The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

They went to this work with unfaltering courage, and at the end of it all a new chapter had been added to the history of heroism.

The moment Pickett's men began their mile long charge, the Federal cannon – about a hundred guns – resumed their fire while the Confederate artillery must of course cease firing lest their shells plow through the ranks of their own infantry. In spite of all, and in face of a hailstorm of shot and shell the Confederates steadily advanced. Great rents were made in their lines by the explosion of shells, but the gaps thus made were instantly closed up, and not for one moment did the assaulting force recoil, or halt or slacken the eager rapidity of its advance. As it drew near to the enemy's lines the Federal fire was changed from shell and shrapnel to canister in double and triple charges – each gun hurling from a quart to a gallon of balls every few seconds into the faces of the still advancing and still cheering Confederates. Presently, when the Southerners drew still nearer to the lines, a great body of Federal infantry that had been lying down and sheltering itself, rose and poured murderous volleys into the ranks of the assailants.

Those ranks were withering now, under the destructive fire, but still they faltered not nor failed. Still they went forward to execute Lee's will, which meant to them quite all that the will of God means to the devotee.

They trampled over the advance lines of the enemy. They pushed forward to the breastworks. They even crossed the fortifications and for a brief space held the lines they had been sent to conquer.

But so depleted were their ranks by this time, and so strangely unsupported were they by those other divisions which they had expected Longstreet to send in after them, and which he did not send in, that they were at last forced back by sheer weight of numbers.

A small remnant of that splendid charging column returned to Lee's lines under a withering fire. The rest of it lay dead or dying on the hillside.

It has always been a fact highly creditable to American armies that the killed and wounded among their officers of high rank in every severe conflict relatively outnumber the casualties among the enlisted men. At Gettysburg, on both sides, this was conspicuously the case. On the Federal side General Reynolds was killed early on the first day of the fight. Later General Weed was mortally wounded; General Vincent and Colonel O'Rorke were killed. So were General Zook and Colonel Cross, while General Sickles lost a leg. In the third day's fighting Generals Hancock, Doubleday, Gibbon, Warren, Butterfield, Stannard, Brooke and Barnes were wounded; General Farnsworth was killed. On the Confederate side the number of killed and wounded among officers of high rank was equally great. General Barksdale fell, leading his men in terrific assault. General Armistead was shot to death as he laid his hand upon a Federal gun, and in Pickett's matchless charge, very nearly every officer, high and low, was either killed or wounded. Their men were not sent into the conflict; they were led into it, and between those two things there is a world of difference.

Longstreet has criticised Lee for ordering Pickett's charge. On the other hand Longstreet has been severely criticised for not having supported that charge with all his might, pushing forward every man he could command to take the places of Pickett's killed and wounded and to crown their superb endeavor with compulsory success. Again Lee has been criticised for having given Ewell, in command of his left wing, uncertain and discretionary orders, instead of directing him, at the time of Pickett's charge, to hurl his whole force upon the enemy in his front, regardless of all other considerations. These matters are open questions that belong to military criticism rather than to history. They need not be discussed in these pages. But it belongs to history to relate that when the struggle was at an end, and the people of the South manifested a disposition to hold Longstreet responsible for its failure to accomplish the results intended, Lee promptly and definitely took upon himself all there might be of blame for the miscarriage of his plans. In a letter to President Davis he wrote protesting that the responsibility was all his own, and asking that some younger and fitter man than himself should be appointed to succeed him in command of that splendidly devoted and unfaltering army which he had so often led to victory but on this occasion had led to something akin to defeat and disaster.

There could scarcely be a stronger contrast than that between Lee's generous refusal to have any of his lieutenants held responsible for the results of a battle which he had authority to direct and Hooker's endeavor to shift to the shoulders of his subordinates the responsibility for his phenomenal failure at Chancellorsville. Lee was a great man, Hooker fell far short of that measure.

