The Better Angels of Our Nature (40 page)

After four days of deliberation, the board acquitted the reporter of the first two charges, but found him guilty of the third. He was expelled from the lines of the Army of the Tennessee and would be arrested if he ever returned. Colleagues from two other New York newspapers pleaded Knox’s cause with Mr. Lincoln, who agreed to revoke the banishment if Grant agreed. Grant would agree only if Sherman consented. Sherman would not consent.

As Jesse sat in the rear of “the courtroom,” in reality a large tent, and listened, the affair shook her hitherto unshakable faith in “Honest Abe’s” integrity. If such a great and good man was prepared to bow to the influence of the press, what chance was there for lesser mortals?

As for Sherman, he felt that he had won a major victory over these “sneaking, croaking scoundrels” but still he felt cheated, he had wanted Knox put in front of a firing squad and shot as a spy.

One thing was certain: All toadying reporters of
every
shade of yellow would now think twice before they ever again “wrote him down,” whether in self-defense or otherwise!

As for Sherman’s first independent command, no one could have been as brutally frank as he was. “I reached Vicksburg at the appointed time,” he had written Ellen, “landed, assaulted, and failed. I assume all responsibility and attach fault to no one—”

During February and March there followed a series of frustrating and abortive attempts at diverting the course of the Father of Rivers, searching for passages through clogged inlets, cutting levees that overflowed, trying to redirect lakes that did not wish to be redirected, while his men grew sick and ragged. A pure waste of human labor was how Sherman described it.

The men of Sherman’s beloved Fifteenth Corps, in their flood-plagued camps, were dying by the hundreds, falling victim to dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, malaria, and various fevers. That wasn’t all. Cartwright told Jesse that homesickness was so prevalent there in the mud and the swamps, where they shared their blankets with snakes and frogs and crawfish, that men were literally losing the will to survive. Those that succumbed to disease or melancholy were buried on the levees, the only dry land deep enough for graves, and even then, after a particularly persistent rainstorm, arms and heads could be seen protruding from the mud, and headboards simply washed away.

Grant was not immune to the muttering of his unhappy men, and he read the newspapers, who wrote that he was holding onto his command by the skin of his teeth. He was getting desperate.

In mid-March, he and Porter came up with a new idea. With five ironclads and three tugs the admiral was to go up the Yazoo River to Steele’s Bayou, and after traversing a series of waterways he would reenter the Yazoo on solid ground far above Haines Bluff.

However, the Rebels sniffed out these plans and Porter sent an eloquent plea to his friend via a Negro: “Help! We are trapped.”

Sherman threw himself and his men into the admiral’s rescue with his usual frenetic energy. He’d received the message on the evening of the nineteenth; by midnight he had loaded three small regiments on a transport, reached firm ground and disembarked his men. If not for Sherman, Porter and his boats would have been in enemy hands.

For Jesse it was a breathless, candlelit adventure through flooded bayous, snake-infested swamps and thick mud, in heavy rain, beneath a pitch-black night to rescue the general’s desperate but profoundly grateful friend.

For Grant it was yet another of his schemes that had come to nothing. His army was still on the wrong side of the river.

Finally, with the press and his enemies in the North urged on by the constantly intriguing McClernand, a disheartened nation, where volunteering for military service had all but ceased, and an election-bruised president badly in need of a victory to celebrate, Grant was forced to make a momentous decision.

Besides, there was another piece of intelligence to consider. Joseph E. Johnston, a general that both Sherman and Grant respected, was now in overall command of the Rebel troops in Mississippi and Tennessee.

When Sherman returned to his headquarters that evening from Grant’s headquarters onboard the
Magnolia
he was spitting nails.

