History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

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."