CHAPTER II. THE FIRST ATTEMPT ON VICKSBURG.
With the capture of New Orleans the first and vital object of the expedition had been accomplished. The occupation of Baton Rouge by a combined land and naval force was the next point indicated in McClellan's orders to Butler. Then he was to endeavor to open communication with the northern column coming down the Mississippi. McClellan was no longer General-in-chief; but this part of his plan represented the settled views of the government.
On the 2d of May, therefore, Farragut sent Craven with the Brooklyn and six other vessels of the fleet up the river. On the 8th, as early as the river transports could be secured, Butler sent Williams with the 4th Wisconsin and the 6th Michigan regiments, and two sections of Everett's 6th Massachusetts battery, to follow and accompany the fleet. The next day Williams landed his force at Bonnet Carré, on the east bank of the river, about thirty-five miles above the town. After wading about five miles through a swamp, where the water and mud were about three feet deep, the troops halted at night at Frenier, a station of the Jackson railway, situated on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, about ten miles above Kenner. A detachment of the 4th Wisconsin, under Major Boardman, was sent to Pass Manchac. The Confederates made a slight but ineffective resistance with artillery, resulting in trivial losses on either side. The bridges at Pass Manchac and Frenier being then destroyed, on the following morning, the 10th, the troops marched back the weary ten miles along the uneven trestle-work of the railway from Frenier to Kenner and there took transport. After their long confinement on shipboard, with scant rations, without exercise or even freedom of movement, the excessive heat of the day caused the troops to suffer severely. The embarkation completed, the transports, under convoy of the navy, set out for Baton Rouge. There on the morning of the 12th of May the troops landed, the capitol was occupied by the 4th Wisconsin, and the national colors were hoisted over the building. The troops then re-embarked for Vicksburg.
Natchez surrendered on the 12th of May to Commander S. Phillips Lee, of the Oneida, the advance of Farragut's fleet. On the 18th of May the Oneida and her consorts arrived off Vicksburg, and the same day Williams and Lee summoned "the authorities" to surrender the town and "its defences to the lawful authority of the United States." To this Brigadier-General Martin L. Smith, commander of the defences, promptly replied: "Having been ordered here to hold these defences, my intention is to do so as long as it is in my power."
On the 19th the transports stopped for wood at Warrenton, about ten miles below Vicksburg, and here a detachment of the 4th Wisconsin, sent to guard the working party, became involved in a skirmish with the Confederates, in which Sergeant-Major N. H. Chittenden and Private C. E. Perry, of A Company, suffered the first wounds received in battle by the troops of the United States in the Department of the Gulf. The Confederates were easily repulsed, with small loss.
Almost at the instant when Farragut was decided to run the gauntlet of the forts, Beauregard had begun to fortify Vicksburg. Up to this time he had trusted the defence of the river above New Orleans to Fort Pillow, Helena, and Memphis.
When Smith took command at Vicksburg on the 12th of May, in accordance with the orders of Lovell, the department commander, three of the ten batteries laid out for the defence of the position had been nearly completed and a fourth had been begun. These batteries were intended for forty-eight guns from field rifles to 10-inch columbiads. The garrison was to be 3,000 strong, but at this time the only troops present were parts of two Louisiana regiments. When the fleet arrived, on the 18th, six of the ten batteries had been completed, and two days later twenty-three heavy guns were in place and the defenders numbered more than 2,600.
The guns of the navy could not be elevated sufficiently for their projectiles to reach the Confederate batteries on the bluff, and the entire land-force, under Williams, was less than 1,100 effectives. Even had it been possible by a sudden attack to surprise and overcome the garrison and seize the bluffs, the whole available force of the Department of the Gulf would have been insufficient to hold the position for a week, as things then stood.