“Grant wants Porter to run the Vicksburg batteries!” he exploded, rummaging around in his footlocker for a bottle of whiskey he had there. Before every item in the locker had been thrown into the air, Jesse took over the search and finally located the bottle. She poured him a full glass, half of which he downed before he continued. “He says he will then use those transports, if indeed any remained afloat after the Rebels have finished bombarding the flotilla, to pick up his army, which would meanwhile have marched down the Louisiana side of the Mississippi.” He moved to the map spread out on his table, and jabbed at the river, which separated them from their adversary. “Then the army will embark on Porter’s ships and he will cross them over to the Mississippi side at Grand Gulf, twenty-five miles below Vicksburg at the mouth of Big Black River. From there he will march inland and attack Vicksburg from the rear, in other words from the landward side.”

Jesse studied the map for a moment. “Why can’t we just cross to the other side and march toward Vicksburg?”

Her question brought forth a torrent of sarcasm. “Because,
General
Davis, there is an obstacle in the way, a small obstacle, called the Mississippi River. Have you been sleep-walking during our time here? Do you propose our men swim across? It’s a mile wide. Do you know what the ground is like west of the river? Exactly like it is here only more so. Directly to the north,” he pointed on the map, “is the vast Yazoo Delta, impassable to any large body of troops. Swampy, cut up with watercourses. Too wet for men to march and not deep enough to float a ship. You saw what happened to the men and horses. The locals say this is one of the wettest seasons they can recall. That makes the bayous and swamps protecting Vicksburg all the more impregnable. The army cannot march and it cannot cross the river without transports and we have no transports below Vicksburg.”

“Then why can’t Admiral Porter’s gunboats and mortar boats bombard the enemy artillery overlooking the river? Admiral Farragut tried it.”

“Yes, and failed, and no one would call him a coward and a slouch! We can bombard Vicksburg from the river ’til kingdom come but it doesn’t mean a damn if the army cannot land along the waterfront and take the city by storm. Have you any idea the level of casualties there would be if we ordered a river assault with troops coming ashore on the town’s waterfront, escalading the bluffs and storming the enemy’s positions? From the west, the riverfront, Vicksburg is impregnable. But Grant is now
determined
to risk Porter’s entire flotilla and Porter, being the brave and loyal man he is, even knowing the terrible risks, will comply, I know it.” He started to pace, his loud sighs punctuating his words. “I do not favor the scheme at all, not at all. It is hazardous in the extreme. I fear it is one of the most dangerous moves of the war. I
must
talk Grant out of it.”

Jesse, perhaps unwisely, persisted. “If the army cannot march and it cannot cross the river without transports, and we have no transports below Vicksburg, then surely General Grant’s idea to move the transports to a place where the men can embark and cross is a good one?”

Sherman walked to the opening and stared out at the rain. “If I can’t persuade Grant against this insanity, I’ll resign,” he stated as if Jesse hadn’t spoken. “I’ll quit and go where no one has heard of me.”

Jesse joined him at the tent fly and asked reasonably, “May I know if you intend to go to a hot climate or a cold one?”

“What the hell difference does that make?” Sherman slanted his eyes to stare at her as if he would eat her alive.

She shivered against the damp. “I need to know whether or not to pack my flannel underclothes.”

The first anniversary of Shiloh, a battle charged forever with meaning for those who had fought it in early April of ’61, came and went. Sherman chose to mark the somber occasion by giving Jesse the compass he had bought for himself on his way up to West Point in his seventeenth year.

“What is it?” she asked examining the watchlike object with letters.

“What is it? What is it? Why you ignorant wretch. It’s for telling direction. Now you’ll never again lose your way.”

As for Grant’s decision to run the gauntlet of Vicksburg’s batteries, despite Sherman’s four-page letter arguing articulately and passionately against it, his mind was made up. Even the straight-talking Porter could not persuade him otherwise. “You must understand,” he told Grant, “that once my ships pass the batteries, assuming they do, they will be past the point of no return. If we try to come back upstream my vessels’ progress against the current will be so slow that the batteries will pound my transports to firewood and sink my ironclads.”

Even though Sherman thought the plan sheer madness, he would, as always, do everything in his power to ensure the success of the plan.

