The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (71 page)

But Grant did not come that way, at least not yet. Finding Port Gibson empty at dawn, he pressed on through and gave James Wilson a brigade-sized detail with which to construct a bridge across the south fork of Bayou Pierre, just beyond the town. Wilson was experienced in such work, having built no less than seven such spans in the course of
the march from Milliken’s Bend, and besides he had plenty of materials at hand, in the form of nearby houses which he tore down and cannibalized. By midafternoon the job was finished, “a continuous raft 166 feet long, 12 feet wide, with three rows of large mill-beams lying across the current, and the intervals between them closely filled with buoyant timber; the whole firmly tied together by a cross-floor or deck of 2-inch stuff.” So Wilson later described it, not without pride, adding that he had also provided side rails, corduroy approaches over quicksand, and abutments “formed by building a slight crib-work, and filling in with rails covered by sand.” Grant was impressed, but he did not linger to admire the young staff colonel’s handiwork. The second of McPherson’s three divisions having arrived that morning, he was given the lead today, with orders to march eight miles northeast to Grindstone Ford, which he reached soon after dark. He was prevented from crossing at once because the fine suspension bridge had been destroyed at that point, but Wilson was again at hand and had it repaired by daylight of May 3, when McPherson pressed on over. Near Willow Springs, two miles beyond the stream, he encountered and dislodged a small hostile force which retreated toward Hankinson’s Ferry, six miles north, where the main road to Vicksburg crossed the Big Black River. Instructing McPherson to keep up the march northward in pursuit, Grant detached a single brigade to accompany him westward in the direction of Grand Gulf.

McClernand, coming along behind McPherson, whom he was ordered to follow north, was alarmed to learn what Grant had done, striking off on his own like that, and sent a courier galloping after him with a warning: “Had you not better be careful lest you may personally fall in with the enemy on your way to Grand Gulf?” But Grant was not only anxious to reach that place as soon as possible, and thus reestablish contact with the navy and with Sherman, who was on the march down the Louisiana bank; he also believed that Bowen, chastened by yesterday’s encounter, would fall back beyond the Big Black as soon as he discovered that his position on Bayou Pierre had been turned upstream. And in this the northern commander was quite right. Reinforcements had reached Bowen from Jackson and Vicksburg by now, but they only increased his force to about 9000, whereas he reckoned the present enemy strength at 30,000, augmented as it was by a full division put ashore at Bruinsburg the night before. When he learned, moreover, that this host had bridged both forks of Bayou Pierre to the east of Port Gibson and was headed for the crossings of the Big Black, deep in his rear, he lost no time in reaching the decision Grant expected. At midnight, finding that his staff advisers “concurred in my belief that I was compelled to abandon the post at Grand Gulf,” he “then ordered the evacuation, the time for each command to move being so fixed as to avoid any delay or confusion.” The retrograde movement went smoothly despite the need for haste. Bringing off all their baggage—which Pemberton,
when informed of their predicament, had authorized them to abandon lest it slow their march, but which Bowen declared he was “determined to and did save”—the weary veterans and the newly arrived reinforcements set off northward, leaving the blufftop intrenchments, which they had defended so ably against the ironclad assault four days ago, yawning empty behind them in the early morning sunlight.

Soon after they disappeared over the northern horizon Porter arrived with four gunboats, intending to launch a new attack. He approached with caution, remembering his previous woes and fearing a rebel trick, but when he found the Grand Gulf works abandoned he did not let that diminish his claim for credit for their reduction. “We had a hard fight for these forts,” he wrote Secretary Welles, “and it is with great pleasure that I report that the Navy holds the door to Vicksburg.” He announced that his fire had torn the place to pieces, leaving it so covered with earth and debris that no one could tell at a glance what had been there before the bombardment. “Had the enemy succeeded in finishing these fortifications no fleet could have taken them,” he declared, quite as if he had subdued the batteries in the nick of time, and added: “I hear nothing of our army as yet; was expecting to hear their guns as we advanced on the forts.”

