SHERMAN'S DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

575

destroying, blowing up the arsenal, and burning the public property,' Van Dorn's men departed at five o'clock in the evening, highly elated, and immediately afterward assailed in rapid succession the National troops at Coldwater, Davis's Mills, Middleburg, and even Bolivar, but without other success than the effect produced upon Grant by a serious menace of his communications. Two hours after they had left Holly Springs, the four thousand troops which Grant had dispatched by railway to re-enforce Murphy arrived. They had been detained by accident on the way, or they might have reached the place in time to have saved the property. Its loss was a paralyzing blow to the expedition, for Grant was compelled to fall back to Grand Junction, to save his army from the most imminent peril, and perhaps from destruction. This left General Pemberton at liberty to concentrate his forces at Vicksburg for its defense.

In the mean time General Sherman had been preparing for his descent upon Vicksburg. While in command of the right wing of the Army of the Tennessee, with his head-quarters at Memphis, he had thoroughly drilled his troops, and put that important post in the most complete defensive state. In Fort Pickering he had constructed one of the finest of the numerous look-outs that were so extensively used by both parties during the war, from which, on several occasions, notice of the approach of guerrillas was given in time to save the place from pillage.

• Dec. 20,

1862.

Sherman left Memphis with a little more than twenty thousand troops in transports, on the day of the sad disaster at Holly Springs, leaving as a guard to the city a strong force of infantry and cavalry, and the siege-guns in place with a complement of artillerists. He proceeded to Friar's Point, a little below where Hovey landed, where he was joined by Admiral D. D. Porter (whose naval force was at the mouth of the Yazoo River) in his flag-ship Black Hawk, and with the gun-boats Marmora and Conestoga to act as a convoy. On the same evening the troops at Helena embarked, and joined Sherman at Friar's Point, and made his entire force full thirty thousand strong. Arrangements for future action were completed the following morning by the two commanders. The army and navy moved down the stream, and were all at the mouth of the Yazoo River, about twelve miles above Vicksburg, on the 25th. The plan was to make an attack upon Vicksburg in the rear, with a strong force, and for that purpose

LOOK-OUT.

Dec. 22.

1 The kind and value of the public property destroyed was as follows:-1,809,000 fixed cartridges and other ordnance stores, including 5,000 rifles and 2,000 revolvers, $1,500,000; 100,000 suits of clothing and other quartermasters' stores, $500,000; 5,000 barrels of flour and other commissary stores, $500,000; medical stores, $1,000,000; 1,000 bales of cotton and $600,000 worth of sutlers' stores.

2 It was at about this time, as we have observed (page 551), that Forrest was making his raid in West Tennessee.

The fleet consisted of more than sixty transports, besides a number of gun-boats (some of them armored), and some mortar-boats.

576

NATURAL DEFENSES OF VICKSBURG.

the fleet and army passed up the Yazoo (which, in a great bend, sweeps round within a few miles of Vicksburg') twelve miles, to Johnston's Landing, the troops debarking at points in that vicinity along the space of three miles, without opposition.

• Dec. 26, 1862.

To understand the difficulties in Sherman's way, we must consider, for a moment, the topography of his field of intended operations. The bluffs or hills on which Vicksburg stands rise a little below the city, and extend northeast twelve or fifteen miles to the Yazoo River, where they terminate in Haines's Bluff. In the rear of the city the ground is high and broken, falling off gradually toward the Big Black River,twelve miles distant. This

THE BLACK HAWK.

range of hills, fronting the Mississippi and the Yazoo, was fortified along its entire length, and the only approach to Vicksburg by land was up their steep faces, through which roads were cut in a manner indicated by the engraving. At the base of these bluffs were rifle-pits. To render the approach still more difficult, there is a deep

natural ditch, called Chickasaw Bayou, extending from the Yazoo, below Haines's Bluff, passing along near the base of the bluffs for some distance, and emptying into the Mississippi. Added to this is a deep slough, whose bottom is quicksand, and supposed to have once been a lake which stretched along the foot of the bluffs, and entered the bayou where the latter approached them. These formed a natural moat in front of the fortifications, while on the plain over which Sherman had to approach the bluffs the cypress forests were felled in places, and formed a difficult abatis.