The truth is that the northern column with which, following their orders, Butler and Farragut were now trying to co-operate had ceased to exist; Jackson meant Beauregard's rear; and, as for any co-operation between Halleck and Williams, Beauregard stood solidly between them. On the 17th of April, the day before Porter's mortars first opened upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the whole land force of this northern column, under Pope, at that moment preparing for the attack on Fort Pillow, had been withdrawn by imperative orders from Halleck, and, on the very evening before the attack on Fort Pillow was to have been made, had gone to swell the great army assembled under Halleck at Corinth; but as yet neither Butler nor Farragut knew anything of all this. Save by the tedious roundabout of Washington, New York, the Atlantic, and the Gulf, there was at this time no regular or trustworthy means of communication between the forces descending the Mississippi and those that had just achieved the conquest of New Orleans and were now ascending the river to co-operate with the northern column. Thus it was that a single word, daubed in a rude scrawl upon the walls of the custom-house, meeting the eyes of Paine's men after they had made a way into the building with their axes, gave to Butler the first intelligence of the desperate battle of the 6th and 7th of April, on which the fate of the whole Union campaign in the West had been staked, if not imperilled, and which in its result was destined to change materially the whole course of operations in the Gulf Department. That word was Shiloh.
By the 26th of May the Oneida had been joined by the rest of the fleet, under the personal command of the restless and energetic flag-officer. On the afternoon of this day the fleet opened fire. The Confederates replied sparingly, as much to economize their ammunition and to keep the men fresh, as to avoid giving the Union commanders information regarding the range and effect of their fire.
The river was now falling. The Hartford in coming up had already grounded hard, and so remained helpless for fifty hours, and had only been got off by incredible exertions. Provisions of all kinds were running very low. On the 25th of May, after a thorough reconnoissance, Farragut and Williams decided to give up the attempt on Vicksburg as evidently impracticable. Farragut left Palmer with the Iroquois and six gunboats to blockade the river and to amuse the garrison at Vicksburg by an occasional bombardment in order to prevent Smith from sending reinforcements to Corinth.
While Williams was descending the river on the 26th, the transports were fired into by the Confederate battery on the bluff at Grand Gulf, sixty miles below Vicksburg. About sixty rounds were fired in all, many of which passed completely through the transport Laurel Hill, bearing the 4th Wisconsin, part of the 6th Michigan, and the 6th Massachusetts battery. One private of the 6th Michigan was killed and Captain Chauncey J. Bassett, of the same regiment, wounded. The Ceres, bearing the remainder of the 6th Michigan and the 6th Massachusetts battery, was following the Laurel Hill and was similarly treated. After a stern chase of about twenty miles, the convoy was overhauled, and the gunboat Kineo, returning, shelled the town and caused the withdrawal of the battery. During the evening Williams sent four companies of the 4th Wisconsin, under Major Boardman, to overtake the enemy's battery and break up the camp, about one mile and a half in the rear of the town. Boardman came upon the Confederates as they were retiring, and shots were exchanged. The casualties were few, but Lieutenant George DeKay, a gallant and attractive young officer, serving as aide-de-camp to General Williams, received a mortal wound.
On the 29th the troops under Williams once more landed and took post at Baton Rouge. During their absence of seventeen days, the Confederates had improved the opportunity to remove much valuable property that had been found stored in the arsenal on the occasion of the first landing of the Union forces.
On his return to New Orleans Farragut received pressing orders from the Navy Department to take Vicksburg. He therefore returned with his fleet, reinforced by a detachment of the mortar flotilla, and Butler once more despatched Williams, this time with an increased force, to co-operate. Williams left Baton Rouge on the morning of the 20th of June with a force composed of the 30th Massachusetts, 9th Connecticut, 7th Vermont, and 4th Wisconsin regiments, Nims's 2d Massachusetts battery and two sections of Everett's 6th Massachusetts battery. This time a garrison was left to hold Baton Rouge, consisting of the 21st Indiana and 6th Michigan regiments, the remaining section of Everett's battery and Magee's Troop C of the Massachusetts cavalry battalion. On the 22d of June the transports arrived off Ellis's Cliffs, twelve miles below Natchez, where Williams found three gunboats waiting to convoy him past the high ground. Here he landed a detachment consisting of the 30th Massachusetts regiment and two guns of Nims's battery to turn the supposed position of two field-pieces said to have been planted by the Confederates on the bluffs, while a second force, composed of the 4th Wisconsin, 9th Connecticut, the other two sections of Nims's battery, and the four guns of Everett's, marched directly forward up the cliff road. An abandoned caisson or limber was all that the troops found.
