PORT GIBSON
The twenty-eight guns sent out continuously shot and shell against the
blue ironclads, the gunboats, the transports. The blue returned the
fire with fervency. Not before had the shores rocked to such sound,
the heavens been filled with such a display. The firing was furious,
the long shriek and explosion of crossing shells, bluff and river
screaming like demons. All the sky was lit. The massed smoke hung huge
and copper red, while high and low sprang the intense brightness of
the exploding bomb. The grey guns set on fire several transports.
These burned fiercely, the coal barges, the cotton bales that made
their shields betraying them now, burning high and burning hard. The
village of De Soto was aflame. The Mississippi River showed as light
as day, a strange red daylight, stuffed with infernal sound. Through
it steadily, steadily, the blue fleet pushed down the river, running
the gauntlet of the batteries. All the boats were struck, most were
injured. A transport was burning to the water’s edge, coal barges were
scattered and sunk. Firing as it went, each ironclad a moving
broadside, the fleet kept its way. The twenty-eight did mightily, the
gunners, powder-grimed automata, the servers of ammunition, the
officers, the sharpshooters along the shore—all strove with
desperation. Up and down and across, the night roared and flamed like
a Vulcan furnace. The town shook, and the bluffs of the river; the
Mississippi might have borne to the sea a memory of thunders. Less a
sunken transport, less one burning low, less scattered and lost small
craft, the fleet—scarred and injured though it was—the fleet passed!
It ran the gauntlet, and at dawn there was a reason the less for
holding Vicksburg.
Two nights later other ironclads got by. Grant had now a fleet at New
Carthage, on the Louisiana shore, halfway between Vicksburg and Grand
Gulf. He proceeded to use it and the transports that had passed. The
sky over the grey darkened rapidly; there came a feeling of
oppression, of sultry waiting, of a storm gathering afar, but moving.
Sherman again threatened to approach by the Yazoo, but that was not
felt to be the head of the storm. From La Grange, in Tennessee,
southward, Grierson was ruining railroads and burning depots of
supplies, but that was but a raid to be avenged by a raid. In the
cloud down the river was forging the true lightning, the breath of
destruction and the iron hail. Vicksburg held its breath and looked
sideways at small noises, then recovered itself, smiled, and talked of
sieges in history successfully stood by small towns. On the
twenty-ninth, Porter’s squadron opened fire on the Confederate
batteries at Grand Gulf, and that night, under a fierce bombardment,
ironclads, gunboats, and transports ran this defence also of the
Mississippi. At dawn there was another reason the less for confining
few troops in small places.
On the thirtieth of April, Grant began to ferry his army across from
the Louisiana shore. Brigade by brigade, he landed it at Bruinsburg,
nine miles below Grand Gulf, sixty below Vicksburg. At Grand Gulf was
Bowen with five thousand grey soldiers with which to delay Grant’s
northward march. Between Bruinsburg and Grand Gulf ran Bayou Pierre,
wide and at this season much swollen, but with an available bridge at
Port Gibson. Bowen’s three brigades took the road to the last-named
place, and Bowen telegraphed to Pemberton at Vicksburg for
reinforcements. Pemberton sent Tracy’s Alabama brigade of Stevenson’s
division, and with it Anderson’s Battery, Botetourt Artillery. The
——th Virginia, figuring in this story, marched also.
They broke camp at dusk. “Night march!” quoth ——th Virginia. “Double
time! Old Jack must have come down from Virginia!”
The colonel heard. “Old Jack and Marse Robert are looking after
Fighting Joe Hooker to-day. I saw the telegram. They’re moving toward
the Wilderness.”
“Well, we wish we were, too,” said the men. “Though the Mississippi is
mighty important, we know!”
