by Jack Hurst
15 Ibid., 316.
16 Ibid., 317–318.
17 Ibid., 325.
18 Ibid., 339, 343, 344n, 381, 381n.
19 Ibid., 368, 378–379n, 380–381n, 370, 371–372n, 385–387n; see Smith, Grant, 410, for the Halleck-Lincoln-Burnside situation.
20 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 7:275n.
21 Ibid., 307–308n.
22 Ibid., 347; Warner, Generals in Blue, 178–179.
23 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 7:452, 467–468, 469n.
24 Ibid., 275n. Grant would show considerable deference to McClernand over the next weeks not only by naming McClernand to command his move to get troops south of Vicksburg but also by being markedly polite in many of his communications with the general.
25 Lewis, Sherman, 269.
26 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 7:446, 455–456, 478; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 1:550–557; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 168.
27 Kiper, Major General John Alexander McClernand, 203.
28 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 1:734.
29 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 7:455–456, 231, 464, 486; ibid., 8, 3–4. That the Mississippi was falling on March 29 is noted in the diary of a Louisiana Confederate captain at Vicksburg, quoted in Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:xv.
30 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 7:471n, 474n, 479n, 486n. Under cover of darkness, the Union had sent other boats past the guns more or less successfully. See, for example, the runs of the Queen of the West, February 1, on 263 and 263n, and the Indianola, February 12, on 346n.
31 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 179–180.
32 Marszalek, Sherman, 217–218; Lewis, Sherman, 270.
33 For McClernand’s support of the plan, see Lewis, Sherman, 270, and Kiper, Major General John Alexander McClernand, 207–208.
34 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:63–64n; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 46.
35 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:71, 66.
36 Ibid., 67–71.
37 Ibid., 58, 64, 65, 59. In addition to the Union withdrawal from Yazoo Pass, Grant had ordered boats of General Alfred Ellet’s marine brigade north to the Tennessee River to deal with Confederate operations there; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:131–132 and O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 520.
38 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:73; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:82–83n.
39 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:74–79.
40 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 49; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:253; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 214; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:131.
41 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:132–133.
42 Lewis, Sherman, 271. For the lowest levels of the road above the surrounding swamp, see Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:53.
CHAPTER 22
1 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 230–231.
2 Ibid., 232; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 2, 638; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 127–128.
3 See, for example, O. R. (1), vol. 17, pt. 2, 811, 813, 835, etc.
4 Warner, Generals in Gray, 314–315; Robert G. Hartje, Van Dorn: The Life and Times of a Confederate General (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), 157, 136–161; Cunningham, Joiner, and Smith, Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862, 95; O. R. (1), vol. 17, pt. 1, 414–459.
5 Hartje, Van Dorn, 324–325. The information on his pedigree comes from Hartje and from a letter written by a sister of Van Dorn to another sister, Emily Van Dorn Miller, from Belvoir, Maryland, on February 5, 1863, obtained through an Internet link to “Emily Van Dorn Miller,” http://milleralbum.com/tmm/?article=OctaviaVanDorn.
6 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 2, 718; ibid., pt. 1, 73, 80, 86.
7 Ibid., pt. 1, 86, 116, 98, 123.
8 Ibid., 86–87, 116.
9 Ibid., 107, 114, 105, 81, 103, 99, 88, 89.
10 Ibid., 89, 120, 117, 119, 90.
11 Ibid., 187, 193, 84, 177, 179, 192, 184, 186, 188.
12 Ibid., 188, 194; Confederate Veteran, vol. 27, 416; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 135.
13 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 192, 180–181.
14 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 143; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 176–177.
15 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 188–189; Thomas Harrison Baker, The Memphis Commercial Appeal: The History of a Southern Newspaper (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 95; Joseph Frazier Wall, Henry Watterson: Reconstructed Rebel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 36–38.
16 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 142–143; A Soldier’s Honor, by His Comrades (New York, 1902) 276–279; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 176–177. Three versions of this story appear in A Soldier’s Honor, which was compiled by a sister of Van Dorn, although she did not put her name on it; Wyeth gives another version. The account here uses details from all.