He heard from “our army” presently with the arrival of its commander, who had got word of the evacuation while en route from Grindstone Ford and had ridden ahead of the infantry with an escort of twenty troopers. Grant was glad to see the admiral, but most of all—after seven days on a borrowed horse, with “no change of underclothing, no meal except such as I could pick up sometimes at other headquarters, and no tent to cover me”—he was glad to avail himself of the admiral’s facilities. After a hot bath, a change of underwear borrowed from one of the naval officers, and a square meal aboard the flagship, he got off a full report to Halleck on the events of the past four days. “Our victory has been most complete, and the enemy thoroughly demoralized,” he wrote. Bowen’s defense of Port Gibson had been “a very bold one and well carried out. 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.” After this unaccustomed flourish he got down to the matter at hand. “This army is in the finest health and spirits,” he declared. “Since leaving Milliken’s Bend they have marched as much by night as by day, through mud and rain, without tents or much other baggage, and on irregular rations, without a complaint and with less straggling than I have ever before witnessed.… I shall not bring my troops into this place, but immediately follow the enemy, and, if all promises as favorable hereafter as it does now, not stop until Vicksburg is in our possession.”

He was on his own, however, in a way he had neither intended nor foreseen. His plan had been to use Grand Gulf as a base, accumulating
a reserve of supplies and marking time with Sherman and McPherson, so to speak, while McClernand took his corps downriver to cooperate with Banks in the reduction of Port Hudson, after which the two would join him for a combined assault on Vicksburg. But he found waiting for him today at Grand Gulf a three-week-old letter from Banks, dated April 10 and headed Brashear City—75 miles west of New Orleans and equally far south of Port Hudson—informing him of a change in procedure made necessary, according to the Massachusetts general, by unexpected developments in western Louisiana which would threaten his flank and rear, including New Orleans itself, if he moved due north from the Crescent City as originally planned. Instead, he intended to abolish this danger with an advance up the Teche and the Atchafalaya, clearing out the rebels around Opelousas before returning east to Baton Rouge for the operation against Port Hudson with 15,000 men. He hoped to open this new phase of the campaign next day, he wrote, and if all went as planned he would return to the Mississippi within a month—that is, by May 10—at which time he would be ready to co-operate with Grant in their double venture.… Reading the letter, Grant experienced a considerable shock. He had expected Banks to have twice as many troops already in position for a quick slash at Port Hudson, to be followed by an equally rapid boat ride north to assist in giving Vicksburg the same treatment. Now all that went glimmering. Some 30,000 men poorer than he had counted on being, he was on his own: which on second thought had its advantages, since the Massachusetts general outranked him and by virtue of his seniority would get the credit, from the public as well as the government, for the reduction of both Confederate strongholds and the resultant clearing of the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf. Grant absorbed the shock and quickly made up his mind that he was better off without him. Banks having left him on his own, he would do the same for Banks. “To wait for his cooperation would have detained me at least a month,” he subsequently wrote in explanation of his decision. “The reinforcements would not have reached 10,000 men after deducting casualties and necessary river guards at all high points close to the river for over 300 miles. The enemy would have strengthened his position and been reinforced by more men than Banks could have brought. 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.”

So much he intended, though he had not yet decided exactly how he would go about it. One thing he knew, however, was that the change of plans called for an immediate speed-up of the accumulation of supplies, preliminary to launching his all-out drive on the rebel citadel two dozen air-line miles to the north. A look at the Central Mississippi interior, with its lush fields, its many grazing cattle, and its well-stocked plantation houses—“of a character equal to some of the finest villas on
the Hudson,” a provincial New York journalist called these last—had convinced him that the problem was less acute than he had formerly supposed. “This country will supply all the forage required for anything like an active campaign, and the necessary fresh beef,” he informed Halleck. “Other supplies will have to be drawn from Milliken’s Bend. This is a long and precarious route, but I have every confidence in succeeding in doing it.” Accordingly, he ordered this supply line shortened, as soon as the river had fallen a bit, by the construction of a new road from Young’s Point to a west-bank landing just below Warrenton. “Everything depends upon the promptitude with which our supplies are forwarded,” he warned. He had already directed that two towboats make a third run past the Vicksburg guns with heavy-laden barges. “Do this with all expedition,” he told the quartermaster at Milliken’s Bend, “in 48 hours from receipt of orders if possible. Time is of immense importance.” Hurlbut was ordered to forward substantial reinforcements from Memphis without delay, as well as to lay in a sixty-day surplus of rations, to be kept on hand for shipment downriver at short notice. To Sherman, hurrying south across the way, went instructions to collect 120 wagons en route, load them with 100,000 pounds of bacon, then pile on all the coffee, sugar, salt, and crackers they would hold. “It is unnecessary for me to remind you of the overwhelming importance of celerity in your movements,” Grant told him, outlining the situation as he saw it now on this side of the river: “The enemy is badly beaten, greatly demoralized, and exhausted of ammunition. The road to Vicksburg is open. All we want now are men, ammunition, and hard bread. We can subsist our horses on the country, and obtain considerable supplies for our troops.”