There existed a road, of course, only it had not been in condition for
a year. No roads were kept up nowadays, though occasionally some
engineer corps momentarily bettered matters in some selected place in
order that troops might pass. Troops had gone up and down this road,
and the feet of men and horses, the wheels of wagons and gun-carriages
had added force to neglect, making the road very bad, indeed. It was
narrow and bad, even for Southern roads in wartime. To the aid of
neglect and the usage of hoof and wheel had come the obliterating
rains. Bayous, too, had no hesitation in flinging an arm across. It
was a season when firm ground changed into marsh and marsh into lake
and ordinary fords grew too deep for fording. Miles of the miserable
road ran through forest—no open, park-like wood whereon one might
travel on turf at the sides of the way, but a far Southern forest,
impenetrable, violent, resenting the road, giving it not an inch on
either hand, making raids and forays of its own. Where it could it
flung poisoned creepers, shot out arms in thorn-mail, laid its own
dead across that narrow track. It could also blot out the light, keep
off the air.
At midnight the Big Black River was reached. Oh, the reinforcements
for Bowen were tired and worn! The night was inky, damp, and hot. The
——th Virginia, closing Tracy’s column, must wait and wait for its turn
at the crossing. There was a long, old-type ferryboat, and many men
and horses swam the stream, but it took time, time to get the whole
brigade across! Broken and decaying wood was gathered and a tall fire
made. Burning at the water’s edge, it murkily crimsoned landing and
stream, the crowded boat slow passing from shore to shore, and the
swimming, mounted men. Above it, on the north side, the waiting
regiments threw themselves down on the steaming earth, in the rank and
wild growth. The ——th Virginia, far back on the road, had a fire of
its own. Behind it yet were the guns accompanying Tracy.
As the fire flamed up Artillery drew near, drawn by the genial glow.
“May we? Thank you! If you fellows are as wet as we are, you are wet,
indeed. That last bayou was a holy terror!”
“In our opinion this entire night’s a holy terror. Haven’t we met you
before? Aren’t you the Botetourt Artillery?”
“Yes. We’ve met a lot of people in this war, some that we liked and
some that we didn’t! You look right likable. Where—”
“Going out to Chickasaw Bayou. Pitch black night like this, only it
was raining and cold. Your mules couldn’t pull—”
“Oh, now we remember!” said Artillery. “You’re the ——th Virginia that
helped us all it could! Glad to meet you again. Glad to meet anything
Virginian.”
“You’ve been out of Virginia a long time?”
“Out of it a weary year. Tennessee, Cumberland Gap, Kentucky, and so
forth. We sing ’most everything in this army, but the Botetourt
Artillery can’t sing ‘Carry me back to Old Virginny’! It chokes
up.—What’s your county?”
Company by company, regiment by regiment, Tracy’s brigade got over the
Big Black. Foot by foot the troops in the rear came nearer the stream;
minute by minute the dragging night went by. Half seated, half lying
on the fallen trunk of a gum, Edward Cary watched the snail-like
crossing. When one dead tree burned down, they fired another. There
was light enough, a red pulsing in the darkness through which the
troops moved down the sloping bank to the ferryboat. The bank was all
scored and trampled, and crested by palmetto scrub and tall trees
draped with vines. The men stumbled as they went, they were so stiff
with fatigue. Their feet were sore and torn. There was delay enough.
Each man as he passed out of the shadow down to the boat had his
moment of red light, a transitory centre of the stage.
Cary watched them broodingly, his elbow on the log, his hand covering
his mouth. “A bronze frieze of the Destined. Leaves of the life tree
and a high wind and frost at hand.” An old man stood his moment in the
light, the hollows in his cheeks plain, plain the thin and whitened
hair beneath a torn boy’s cap. He passed. The barrel of his musket
gleamed for an instant, then sank like a star below the verge. A young
man took his place, gaunt, with deep circles about his eyes. The hand
on the musket stock was long and thin and white. “Fever,” thought
Edward. “Disease, that walks with War.” The fever-stricken passed, and
another took his place. This was a boy, certainly not more than
fifteen, and his eyes were dancing. He had had something to eat,
Edward thought, perhaps even a mouthful of whiskey, he carried himself
with such an impish glee. “Is it such fun? I wonder—I wonder! You
represent, I think, the past of the human species. Step aside,
honourable young savage, and let the mind of the world grow beyond
fifteen!”