Gettysburg was, like Sharpsburg or Antietam, technically a drawn battle. Neither side had won a recognizable victory. Neither army had driven its adversary from the field. Neither had destroyed or even seriously impaired the fighting capacity of the other. Neither had triumphed over the other. But the result at Gettysburg as at Antietam was that Lee's invasion of the North was brought to naught. In the one case as in the other the Confederate hope of compelling terms of peace was defeated by successful resistance. To that extent at least the battle had resulted in victory for the Federal arms.

When the fourth of July dawned, neither army cared to assail the other. All day they confronted each other sullenly, as they had done at Sharpsburg. Then Lee slowly and deliberately withdrew, as he had done on the former occasion, his enemy not having confidence or strength enough to interfere in any active way with his retirement. Lee's ammunition was so far exhausted that many of his divisions had only one round of cartridges, while many of his batteries had none at all. But so terrible had been his onset, and so greatly did his foe dread a further conflict with him, that after taking his own time in the enemy's country in which to determine what he would do, he moved to the Potomac practically unmolested, rested there because of high water, still unmolested, and finally returned to Virginia. Meade slowly and quite inoffensively followed. The two armies resumed their old positions on the Rappahannock and the Rapidan and neither ventured to assail the other during the remainder of that summer or autumn.

Here was another of those strange pauses in the war which history finds it difficult to explain. The first battle of Manassas was fought on the twenty-first of July, 1861. There was no further battling of consequence during that summer or autumn. The battle at Sharpsburg was fought at the middle of September, 1862; there was no further fighting until the middle of December following. The Gettysburg battle was fought during the first three days of July, 1863, and throughout the long summer and autumn that followed there was no activity on either side. Not until May of the following year did the armies that confronted each other in Virginia meet again in conflict.

The wherefore of this inactivity has never been explained.

But meanwhile events of the utmost importance were occurring at the South and West, which claim attention in another chapter.

CHAPTER XXXIX

The Campaign of Vicksburg

After Shiloh, Grant was left, as he himself has told us, in a state of grave uncertainty as to the limits of his command, and even as to the question whether or not he had any command. After Halleck was transferred to Washington and placed in the position of General in Chief, things at the West did not much mend. We have seen how Grant at Corinth was slowly stripped of his forces and compelled to stand mainly upon the defensive in a field where offense, instant and vigorous, was obviously called for.

After the fall of Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge, the Confederates were left in possession only of that part of the Mississippi river which lies between Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Their possession of that stretch of river was doubly important to them. Defensively, it enabled them to blockade the river and render it a no-thoroughfare to Federal troops and supplies. Still more importantly, it enabled them to maintain their communications with the country lying to the west of the Mississippi in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. From that region they drew a very important part of their food supplies. These came to Vicksburg by water or over the Shreveport railroad on the west of the river, and were carried from Vicksburg eastward by other lines of railroad. A still more important line of communication was that by way of the Red river, which empties into the Mississippi from the westward between Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

To hold these routes seemed almost an absolute necessity to the Confederates. To cut them and open the Mississippi river from Cairo to the Gulf was equally a necessity to the Federals.

Here were the conditions that rendered a campaign inevitable, and in a degree marked out its course and character. The Confederates energetically fortified Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and planted posts at various other points on both sides of the Mississippi and on the Arkansas and Red rivers. The Federals had made several attempts – one of them made by Farragut himself – to open the Mississippi, but had completely failed, largely because the Confederate fortifications at Vicksburg were perched so high upon the bluff that Farragut's guns could not be sufficiently elevated to reach them.

It was not until the twelfth of November, 1862, that General Grant was set free to do those things which it was necessary to do in this quarter of the country. On that date he received a dispatch from General Halleck, giving him command of all troops in his department, and authorizing him to conduct operations there on his own judgment. Thus armed with liberty to act, Grant instantly consulted Sherman, in whose sagacity and in whose superb fighting qualities he had the utmost confidence. These two energetic commanders quickly agreed upon a plan of action which looked to nothing less than the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the opening of the great river throughout its length, and the severance of the Confederacy in twain.

