The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian

by Shelby Foote

  Grant could sympathize with the boy’s disappointment, but he had just been handed something considerably more valuable to him than the lost flag or even the seventeen guns that had been taken in the engagement that served as prelude to the occupation of the capital. Charles Dana arrived in mid-celebration with a dispatch just delivered by a courier from Grand Gulf. Signed by the Secretary of War and dated May 5, it had been sent in response to a letter in which Dana had given him a summation of Grant’s plan “to lose no time in pushing his army toward the Big Black and Jackson, threatening both and striking at either, as is most convenient.… He will disregard his base and depend on the country for meat and even for bread.” Now Stanton replied:

  General Grant has full and absolute authority to enforce his own commands, to remove any person who, by ignorance, inaction, or any cause, interferes with or delays his operations. He has the full confidence of the Government, is expected to enforce his authority, and will be firmly and heartily supported; but he will be responsible for any failure to exert his powers. You may communicate this to him.

  There was more here than met the eye. Stanton of course had authority over Halleck, so that if—or rather, as Grant believed from past experience, when—the time came for the general-in-chief to protest that Grant had disobeyed orders by abandoning Banks and striking out on his own, he would find—if indeed he had not found already—that Stanton, and presumably Lincoln as well, had approved in advance the course Grant had adopted. Nor was that all. Dana, having long since taken a position alongside the army commander in his private war against McClernand, had been keeping the Secretary copiously posted on the former congressman’s military shortcomings, large and small, and feeling him out as to what the administration’s reaction would be when Grant decided the time had come for him to swing the ax. Now the answer was at hand. Grant not only had “full and absolute authority” to sit in judgment; he would in fact be held “responsible for any failure to exert his powers” in all matters pertaining to what he considered his army’s welfare and the progress of what Stanton called his “operations,” whether against the rebels or McClernand.

  It was no wonder then—protected as he now was from the wrath of his immediate superior, as well as from the machinations of his ranking subordinate—that he was in good spirits during the hotel-lobby victory celebration. All around him, meanwhile, the town was in a turmoil. “Many citizens [had] fled at our approach,” one Federal witness later recalled, “abandoning houses, stores, and all their personal property, without so much as locking their doors. The Negroes, poor whites, and it must be admitted some stragglers and bummers from the ranks of the Union army, carried off thousands of dollars worth of property from houses, homes, shops and stores, until some excuse was given for the charge of ‘northern vandalism,’ which was afterwards made by the South. The streets were filled with people, white and black, who were carrying away all the stolen goods they could stagger under, without the slightest attempt at concealment and without let or hindrance from citizens or soldiers.… In addition … the convicts of the penitentiary, who had been released by their own authorities, set all the buildings connected with that prison on fire, and their lurid flames added to the holocaust elsewhere prevailing.” He observed that “many calls were made upon [Grant] by citizens asking for guards to protect their private property, some of which perhaps were granted, but by far the greater number [of these petitioners] were left to the tender mercies of their Confederate friends.”

  After all, Grant had not brought his army here to protect the private property of men in revolution against the government that army represented; nor, for that matter, had it ever been his custom to deny his soldiers a chance at relaxation they had earned, even though that relaxation sometimes took a rather violent form. His purpose, rather, was to destroy all public property such as might be of possible comfort to the Confederacy. This applied especially to the railroads, the wrecking of which would abolish the Mississippi capital as a transportation hub, at least through the critical period just ahead. But that other facilities were not neglected was observed by a witness who testified that “foundries, machine shops, warehouses, factories, arsenals, and public stores were fired as fast as flames could be kindled.” Sherman was the man for this work, Grant decided, and he gave him instructions “to remain in Jackson until he destroyed that place as a railroad center and manufacturing city of military supplies.”