On and down went the column, young, old, and in between. Two years
earlier a good observer, watching it, would have been able fairly to
ascribe to each unit his place in life before the drum beat. “A
farmer—another—a great landowner, a planter—surely a blacksmith—a
clerk—a town-bred man, perhaps a banker—another farmer—a professional
man—a student—Dick from the plough—” and so on. Now it was different.
You could have divided the columns, perhaps, into educated men and
uneducated men, rough men and refined men, as you could have divided
it into young men and old men, tall men and men not so tall. But the
old stamp had greatly worn away, and the new had had two years in
which to bite deep. It was a column of Confederate soldiers, poorly
clad and shod, and, to-night, hungry and very tired. Soldier by
soldier, squad, company, regiment, on they stumbled through prickly
and matted growth down to the water of the Big Black and the one boat.
The night wore on. One and two and three o’clock went by before the
last of the ——th Virginia was over. Edward, standing in the end of the
boat, marked the Botetourt Artillery move forward and down to the
stream. There was a moment when the guns were drawn sharply against
the pallor of the morning sky. There came into his mind an awakening
at dawn on the battle-field of Frayser’s Farm, and the pale pink
heaven behind the guns. But, indeed, he had seen them often, drawn
against the sky at daybreak. There was growing in this war, as in all
wars, a sense of endless repetition. The gamut was not extensive, the
spectrum held but few colours. Over and over and over again sounded
the notes, old as the ages, monotonous as the desert wind. War was
still war, and all music was military. Edward and his comrades touched
the southern shore of the Big Black, and the boat went back for the
Botetourt Artillery.
The reinforcements for Bowen made no stop for breakfast for men or for
horses, but pushed on toward Grand Gulf. The day was warm, the forest
heavily scented, the air languid. All the bourgeoning and blossoming,
the running sap, the upward and outward flow, was only for the world
of root and stem, leaf and bud. The very riot and life therein seemed
to draw and drain the strength from the veins of men. It was as though
there were not life enough for both worlds, and the vegetable world
was forcing itself uppermost. All day Tracy’s column moved forward in
a forced march. The men went hungry and without sleep; all day they
broke with a dull impatience thorn and briar and impeding cane, or
forded waist-deep and muddy bayous, or sought in swamps for the lost
road. They were now in a region of ridge and ravine, waves of land and
the trough between, and all covered with a difficult scrub and a maze
of vines.
A courier from Grand Gulf met the head of the column. “General Bowen
says, sir, you’ll have to cross Bayou Pierre at Port Gibson. The
bridge is there. Yes, sir, make a détour—yonder’s the road.”
“That turkey track?”
“Yes, sir. General Bowen says he surely will be obliged if you’ll come
right on.”
Sundown and Bayou Pierre were reached together. At the mouth of the
bridge at Port Gibson waited an aide on horseback.
“General Tracy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“General, we’re in line of battle across the Bruinsburg road, several
miles from here! McClernand’s corps is in front of us and he’s got at
least four divisions. General Bowen says he knows your men are tired
and he’s sorry, but you must move right out. They’ll attack at dawn at
latest. We aren’t but five thousand.”
The reinforcements from Vicksburg moved out. At ten o’clock they got
into line of battle—a hot, still, dark night, and the soft blurred
stars swimming before the men’s eyes. When the order was given, the
troops dropped down where they stood, lay on their arms, and slept
like the dead.
At two in the morning of the first of May the pickets began firing. Up
rose the reinforcements. They looked for breakfast, but breakfast was
scant indeed, a stopgap of the slightest description. Presently came
the order, “Move to the left and support General Green.”
Missouri formed Bowen’s left, and Missouri fought bravely at Port
Gibson. It had to face treble its numbers, artillery and infantry. It
faced them so stubbornly that for a time it bade fair to outface them.