Their plan at first was that Grant, with about 30,000 men, should move against the Confederate General Pemberton, who had about an equal force in the Tallahatchie river country, and occupy him there while Sherman, with 30,000 more, should descend the Mississippi in transports, convoyed by the gunboats, and effect a landing within striking distance of Vicksburg. Should Pemberton fall back for the defense of that stronghold, Grant was to press him with all possible vigor, endeavoring to cut him off from Vicksburg, and leave Sherman free to deal with that fortress as he pleased.

The Tallahatchie country, through which Grant marched to assail Pemberton, is a tangled wilderness, lying actually lower than the surface of the Mississippi, and itself laced by multitudinous rivers, creeks, and streams, all of them difficult of passage, even at times of lowest water, and impossible of passage when a rain or a break in a Mississippi levée suddenly raises them to flood height. The region is, in fact, a vast morass. In parts of it the planters were often left for six, eight or ten months without communication with the outer world, except by way of the rivers themselves, during the winter. It is not difficult, even for the reader who has no technical knowledge of war, to understand how slowly and painfully a march through such a country must be made, when not only the cannon but a wagon train, carrying every ounce of supplies necessary for 30,000 men must be dragged at every step through a quagmire.

But this was not Grant's chief difficulty. With his headquarters at Holly Springs, and a purpose to press forward in a southwesterly direction, he must maintain a long and attenuated line of communication with his base at Columbus, Kentucky. The Confederates were alert and ceaselessly active in assailing this line and rendering it hopelessly insecure. They sent heavy cavalry detachments under Van Dorn and Forrest to cut him off from his base, and Van Dorn, emboldened by repeated successes at last on the twentieth of December assailed Holly Springs itself, where Grant had accumulated many million dollars' worth of supplies in preparation for his campaign. The Confederate cavalrymen captured the town and its garrison, burned all the stores and destroyed the railroad buildings. In the meanwhile Forrest raiding farther north cut the railroad between Jackson, Tennessee, and Columbus, Kentucky, thus completely severing Grant's line, and leaving him in the enemy's country without supplies or the means of procuring them.

In order to save his army Grant immediately abandoned his plan of campaign and moved northwestward to Memphis. His purpose now was to join Sherman there, unite the two wings of the army, and in company with Sherman and the gunboats move down the river and assail Vicksburg in overwhelming force.

But when Grant reached Memphis Sherman had already gone down the river in his transports, accompanied by Porter's gunboats, to a point called Milliken's Bend. There on Christmas day Sherman had landed on both sides of the river, sending the main body of his troops up the Yazoo, which empties from the northeast into the Mississippi near that point. He did this in order to assail the Confederates on the bluffs north of Vicksburg.

At this point a little topographical explanation seems necessary. Vicksburg lies on a great easterly bend of the river. It is perched upon high bluffs which extend thence northward to the Yazoo, striking it at a point called Haines's Bluff.

From Milliken's Bend above Vicksburg Sherman had sent a brigade down the western side of the river to cut the railroad leading from Shreveport, Louisiana, to that city. Landing his main force under the bluffs on the Yazoo, he hoped to march southward in the rear of Vicksburg, and cut the railroad which leads thence to Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital, about fifty miles away. If he could accomplish this he would have Vicksburg isolated from communication on either side of the river.

In all this he was instantly and completely baffled. Low grounds bordered the Yazoo at the point of landing, while the Confederates occupied and had cannon-crowned the bluffs at a little distance from the stream. The flat lands with their marshes were pestilential to the young men of the northwest who constituted Sherman's army. At times of high water the lowlands were often overflowed to a depth of ten feet. They were at all times malarial, and such water as could be had by digging a foot or two into the mucky soil was simply poisonous for human beings to drink. On the other hand, the Southerners on the bluffs above were living in much more salubrious conditions. They had the advantage also of being immune by lifelong use to the miasms which laid so many of the Northern soldiers low. It is scarcely too much to say that the spores of miasmatic disease were at this time more important to the Confederates as a means of defense than their powder and bullets were.

