CHICKASAW BAYOU
For ages and ages, water, ceaselessly streaming, ceaselessly seeping,
through and over the calcareous silt, had furrowed the region until
now there was a medley and labyrinth of narrow ravines and knife-blade
ridges. Where the low grounds opened out it was apparently only that
they might accommodate bayous, or some extension of a bayou, called by
courtesy a lake. Along these the cane was thick, and backward from the
cane rose trees and trees and trees, all draped with Spanish moss. It
had been a rainy winter, a winter of broken banks and slow, flooding
waters. Sloughs strayed through the forest; there was black mire
around cypress and magnolia and oak. The growth in the ravines was
dense, that upon the ridges only less so. From Vicksburg, northward
for several miles, great clearings had recently been made. Here, from
the Upper Batteries above the town to Haynes Bluff on the Yazoo,
stretched grey field-works, connected by rifle-pits.
Chickasaw Bayou, sullen and swollen, curved away from the scarped
hills and the strip of forest. On the other side of Chickasaw, and of
that width of it known as McNutt’s Lake, there was shaking
ground—level enough, but sodden, duskily overgrown, and difficult.
This stretched to the Yazoo.
Down the Mississippi from Memphis came Sherman with thirty thousand
blue infantry. They came in transports, in four flotillas, and in
front went Porter’s Gunboat Squadron. Grant had planned the campaign.
With the forces which had been occupying southwestern Tennessee, he
himself was at Oxford. He would operate by land, overwhelming or
holding in check Pemberton’s eighteen thousand at Grenada. In the mean
time Sherman, descending the Mississippi to the mouth of the Yazoo,
some miles above Vicksburg and its river batteries, should ascend that
stream, flowing as it did not far to the northward of the doomed
town;—ascend the Yazoo, disembark the thirty thousand, and with a
sudden push take Vicksburg in the rear. It was known that there were
but five thousand troops in the place.
The plan was a good plan, but Van Dorn disarranged it. Grant, his base
of supplies at Holly Springs captured and all his stores destroyed,
was compelled to fall back toward Memphis. He sent an order to
Sherman, countermanding the river expedition, but Sherman had started
and was well down the vast yellow stream, the gunboats going ahead.
On the twenty-third of December these entered the Yazoo, to be
followed, three days later, by four flotillas. There ensued several
days of Federal reconnoitring. The Yazoo, not so tortuous as the great
stream into which it flowed, was yet tortuous enough, and in places
out of banks, while the woods and swamps on either side were
confusing, wild, and dark. Necessary as it may have been, the
procedure militated against taking a city by surprise. The grey had
notice of the gunboats, and of the trail of flotillas.
Pemberton acted with promptness and judgment. Grant was not so far
away that the forces at Grenada could be utterly weakened, but the
brigades of Barton, Vaughn, and Gregg were detached at once for
Vicksburg. There, on the line from the sandbar north of the town to
Haynes Bluff, they joined the provisional division of Stephen D. Lee.
The position was strong. The grey held the ridges crowned by
field-works and rifle-pits. Before them spread the dark, marsh-ridden
bottom land, crept through, slow and deep, by Chickasaw Bayou. They
had greatly the advantage of position, but there were, on the strip
between the Yazoo and the Walnut Hills, four men in blue to one in
grey. At the last moment, in answer to a representation from General
Martin Luther Smith, commanding the defences at Vicksburg, an
additional regiment was despatched from Grenada. It chanced to be the
——th Virginia Infantry.
The night was cold, very dark, and pouring rain. Vicksburg had been
reached at dusk. There seemed no soldiers here. “Everybody’s out
toward McNutt’s Lake. Reckon you’re wanted there, too!” The ——th
Virginia found at last the man to report to, upon the heels of which
event, without having tasted supper or experienced warmth, it
discovered itself on the road to Chickasaw Bayou. “On the road” is
merely a figure of speech. The regiment concluded that some time in
the Bronze Age there might have been a road, but that since then it
had been washed away. This was the Mud Age.