On the 24th, anticipating more serious resistance from the guns said to be in position on the bluffs at Grand Gulf, Williams entered Bayou Pierre with his whole force in the early morning, intending to strike the crossing, about seventeen miles up the stream, of the railway from Port Gibson to Grand Gulf, and thence to move directly on the rear of the town. Half-way up the bayou the boats were stopped by obstructions and had to back down again. Toward noon the troops landed and marched on Grand Gulf in two detachments, one under Paine, consisting of the 4th Wisconsin and 9th Connecticut regiments and a section of Nims's battery; the other, under Dudley, embracing the remainder of the force. Paine had a short skirmish with the enemy near Grand Gulf, and captured eight prisoners, but their camp, a small one, was found abandoned. The same evening the troops re-embarked, and on the 25th arrived before Vicksburg.
The orders from Butler, under which Williams was now acting, required him to take or burn Vicksburg at all hazards. Here, too, we catch the first glimpse of the famous canal upon which so much labor was to be expended during the next year with so little result. "You will send up a regiment or two at once," Butler said, "and cut off the neck of land beyond Vicksburg by means of a trench, making a gap about four feet deep and five feet wide."
To accomplish this purpose Williams had with him four regiments and ten guns, making an effective force in all less than three thousand, rapidly diminished by hard work, close quarters, meagre rations, and a bad climate nearly at its worst.
On the 24th of June the Monarch, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, arrived in the reach above Vicksburg. This was one of the nondescript fleet of rams, planned, built, equipped, and manned, under the orders of the War Department, by Ellet's elder brother, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., but now acting under the orders of the Commander of the Mississippi fleet. Ellet promptly sent a party of four volunteers, led by his young nephew, Medical Cadet Charles R. Ellet, to communicate with Farragut across the narrow neck of land opposite Vicksburg. This was the first direct communication between the northern and southern columns. By it Farragut learned of the abandonment of Fort Pillow by the Confederates on the 4th of June, and the capture of Memphis on the 6th, after a hard naval fight, in which nearly the whole Confederate fleet was taken or destroyed. There Charles Ellet was mortally wounded. When the Monarch party went back to their vessel, they bore with them a letter from Farragut, the contents of which being promptly made known by Ellet to Davis, brought that officer, with his fleet, at once to Vicksburg. On the following day, June 25th, a detachment of the 4th Wisconsin, sent up the river overland by Colonel Paine, succeeded in establishing a second communication with the Monarch, believing it to be the first.
Farragut's fleet, now anchored below Vicksburg, comprised the flagship Hartford, the sloops-of-war Brooklyn and Richmond, the corvettes Iroquois and Oneida, and six gunboats. Porter had joined with the Octorara, Miami, six other steamers, and seventeen of the mortar schooners. The orders of the government were peremptory that the Mississippi should be cleared. The Confederates held the river by a single thread. The fall of Memphis and the ruin of the famous river-defence fleet left between St. Louis and the Gulf but a solitary obstruction. This was Vicksburg.
Vicksburg stand at an abrupt turn, where within ten miles the winding river doubles upon itself, forming on the low ground opposite a long finger of land, barely three quarters of a mile wide. Opposite the extreme end of this peninsula, known as De Soto, the bluff reaches the highest point attained along the whole course of the river, the crest standing about 250 feet above the mean stage of water. Sloping slowly toward the river, the bluff follows it with a diminished altitude for two miles. Here stands the town of Vicksburg, then a place of about ten thousand inhabitants. Below the town the bluffs draw away from the river until, about four miles beyond the bend, their height diminishes to about 150 feet. For the defence of this line, as has been already seen, a formidable series of batteries had been constructed, extending from the bluff at the mouth of Chickasaw Bayou on the north to Warrenton on the south. These batteries now mounted twenty-six heavy guns, served by gunners comparatively well trained and instructed, and supported against an attack by land by about 6,000 infantry under Lovell. Almost simultaneously with the arrival of Farragut and Williams, came Breckinridge with his division, augmenting the effective force of the defenders to not less than 10,000. On the 30th of May Beauregard evacuated Corinth and drew back to Tupelo; Halleck did not follow; and so 35,000 Confederates were now set free to strengthen Vicksburg. Thus defended and supported Vicksburg was obviously impregnable to any attack by the combined forces of Farragut and Williams. On the 28th of June, Van Dorn arrived and took command of the Confederate forces.
