The Man Who Saved the Union (36 page)

One of the steamers, the
Henry Clay
, caught fire and burned for nearly an hour. The crew abandoned ship but the pilot stayed aboard long enough to run the vessel aground. He leaped off and clung to a plank, which kept him afloat for four miles until he was picked up.

Grant watched the battle from a river transport that kept just out of range. “
The sight was magnificent, but terrible,” he said. Yet not nearly as terrible as it might have been. The flotilla made it past the Confederate guns. “My mind was much relieved when I learned that no one on the
transports had been killed and but few, if any, wounded.” The damage to the vessels was repairable.

Grant was most pleased. “
Our experiment of running the batteries of Vicksburg I think has demonstrated the entire practicability of doing so with but little risk,” he wrote Halleck. “I shall send six more steamers by the batteries as soon as they can possibly be got ready.”

31

T
HE RUNNING OF THE BATTERIES OPENED THE RIVER BELOW
V
ICKSBURG
to Grant’s army, and he proposed to exploit the opportunity at once. “
I move my headquarters to Carthage tomorrow,” he told Halleck on April 21. From the west bank of the river he would direct operations against the Mississippi side. “Every effort will be exerted to get speedy possession of Grand Gulf and from that point to open the Mississippi.” Grand Gulf, at the mouth of the Big Black River, was the first railhead below Vicksburg; control of the town would enable Grant to strike at the rear of Vicksburg or inland toward Jackson. He fairly exuded optimism. “If I do not underestimate the enemy my force is abundant with a foothold once obtained to do the work.”

His good feeling only increased during the following week. “
In company with Admiral Porter I made today a reconnaissance of Grand Gulf,” he wrote Sherman on April 24. “My impressions are that if an attack can be made within the next two days, the place will easily fall.” Preparations took longer than expected, but three days after his letter to Sherman he wrote to Halleck: “
I am now embarking troops for the attack on Grand Gulf. Expect to reduce it tomorrow.” To Julia he said that the capture of Grand Gulf would constitute “
virtual possession of Vicksburg and Port Hudson and the entire Mississippi River.”

Grant’s plan was for Porter’s gunboats to engage the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, silence the rebel guns and cover the landing of the Union troops, which would storm and carry the fort there. Porter’s crews opened fire at eight o’clock in the morning of April 29. For five hours they blasted the Confederate positions. “
From a tug out in the stream, I witnessed the whole engagement,” Grant reported after the
battle. “Many times it seemed to me the gunboats were within pistol shot of the enemy’s batteries.” But they failed to suppress the rebel fire. The batteries were too high above the water and too well emplaced.

Changing plans midstream, Grant decided to circumvent Grand Gulf and land his troops at Bruinsburg, ten miles down the river. A slave who had escaped to the Union lines reported that a good road linked Bruinsburg to Port Gibson, several miles behind Grand Gulf. Grant again summoned Porter into action. “
The gunboats made another vigorous attack and in the din the transports safely ran the blockade,” Grant subsequently explained to Halleck. The troops meanwhile moved overland to a point on the Louisiana shore below Grand Gulf; the next day they were ferried to Bruinsburg.

“
When this was effected I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since,” Grant recalled later. “Vicksburg was not yet taken, it is true, nor were its defenders demoralized by any of our previous moves. I was now in the enemy’s country, with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg between me and my base of supplies. But I was on dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy. All the campaigns, labors, hardships and exposures from the month of December previous to this time that had been made and endured were for the accomplishment of this one object.”

Relief causes some persons to relax; it prompted Grant to redouble his effort. “
The march immediately commenced for Port Gibson,” he told Halleck a short while later. Grant’s soldiers were issued three days’ rations; with these in their haversacks they set off for the Mississippi interior. They made contact with the enemy a few miles from Port Gibson in the predawn darkness of May 1, and a battle ensued. “The fighting continued all day and until dark over the most broken country I ever saw,” Grant explained. “The whole country is a series of irregular ridges divided by deep and impassable ravines, grown up with heavy timber, undergrowth and cane. It was impossible to engage any considerable portion of our forces at any one time.” But the Union troops drove the Confederates steadily back. “
General Bowen’s, the rebel commander’s, defense was a very bold one and well carried out,” Grant told Halleck. “My force, however, was too heavy for his and composed of well disciplined and hardy men who know no defeat and are not willing to learn what it is.” Bowen evacuated Port Gibson that night.