In the pitchy dark, the chill, arrowy rain, the men stumbled along.
Except for an occasional order, an occasional exclamation, impatient
groan, long-drawn sigh, there was silence. They had some miles to go.
To keep step was out of the question.
Edward Cary, closing his file, moved with a practised, light
steadiness. His body was very supple, fine, with long clean lines.
From head to heel he was in order, like a Greek runner. Spare and worn
and tired like all the rest, he kept at all times a certain lift and
poise as though there were wings upon his cap.
He was not like Richard Cleave. He had little innate feeling for War,
intuitive understanding of all its phases. Being with all his people
plunged deep, deep within it, he played his part there bravely enough.
He served his native land, and her need and woe dwelt with him as it
dwelt with all his world, both men and women. Much of him, perforce,
was busy with the vast and mournful stage. But he found himself not
truly at home with the war-drums and the wailing, with smell of blood
and smoke, weight of shot-riddled banners, trampled faces. He was born
for beauty and her worship, for spacious order and large harmony, and
for months now there had been war and agony and smell of blood and
sight of pale, twisted faces—for long months only that. And then
somehow, accidentally it seemed, he had rubbed the lamp. Only ten days
ago—oh, light and warmth and harmony! Oh, the strange and sweet in
combination! Oh, serene spaces for the mind! Oh, golden piping and
beckoning to emotions not stern! Oh, the deepest, oldest wine! Oh, by
the oddest, simplest chance, sudden as a wind from Heaven, intimacy
warm and fragrant with the Only-Dreamed-Of, the Never-Found-Before!
Oh, in a word, the love of Désirée Gaillard!
He was marching through the dark night, the mire, the cold, the wet.
Certain centres of consciousness, no doubt, knew them all,—knew
hunger, cold, weariness. But the overman, the Lover, moved through
rose-scented dusk, through intricate, sweet thoughts, in some imaged
Vale of Cashmere. Only not at all, not at all could he banish anxiety
as to the Beloved’s well-being.
About him, in the night, was the tramp, tramp of other weary feet, the
dim sight and sound of other weary bodies, cold, wet, thinly clad.
Most of these men in the darkness thought, perhaps, of beings far away
from these labyrinthine ridges and hollows. Many a soldier warmed his
heart by the fires of home, dreamed as he marched of lover, wife, or
child. But the thoughts were shot with pain and the dreams were bitter
sweet. No man in a Southern army could take comfort in the thought
that whatever of want and strain and boding might obtain where he
moved, ragged, through the darkness, all was well at home—comfort
there, warmth and food there, ease of heart there! Many knew that at
home there was immediate suffering; others, that while the board was
spread to-night, yet the dark sail of privation grew larger and
larger. All knew that there was little, little ease of heart. Marching
through the rainy night they carried with them, heavier than musket
and haversack, the ache of all at home, as, upon this night, all at
home felt cold and gaunt with the marching, marching armies. Yet the
South at home managed to keep a high head and a ready smile, and the
South in the field managed a jest, a laugh, a song. At home and in the
field vast need and stress lifted the man, lifted the woman, lifted
the child. Some one in the ——th Virginia, moving out to Chickasaw
Bayou, began to sing jerkily—
“Old Dan Tucker!
You too late to get your supper—”
The regiment climbed another of the innumerable mole-hills, all stumps
of recently felled trees, and between, tenacious and horrible mud. The
far side was worse than the near, and the bottom land, when finally
they slipped and slid and wavered down upon it, proved mere quagmire.
Here they found, deeply mired, two sections of artillery, bound as
they were bound and struggling with the night. Gun wheels were sunken
above the axle-tree; it seemed a mud burial, a question of never
getting out. One heard straining gun teams, chattering negro drivers.
There were torches, saffron blurs of light, hissed against by the
rain, moving up and down like dejected will-o’-the-wisps.
Infantry came up. “Halfway to China, aren’t you? Want us to lend a
hand?”
