The Better Angels of Our Nature (39 page)

Sherman too was excited; this was to be his first independent command.

By the nineteenth all Sherman’s Memphis troops were embarked, seven thousand of his single division brought back from Oxford, plus two more divisions made up of fresh recruits from Halleck and McClernand’s recruits. For not only was Sherman departing before McClernand’s arrival, he was taking with him those troops the politician-soldier had sent down from Ohio for his own use.

Those transports leaving Memphis rendezvoused with the transports sent to pick up the extra eleven thousand troops from Helena, and on December 25, the expedition had reached Milliken’s Bend, a long curving stretch of the river twenty miles above Vicksburg. While one brigade was sent off to cut the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas railroad on the Louisiana side of the river, others were free to celebrate Christmas Day.

After a fine lunch, invited officers of army and navy adjourned to the stateroom of Porter’s flagship
Black Hawk,
where Jesse sang carols to the gentle accompaniment of an upright piano wheeled in for the occasion. For a few hours at least, these men, filled with esprit de corps, courtesy of Porter’s strong punch, could forget that war and all its accompanying miseries were waiting beyond these creaking timbers to engulf them.

By the following morning, they were at the mouth of the Yazoo River, where it drains into the Mississippi five miles just north of Vicksburg. Sherman went out looking for a suitable place from which his troops could assault the enemy. Judging by the way Jesse’s horse sank into the mud every time he tried to get past a slow trot as she followed the commander on his quest, there wasn’t much to choose from.

However, two days later, his troops were disembarked on what could only have been described as a swamp, or as Sherman himself described it, “Mississippi alluvion,” an island four miles wide and twelve miles long, bounded on the south by the strongly flowing Mississippi. Along the eastern side of this island was Chickasaw Bayou and, rising above that, Sherman’s immediate objective, Chickasaw Bluffs. If his infantry could survive the barrier of trees, felled by the enemy, a levee in the form of a parapet, artillery, and marksmen, they would then reach the bluffs themselves, defended by more Rebels, well protected behind their gun emplacements. The assault would be uphill all the way, his men exposed to pitiless, enfilading crossfire from batteries and rifle pits that commanded every inch of this hazardous terrain. The weather didn’t help much either. It rained almost constantly.

Sherman and Grant had arranged to coordinate their attacks, but there was no sign from Grant that he was ready. As the Ohioan told Porter, “Grant would never let me down, unless dead or taken prisoner, but if I delay any longer we will lose any chance that we still have for surprise.”

At noon the following day, the twenty-ninth, Sherman gave that signal and the main attack began.

By late evening, wild-eyed and breathless, the Ohioan was back on board the
Black Hawk,
soaked through to the bone and covered in mud, where Porter was awaiting him.

“The assault was a disaster. I’ve lost seventeen hundred men—” Sherman declared.

“Bear up, Sherman,” answered the admiral, taking him to the warmth of his stateroom and sending Jesse for rum from his steward. “Seventeen hundred is simply an episode in the war! You’ll lose seventeen
thousand
before this war is over and think nothing of it. We’ll have Vicksburg yet, before we die. Drink your rum and we’ll see what needs to be done.”

The wounded and the dead lay scattered among the trees and bushes, while those who were able dragged themselves to the place where they had started, and awaited the medical orderlies and surgeons who now moved among them in biting, icy rain. Others, too badly injured to extricate themselves, lay half-buried in the mud, the thick brown waters of the Yazoo oozing into their open wounds as they cried for help, their cries sounding louder and more pitiful than ever in the rainy night.

Men of the Sixth Missouri, who had managed to cross the bayou and been pinned down beneath the steep bank, had used their bare hands to scoop out holes in the earth to shield themselves; now enemy soldiers were holding their muskets outside of the parapets in a vertical position and firing down directly upon their heads. Southern farm boys using their countrymen instead of squirrels for target practice.