  Meanwhile there was the campaign to get on with; Pemberton was hovering to the west, already on the near side of the Big Black, and beyond him there was Vicksburg, the true object of all this roundabout marching and such bloodshed as had so far been involved. McPherson was told to get his corps in hand and be prepared to set out for Bolton Depot at first light tomorrow to support McClernand, whose corps was no longer the army’s rear guard, but rather its advance. Having attended to this, Grant joined Sherman for a little relaxation of his own; namely, a tour of inspection to determine which of the local business establishments would be spared or burned. In the course of the tour they came upon a cloth factory which, as Grant said later, “had not ceased work on account of the battle nor for the entrance of Yankee troops.” Outside the building “an immense amount of cotton” was stacked in bales; inside, the looms were going full tilt, tended by girl operatives, weaving bolts of tent cloth plainly stamped C.S.A. No one seemed to notice the two generals, who watched for some time in amused admiration of such oblivious industry. “Finally,” Grant said afterwards, “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. In a few minutes cotton and factory were in a blaze.”

  This done, Grant returned to the Bowman House for his first night’s sleep on a mattress in two weeks. Joe Johnston, he was told, had occupied the same room the night before.

  3

  Johnston—not Beauregard, as rumor had had it earlier—had arrived at dusk the day before, at the end of a grueling three-day train ride from Tennessee by way of Atlanta, Montgomery, Mobile, and Meridian, only to find the Mississippi capital seething with reports of heavy Union columns advancing from the west. As night closed in, a hard rain began to fall, shrouding the city and deepening the Virginian’s gloom still further: as was shown in a wire he got off to Seddon after dark. “I arrived this evening finding the enemy’s force between this place and General Pemberton, cutting off communication. I am too late.” To Pemberton, still on the far side of the Big Black, he sent a message advising quick action on that general’s part. To insure delivery, three copies were forwarded by as many couriers. “I have lately arrived, and learn that Major General Sherman is between us, with four divisions, at Clinton,” Johnston wrote. “It is important to re-establish communications, that you may be reinforced. If practicable, come up in his rear at once. To beat such a detachment would be of immense value. The troops here could cooperate. All the strength you can quickly assemble should be brought. Time is all important.”

  He had at Jackson, he presently discovered, only two brigades of about 6000 men with which to oppose the 25,000 Federals who were knocking at the western gates next morning. After a sharp, brief skirmish and the sacrifice of seventeen guns to cover a withdrawal, he retreated seven miles up the Canton road to Tugaloo, where he halted at nightfall, unpursued, and sent another message to Pemberton, from whom he had heard nothing since his arrival, informing him that the capital had been evacuated. He was expecting another “12,000 or 13,000” troops from the East, he said, and “as soon as [these] reinforcements are all up, they must be united to the rest of the army. I am anxious to see a force assembled that may be able to inflict a heavy blow upon the enemy.… If prisoners tell the truth, the force at Jackson must be half of Grant’s army. It would decide the campaign to beat it, which can only be done by concentrating, especially when the remainder of the eastern troops arrive.” He himself could do little or nothing until these men reached him, reducing the odds to something within reason, b
ut he did not think that Pemberton should neglect any opportunity Grant afforded meanwhile, particularly in regard to his lines of supply and communication. “Can he supply himself from the Mississippi?” Johnston asked. “Can you not cut him off from it, and above all, should he be compelled to fall back for want of supplies, beat him?”

  This last was in accord with Pemberton’s own decision, already arrived at before the second message was received. The first, delivered by one of the three couriers that morning at Bovina Station, nine miles east of Vicksburg, had taken him greatly by surprise. He had expected Johnston to come to his assistance in defense of the line along or just in front of the Big Black; yet here that general was, requesting him “if practicable” to come to his assistance by marching against the enemy’s rear at Clinton, some twenty miles away. Pemberton replied that he would “move at once with the whole available force,” explaining however that this included only 17,500 troops at best, since the remaining 9000 under his command were required to man the Warrenton-Vicksburg-Haines Bluff defenses, as well as the principal crossings of the Big Black, which otherwise would remain open in his rear, exposing the Gibraltar of the West to sudden capture by whatever roving segment of the rampant blue host happened to lunge in that direction. “In directing this move,” he felt obliged to add, by way of protest, “I do not think you fully comprehend the position Vicksburg will be left in; but I comply at once with your request.”