“Thank you, boys! William, tell those mules to pull harder.”
“What are you doing with mules? Has it come to mule artillery?”
“Well, it’s coming to so many things!—We’re Army of
Tennessee—Stevenson’s division—come down to help hold the Mississippi
River. Right big eel, isn’t it? Rushed through—two sections,
Anderson’s battery—from Jackson. Horses yet on the road. Impressed
mules.—Lieutenant Norgrove, tell those darkies there’s a watermelon
field in front of them and ‘paterollers’ behind!—Pull there! pull!”
The howitzer came slowly up from halfway to China, the Napoleon
followed, infantry encouraging. “You’ve trained your mules quick! That
gun came from the Tredegar, didn’t it? Artillery’s a mighty no-account
arm, but you sort of somehow grow fond of it—”
“Aren’t you all Virginia?”
“Yes; ——th Virginia. Aren’t you all—”
“Of course we are! Botetourt. Anderson’s battery.—What’s the matter,
Plecker?”
“Firing ahead, sir, and those negroes are getting ready to stampede—”
There broke and increased a wild night-time sputter of minies. Panic
took the chance medley of negroes. They sprang from the horses, paid
no heed to appeal or threat, twisted themselves from clutching hands,
and vanished into darkness. Artillery, infantry helping, got the guns
on somehow. Amid a _zip_—_zip_—_zip_ of minies both arms came to a
grey breastwork where Stephen D. Lee was walking up and down behind a
battery already placed.
The dull light and rattle of skirmishes in the night died away. With
it died, too, the rain. The dawn came spectrally, with a mist over
McNutt’s Lake. One of Sherman’s division commanders had received
orders to bridge this water during the night. Over the mournful,
water-logged land the pontoons were brought from the Yazoo. Standing
in the chill water, under the sweep of rain the blue engineers and
their men worked courageously away, but when dawn came the pale light
discovered the fact that they had not bridged the lake at all, but
merely a dim, Briareus arm of the bayou, wandering off into the
forest. They took up the pontoons, moved down the shore to the
widening of the water, and tried again. But now the water was too
wide. There were not boats enough, and while they were making a raft,
the wood across McNutt’s filled with men, grey as the dawn. Tawny-red
broke the flames from the sharpshooters’ rifles. A well-placed
Confederate battery began, too, to talk, and the lake was not bridged.
Barton’s brigade had come down to occupy the wood. When the bridge
builders were driven away, it fell back to the high ground crested
with slight works, seamed with rifle-pits, where were Vaughn and Gregg
and Stephen D. Lee. Across the bayou the blue began to mass. There was
a strip of corduroy road, a meagre bridge spanning the main bayou,
then a narrow encumbered front, muck and mire and cypress stumps, and
all the felled trees thrown into a grey abatis. The blue had as many
divisions as the grey had brigades, but the grey position was very
strong. On came the dull, December day,—raw, cold, with a lowering
sky.
The blue, assaulting force, the blue reserves, the division
commanders, drew shoulders together, brows together, and looked across
and upward doubtfully enough at the bluffs they were expected to take.
Wade the bayou, break through the cane, cross that narrow front of
brush and morass, attack at the apex of a triangle whose base and
sides were held by an unknown number of desperate Rebels defending
Vicksburg, a place that had got the name for obstinacy!—the blue
troops and their generals, however hard they tried, could not at all
visualize success. All the prospect,—the opposite height and the small
grey batteries, the turbid, winding waters and the woods so strange to
Northern eyes,—all was hostile, lowering. Indiana, Ohio, Illinois,
Iowa drew uneasy breath, it was so sinister a place!
An officer came from Sherman to the senior division commander.
“General Sherman says, sir, that you will order the assault.”
“It’s a bad place—”
“Yes. He says we will lose five thousand men before we take Vicksburg
and that we might as well lose them here as anywhere.”
“All right. We’ll lose them all right. Tell him I’ll give the signal.”