If Grant lost the fleet and his army, McClernand would be back in command. Then Sherman would certainly, “…quit, and go to Saint Louis.”

20

In mud that’s many fathoms deep

On the night of April 16, under a cloudless sky, unfortunately bright with stars, Admiral David Dixon Porter, aboard his flagship
Benton,
steamed out into the darkness to lead off the flotilla of eleven vessels from the mouth of the Yazoo, across the dark, murky surface of the Mississippi. Except for the dim signal lights, hooded to prevent them from being spotted by the Rebels along the eastern shoreline, all vessels moved under blackout conditions.

They proceeded in single file at fifty-yard intervals into the first stretch of the mile-wide river, whose bend would swing them south, beyond which the giant bluff itself, holding the city aloft, disdainful in its apparent invincibility, rose up beneath the moonless heavens.

Federal soldiers, straining to see the flotilla’s progress from their camps at Milliken’s Bend on the Louisiana side of the river, held their breath in frustration, for they could see nothing but the lights of Vicksburg itself, slowly snuffed out, one by one, as the residents went to their beds, unaware of what was unfolding below.

While the author of this daring drama waited aboard the
Magnolia
with Mrs. Grant and their two sons, who were visiting, Sherman had given himself a more practical and active role. Practical and realistic as ever, “anticipating a scene,” as he explained to his protesting staff, he had ordered four large rowing boats hauled across the swamp to the river below Vicksburg. He had manned them with strong, willing sailors and struck off, with the intention of picking up any survivors from the disabled wrecks that he expected to be floating by, as soon as the Rebels realized what was happening. Positioning himself and the boats in the center of the straight stretch of the river below Vicksburg, Sherman waited.

Jesse waited too. With Sherman’s warning still echoing in her ears, that dire consequences would result from her attempt to follow him, she had bribed one of Porter’s young ratings. Two dollars and a penny whistle had got her the loan of his naval jacket and a cap. A cap into which she had crammed every telltale red hair and pulled it so far down over her reddish brows that here on the surface of the dark water she could hardly see a darn thing. But with the cap pulled down and the coat collar pulled up there was no chance that even the eagle-eyed Sherman would spot her manning a pair of oars in his brave little flotilla.

No matter how dire the consequences, she would not have missed being at Sherman’s side for this adventure, or at the least in one of his boats.

An hour went by as they sat there in self-imposed silence, muffled up against the cold, with nothing much to see, but plenty to think about as they stared into the blackness of the invisible shore. Then a low buzzing of voices started up, a rumor that the flagship
Benton,
with Porter onboard, leading the seven armored gunboats with coal barges lashed to their sides and three army transports loaded with supplies instead of soldiers, their boilers protected by water-soaked bales of hay, had cleared the mouth of the Yazoo.

“They’re passing Young’s Point!” announced someone in another boat, but was quickly silenced by his companions. How could he know? They couldn’t see a hand in front of their face.

Then Jesse, like her companions, watched in open-mouthed awe as a massive shadow seemed to drift out of the night and come slowly downriver toward them around the hairpin bend that led past Vicksburg’s dark, impenetrable bluffs.

It
was
the
Benton,
and everyone cheered, at least in their hearts, for even a murmur now might alert the Rebels manning the cannons on the riverfront. Then secrecy no longer mattered. As the
Benton
reached the first of the batteries, all hell broke loose.

A dazzling light suddenly illuminated the scene, followed by muzzle-flashing thunder and lightning. The sailor in front of Jesse shouted excitedly that Vicksburg itself was on fire and his companions took up the call. But they were wrong, it was not the city that had set the riverbanks ablaze, back-lighting Porter’s ships for Rebel cannoneers, but vigilant enemy pickets who had torched the abandoned De Soto railroad station midway up the point, and set fire to prepared tar barrels and pitch-soaked wood, turning black-night into bright day, as soon as they saw Porter’s ship and realized what the Yankees planned to do.