Jesse on the deck of the
Black Hawk
listened to the cries of the wounded and heard the occasional shot ring out, a crack, a brief flash that illuminated the darkness, followed immediately by a cry of surprise and pain, then silence. Dr. Cartwright and Jacob were out there somewhere, moving about in the mists, tending the wounded, comforting the dying. How could she sleep?

As dawn broke on January 1, 1863, celebrating New Year was the last thing on anyone’s mind. Overnight, the mists had turned to a fog that had settled thick and impenetrable on the river. It was still raining, a cold icy rain that seemed to penetrate to the very bone, leaving the men on the riverbanks shivering and cursing as they waited to hear if they would be facing the enemy, as well as the elements, that day.

Sherman, as always unwilling to trust to subordinates, rode out personally to reconnoiter the situation. He was glad that he had, for immediately he saw that the trees lining the banks bore watermarks ten feet above his head. His conclusion was unavoidable. If they remained there, his entire army risked being swallowed up and drowned. The second attack was postponed.

By midnight, hospital ships had hastily gathered in all their sick and wounded, their staff, and their tents. Stores, artillery, and troops were once more herded onto the boats. As Jesse brought a dejected Sherman a mug of coffee laced with rum they could both hear the whistle of enemy troop trains bringing reinforcements into Vicksburg. Reports had been coming to Sherman all that day of battalions of uniformed men marching up toward the Rebel fortifications at Synder’s Bluff, a dozen miles up the Yazoo, and into Yazoo City forty-five miles away. Jesse looked at Sherman’s drawn features, the bony nose over the forbidding mouth, the haunted look in the eyes, and the hands that shook ever so slightly. Clearly, Grant had not kept Pemberton busy. Something had gone badly wrong.

As the
Forest Queen
steamed slowly away from the half-drowned valley of the Yazoo the following morning, the dead from the assault of the twenty-ninth buried along the shifting riverbanks, bayous, and channels were already sinking into the mud, along with their crude wooden headboards. Soon nothing would remain.

For Sherman matters were about to get worse.

On January 2 the steamboat
Tigress
came down from Memphis to the mouth of the Yazoo River to Sherman’s headquarters at Young’s Point, Louisiana. Onboard was Major General John McClernand, and with him he carried an order from Abraham Lincoln to take over the Ohioan’s command.

McClernand’s first act was to divide the Thirteenth Corps into two, renaming it the “Army of the Mississippi,” which the politician himself would lead. He then gave Sherman more bad news. Grant wouldn’t be coming up to join them. There would be no movement on Vicksburg in the near future, he announced with relish, at least by Grant. On December 20 Earl Van Dorn’s men had raided Grant’s enormous supply depot at Holly Springs, rampaging through the town and destroying what they could not carry away. There had been sufficient troops to defend the place but they had surrendered without a fight. Grant had lost fifteen hundred men as prisoners and a million dollars in foodstuffs, munitions, and forage. He’d tried to warn Sherman through General Dodge at Corinth, but Nathan Bedford Forrest, raiding in western Tennessee, had cut the telegraph lines.

Grant’s army, without supplies or a supply line, had been immobilized. He was unable to keep Pemberton busy at Grenada, and consequently Pemberton had been able to send reinforcements to Vicksburg to meet Sherman’s attack at Chickasaw.

Sherman issued a message to be read to his men:

A new commander is here to lead you—I know that all good officers and soldiers will give him the same hearty support and cheerful obedience they have hitherto given me. There are honors enough in reserve for all and work enough too. Let each do his appropriate part, and our nation must in the end emerge from this dire conflict purified and ennobled by the fires which now test its strength and purity.

“Why do you stare at me that way?” he demanded of Jesse, as she waited by his desk to take the message to his clerks for copying. “Do you suppose I enjoy having a man like McClernand as my superior? But if I believe in anything, I believe in the right of our government to
govern
! If I abide merely by the decisions I think equitable and right and
rebel
against those I deem to be unjust and wrongheaded I shall be no better than those traitors in Richmond who seek to destroy our nation.”