A grey rifle-pit, dug along the face of the hill, had received since
dawn the attention of blue sharpshooters stationed in a distant row of
moss-draped trees. The bottom of the long trench was all slippery mud,
the sides were mud, the out-thrown, heaped earth atop was mud. Rest a
rifle barrel upon it and the metal sank as into water. The screen of
scrub along the forward rim was drenched, broken, insufficient.
Through it the men in the pit looked out on a sodden world. They saw a
shoulder of the hill where, in the early light, the caisson of an
isolated gun had been exploded by a Federal shell. Horses and men lay
beside it, mangled. Farther away yet, and earlier yet, they had seen a
reconnoitring party enter a finger of land crooking toward the Federal
lines, and beyond the cover of the grey guns. The blue, too, had seen,
and thrusting forward a regiment cut off the grey party. The bulk of
the latter hewed its way through, back to the shelter of the grey
Parrotts, but there were officers and men left wounded in the
wood.—The day was gloomy, gloomy! The smoke from Stephen Lee’s guns
and from the answering Federal batteries hung clogged and
indiffusible, dark and hard.
“Somebody’s going to get hurt this day,” said the men in the
rifle-pits. “There ain’t any joke about this place.”
“Do you know I think they’re going to charge us? Just as brave as they
are foolish!”
“I don’t think much of Sherman’s capacities as a general. Grant’s the
better man.”
“They’re getting ready.—Well, I always did hate waste, whatever colour
it was dressed in!”
“My God! Even their bugles don’t sound cheerful!—
_Chickasaw—Chickasaw Bayou
The death of you—the death of you!_”
Edward Cary, loading his rifle, had the cartridge knocked from between
his fingers by the swaying against him of the man on the right. He
moved, and the corpse slid softly down upon the miry bottom of the
pit.
The man on the left began to talk, a slow, quiet discourse not at all
interfering with eye or hand. “Western troops, I reckon! They’ve
always the best sharpshooters.—Is he dead? I’m sorry. I liked Abner.
He had an application in for furlough. Wife ill after the baby was
born, and the doctor writing that there might be a chance to save her
mind if she could see Abner. Told me last night he was sure he’d get
the furlough.—Can you see for those damned bushes? There’s a perfectly
hellish fuss down there.”
“The guns echo so. Here they come! And God knows I am sorry for
them—for Abner here and Abner there! Martin, I hate War.”
“It ain’t exactly Christian, and it’s so damned avoidable.—The baby
died, and I reckon his wife—and she was a sweet, pretty girl—’ll go to
the Asylum at Williamsburg—”
“Here they come!—Here they come!—Here they come!” ... _Fire!_
... At last the dreadful repulse was over. Shattered, disorganized, in
sullen and horrible confusion, Sherman’s brigades, the four that had
charged, sank downward and back, a torn and beaten blue wave, into the
dark forest beyond the bayou, the bayou whence they had come. In the
water, in the mire and marsh and swamp, beside the sloughs in the
forest, through the wild tangle of the abatis, over the narrow cleared
ground, at the foot of the bluffs they had tried to storm, lay thick
the dead and wounded. They did not number Sherman’s “five thousand,”
but then neither was Vicksburg taken. The blue had charged without
order, all formation broken, forced together in a narrow space, and
they had rolled, a broken flood, back upon the dark bayou. As the rain
had fallen in the night-time, so now fell the grey shot and shell, and
they were beaten down like wheat beneath hail. The chill air was
filled with whistling. The pall of the smoke added itself to the pall
of the clouds. It was like fighting under a great and dingy tent with
the stark cypress trees for tent poles. By the closing-down of day the
desperately defeated had rolled back toward the Yazoo. Their dead and
dying strewed the tent floor.