17 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 143; A Soldier’s Honor, 279; Warner, Generals in Gray, 315.
18 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 294, 245, 247.
19 Ibid., 243.
20 Ibid., 247, 282.
21 Stephen Z. Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 3:221.
22 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 248, 282. (A good idea of where the Etowah River Bridge was and the distances to it from Rome, and so forth, is provided by comparing plate 49 of The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War with a modern Georgia road map.)
23 Ibid., 286, 248; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 142.
24 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 227; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 246–247.
25 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 253; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:153; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 294. For Freeman’s death, see O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 2, 277; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 246–247, 247n; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 182–184.
26 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 248, 246.
27 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 254–255.
28 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:154–155.
29 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 644; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 181.
30 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 255; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 285, 287–288.
31 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 288.
32 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:159; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 288.
33 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 283.
34 Ibid., 288.
35 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 257, 257n; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 288–289.
36 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 147; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 289.
37 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 256–257; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 148; O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 289.
38 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 289–290.
39 Ibid., 290.
40 Ibid.; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 149.
41 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 206. Wyeth quotes the final word of this sentence as “easily,” but Forrest likely was not fussy about adverbs.
42 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 265; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 207.
43 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 210–212.
44 Atlanta Southern Confederacy, May 8, 1863, 1; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 151.
45 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 18A.
46 Ibid., 18A, 211–212; Henry, As They Saw Forrest, 289, 290, 293.
47 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 290.
48 Ibid., 291.
49 Ibid., 291–292.
50 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 155–156; Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, 3:220.
51 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 292; Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, 153–155.
52 Dabney H. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 209; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 157.
53 Maury, Recollections, 209.
CHAPTER 23
1 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 2, 795; Smith, Grant, 237.
2 Smith, Grant, 301.
3 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:269–270.
4 Ibid., 183; Marszalek, Sherman, 220; O. R. N, vol. 24, 591; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 576–577; Lewis, Sherman, 272.
5 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 575, 593.
6 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:314–315; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 575.
7 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 574; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:305–306; Warner, Generals in Gray, 29.
8 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 32, 48; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 261.
9 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 262.
10 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:318–319.
11 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 80–81.
12 Ibid., 74–75.
13 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:78, 293–294.
14 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 49.
15 Ibid., 48.
16 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:385–386.
17 Ibid., 353–372, 373–398, 367, 405, 407.
18 Ibid., 409; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 266–267. Grierson, coming down through the middle of Mississippi, tore up the Southern Railroad around Newton, midway between Meridian and Jackson, and then continued south to Hazlehurst, Mississippi, to ravage the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad.
19 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 267–268; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:147, 155.
20 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 49–50.
21 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 268; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:147.
22 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:151.
23 Ibid., 153, 162, 164, 168, 172, etc.; ibid., 178–179n, 183.
24 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 266.
25 Ibid.; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:160.
26 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 282; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:461–462.
27 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:200.
28 Ibid., 201n; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 707. Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:480–481, emphasizes a fine distinction obvious in Grant’s contemporary letters and the official records but missed by many historians and inaccurately described by Grant in his memoirs: while he did separate himself from his Mississippi supply bases and the Union river armada, he never severed his supply line. He did markedly thin it and then almost outran it.
29 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:512, 515, 517; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 737.
30 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:502, 506, 517, 515.
31 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 50.
32 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:554.
33 Ibid., 537–538, 543–544, 545, 531, 556, 557.
34 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 877; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:530, 547.
35 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 310.
36 Ibid., pt. 1, 261.
37 Warner, Generals in Gray, 193–194, 232–233; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign , 2:620, 620n.
38 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 261.
39 Ibid., 262; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:573, 577.
40 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 279.
41 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 263; ibid., pt. 2, 101; for a map, see Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:588.
42 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 87, 75; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:581–583.
43 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:596.
44 Ibid., 605.
45 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 55–56, 102.
46 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:607, 609, 614; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 111.
47 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 718; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:615–616.
48 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 265; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:624.