On that hot May day, on that steaming Southern battle-field, occurred
strong fighting, grey and blue at grips, Victory shouting now here,
now there, Defeat uncertain yet into which colour finally to let fly
the deadly arrow. The battle smoke settled heavily. The bright
colours, the singing-birds fled the trees and bushes, the perfume of
flowers was smothered and vanished.
Artillery on both sides became heavily engaged. The ——th Virginia,
during one of those sudden and mysterious lulls coming suddenly in
battle as in other commotions of the elements, found itself, after
hard fighting, with nothing to do but to watch that corner of the
fight immediately before it. The corner was but a small,
smoke-shrouded one. Only general officers, aides, and couriers ever
really saw a battle-field. The ——th Virginia gazed with feverish
interest on what it could see and guessed that which it could not. It
could guess well enough that for the grey the struggle was growing
desperate.
All this field was up and down, low ridge and shallow ravine. The ——th
Virginia held a ridge. Over against it was a blue battery, and beyond
the battery there might be divined a gathering mass of infantry. The
——th Virginia looked to its cartridge boxes. “Wish we had some guns!
There won’t be much of this left—What’s that? Praise the Lord!” At a
gallop, out of the smoke to the right, came a section of a grey
battery, the guns leaping and thundering. Red-nostrilled, with
blood-shot eyes up strained the horses. At the ridge-top, with an iron
clang, all stopped. At once the gunners, grey wraiths in grey smoke,
were busy; busy also at once the shapes upon the opposite ridge, blue
wraiths in grey smoke. There was shouting, gesturing, then the flare
and shriek of crossing shells. The ——th Virginia, still in possession
of its spare moment, watched with an interest intense and critical.
“Hello!” it said. “That’s the homesick battery! That’s the Botetourt
Artillery!”
Out of the haze in front, above the opposing crest, came a glint of
bayonets, the blue infantry, coveting the grey ridge, moving forward
under artillery support. The ——th Virginia handled its rifles.
_Ready—take aim—fire!_ The blue failed to acquire the coveted ridge.
The ——th Virginia, at rest once again in its corner of the field,
looked sideways to see what the homesick battery was doing. There was
a silence; then, “Give them a cheer, men!” said the colonel. “They’re
dying fast, and it always was a brave county!”
The shells from the many blue cannon came many and fast. It was
necessary to clear the ridge of that grey section which stood in the
way of a general advance. The gunners fell, the gunners fell, the
officers, the horses. Dim in the universal cloud, from the left, a
force was seen approaching. “Grey, I think,” said the lieutenant
commanding this section of the Botetourt Artillery. “J.J. Smith, climb
up on the roof of that cabin, and see what you can see!”
J.J. Smith climbed. “Lieutenant Norgrove! Lieutenant Norgrove! they’re
damn-Yankees—”
Out of the smoke came a yellow light and a volley of lead. Gunner
Number 8, J.J. Smith, fell from the roof of the cabin, desperately
wounded. “Double canister!” shouted Norgrove.
An orderly came up the back side of the ridge. The ——th Virginia was
needed to cover a break in the line to the right. Off perforce went
the regiment, with one backward look at the homesick battery, left
without infantry support. An aide dashed up, rose in his stirrups, and
shouted, “Move your guns to the ridge in your rear!” He was gone;
Botetourt looked and shook its head. The horses were all killed. “Put
your hands to them, men!” ordered Norgrove—and they tried. But the
scrub was thick, the ground rough; there burst a frightful fire, shell
and musketry, and on came the blue wave hurrahing. “All right! We
can’t!” shouted Norgrove. “_Load!_ This hill’s Botetourt County—_Take
aim!_—and we don’t propose to emigrate! _Fire!_”
The blue guns threw death. Deep, many-atomed, resistless, up roared
the blue wave. It struck and went over Botetourt County, and, taking
the two guns, turned them on the Botetourt men. There were few
Botetourt men now, Botetourt was become again the wilderness. Norgrove
jerked the trail from a gun, a man in blue calling on him all the time
to surrender. He made at the man, who lifted his rifle and fired.