  So he said. However, when he rode forward to Edwards, where his mobile force of three divisions under Loring, Stevenson, and Bowen was posted four miles east of the Big Black, he learned that a Union column, reportedly five divisions strong—it was in fact McClernand’s corps, with Blair attached as guard for the wagon train—was at Raymond, in position for a northward advance on Bolton. If Pemberton marched on Clinton, as Johnston suggested, ignoring this threat to his right flank as he moved eastward along the railroad, he would not only be leaving Vicksburg and the remaining two divisions under Major Generals M. L. Smith and John H. Forney in grave danger of being gobbled up while his back was turned; he would also be exposing his eastbound force to destruction at the hands of the other half of the Northern army. Perplexed by this dilemma, and mindful of some advice received two days ago from Richmond that he “add conciliation to the discharge of duty”—“Patience in listening to suggestions … is sometimes rewarded,” Davis had added—he decided the time had come for him to call a council of war, something he had never done before in all his thirty years of military service. Assembling the general officers of the three divisions at Edwards Station shortly after noon, he laid Johnston’s message before them and outlined the tactical problems it posed. Basically, what he had to deal with was a contradiction of orders from above. As he understood the President’s wishes, he was not to risk losing Vicksburg by getting too far from it, whereas Johnston was suggesting a junction of their forces near Jackson, forty miles away, in order to engage what he called a “detachment” of four—in fact, five—divisions, without reference to or apparent knowledge of the five-division column now at Raymond, both of which outnumbered the Confederates at Edwards. Pemberton, on the other hand, did not strictly agree with either of his two superiors, preferring to await attack in a prepared position near or behind the Big Black River, with a chance of following up a repulse with a counterattack designed to cut off and annihilate the foe. These three views could not be reconciled, but neither did he consider that any one of them could be ignored; so that, like the nation at large, this Northerner who sided with the South was torn and divided against himself. That was his particular nightmare in this nightmare interlude of his country’s history. According to an officer on his staff, the Pennsylvania’s trouble now and in the future was that he made “the capital mistake of trying to harmonize instructions from his superiors diametrically opposed to each other, and at the same time to bring them into accord with his own judgment, which was averse to the plans of both.”

  Nor was the council of much assistance to him in finding a way around the impasse. Though a majority of the participants favored complying with Johnston’s suggestion that the two forces be united, they were obliged to admit that it could not be accomplished by a direct march on Clinton, which was plainly an invitation to disaster. Meanwhile Pemberton’s own views, as he told Johnston later, “were strongly expressed as unfavorable to any advance which would remove me from my base, which was and is Vicksburg.” Apparently he limited himself to this negative contention. But finally Loring—known as “Old Blizzards” since his and Tilghman’s spirited repulse of the Yankee gunboats above Greenwood—suggested an alternate movement, southeast nine miles to Dillon, which he believed would sever Grant’s connection with Grand Gulf and thus force him either to withdraw, for lack of supplies, or else to turn and fight at a disadvantage in a position of Pemberton’s choice. Stevenson agreed, along with others, and Pemberton, though he disliked the notion of moving even that much farther from Vicksburg, “did not, however, see fit to put my own judgment and opinions so far in opposition as to prevent a movement altogether.” He approved the suggestion, apparently for lack of having anything better to offer, and adjourned the council after giving the generals instructions to be ready to march at dawn. At 5.40, on the heels of the adjournment, he got off a message informing Johnston of his intentions. “I shall move as early tomorrow morning as practicable with a column of 17,000 men,” he wrote, explaining the exact location of Dillon so that Johnston would have no trouble finding it on a map which was enclosed. “The object is to cut the enemy’s communications and to force him to attack me, as I do not consider my force sufficient to justify an attack on the enemy in position or to attempt to cut my way to Jackson.”

  Johnston received this at 8.30 next morning, May 15, by which time he had withdrawn another three miles up the Canton road, still farther from the intended point of concentration at Clinton. Though the message showed that Pemberton had anticipated the Virginian’s still unreceived suggestion that he attempt to “cut [Grant] off from [the Mississippi],” Johnston no longer favored such a movement. “Our being compelled to leave Jackson makes your plan impracticable,” he replied, and repeated—despite Pemberton’s objection to being drawn still farther from his base—his preference for an eastward march by the mobile force from Vicksburg: “The only mode by which we can unite is by your moving directly to Clinton, informing me, that [I] may move to that point with about 6000 troops. I have no means of estimating the enemy’s force at Jackson. The principal officers here differ very widely, and I fear he will fortify if time is left him. Let me hear from you immediately.”