With all this paper work behind him, he left Grand Gulf at midnight and rode eastward under a full moon to rejoin McPherson, who had reached Hankinson’s Ferry that afternoon and had already dispatched cavalry details to probe the opposite bank of the Big Black River. From his new headquarters Grant kept stressing the need for haste. “Every day’s delay is worth 2000 men to the enemy,” he warned a supply officer, and kept goading him with questions that called for specific answers: “How many teams have been loaded with rations and sent forward? I want to know as near as possible how we stand in every particular for supplies. How many wagons have you ferried over the river? How many are still to bring over? What teams have gone back for rations?” His impatience was such that he had no time for head-shaking or regrets. Learning on May 5 that one of the two towboats and all the barges had been lost the night before in attempting the moonlight run he had ordered, he dismissed the loss with the remark: “We will risk no more rations to run the Vicksburg batteries,” and turned his attention elsewhere. This touch of bad luck was more than offset the following day by news that Sherman had reached Hard Times, freeing McPherson’s third division from guard duty along the supply route,
and was already in the process of crossing the river to Grand Gulf. The red-haired general was in excellent spirits, having learned that four newspaper reporters had been aboard the towboat that was lost. “They were so deeply laden with weighty matter that they must have sunk,” he remarked happily, and added: “In our affliction we can console ourselves with the pious reflection that there are plenty more of the same sort.”

One thing Grant did find time for, though, amid all his exertions at Hankinson’s Ferry. On the 7th he issued a general order congratulating his soldiers for their May Day victory near Port Gibson, which he said extended “the long list of those previously won by your valor and endurance.” He was proud of what they had accomplished so far in the campaign, he assured them, and proudest of all that they had endured their necessary privations without complaint. Then he closed on a note of exhortation. “A few days’ continuance of the same zeal and constancy will secure to this army the crowning victory over the rebellion. More difficulties and privations are before us. Let us endure them manfully. Other battles are to be fought. Let us fight them bravely. A grateful country will rejoice at our success, and history will record it with immortal honor.”

Pemberton at this stage was by no means “badly beaten.” Neither was he “greatly demoralized,” any more than Vicksburg’s defenders were “exhausted of ammunition.” Nor was the road to the city “open,” despite Grant’s suppositions in his May 3 note urging Sherman to hurry down to get in on the kill. It was true, on the other hand, that the southern commander had been acutely distressed by the news that the blue invaders were landing in force on the east bank of the river below Grand Gulf, for he saw only too clearly the dangers this involved. “Enemy movement threatens Jackson, and, if successful, cuts off Vicksburg and Port Hudson from the east,” he wired Davis on May Day, before he knew the outcome of the battle for Port Gibson, and he followed this up next morning, when he learned that Bowen had withdrawn across Bayou Pierre, with advice to Governor Pettus that the state archives be removed from the capital for safekeeping; Grant most likely would be coming this way soon. Another appeal to Johnston for “large reinforcements” to meet the “completely changed character of defense,” now that the Federals were established in strength on this side of the river, brought a repetition of yesterday’s advice: “If Grant crosses, unite all your troops to beat him. Success will give back what was abandoned to win it.”