Still further, Sherman had been misled and misinformed with regard to the character of the bluffs which he must assail. He had supposed them to be easily accessible to such lithe young fellows as those northwestern boys who constituted the pith and marrow of his army. He found them instead scarcely more accessible than the steeps of Gibraltar itself. And as at Gibraltar, so at this point the men standing upon the defense not only occupied the heights, but held their bases with a bristling row of well-served cannon, strongly supported by an infantry as good as any that ever fought. The approaches across bayous and creeks and broad marshes were narrow and difficult. The Confederates had fully made good their deficiency in numbers by so planting their cannon and their riflemen as to command these approaches completely.

It was on the twenty-ninth of December, 1862, that Sherman made his desperate attack. One brigade, by determined fighting, reached the foot of the bluffs but was instantly hurled back again, leaving five hundred of its men stark and stiff on the battlefield. At another point a regiment of daring fellows reached the base of the headland and found it impossible either to go forward or to retreat without inviting destruction. The men dug rat holes for themselves at the base of the bluffs, and did what they could in the way of self-protection, while the Confederates on the cliffs above kept up a murderous vertical fire upon them throughout the day, until nightfall mercifully came and brought with it an opportunity for the Federals to retire.

In this struggle Sherman lost nearly two thousand men, while the Confederate loss was less than two hundred – one man killed on the one side to ten laid low on the other.

Sherman was a man not easily daunted. He was not yet ready to abandon his plan, to admit himself defeated or even to suspend his preternatural activity. He instantly decided upon still further assaults at other points. He arranged that the transports should carry the bulk of his army further up the river to Haines's Bluff during the night with the purpose of taking the Confederate works there by assault from the rear. There came a great fog so that the transports could not find their way, and so this plan miscarried.

By this time Sherman discovered that great bodies of Confederates were being hurried into the defensive works surrounding Vicksburg. He had previously heard nothing whatever from Grant, and it was only in this way that he learned that Grant had somehow failed to hold Pemberton in check, and that he, therefore, had in front of him the greater part of the Confederate army instead of the little garrison which he had set out to encounter and overcome.

Sherman was a man of wits and promptitude. He wasted no time in speculation, but at once reëmbarked his troops and returned to the mouth of the Yazoo, thus abandoning as a failure the campaign which he had undertaken in full confidence that it would be crowned with distinguished success. He did not abandon the hope of ultimately reducing the Vicksburg stronghold, but for the time being he knew not how to go on with that enterprise with any tolerable prospect of success. He sat still, therefore, for a day or two, until on the fourth of January, 1863, General McClernand was placed in command of the forces which Sherman had previously controlled.

Many little actions followed, most of them directed to the purpose of breaking up small tributary Confederate posts and fortresses on the Arkansas river and elsewhere in the neighborhood. In these little operations the Federals were in the main successful, but as yet they had achieved nothing that seriously threatened the integrity of the Confederate position at Vicksburg, and that alone was the real object of their persistent endeavors.

Then came Grant. His coming opened a new chapter in the war for the possession of the Mississippi river. He brought to bear upon the problem all that superb determination, that dauntless courage and that splendid obstinacy which afterward won for him his place in history.

He had no particular plan at first, because he was not yet familiar with the terms and conditions of the problem he was set to solve. But he intended to take Vicksburg, and he did not intend to fritter away the energies of his army in little side expeditions which in no important way could affect the general result. He called in all the troops who had been sent by McClernand to unimportant points and set himself at work to find a way of conquering the stronghold, the conquest of which was the sole object of his campaign.

The difficulties that presented themselves were many and exceedingly great. While Vicksburg, itself, was perched upon high hills, every conceivable road to it lay through swamps and morasses naturally defended by streams that were bottomed with unfathomable mud.

The best approaches to the town were from points farther down the river, but except by desperate endeavor it was impossible to reach those approaches so long as the works at Vicksburg completely commanded the stream. Grant was satisfied that if he could reach any point on the river below Vicksburg where a landing was practicable he could march thence into the rear of the town and compel its surrender.

