CHAPTER VII
PORT GIBSON
The twenty-eight guns sent out continuously shot and shell against the blue ironclads, the gunboats, the transports. The blue returned the fire with fervency. Not before had the shores rocked to such sound, the heavens been filled with such a display. The firing was furious, the long shriek and explosion of crossing shells, bluff and river screaming like demons. All the sky was lit. The massed smoke hung huge and copper red, while high and low sprang the intense brightness of the exploding bomb. The grey guns set on fire several transports. These burned fiercely, the coal barges, the cotton bales that made their shields betraying them now, burning high and burning hard. The village of De Soto was aflame. The Mississippi River showed as light as day, a strange red daylight, stuffed with infernal sound. Through it steadily, steadily, the blue fleet pushed down the river, running the gauntlet of the batteries. All the boats were struck, most were injured. A transport was burning to the water’s edge, coal barges were scattered and sunk. Firing as it went, each ironclad a moving broadside, the fleet kept its way. The twenty-eight did mightily, the gunners, powder-grimed automata, the servers of ammunition, the officers, the sharpshooters along the shore—all strove with desperation. Up and down and across, the night roared and flamed like a Vulcan furnace. The town shook, and the bluffs of the river; the Mississippi might have borne to the sea a memory of thunders. Less a sunken transport, less one burning low, less scattered and lost small craft, the fleet—scarred and injured though it was—the fleet passed! It ran the gauntlet, and at dawn there was a reason the less for holding Vicksburg.
Two nights later other ironclads got by. Grant had now a fleet at New Carthage, on the Louisiana shore, halfway between Vicksburg and Grand Gulf. He proceeded to use it and the transports that had passed. The sky over the grey darkened rapidly; there came a feeling of oppression, of sultry waiting, of a storm gathering afar, but moving. Sherman again threatened to approach by the Yazoo, but that was not felt to be the head of the storm. From La Grange, in Tennessee, southward, Grierson was ruining railroads and burning depots of supplies, but that was but a raid to be avenged by a raid. In the cloud down the river was forging the true lightning, the breath of destruction and the iron hail. Vicksburg held its breath and looked sideways at small noises, then recovered itself, smiled, and talked of sieges in history successfully stood by small towns. On the twenty-ninth, Porter’s squadron opened fire on the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, and that night, under a fierce bombardment, ironclads, gunboats, and transports ran this defence also of the Mississippi. At dawn there was another reason the less for confining few troops in small places.
On the thirtieth of April, Grant began to ferry his army across from the Louisiana shore. Brigade by brigade, he landed it at Bruinsburg, nine miles below Grand Gulf, sixty below Vicksburg. At Grand Gulf was Bowen with five thousand grey soldiers with which to delay Grant’s northward march. Between Bruinsburg and Grand Gulf ran Bayou Pierre, wide and at this season much swollen, but with an available bridge at Port Gibson. Bowen’s three brigades took the road to the last-named place, and Bowen telegraphed to Pemberton at Vicksburg for reinforcements. Pemberton sent Tracy’s Alabama brigade of Stevenson’s division, and with it Anderson’s Battery, Botetourt Artillery. The ——th Virginia, figuring in this story, marched also.
They broke camp at dusk. “Night march!” quoth ——th Virginia. “Double time! Old Jack must have come down from Virginia!”
The colonel heard. “Old Jack and Marse Robert are looking after Fighting Joe Hooker to-day. I saw the telegram. They’re moving toward the Wilderness.”
“Well, we wish we were, too,” said the men. “Though the Mississippi is mighty important, we know!”
There existed a road, of course, only it had not been in condition for a year. No roads were kept up nowadays, though occasionally some engineer corps momentarily bettered matters in some selected place in order that troops might pass. Troops had gone up and down this road, and the feet of men and horses, the wheels of wagons and gun-carriages had added force to neglect, making the road very bad, indeed. It was narrow and bad, even for Southern roads in wartime. To the aid of neglect and the usage of hoof and wheel had come the obliterating rains. Bayous, too, had no hesitation in flinging an arm across. It was a season when firm ground changed into marsh and marsh into lake and ordinary fords grew too deep for fording. Miles of the miserable road ran through forest—no open, park-like wood whereon one might travel on turf at the sides of the way, but a far Southern forest, impenetrable, violent, resenting the road, giving it not an inch on either hand, making raids and forays of its own. Where it could it flung poisoned creepers, shot out arms in thorn-mail, laid its own dead across that narrow track. It could also blot out the light, keep off the air.
At midnight the Big Black River was reached. Oh, the reinforcements for Bowen were tired and worn! The night was inky, damp, and hot. The ——th Virginia, closing Tracy’s column, must wait and wait for its turn at the crossing. There was a long, old-type ferryboat, and many men and horses swam the stream, but it took time, time to get the whole brigade across! Broken and decaying wood was gathered and a tall fire made. Burning at the water’s edge, it murkily crimsoned landing and stream, the crowded boat slow passing from shore to shore, and the swimming, mounted men. Above it, on the north side, the waiting regiments threw themselves down on the steaming earth, in the rank and wild growth. The ——th Virginia, far back on the road, had a fire of its own. Behind it yet were the guns accompanying Tracy.
As the fire flamed up Artillery drew near, drawn by the genial glow. “May we? Thank you! If you fellows are as wet as we are, you are wet, indeed. That last bayou was a holy terror!”