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VICKSBURG

By Thomas R. Stubbs

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Thomas R. Stubbs
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-4440-4

Chapter One

It was now somewhere around the middle of April. We had been told last night that in the morning we would be marching off to Vicksburg, but morning came and nothing seemed to happen. It did seem obvious that something was up. On talking to some of the other troops of the 31 Mo. regiment that had been at Milliken's Bend for awhile, they related that General McClernand and his corps and part of General McPherson's troops had already left camp and marched down across the peninsula a few weeks ago. Just where they were headed, none of the troops that I had talked to seemed to know. These troops had been in the garrison at Milliken's Bend for several months and had welcomed our arrival yesterday by celebrating over a few jugs of corn liquor.

They had related last evening all of the abortive attempts they had made so far in attempting to take Vicksburg. The first attempt had been by General Sherman who had tried attacking at Chickasaw Bayou up a steep bluff north of town, in face of impossible odds. There they had attempted to land troops on a narrow triangle of damp ground, bounded on the west and east by a bayou, or flooded swamp, in places over head high and at other places up over the knees. On the western side, it had been bounded by deep sloughs and swampy ground so that the only practical way of marching was down a patch of ground that pointed directly at the bluffs. The bluffs had been extremely steep, so that it was impossible to walk or climb the bluffs and the troops had been reduced to crawling on hands and knees and trying to pull themselves forward with brush and clumps of grass in order to climb the bluffs to get at the troops. This had been a disastrous attempt and as I recall one of the troops had said that Sherman had complained that it would cost them 5,000 casualties to take Vicksburg and they may as well lose them here. Such a cavalier statement hadn't set well with the troops. The attempt had been disastrous, as they knew it would from the start.

Then the other troops had related similar escapades that the military commanders had engaged in, such as digging a canal across the peninsula. De Soto's point, as the peninsula was called, was nothing but mud and swamp and the attempt resulted in failure when heavy rains washed out the dams and flooded the works that the troops had spent months on. Then there was the attempt to blow the Mississippi levees upstream thereby flooding the farmland east of the river and making a giant lake that would allow the Union troops to travel by steamboat south to get in position for an attack on Vicksburg from above. An attempt was also made to dig a canal through the swamps west of the Mississippi to reach Lake Providence from which, it was thought, the army could travel by steamer to reach to reach the Mississippi River and assault Vicksburg from below. Whether we would be off on another expedition to dig passages through the swamps or whether they would come up with some idea for another boat trip on the rivers, no one seemed to know.

That morning we didn't receive any orders and we were uncertain as to what the actual intentions were. Sometime after noon, we received orders to march down to the landing to help in loading Admiral Porter's ships. When we got to the landing, there was an incredible bustle with troops and sailors at work on the steamers and gunboats. The boats had been strangely modified. On the port side of the ships some large bales of cotton had been latched that had been soaked with water. Some ships had strange structures put together out of planks and wood that changed the outlines of the ships in an attempt to disguise the structures on board. We received orders to help with loading and formed lines to pass boxes and crates of ammunition, food and clothing down from the banks and up onto the ships where the sailors took it and stowed it below decks or inside the superstructures on the steamers.

Some of the troops seemed to feel that this indicated that the steamers would be attempting to run the river past the Vicksburg batteries on the bluffs. Barges were similarly protected with bales of water soaked cotton and loaded with supplies to be pulled behind the steamers. We worked feverishly throughout the day, loading the barges and steamers and, after it became dark, the troops were marched back to the barracks.

We had a late meal that evening and gathered around on the levees facing the river to watch for the anticipated passage down the river. We seemed to wait in quiet anticipation for hours. Just when the steamers actually moved away from the wharf, I don't know because they left so quietly that it was impossible to detect the true time of their departure. Not owning a watch, I think it was probably well up towards midnight before we heard cannon fire from across the river. I feared the attempt to run the bluffs without being seen, hadn't gone so well.

Still, it was so dark, I was sure that the confederates on the other side of the river wouldn't be able to hit anything from the heights of the bluff. But, shortly after that, flames sprang up in the east and quickly became almost like a blazing sunup. The whole eastern shoreline seemed to be bathed in bright light. Then flames appeared to spring up from the western bank and also from what we assumed was the center of the river. I was amazed to think that the Confederate fire could have been so accurate. Silence settled over the troops as we watched from the levee. We were quite fearful that all of the steamers and barges had been hit and set on fire and now were burning in midstream or running to ground on the western shore causing this illusion of an early sunrise.

We felt sorry for the sailors on board the steamers and the barges as we were sure that the entire expedition had been shot out of the water or set on fire. There wasn't anything that we could do, however, and being quite late we were finally ordered back to the barracks for the evening. It was a dejected and disheartened army that finally hit the bunks and went to bed for the evening. We believed that another attempt on Vicksburg had ended disastrously like all the previous ones over the last several months.

Getting to sleep that evening was difficult. As I lay there, attempting to drift off, I thought about all that had transpired to me over the last year and a half. It was hard to believe that so much had happened in that time. It was in October of `61 that I had lost my family in the massacre at Osceola. After that, I joined the Union Army and had gone through training and been deployed just in time for the Battle of Shiloh. We had been on our way to Corinth when we had been attacked at Shiloh by a rebel army that we had no idea was in the vicinity. After the battle, we had spent several weeks reorganizing and had spent another month marching the 30 miles to Corinth which had been our original objective. There, we spent the next six months battling mosquitoes, chiggers and bad water. It seemed like once we had got to Corinth, no one knew what to do next. Eventually the rebels had found us in Corinth and decided that they really didn't want us there and had tried to force us out. We had endured the two day battle at Corinth and soundly defeated the rebels but neglected to make any meaningful pursuit.

Disappointed and dejected, we had spent another few weeks in Corinth before being marched back up the way we came and had, in the end, disembarked from Shiloh Landing and gone back to St. Louis to refit and recruit...