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| Battle of Vicksburg series |
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This page is about the Battle of Vicksburg (where all references live) during the American Civil War. This material is on early military actions before Ulysses S. Grant's landing to begin army actions before the siege of Vicksburg.
General U.S. Grant's risky plan was to thus march his army west and south of the fortified cliff of Vicksburg, cross the river, and assault Vicksburg from behind. While he could march troops well west of the west-facing fortified bluff, getting his boats below to ferry them across the mile-wide river required running the bluff, a task that fell to Admiral David Dixon Porter . While neither was under the command of the other, Porter accepted the assignment.
On March 29, Grant's arch-enemy in the Union Army, the over-ambitious General John A. McClernand , set his troops to work corduroying roads and making bridges. They filled in the swamps in their way as well, and after but weeks had a 70-mile road from Milliken's Bend to Hard Times below Vicksburg. It wasn't the best, but sufficed to march troops. Now it was Porter's turn.
Porter knew that he may be able to get south of the bluff, as it had been run before, but his low-powered craft would never be able to make it upriver again until the bluff had been reduced. Thus he would be crossing the Rubicon -- no going back.
On April 16, 1863, a clear night with no moon, Porter sent seven gunboats loaded with seventy-nine big guns and three empty troop transports loaded with stores to the run the bluff. Boat furnaces were hidden; all lights were out; the boats sailed slow to mask noise; there were no animals.
To no avail. Confederate sentries sighted the boats and the bluff exploded. The Union gunboats answered back. Porter noted the Confederates mainly hit the high parts of his boats, reasoned that they couldn't depress their guns, and had them hug the east shore, right under Confederate cannon, so close he could hear rebel commanders giving orders, shells flying overhead. The fleet survived with surprisingly little damage, and only thirteen men had been wounded; none killed. The Henry Clay was disabled and burned to the water's edge, the crew deserting. On April 22, six boats loaded with supplies made the run; one did not make it, though no one was killed, the crew having floated downstream on the boat's remnants.
Grant's big riverboat gamble succeeded. Now the Union had to confuse the Confederates as to their intentions and prevent their opposing Grant's landing.
On April 30, General Sherman with ten regiments and what of the navy Porter had not sent below Vicksburg's bluff took off up the Yazoo River for Haines Bluff losing little (for the Civil War), but gaining nothing. This feint was to keep a substantial portion of the Vicksburg garrison north of the Union main effort to the south. This an other feints were, in Shelby Foote's words to "confuse and distract" the Confederates prior to Grant's crucial landing.
The big feint however, the one that most threw the Confederates off balance, was Grierson's Raid. In this discussion it will be summarized. It ran from April 17, to May 2, 1863. Confederate cavalry commanders such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, John Hunt Morgan and J.E.B. StuartJames Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart ( February 6, 1833- May 12, 1864) was a Confederate cavalry commander during the American Civil War. Born on a plantation in Patrick County, Virginia in 1833, Stuart would attend Emory and Henry College from 1848 to 1850. had so far rode circles around the Union (literally, in Stuart's case; see the Seven Days CampaignThe Seven Days Campaign ( June 25 July 1, 1862), or Seven Days Battle of the American Civil War was a successful effort by the Confederate commander Robert E. Lee to turn back the Union general George McClellan's Army of the Potomac in its attempt to capt), and it was time to out-do the Confederates in cavalry expeditions, and the task fell to Colonel Benjamin Grierson, who, oddly, hated horses.
Grierson's raid from southern TennesseeTennessee ( In Detail) (Full size) State nickname: Volunteer State Other U. States Capital Nashville Largest City Memphis Governor Phil Bredesen Area Total Land Water % water Ranked 36th 109,247 kmē 106,846 kmē 2,400 kmē 2. 2% Population Total ( 2000) Den, through the state of MississippiMississippi ( In Detail) (Full size) State nickname: Magnolia State Other U. States Capital Jackson Largest City Jackson Governor Haley Barbour Area Total Land Water % water Ranked 32nd 125,546 kmē121,606 kmē 3,940 kmē 3% Population Total ( 2000) Density and to Union-held Baton Rouge, LouisianaBaton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana, a state of the United States of America. As of the 2000 census, its population is 227,818. It is the seat of East Baton Rouge Parish. Baton Rouge is home to the main campus of Louisiana State University and to Sout, entered the realm of legend, later inspiring an historically inaccurate John WayneJohn Wayne ( May 26, 1907 June 11, 1979), nicknamed Duke was an American film actor whose career spanned the evolutionary phase of American cinema, appearing in silent movies and "talkies" alike. He remains, by many accounts, the most popular star in the movie titled The Horse SoldiersThe Horse Soldiers ( 1959) (set in the American Civil War), directed by John Ford, is a film about a Union Cavalry detachment, lead by Colonel John Marlowe ( John Wayne), which is sent behind the Confederate enemy lines in strength to destroy a railroad a.
Grierson and his 1,700 horse troopers rode through over six hundred miles of hostile territory, over routes no Union soldier had traveled before. He tore up railroads and burned crossties, freed slaves, burned Confederate storehouses, inflicted ten times the casualties he received, destroyed locomotives and commissary stores, ripped up bridges and trestles, burned buildings, all while detachments of his troops made feints confusing the Confederates as to his actual whereabouts and direction.
Vicksburg's general Pemberton was short on cavalry and could do nothing to Grierson, and an entire division of Pemberton's graybacks were tied up defending the Vicksburg -- Jackson railroad from the slippery Grierson, and consequently did nothing to stop Grant's landing. The premier Confederate cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was off chasing another Union raider named Abel Streight in Alabama, and did nothing to stop Grierson.
While Streight's raid failed, occupying the deadly Forrest perhaps sealed the success of Grierson's Raid. Of course every Confederate in the state -- save perhaps Forrest -- was hot in Grierson's trail. All they gained was mass confusion. Grierson and his troopers ultimately pulled in to Baton Rouge; combined with Sherman's feint, the befuddled Confederates did not oppose Grant's landing on the east side of the Mississippi.
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