In order to accomplish this he sent McClernand and Sherman to cut a canal across the peninsula made by the great bend in the river west of Vicksburg. This effort proved a failure, partly through engineering difficulties and partly because there were bluffs on the eastern side of the river below Vicksburg, which the Confederates promptly fortified and armed in such fashion as to command the outlet of the proposed canal.

Grant soon saw that even if he should succeed in making this canal cut-off, he must still find himself confronted on the river bank by heavily armed and high-placed works as difficult for his flotillas to pass as were the bluffs at Vicksburg itself.

He continued the work, however, in despair of anything better to do until early in March when a sudden flood in the Mississippi completely overflowed the peninsula on which the Federals were working, and compelled Sherman to withdraw hastily to save his army from drowning.

Grant's next scheme was by cutting another canal to carry his flotilla through Lake Providence west of the Mississippi, and thence by way of the many navigable bayous in that quarter to a point on the river well below Vicksburg. A good deal of digging was done in an attempt to carry out this plan, but in the end it failed as completely as the former one had done.

Grant now turned his attention to possibilities on the eastern side of the Mississippi. By blowing up a levée he tried to open again an old and abandoned waterway from the Mississippi into the Yazoo river, by way of the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers. Those two streams unite at Greenwood to form the Yazoo river. They are narrow, tortuous, uncertain of channel, and densely wooded along their banks. The Confederates with their ceaseless and alert activity swarmed on the banks of these rivers, and obstructed them not only by the fire of sharpshooters, and now and then of a field battery, trained against the advancing flotilla, but still more effectively by felling trees into the stream and thus rendering it impassable. Presently Grant found also that the Confederates were engaged in a system of defense still more dangerous to him than this. While obstructing his pathway down these streams in the way described they were also felling trees into the channels in the rear of his flotilla, and constructing strong earthworks along the banks above him. It was obvious that he must withdraw at once from his perilous position or encounter something worse than a mere risk of capture.

The work of extricating himself was difficult, but with strong reinforcements continually coming to him Grant succeeded in accomplishing it.

Still he did not abandon his hope of getting into the rear of Vicksburg by some movement from the north. The Yazoo river was connected by many bayous and other watercourses on the west of Haines Bluff with its tributary, the Big Sunflower. Grant decided to go up the Yazoo to Steele's Bayou and to go on up that watercourse, through some difficult passes into the Big Sunflower; thence he planned to descend the last-named stream, and strike the Yazoo again above the fortifications at Haines Bluff. If he could accomplish this he would have an open and comparatively easy road into the rear of Vicksburg.

This effort was met and baffled, as the former one had been, by Confederate obstructions in the streams, and by ceaseless annoyance from the woodlands on the banks. So active were the Confederates that at one time Commodore Porter seriously contemplated the abandonment of all his gunboats and transports. His energy, however, and his wonderful skill in navigation saved him at last from this humiliating necessity. By backing through streams in which there was not room enough to turn around, he managed at last to retreat lobster fashion, through thirty miles of tangled and crooked waterways, under a constant and galling fire from the banks, and in the end to get back into openly navigable waters.

As a wise and discreet commander, it was Grant's habit to adopt those measures which promised success at the smallest cost of human life – these first. But as a man of indomitable courage and determination, it was his habit also, if the less costly method failed, to venture upon more desperate courses with a single-minded determination to accomplish his purposes at whatever hazard and whatever sacrifice. He was convinced now, that in order to conquer the stronghold at Vicksburg he must manage in some way to place his army on the river bank below that city in some position from which he could march into its rear. To do this involved a world of difficulty, incredible hardship, and immeasurable danger. He must somehow get his army past the town, and into a position where it would be hopelessly dependent upon such stores as he could carry with him for the maintenance of his troops from day to day.

In order to reach such a position he must take incredible risks, and, having attained it, he must find himself isolated without communications of any sort, and dependent upon complete and quick success for the very existence of his army. Having once placed himself in that position he must promptly conquer Vicksburg, or ingloriously surrender all his force.