After some preliminary bombarding and reconnoitring Farragut, who was well informed as to the condition of the defences, determined upon repeating before Vicksburg his exploit below New Orleans. Accordingly, on the 28th of July, in the darkness of the early morning, under cover of the fire of Porter's mortar flotilla, Farragut got under way with his fleet to pass the batteries of Vicksburg. The fleet was formed in two columns, with wide intervals, the starboard column led by the Hartford, the port column by the Iroquois. The battle was opened by the mortars at four o'clock, the enemy replying instantly. By six o'clock the Hartford and six of her consorts had successfully run the gauntlet, and lay safely anchored above the bend, while the rest of the fleet, through some confusion of events or misapprehension of orders, had resumed its former position below the bend. The losses of the navy in this engagement were fifteen killed and thirty wounded, including many scalded by the effect of a single shot that pierced the boiler of the Clifton. The eight rifled guns of Nims's and Everett's batteries having been landed, were placed in position behind the levee at Barney's Point, and replied effectively to the fire of the heavy guns on the high bluff, at a range of about fourteen hundred yards. This slight service was the only form of active co-operation by the army that the circumstances admitted; yet all the troops stood to arms, ready to do any thing that might be required.
On the 1st of July Davis joined Farragut with four gunboats and six mortar-boats of the Mississippi fleet. On the 9th Farragut received orders from the Navy Department, dated on the 5th, and forwarded by way of Cairo, to send Porter with the Octorara and twelve mortar-boats at once to Hampton Roads. Porter steamed down the river on the 10th. This was obviously one of the first-fruits of the campaign of the Peninsula just ended by the withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac to the James. Indeed, at this crisis, all occasions seemed to be informing against the Union plan of campaign, and the same events that drew the Confederate armies together served to draw the Union armies apart. Just as we have seen Pope called away from Fort Pillow on the eve of an attack that must have resulted in its capture, and taken in haste to swell the slow march of Halleck's army before Corinth, so now, when for a full month Corinth had been abandoned by the Confederates, Halleck's forces were being broken up and dispersed to all four of the winds, save that which might have blown them to the south. Halleck declared himself unable to respond to Farragut's urgent appeal for help. "I cannot," he said, when urged by Stanton; "I am sending reinforcements to General Curtis, in Arkansas, and to General Buell, in Tennessee and Kentucky." Not only this, but he was being called upon by Lincoln himself for 25,000 troops to reinforce the Army of the Potomac before Richmond. "Probably I shall be able to do so," Halleck told Farragut, "as soon as I can get my troops more concentrated. This may delay the clearing of the river, but its accomplishment will be certain in a few weeks."
Meanwhile Williams was hard at work on the canal. In addition to such details as could be furnished by the troops without wholly neglecting the absolutely necessary portions of their military duties, Williams had employed a force of about 1,200 negroes, rather poorly provided with tools. The work was not confined to excavation, but involved the cutting down of the large cottonwoods and the clearing away of the dense masses of willows that covered the low ground and matted the heavy soil with their tangled roots. By the 4th of July the excavation had reached a depth in the hard clay of nearly seven feet. The length of the canal was about one and a half miles. By the 11th of July the cut, originally intended to be four feet deep and five feet wide, with a profile of twenty square feet, had been excavated through this stiff clay to a depth of thirteen feet and a width of eighteen feet, presenting a profile of 234 feet. The river, which, up to this time, had been falling more rapidly than the utmost exertions had been able to sink the bottom of the canal, had now begun to fall more slowly, so that at last the grade was about eighteen inches below the river level. In a few hours the water was to have been let in. Suddenly the banks began to cave, and before any thing could be done to remedy this, the river, still falling, was once more below the bottom of the cut. Although with this scanty and overworked force he had already performed nearly twelve times the amount of labor originally contemplated, Williams does not seem to have been discouraged at this; his orders were to make the cut, and his purpose clearly was to make it, even if it should take, as he thought it would, the whole of the next three months. He set to work with vigor to collect laborers, wheelbarrows, shovels, axes, carts, and scrapers, and "to make a real canal," to use his own words, "to the depth of the greatest fall of the river at this point, say some thirty-five to forty feet." But this was not to be.