Sherman had been right to anticipate a scene, and what a scene!

Jesse heard the dreaded heavy artillery pieces of Vicksburg’s mighty defenses open up on targets lit up by the flames now leaping along the riverfront. The houses on both sides were engulfed in fire that threw its lurid colors across the water, making it seem as if the river itself were ablaze. Smoke billowed from ship and shore, flames leapt into the night sky, obliterating the stars while Rebel cannons sent out a deafening boom-boom.

There was an advantage however: Now with all pretense of secrecy stripped away, Porter’s ships could defend themselves, and Jesse joined in the cheers as the admiral’s vessels answered the Rebel broadsides by sending cannonades of their own into the city, the gunboats returning fire as they passed, trying to protect the transports desperately hugging the Louisiana shoreline. The noise was so deafening, as Rebel shot and shell rattled against the ironclads like hailstones, that many of the sailors in Sherman’s little convoy were forced to put their hands over their ears. But no one could drag their eyes from this fearful yet exciting scene as the
Lafayette,
with the captured Rebel ship
General Price
lashed to her starboard side, was penetrated by artillery fire. Jesse tried to count the hits on the
Price,
but lost count at ten when the
Lafayette
and
Louisville
became tangled in midstream, escaping destruction only through the courageous actions of the sailors aboard who cut loose the attached coal barges, setting both vessels free.

Next to feel the wrath of the enemy’s guns was the transport
Henry Clay,
set ablaze by cannon fire that knocked out her engines. The transport appeared to stagger, bringing full-throated cheers from the Rebel gunners on the Vicksburg heights.

As the now unmanageable steamer ran erratically past the gauntlet of Rebel artillery pandemonium broke out on her decks, a blinding flash, as though a bolt of lightning had struck the vast river, was instantly followed by an explosion that blinded those in the nearest rowboats. Jesse averted her gaze and, when she could look again, the
Henry Clay
was a blazing inferno, engulfed in swirls of black smoke.

The bowels of hell could not have been more hot and fierce, more deafening with fury and thunder, or more shrouded with choking, sulfurous clouds.

Sherman now ordered his boats to row toward the stricken
Clay
as members of her crew, some of them with their clothing on fire, jumped overboard. Some found a piece of flotsam to cling to, and floated downstream, others were picked up by the nearest of Sherman’s rowing boats.

As Jesse’s boat got closer she readied herself to help haul in the survivors, but one particular survivor, struggling desperately to maintain his slipping hold on a small piece of wood, caught her attention and all but drove the breath from her lungs.

It was Seth Cartwright.

In the next second, Jesse discarded her heavy jacket and hat and went over the side of the boat. With her breath snatched from her throat by the shock of the cold water, she struck out with strong strokes toward the dark-haired figure. She reached him just as his fingers had slipped from the splintered wood. He had gone under. She dived down and held him about the waist, breaking through the surface with his head so he could quickly gasp for air. But why did the surgeon seem so heavy? She grabbed another hunk of deck as it floated by, urging Cartwright to hold on with all his strength. Then she dived once more beneath the surface. She saw immediately what was wrong. His father’s medical bag was tied to one end of a length of rope, while the other end was tied around his waist. The bag was a dead weight, an anchor dragging him down. She fumbled with the knot, her fingers stiff from the cold, finally untying it. She rejoined him on the surface.

The sailors in the nearest rowboat had spotted them and were heading in their direction.

She saw Sherman stand up in the yawl, tear off his shapeless hat, and heard his hoarse voice shouting, “Jesse Davis?” with unmistakable shock, straining for a better look at the two heads bobbing about in the water. “Hang on, hang on, Sherman is here! Sherman is coming! Have courage, we are coming for you.”