Norgrove fell, mortally wounded, fell by the side of J.J. Smith. He
put his arms about the gunner, “Come on! Come on!” he cried.... The
wave swept over Botetourt County, the dead and the dying.
The ——th Virginia, fighting strongly in another quarter of the field,
came in mid-afternoon to a stand between charges. All knew now that
the day was going against them. The smoke hung thick, a dark velvet in
the air, torn in places by the lightning from the guns. Grey and
blue—all was dimly seen. The flags looked small and distant, mere
riddled and blood-stained rags. The voice of War was deep and loud.
The ——th Virginia, looking up from a hollow between the hills, saw two
grey guns, stolid in the midst of wreck and ruin. The plateau around
had a nightmare look, it was so weighted and cumbered with
destruction. There was an exploded caisson, a wreck of gun-carriages.
Not a horse had been spared. The agony of them was ghastly, sunk in
the scrub, up and down and on the crest of the ridge.... A few grey
gunners yet served the grey guns.
A captain, young, with a strong face and good brown eyes, stood out,
higher than the rest, careless of the keening minies, the stream of
shells. “A habit is a habit, men! This battery’s got a habit of being
steadfast! Keep it up—keep it up!”
“Captain Johnston—Captain Johnston! They’ve killed Lieutenant
Douthatt—”
“Lay him in the scrub and fight on. How many rounds, Peters?—Two?—All
right! You can do a good deal with two rounds—”
“It’s the rest of the homesick battery,” said the ——th Virginia,
“_Botetourt Artillery! Botetourt Artillery!_”
There rushed a blue, an overpowering, a tidal wave—out of the smoke
and din, bearing with it its own smoke and din, overmasteringly
strong, McClernand’s general advance. At the same moment, on the left,
struck McPherson. When the roar that followed the impact died, the
blue had won the field of Port Gibson; the grey had lost.
At sunset, Bowen’s retreating regiments re-crossed Bayou Pierre. The
exhaustion of the troops was extreme. There was no food; the men sank
down and slept, in the whispering Southern night, in the remote light
of other worlds. At dawn began the slow falling-back upon Vicksburg.
Lieutenant-General Pemberton telegraphed the situation to General
Johnston in Tennessee, adding, “I should have large reinforcements.”
In Tennessee, Rosecrans lay menacingly before Bragg. Johnston
telegraphed to Pemberton, “Reinforcements cannot be sent from here
without giving up Tennessee. Unite all your forces to meet Grant.
Success will give you back what you abandoned to win it.”
Pemberton, personally a brave and good man, looked out south and east
from Vicksburg over the sparsely settled, tangled country. He looked
west, indeed; but it was too late now to gather to him the Army of the
Trans-Mississippi. His mind agreed that perhaps it should have been
done in December.... The troops in Vicksburg and north of Vicksburg,
the troops at Jackson, the troops falling back from Grand Gulf—leaving
out the garrison at Port Hudson, one might count, perhaps, thirty
thousand effectives. Unite all these, but not at Vicksburg ... move
out from Vicksburg, manœuvre here and manœuvre there, and at last take
Grant somewhere at disadvantage.... General Johnston’s plan as against
the President’s.... Leave Vicksburg defenceless, to be taken by some
detached force, by Sherman, by the Federal men-of-war that could now
march up and down the Mississippi.... Pemberton looked out at the
batteries that had been built, all the field-works, all the trenches.
Most useless of all considerations moved him, the consideration of the
pity, of the waste of all these. He looked at the very gallant town;
he thought of the spirit of an old gentleman and prominent citizen to
whom he had talked yesterday. “Before God,” said Pemberton, “I am not
going to give up Vicksburg!”
The third day after Port Gibson the ——th Virginia came again to its
old camp above the river, just without the town. Here, the next
morning, Edward Cary received an order to report to his colonel. He
found the latter at Headquarters and saluted—the colonel being an old
schoolmate and hopelessly in love with his sister Unity. “Cary,” said
the colonel, “we’re poorer than the Ragged Mountains, but apparently
we are considered highly presentable, a real crack command, dandies
and so forth! The War Department wants a word-of-mouth description of
Mississippi conditions. In short, there’s an embassy going to
Richmond. The general came down and asked if my uniform was whole and
if I could muster two or three men in decent apparel. Said I thought I
could, and that there was a patch, but I didn’t think it would show. I
am going to take you as my orderly. The train for Jackson leaves at
midday.”
