some Northern soldier would hear, ‘I’ll shoot his bloody eyes out.’
At about two in the morning Otto Macnab, who had seen a great deal of war and who knew how men should die, could stand no more. Leaving the lunette, he went out among the dying, and when he found a Northern soldier in the last shrieking pain of gangrenous agony, he shot him, and in doing this he attracted the attention of a Missouri man who was doing the same from his lines. Meeting in the dark shadows, neither soldier entertained even the most fleeting idea of shooting the other.
‘That you, Reb?’
‘Yank. What unit?’
‘Texas. You?’
‘Missouri.’
‘We have Missouri men on our side. Good fighters.’
‘You know a sergeant named O’Callahan?’
‘I don’t know many.’
‘Should you come upon him …’ The man was a schoolteacher.
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘My brother. Good kid.’
When Otto crept back to the lines he went to all parts of the lunette and even back to the Railroad Redoubt, shaking men awake and asking if they’d seen a Missouri man named O’Callahan.
On the morning of 24 May, in response to a plea from the Confederates, General Grant relaxed his inhumane order, a truce was agreed upon, and men from each side moved out upon the battlefield to look at the bodies of those who might have been saved had it come earlier. When the truce ended, the soldiers returned to their respective lines, the war resumed, with General Grant bitterly acknowledging that he was not going to capture Vicksburg by frontal assault. He would have to do so by siege, which he promptly initiated. Not a man, not a scrap of food, not a horse would move in or out, and the last bastion on the Mississippi would fall.
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