Grant proposed to maintain the pressure against the Confederates. “The country will supply all the forage required for anything like an
active campaign and the necessary fresh beef,” he wrote from Grand Gulf, which the Confederates had evacuated to strengthen Vicksburg. “I shall not bring my troops into this place but immediately follow the enemy, and if all promises as favorably hereafter as it does now, not stop until Vicksburg is in our possession.”

Grant’s subordinates thought he was moving too fast. Even the energetic Sherman warned him to slow down. “
Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons,” Sherman urged. “This road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road.”

“
I do not calculate upon the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” Grant answered. “I know it will be impossible without constructing additional roads. What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.” Initial experience had been promising. “We started from Bruinsburg with an average of about two days’ rations and received no more from our own supplies for seven days,” he told Sherman. “Abundance was found in the meantime. Some corn-meal, bacon and vegetables was found, and an abundance of beef and mutton.”

Grant knew that Halleck, especially, wouldn’t like his audacious plan, but he guessed that once he started he might be out of reach of any countermanding order from Washington. “
I shall communicate with Grand Gulf no more except it becomes necessary to send a train with heavy escort,” he telegraphed Halleck on May 11. “You may not hear from me again for several days.”

W
ith this parting message, Grant commenced the greatest gamble of his career. Halleck wanted him to head south and join forces with
Nathaniel Banks, who was approaching Port Hudson; the combined army would move deliberately against that fortress and then Vicksburg. But Banks informed Grant he couldn’t reach Port Hudson for another week and then with merely fifteen thousand troops. Grant decided he couldn’t wait. “
The enemy would have strengthened his position and been reinforced by more men than Banks could have brought,” he related afterward. “I therefore determined to move independently of Banks, cut loose from my base, destroy the rebel force in rear of Vicksburg and invest or capture the city.”

But doing so required nerve in the commander and alacrity in his
subordinates. One rebel army, commanded by
John Pemberton, occupied Vicksburg; another, under Joseph Johnston, was near Jackson. Either one might give Grant trouble; combined they could crush him. Yet Grant self-consciously put himself between the two commands, intending to strike one and then the other and by this means beat both.

He knew that any number of things could go wrong. His men might lose their way in the unfamiliar country. His harvest of the local crops and livestock might fail. A critical message might be intercepted. His intelligence regarding the enemy’s numbers might be mistaken. (In fact it was: Grant thought Pemberton had thirty thousand men when he actually had more than fifty thousand.)

Yet Grant took the gamble. His instinct, as always, was to fight, to carry the battle to the enemy, to hit him when he was off balance and then to hit him again. “
The enemy is badly beaten, greatly demoralized and exhausted of ammunition,” he wrote Sherman on May 3. “The road to Vicksburg is open.”

It wouldn’t stay open for long. Speed was essential. “
Every day’s delay is worth two thousand men to the enemy,” Grant declared to
William Hillyer on May 5. On May 9 he told Julia: “
Two days more, or Tuesday next, must bring on the fight which will settle the fate of Vicksburg.”

To take Vicksburg he turned away from Vicksburg, driving instead toward Jackson. “
Move your command tonight to the next cross roads three or four miles to your front, if you can find water,” he told
James McPherson on May 11. “And tomorrow push with all activity into Raymond.… We must fight the enemy before our rations fail.” After McPherson engaged the Confederates at Raymond in a sharp battle that left hundreds killed or wounded, Grant related the result to
John McClernand: “
The enemy was driven at all points.… He retreated towards Clinton and no doubt to Jackson. I have determined to follow and take first the capital of the State.”