If there was relief and exultation on the heights it found no
strenuous voice. The dreariness of the day and place, the streaming
wet and sighing wind somehow forbade. The grey loss was slight
enough—two hundred men, perhaps, in killed and wounded. Some lay
within or below the rude works, some upon the hillside and the low
ground where there had been a countercharge, some down by the abatis,
fallen before the pursuit was recalled. It had been idle really to
pursue. Sherman had thirty thousand, and the gunboats. A detachment or
two streamed down, over the fatal and difficult ground, dislodging
from a momentary shelter some fragment of the blue wave, cutting off
and taking prisoner. Occasional thunder came from a battery, or a
crack of rifles shook the clinging gloom. But the atmosphere deadened
the sound, and the rain came down again fine and cold, and though the
grey soldiers had reason for cheer and tried their best, it was but a
makeshift glee. They had known hot joy in battle and would know it
again, but it did not haunt the fight of Chickasaw Bayou.
There were yet the wounded that the reconnoitring party had left
behind in the twilight wood. Volunteers were called for to bring them
in. The wood crooked toward the enemy’s lines, might at any moment be
overflowed by the blue. Edward was among those who stood forward. The
lieutenant of the other night beside the Yallabusha raised his brows.
“Don’t volunteer too often,” he said. “There’s no promotion in a
trench with a hundred others! Furloughs can be too long.”
In the dusk the platoon went zigzagging down into the wood by the
bayou. It went through the zone of Federal wounded. “_Oh, you people!
take us up; take us out of this! O God—O God—O God! Water!_” To the
last cry neither grey nor blue in this war failed to answer when they
could. Despite all need for haste and caution there were halts now,
canteen or cup held to thirsty lips, here or there a man helped nearer
to muddy pool or stream. “_Take us up—take us out of this!_”
The grey shook their heads. “Can’t do that, Yanks. We would if we
could, but we’re sent to get our own. Reckon your side’ll be sending a
flag of truce directly and gather you up. Oh, yes, they will! We would
if we could. You charged like hell and fought first-rate!”
“Silence, men! Get on!”
It was dusk enough in the wood which they finally reached. The bayou
went through it crookedly, and from the other side of the water came
the hum of Sherman’s troubled, recriminatory thousands. They were so
close that orders might be heard and the tread of the sentries. The
men in grey broke rank, moved, two and two, cautiously through the
cane looking for the wounded. The cane grew thick, and for all it was
so sodden wet might be trusted here or there for a crackling sound.
The trees grew up straight from black mud. They were immensely tall
and from their branches hung yards and yards of moss, like tatters of
old sails or like shrivelled banners in a cathedral roof. Large birds
sat, too, upon the higher limbs, watching. Beneath lay killed and
wounded, a score or so of forms half sunk in the universal swamp. The
searchers left the dead, but where there was life in a figure they
laid hold of it, head and feet, and bore it, swiftly and silently as
might be, out of the wood, back to the rising, protected ground.
Edward and the man with him found an officer lying between huge knees
of cypress. The cane walled him in, a hand and arm hung languid in the
dark water. Kneeling, Edward felt the heart. “He’s far and far away,
but there’s a chance, perhaps. Take the feet.”
Half an hour later, by a great camp-fire behind a battery, surgeons
and helpers took these wounded from the hands of the men who had gone
after them.
Stephen D. Lee and General Seth Barton were standing by. “Thank God,”
said the former, “for a small field hospital! After Sharpsburg—ugh!”
A major of Wither’s brigade walked slowly between the rows. “It was
the ——th Louisiana cut off in the wood. There’s an officer or two
missing—”
“This is an officer, sir,” said Edward. “He was living when we lifted
him—”
General Barton came across. “He is not living now. A handsome man!...
He lies there so stately.... A captain.”
Edward held out his hand—in it an envelope. “This fell from his coat,
sir. The bullet went through it—” The movement brought hand and letter
into the ruddy light. Involuntarily he uttered an exclamation. “It is
addressed to me!”
The major rose from his knees. “Quite dead.... And you would have
called him Fortune’s favorite. It is Louis Gaillard from down the
river—Cape Jessamine.”