49 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 32; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:640, 645, 651. Bearss’s exact rendering of casualties is as follows: Confederate—381 killed, 1,018 wounded, and 2,441 missing; Union—396 killed, 1,838 wounded, and 187 missing.
50 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:658–659, 635–637.
51 Ibid., 656–657; Larry Gordon, The Last Confederate General: John C. Vaughn and His East Tennessee Cavalry (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009), 58–62; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 267.
52 Gordon, The Last Confederate General, 48–49; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 322; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:667–670; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 266.
53 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 152; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:670–671, and map, 664.
54 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:220, 221n.
55 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 137–138.
56 Ibid., pt. 1, 267–268.
57 Ibid., 618; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:752.
58 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:189, 155; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 2:677.
59 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:332.
CHAPTER 24
1 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 280–281; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 160.
2 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 280–281.
3 Ibid., 281.
4 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 160.
5 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 2, 856.
6 Ibid., 857.
7 Ibid., 365, 369, 370–373.
8 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 286.
9 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 494n.
10 Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 101–102.
11 Ibid.; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 224.
12 Frank H. Smith, account in Tennessee State Library and Archives, first printed in The Nashville Banner on April 29, 1911. Smith, one of the boys watching from the steps of the Masonic hall, later became a prominent teacher and preserver of Maury County history.
13 Ibid.
14 Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 103; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 225. The original quote in Morton is “No d——d man shall kill me and live!” This writer doubts that under the stress of the moment, if ever, Forrest would have used the word “shall”; nor would he have dressed up “damn.” Lytle, Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company, 181, probably has it closer to the truth in his “No damn man can kill me and live.”
15 Frank Smith.
16 Ibid.; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest ’s Cavalry, 103.
17 Wyeth’s full quote is longer and, for the most part, unnaturally formal. Presented here are its very natural-sounding guts.
18 Frank Smith; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 103.
19 Frank Smith.
20 This version appears in Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 225–226, and Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 104, both purporting to come from the same unnamed eyewitness.
21 Wills, A Battle from the Start, 127; Mathes, General Forrest, 132. The story that Andrew Wills Gould’s family said no reconciliation occurred emanates from the biography by historian Wills, who cites no specific source.
22 O. R. (1), vol. 23, pt. 1, 10.
23 Ibid., pt. 2, 460, 461; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 290–291; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 231.
24 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 231–232.
25 Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest ’s Cavalry, 110.
CHAPTER 25
1 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:232–233.
2 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:760, 780–785.
3 Ibid., 772, 761, 763, 765; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 268–269.
4 O. R. (1), vol.
24, pt. 1, 273–274; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:773, 772.
5 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 331–332.
6 Ibid., 332. Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:813–814, himself a distinguished combat veteran, has, as a park historian for the government, all but lived on the ground over which Grant had to attack. He says the broken and obstacle-clogged nature of that ground offered only one area—in front of Sherman—where troops might possibly be massed in sufficient strength to do what McClernand advised and that Sherman tried to exploit that area. Bearss adds that in McClernand’s own troop arrangements, the general did not follow his own advice.
7 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 334.
8 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:814, 828, 823–824.
9 See map in Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:838.
10 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 244, 242.
11 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:825–827; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 243, 140.
12 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 257; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:816, 816n, 817, 817n; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 282, 257–258.
13 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 719; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:821–822, 822n.
14 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 172–173. For the location of McArthur’s troops, see ibid. pt. 2, 302.
15 Ibid., 173.
16 Ibid., 56.
17 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:824–833.
18 Ibid., 837–844, 845–846; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 710.
19 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:856–857.
20 Ibid., 858; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 87.
21 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:257, 258n.
22 Ibid., 261–262.
23 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 276–277; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:860–861, 861n.
24 Quoted in Kiper, Major General John Alexander McClernand, 270; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:307; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:880n; Kiper, Major General John Alexander McClernand, 270.
25 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 165–166.
26 Ibid., 159–164, 161; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:876–879.
27 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 103.
28 Ibid., 103.
29 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:428–429.
30 For the delivery of messages into Vicksburg, see Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston , 211–212.