She was so close to the burning ship, that even in the water she could feel the heat of the flames searing her skin, singeing her eyebrows. She heard Sherman shout to his oarsmen, “Take us in as close as you can! Take us in closer. Closer!” as he crouched in the boat and leaned out so far that these exhausted men, muscles straining to obey Sherman’s orders, feared he would fall in, held fast to his field coat. “Jesse, reach out for my hand? Can you stretch out to me? Try, you must try!”

“I can’t sir—if I lose the float—we will both—go under.” She was fighting to keep from swallowing the water that swept repeatedly over her head. “The doctor can’t swim, sir, and he’s been injured.” Saying this she took in a mouthful of the river and choked, coughing until her face was red.

“Jesse!” Sherman bellowed.

“I’m all right,” she shouted, gulping for air, “you must take up the doctor first. He’s near unconscious.”

With water washing over the blood from cuts to his forehead and cheeks, spectacles gone, Cartwright barely had the strength to grasp the hands stretched out to him. “My bag—” he said with failing breath, “—my bag—”

“I have it, sir—I have your bag,” Jesse reassured him as the soldiers finally hauled him into the boat, where he lay, still mumbling about his bag.

As Jesse jettisoned the wooden float, willing hands, above all Sherman’s, grabbed at her waterlogged clothing. The water rose in a sudden swell and completely covered the top of her head. She was choking. Her lungs were bursting. Her eyes were on fire. She was floating downstream, and away from Sherman’s boat. She struggled to get back, to swim against the current, but her arms and legs were aching and would no longer obey her commands. Some of the men were rowing toward her, while others reached out to her, their fingertips touching hers, Sherman’s arms stretching the farthest. But it was useless, Jesse’s strength and fortitude had finally given out. The last thing she saw as she disappeared beneath the churning swell was the look of horrified disbelief on Sherman’s face. She heard him, as if in a dream, shout her name and tried to respond, but her voice had been silenced. All was a watery darkness. She closed her eyes and felt a strange kind of peace.

To the whimsical among the sailors, it might have seemed as if the mighty Mississippi had tried to swallow the boy. Then disgusted with such a scrawny catch had spit him out along with an old black leather bag that hung from a length of rope around his waist, for that boy rose from the depths of the river as though hurled to the surface by an unseen hand.

Now when several pairs of strong arms reached out, Jesse found herself lifted to safety and a blanket placed around her shoulders.

Her first concern was for the doctor, but he looked comfortable enough with a folded blanket beneath his head and one to cover him. They had come well prepared.

Even with the muddy waters of the Mississippi still flowing from her ears, Jesse had little trouble hearing a voice bellow, “Jesse Davis, you are in grave trouble!”

“Sir!” she cried in breathless alarm, ignoring Sherman’s warning as water dripped into her eyes. She was holding up the end of the rope that had held Cartwright’s medical case. “The bag—where is the doctor’s bag?”

“I got it here, lad,” said the sailor who had cut the rope.

“Thank you. Thank you—” she told him. “You don’t know how much it means to him.”

“Does it mean more to him than a young lad’s life?” he asked, handing over the surgeon’s heritage with a rueful smile and a shake of his venerable head.

His beard and face all coated in gunpowder, his eyebrows scorched, his bloodshot eyes encircled in soot, Sherman boarded the
Benton
to be greeted by an exuberant but weary admiral. He struck the sailor on the back with a force that would have felled a less robust man.

“Do you have many injured?”

“A few cuts and some broken bones, there’s been a deal of damage from what I can see, but only the
Henry Clay
lost. But, bravo, Sherman, I saw what you and your men did, sir, I saw what you did. You were magnificent!”

“One of my surgeons was injured doing his duty. Can we bring him aboard?”

“Not dead, I hope, Sherman?”

“He was breathing last time I looked.”

A litter was lowered over the side and doctor
and
bag were strapped to the canvas and passed up carefully by the sailors who had rescued them. Jesse checked his pulse, wiped his wet, bloodied face with the corner of the blanket. He was in good hands, Porter’s own surgeon was in attendance as they carried him below.