  Evidently Johnston believed that Grant was going to hole up in the Mississippi capital and thus allow him time to effect a junction between the Vicksburg troops and his own, including the “12,000 or 13,000” reinforcements expected any day now from the East. If so, he was presently disabused. A reply from Pemberton, written early the following morning but not delivered until after dark, informed him that the advance on Dillon—badly delayed anyhow by the need for building a bridge across a swollen creek—had been abandoned, in accordance with his wishes, and the direction of march reversed. It was Pemberton’s intention, as explained in the message, to move north of the railroad, swing wide through Brownsville to avoid the mass of Federals reported to be near Bolton, and converge on Clinton as instructed. “The order of countermarch has been issued,” he wrote, and followed a description of his proposed route with the words: “I am thus particular, so that you may be able to make a junction with this army.”

  The Vicksburg commander at last had abandoned his objections to what Johnston had called “the only mode by which we can unite.” He was, or soon would be, moving east toward his appointed destination. But there was an ominous postscript to the message, written in evident haste and perhaps alarm: “Heavy skirmishing is now going on to my front.”

  What that portended Johnston did not know; but Grant did. Before he retired to the hotel room his adversary had occu
pied the night before the fall of Jackson, he received from McPherson one of the three copies of Johnston’s message urging Pemberton to “come up in [Sherman’s] rear at once.” This windfall was the result of a ruse worked some months ago by Hurlbut, who banished from Memphis, with considerable fanfare, a citizen found guilty of “uttering disloyal and threatening sentiments,” though he was in secret, as Hurlbut knew, a thoroughly loyal Union man. The expulsion, along with his continued expression of secessionist views after his removal to the Mississippi capital, won him the sympathy and admiration of the people there: so much so, indeed, that he was one of the three couriers entrusted with copies of Johnston’s urgent message. He delivered it, however, not to Pemberton but to McPherson, who passed it promptly along to Grant. “Time is all important,” the Virginian had written. Grant agreed. By first light next morning, May 15, McPherson was marching west from the capital, leaving Sherman to accomplish its destruction while he himself moved toward a junction with McClernand, who had been instructed simultaneously by Grant: “Turn all your forces toward Bolton station, and make all dispatch in getting there. Move troops by the most direct road from wherever they may be on the receipt of this order.”

  McPherson’s three divisions had seventeen miles to go, and McClernand’s four—five, including Blair—were variously scattered, from Raymond back to Fourteen Mile Creek. Each corps got one division to Bolton by late afternoon—Hovey and Logan, in that order—while the others camped along the roads at sundown. Carr and Osterhaus were three miles south, with A. J. Smith between them and Raymond, where Blair was. Brigadier Generals John McArthur and Marcellus Crocker, commanding McPherson’s other two divisions, were bivouacked beside the railroad leading back to Clinton. Riding out from Jackson to that point before nightfall, Grant ordered McClernand to move on Edwards in the morning, supported by McPherson, but warned him “to watch for the enemy and not bring on an engagement unless he felt very certain of success.” The fog of war, gathering again to obscure the Confederate purpose, had provoked this note of caution; but it was dispersed once more at 5 o’clock next morning, when two Union-sympathizing employes of the Vicksburg-Jackson Railroad were brought to Grant at Clinton. They had passed through Pemberton’s army in the night, they said, and could report that it was moving east of Edwards with a strength of about 25,000 men. Though this was in fact some 7500 high, it was still some 10,000 fewer than Grant had on hand. But he was taking no unavoidable chances. Deciding to ignore Johnston, who by now was a day’s march north of Jackson at Calhoun Station, he ordered Sherman to “put one division with an ammunition train on the road at once, with directions to its commander to march with all possible speed until he comes upon our rear.” The remaining division was to hurry its demolition work and follow along as soon as might be. The orders to McClernand and McPherson were unaltered; all that was changed by this second dispersal of the war fog was the weight of the blow about to be delivered. Now that he knew Pemberton’s strength and had him spotted, Grant intended to hit him with everything he had.