A week later, on January 9, Porter’s ironclads demolished Fort Hindman, also known as Arkansas Post, fifty miles up the Arkansas River, while Sherman’s infantry attacked from the land side. It wasn’t Vicksburg, but it was something to boost the men’s morale and McClernand, who had remained safely onboard the
Tigress,
made the most of it to a pack of toadying reporters scribbling down his every self-serving word.

As the old year died, so did more Americans, this time at Stone’s River, a mile north of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Rosecran’s blue-clad army had met Bragg’s gray forces at dawn of December 31. Despite achieving an apparent tactical victory in the first stages of the battle, by the third day of January, Bragg had unexpectedly withdrawn his forces toward Tullahoma.

Though Negroes and abolitionists celebrated freedom on New Year’s Eve, not even the “glory of his
Emancipation Proclamation,
” or the sight of free Negroes and former slaves testifying, lamented a New York newspaper, had eased Abe’s suffering. Peace Democrats were calling for an armistice and a repeal of the Proclamation while soldiers from Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and especially Indiana and Illinois were threatening to desert, angry at being ordered to fight and die
just
to free niggers.

As for the news from the east. “The Army of the Potomac, is still at Fredericksburg, and so am I,” Jack Coppersmith had written Seth Cartwright, “encamped on the northern bank of the frozen Rappahannock in thick snow, fighting battles on behalf of my patients, against scurvy, typhoid, dysentery, diphtheria and pneumonia, and oh yes, homesickness,” for which, Cartwright’s best friend had written him, “there was but one cure—
home.
”

Meanwhile, back in his camp on the narrow levee, at Young’s Point, five miles from Vicksburg on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi, where the Rebel guns could not reach them, Sherman was, according to the
New York World,
“subject to fits of insanity, hates reporters, and foams at the mouth when he sees them, sure signs of a deep seated mania.” He was also, stated several newspapers, about to court-martial a reporter. That part was true.

Since the regular arrival of the newspapers, the Ohioan had given himself over to a depressed state of mind. Jesse watched him pace in his tent, smoking one cigar after another, while everyone else slept. It seemed inconceivable to her and to his staff that following the courage and strong leadership he had displayed at Shiloh and the hard work and dedication he had invested in his role as military governor of Memphis, he should once again find himself the victim of an insulting and vicious press campaign to discredit his command abilities and slander his reputation. Just how many times did a man have to prove himself?

The volatile and sensitive Sherman was threatening to retire before he was forced to join the miserable ranks of McClellan, Buell, McDowell, and Burnside, in his words “all killed by the press.”

However, Jesse was not overconcerned, for this was a different Sherman from the man who had sunk into dangerous melancholy in those early dark days. This was a far stronger Sherman, and though he had suffered badly from the failure at Chickasaw, he had come through and knew his value to Grant. He knew also that he occupied a significant position in an army of brave veterans.

There was something to celebrate. On January 18, despite McClernand’s confident assertion that Grant would not be coming up to join them, he appeared. He immediately assumed overall command, dividing the “Mississippi Army” into three corps. Sherman got the Fifteenth Corps. McClernand got the Thirteenth, and McPherson, the Seventeenth.

As the first glimmerings of spring appeared on the banks of the Mississippi, the Ohioan decided against resigning. Instead, he settled for that court-martial.

Thomas Knox, of the
New York Herald,
a civilian reporter, stood before a military court accused of revealing information to the enemy, of being a spy, and of disobeying Sherman’s order barring reporters from the Chickasaw Expedition. Knox admitted that the article he had written about Sherman was “malicious and based upon false information received from parties interested in defaming Sherman and his command” and that he had “brought up the old story of Sherman’s insanity merely for the purpose of gratifying personal revenge.” He further confessed, “Of course, General Sherman, I had no feeling against you personally, but you are regarded as the enemy of our set, and we must in self-defense write you down.”