Grant realized that his decision would expose his rear to an attack by Pemberton, who at the least could sever his line of communication. “
So I finally decided to have none—to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole force eastward,” he recalled. “I then had no fears for my communications, and if I moved quickly enough could turn upon Pemberton before he could attack me in the rear.”

He issued orders more rapidly than ever. “
Move one division of your corps through this place to Clinton, charging it with the duty of destroying the railroad as far as possible to a point on the direct Raymond and
Jackson road,” he instructed McClernand on May 13 from Raymond. “Move another division three or four miles beyond Mississippi Springs, and eight or nine miles beyond this place, and a third to Raymond ready to support either of the others.” He ordered Sherman: “
Move directly towards Jackson, starting at early dawn.” Just after midnight he wrote McPherson from the outskirts of Jackson: “
Send me word how you are progressing; we must get Jackson or as near as it is possible tonight.”

Grant discovered that Johnston at Jackson was expecting reinforcements imminently; the discovery caused him to push even harder. Heavy rains delayed the attack on Jackson, but on the morning of May 14 McPherson and Sherman struck the outer defenses of the city. The Confederates resisted primarily to cover Johnston’s withdrawal of the main body of his outnumbered force lest the whole be captured by Grant’s men. Johnston got away to the north, but Grant took Jackson, sleeping that night in the house where, he was told, Johnston had slept the night before.

B
agging the capital of the home state of
Jefferson Davis won Grant praise in the North, but he himself considered it merely a step to the larger goal of reducing Vicksburg. He summoned McPherson and Sherman to the Mississippi statehouse on the afternoon of May 14 and told McPherson to head back toward Vicksburg at once, with Sherman to follow after he eliminated Jackson’s capacity for supporting the Confederate war effort. “
He set about his work in the morning, and utterly destroyed the railroads in every direction, north, east, south, and west, for a distance, in all, of twenty miles,”
Adam Badeu said of Sherman’s work at Jackson. “All the bridges, factories, and arsenals were burned, and whatever could be of use to the rebels destroyed. The importance of Jackson as a railroad center and a depot of stores and military factories was annihilated.”

A few other facilities were wrecked as well, without authorization. “
Just as I was leaving Jackson, a very fat man came to see me, to inquire if his hotel, a large frame building near the depot, were doomed to be burned,” Sherman recalled. He replied that he intended nothing of the kind; he would raze only those properties that produced war-related goods. The hotel owner expressed relief, avowing that he was a loyal Union man. “I remember to have said,” Sherman continued sardonically, “that this fact was manifest from the sign of his hotel, which was the
‘Confederate Hotel,’ the sign ‘United States’ being faintly painted out, and ‘Confederate’ painted over it.” Sherman would have left the matter there with the hotel intact. “But just as we were leaving the town, it burst out in flames and was burned to the ground. I never found out exactly who set it on fire, but was told that in one of our batteries were some officers and men who had been made prisoners at Shiloh, with Prentiss’s division, and had been carried past Jackson in a railroad train; they had been permitted by the guard to go by this very hotel for supper, and had nothing to pay but greenbacks, which were refused, with insult, by this same law-abiding landlord. These men, it was said, had quietly and stealthily applied the fire underneath the hotel just as we were leaving the town.”

G
rant meanwhile surmised that Johnston’s northward retreat would bend to the west so that Johnston’s army might join up with Pemberton’s, and he moved to forestall the meeting. “
I am concentrating my forces at Bolton to cut them off,” he told Halleck.
An intercepted message from Johnston to Pemberton confirmed Grant’s surmise.
Stephen Hurlbut had arranged to plant a spy behind the Confederate lines, a man who received a noisy expulsion from the Union army on asserted grounds of disloyalty. This person found his way to Jackson, where he fulminated against Grant and subsequently offered to carry a message from Johnston to Pemberton through territory controlled by Grant’s forces. He seemed reliable enough to Johnston that the Confederate commander let him make the hazardous run, which included a stop in McPherson’s Union camp.