UPPER ENTRANCE TO VICKSBURG.2

Sherman's army was organized in four divisions, commanded respectively by Brigadier-Generals G. W. Morgan, Morgan L. Smith, A. J. Smith, and Frederick Steele. The first three divisions had three brigades each, and the fourth one (Steele's), four. In the plan of attack Steele was assigned to the

1 The Yazoo River is a deep and narrow stream formed by the Tallahatchee and Yallobusha Rivers, which unite in Carroll County, Mississippi. It runs through an extremely fertile alluvial plain.

2 This is a view on what is called the Valley road, the one entering Vicksburg from the north, nearest the river. At the point where this little sketch was taken was a strong palisade, and near it was a block-house, both of which were well preserved when the writer visited Vicksburg, in April, 1866.

MOVEMENTS AT CHICKASAW BAYOU.

577

command of the extreme left, Morgan the left center, M. L. Smith the right center, and A. J. Smith the extreme right. The latter division not having arrived from Milliken's Bend (where it had remained as a support to a force under Colonel Wright, sent to cut the railway on the west side of the Mississippi, that connects Vicksburg with Shreveport) when Sherman was ready to advance, General Frank P. Blair, of Steele's division, was placed in command on the extreme right. All of these divisions were to converge toward the point of attack on the bluffs at or near Barfield's plantation, where only, it had been ascertained, the bayou could be crossed at two points-one at a sand-bar, and the other at a narrow levee. Both were commanded by Confederate batteries and rifle-pits. The battery at the levee was on an ancient In

dian mound,' near the bank of the bayou, and could sweep nearly the whole ground over which the Nationals must advance. Everywhere on that advance the ground was so soft that causeways had to be built for the passage

of the troops and cannon. Difficulties were found to be much greater and more numerous than was anticipated.

• Dec., 1862.

The army was ready to move on the 27th, and the center divisions, including Blair's, marched slowly toward the bluffs, driving the Confederate pickets, silencing a battery on the left where Steele was to join the forward movement, and cheered by the confidence of the commanding general that full success would crown their endeavors. Alas! he did not then know of the disaster at Holly Springs, the recoil of Grant from Oxford, and the heavy re-enforcements which Pemberton had been sending to Vicksburg. He knew that the line that he was to attack was fifteen miles in length, and supposed there were only fifteen thousand men to man it, and he believed that, with his superior force concentrated at some point, he might break through the line, demolish it in detail, and march triumphantly into Vicksburg. He knew the position to be assailed was a strong one, but he was not aware of the ample preparations, by rifle-pits rising tier above tier upon the slopes, and batteries crowning every hill, to enfilade his troops at every point, and make success almost an impossibility. In ignorance of the strength before him, and expecting Grant's co-operation on the morrow, Sherman reposed on the night of the 27th, his army bivouacking in the cold air without fires.

The army pressed forward on Sunday morning, the 28th, driving the pickets of the Confederates across the bayou. Steele, moving on the extreme left, was soon checked by a slough and cypress swamp, across which there was no passage excepting by a corduroy causeway, enfiladed by the Confederate batteries and rifle-pits. Meanwhile Morgan had advanced under cover of a heavy fog and the fire of his artillery against the Confede He pressed on to a point at the bayou where it approaches

rate center.

The Httle sketch above shows the appearance of the ancient mound when the writer visited it, in 1866. It was about twenty-five feet in height

VOL. II-37

578

BATTLE OF CHICKASAW BAYOU.

nearest the bluffs, and where it was impassable. He held his ground there throughout the day and the following night. At the same time M. L. Smith had advanced far to the right, and before noon was disabled by a sharpshooter's ball wounding his hip, when his command devolved on General David Stuart. A. J. Smith pushed forward on the extreme right until his pickets reached a point from which Vicksburg was in full view.