“Yes, sir. It is ten now. May I have the two hours?”
“Yes. I’ll take you on now. Tell your captain.”
Outside he heard the news of the battle of Chancellorsville.
“It was a victory!” said the men, sore from Port Gibson. “A big
victory! We’re having them straight along in Virginia.”
“It ain’t a victory to have Stonewall Jackson wounded.”
“Telegram said he’d get well. Old Jack isn’t going to leave us. God!
We’d miss him awful!”
Edward and Désirée had one hour together. They spent it in the garden,
sitting beneath a flowering tree.
“How soon are you coming back? Oh, how soon are you coming back?”
“As soon as we may. It must be soon, for the fighting will begin now.
Port Gibson was but the opening gun.”
“We have been making the cave for this house larger. A siege....”
“I do not believe that we should pen ourselves up here. Grant can
bring, if needed, a hundred thousand men. He is a dogged, earnest man.
I think that we should concentrate as rapidly as possible and move
from behind these walls. The odds are not much greater than they were
in the Valley, or during the Seven Days.”
“We have not General Jackson and General Lee.”
“No, but the Government should give General Johnston free hand. He is
the third.”
“Oh, War!—When will it end and how?”
“When we have fought to a stand-still. There is a Trojan feel to it
all.... How beautiful you are!—fighter of floods, keeper of home!
warrior and sufferer more than I am warrior and sufferer! I do not
know how to say good-bye.”
He had in Virginia three days. There was no time nor leave for
Greenwood. His father was upon the Rappahannock, but in Richmond he
saw Fauquier Cary. He had in Richmond two days.
The town lay in May sunshine, in bloom of the earliest roses. They
mantled the old porches, the iron balconies, while above the magnolias
opened their white chalices. The town breathed gladness for the
victory in the Wilderness, and bitter grief for the many dead, and
bitter grief for Stonewall Jackson. Edward heard in Richmond the Dead
March for Jackson and watched him borne through the sighing streets.
He heard the minute guns, and the tolling bells, and the slow, heroic
music, and the sobbing of the people. He saw the coffin, borne by
generals, carried into the Capitol, upward and between the great white
Doric columns, into the Hall of the Lower House, where it rested
before the Speaker’s chair. He was among the thousands who passed
before the dead chieftain, lying in state among lilies and roses,
shrouded in the flag of Virginia, in the starry banner of the
Confederate States. All day he heard the tolling of the bells, the
firing of the minute guns.
On the morrow began the return journey to the Mississippi, long and
slow on the creeping, outworn train, over the road that was so seldom
mended. On the train crept, for many hundred miles, until just within
the boundaries of Mississippi, at a crowded station, the passengers
heard grave news. Jackson, the capital of the State, was in Federal
hands!—there had been a desperate and disastrous battle at Baker’s
Creek, as desperate and more disastrous than Port Gibson!—there had
been a Confederate rout at Big Black Bridge.... The colonel of the
——th Virginia, and the three or four officers and men with him, left
the train, impressed horses, struck north, and then west and south.
After three days they came upon a grey picket line, passed, and
entered Vicksburg, where they found Pemberton with something over
twenty thousand effectives,—the troops that had met defeat at Baker’s
Creek, with others not engaged,—all under orders from Richmond to hold
Vicksburg at all hazards.
On the eighteenth, the Federal forces appeared on the Jackson and
Grapevine road, east of the town. The two following days were spent by
the blue in making their lines of circumvallation. The grey and the
blue lines were about eight hundred yards apart. On the twenty-second,
the ironclads came up the river from Grand Gulf. When they opened fire
on the town and its defences, which they did almost immediately, the
siege of Vicksburg was formally begun.