Until toward the end of June, the Polk and Livingston, the last vestiges of the Confederate navy on the Mississippi spared from the general wreck at Memphis, lay far up the Yazoo River, with a barrier above them, designed to cover the building of the ram Arkansas. This formidable craft was approaching completion at Yazoo City. The Ellets, uncle and nephew, with the Monarch and Lancaster, steamed up the Yazoo River to reconnoitre. The rams carried no armament whatever, but this the Confederate naval commander in the Yazoo did not know; so, unable to pass the barrier, he set fire to his three gunboats immediately on perceiving Ellet's approach. On the 14th of July, Flag-Officers Farragut and Davis sent the gunboats Carondelet and Tyler, and the ram Queen of the West, on a second expedition up the Yazoo to gain information of the Arkansas. This object was greatly facilitated by the fact that the Arkansas had at this very moment just got under way for the first time, and was coming down the Yazoo to gather information of the Federal fleet. The Arkansas, which had been constructed and was now commanded by Captain Isaac N. Brown, formerly of the United States Navy, was, for defensive purposes, probably the most effective of all the gunboats ever set afloat by the Confederacy upon the western waters. Her deck was covered by a single casemate protected by three inches of railroad iron, set aslant like a gable roof, and heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls that presented by the Merrimac, or Virginia, in Hampton Roads before the opportune arrival of the Monitor. On board the Tyler was a detachment of twenty sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin regiment, under Captain J. W. Lynn, and on the Carondelet were twenty men of the 30th Massachusetts regiment, under Lieutenant E. A. Fiske. About six miles above the Yazoo the Union gunboats encountered the Arkansas. The unarmed ram Queen of the West promptly fled. After a hard fight the Carondelet was disabled and run ashore, and the Tyler was forced to retire, with the Arkansas in pursuit. The sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin suffered more severely than if they had been engaged in an ordinary pitched battle, Captain Lynn and six of his men being killed and six others wounded.
The Queen of the West, flying out of the mouth of the Yazoo under a full head of steam, gave to the fleet at anchor the first intimation, though perhaps a feeble one, of what was to follow. Not one vessel of either squadron had steam. The ram Bragg, which might have been expected to do something, did nothing. The Arkansas, so seriously injured by the guns of the Carondelet and Tyler that the steam pressure had gone from 120 pounds to the square inch down to 20 pounds, kept on her course, and proceeded to run the gauntlet of the Union fleet, giving and taking blows as she went. Battered, but safe, she soon lay under the guns of Vicksburg.
This decided the fate of the campaign, and extinguished in the breast of Farragut the last vestige of the ardent hope he had expressed to the government a few days earlier that he might soon have the pleasure of recording the combined attack of the army and navy, for which all so ardently longed. The river was falling; the canal was a failure. Of the officers and men of the army, two fifths, and of the effective force of the army nearly three fourths, were on the sick-list. There was no longer any thing to hope for or to wait on. The night that followed the exploit of the Arkansas saw Farragut's fleet descending the river and once more running the gauntlet of the batteries of Vicksburg. A flying attempt was made by each vessel in succession, but by all unsuccessfully, to destroy the offending Arkansas.
On the 24th of July, Williams, with his small force, under convoy of Farragut's fleet, sailed down the river. So ended the second attempt on Vicksburg, usually called the first, when remembered. Its sudden collapse gave the Confederates the river for another year.