Steele's division was brought around that night to a point a little below the junction of the bayou with the Yazoo, and on the morning of the 29th, General Sherman, aware that the force of the Confederates on his front was rapidly increasing, ordered a general advance of his whole army. Morgan, being nearest the bayou and the bluffs, was expected to cross early and carry the batteries and heights on his front; but at the dawn the Confederates opened a heavy cannonade upon him, and it was almost noon before he thought it prudent to move forward. Meanwhile detachments had been constructing bridges over the bayou, for the purpose of crossing to assail the foe on the bluffs, and when Morgan was ready to move, Blair had come up with his brigade and was ready to go into the fight, with Thayer, of Steele's division, as a support.

Blair had moved forward between the divisions of Smith and Morgan, and obliquing to the left, which exposed him to a severe flank fire, in which Colonel J. B. Wyman, of the Thirteenth Illinois, was killed, he crossed Morgan's track, and there detached two regiments to the support of that commander. With the remainder he worked his way to the front of Morgan's left, near the house of Mrs. Lake, and at the van of Steele he crossed the bayou over a bridge his men had built, and advanced to the slough, whose

SWAMP

STEELE DEO, SE,

SLOUGH

CHICKASA

YOU BLAIR

LAKE

ARTILLER

bottom was a quicksand, and its banks were covered with a snarl of felled trees. Over this they passed, Blair leaving his horse floundering in the shallow water with its unstable bed. Dashing through the abatis, and followed by Thayer, with only a single regiment (Fourth Iowa) of his brigade then in hand, he pressed across a sloping plateau, captured two lines of rifle-pits, and fought desperately to gain the crest of the hill before him, while De Courcy's brigade of Morgan's command, which had crossed the bayou, charged on his right. But the effort was vain. The assailants suffered terribly, for the hills were swarming with men, bristling with weapons, and ablaze with the fire of murderous guns. It was a struggle of three thousand in open fields below with ten thousand behind intrenchments above. Pemberton, who had arrived and was in command, had been re-enforced by three brigades from Grenada, released by Grant's retrograde move ment, and he defied Sherman. Blair and his companions were compelled to

JOHNSON

JSMITH

DUNION

CONFEDERATE

THE BATTLE OF CHICKASAW BAYOU.

A NEW PLAN OF OPERATIONS.

579

retreat. He had lost one-third of his brigade, and De Courcy, by a flank charge by the Seventeenth and Twenty-sixth Louisiana, lost four flags, three hundred and thirty-two men made prisoners, and about five hundred small arms. So heavy and active was the force on the bluffs, that all attempts to construct bridges were frustrated, and they were abandoned. General A. J. Smith's advance (Sixth Missouri) had crossed the bayou at a narrow sandbar on the extreme right, but could not advance because of the cloud of sharp-shooters that confronted them. So they lay below the bank until night, and then withdrew. Darkness closed the struggle, when Sherman I had lost nearly two thousand men, and his foe only two hundred and seven. Thus ended THE BATTLE OF CHICKASAW BAYOU.

General Sherman was loth to relinquish his effort against Vicksburg. He had ordered another attack on the left after Blair was repulsed, but

wisely countermanded it; but that night, while rain was falling copiously, he caused his men to rest on their arms without fire, preparatory to another struggle in the morning. During the night he visited Admiral Porter on board his flag-ship, and concerted a fresh plan of attack, but on the following day, after a careful estimate of his chances for success, and despairing of any co-operation on the part of Grant, he concluded to abandon the attempt to penetrate the Confederate lines, but to try and turn them. He proposed to go stealthily up the Yazoo

a Dec. 20, 1862.

1 In this attack Lieutenant-Colonel Dister, of the Fifty-eighth Ohio. and Major Jaensen, of the Thirty-first Missouri, were killed. Colonel T. C. Fletcher, of the latter regiment, who is now (1867) Governor of Missouri, and his Lieutenant-Colonel, Simpson, were wounded. Fletcher was made a prisoner.

2 This was the appearance of the battle-ground of Chickasaw Bayou when the writer sketched it, just at Caning of a warm day in April, 1866. The view is taken from the road (see map on page 578), on the slope of