The laughable campaign of the war--An army floating among the tree
tops of the Yazoo Pass.
In a little time, February, 1863, Grant's army was again off to try for
Vicksburg. This time it was to go on that campaign, so laughable now,
but romantic always, called the "Yazoo Pass expedition." We were to go
down the Mississippi River in big steamers to Helena, and there transfer
ourselves on to a fleet of little steamers, cut the levee into the
overflooded country, and try floating a whole army a hundred miles
across the plantations and swamps of Mississippi.
My eyes were well again, and I was happy to join our regiment and be one
of the aquatic throng. Just as we were getting on to the boat at Memphis
two of my company managed to get shot by the provost guard. They had
been full of liquor, and refused to go to the steamer. They had been
heroes at Iuka. How unlucky now to get crippled for life in a drunken
brawl!
On the 22d of March, near Helena, my regiment went aboard the pretty
little schooner called the _Armada_. Shortly, dozens of these small
boats, crowded with regiments, accompanied by gunboats, were floating
about, awaiting the order to sail through a big cut that our engineers
had made in the river levee and get down the pass into Moon Lake. The
Mississippi was high and raging. All the low-lying country for half a
hundred miles was flooded till it looked like a vast sea, with forests
of trees standing in its midst. Here and there, too, a plantation,
higher than the surrounding country, was noticeable. The first pass into
Moon Lake was but a mile long. But through that pass swirled and roared
the waters of the Mississippi, so suddenly let loose by the break in the
levee.
At just four in the evening our little steamer got the order to turn out
of the river and into the rushing waters of the pass. We would not have
been more excited at being told to start over Niagara Falls. Our engines
are working backward and we enter the crevasse slowly, but in five
minutes the fearful, eddying current seized us, and our boat was whirled
round and round like a toy skiff in a washtub. We all held our breath as
the steamer was hurled among floating logs and against overhanging
trees. In ten minutes the rushing torrent had carried us, backward,
down into the little lake. Not a soul of the five hundred on board the
boat in this crazy ride was lost. Once in the lake we stopped, and with
amazement watched other boats, crowded with soldiers, also drift into
the whirl and be swept down the pass. It was luck, not management, that
half the little army was not drowned.
Now for days and days our little fleet coursed its way toward Vicksburg
among the plantations, swamps, woods, bayous, cane-brakes, creeks, and
rivers of that inland sea. Wherever the water seemed deepest that was
our course, but almost every hour projecting stumps and trees had to be
sawn off under the water to allow our craft to get through. Sometimes we
advanced only four or five miles a day. At night the boat would be tied
to some tall sycamore. Here and there we landed at some plantation that
seemed like an island in the flood. The negroes on the plantation,
amazed at our coming, wondered if it was the day of Jubilee or if it was
another Noah's flood and that these iron gunboats arks of safety.
We soldiers, if not on duty pushing the boat away from trees, had
nothing to do but sleep and eat and read. Most of the soldiers slept on
the decks, on the guards, and on the cabin floors. Four of us had a
little stateroom. I had with me a copy of Shakespeare, cribbed by one
of the boys somewhere, and the Bard of Avon was never studied under
stranger circumstances.
The Yazoo Pass, though not so crazy as the crevasse we had come through,
was nevertheless bad and dangerous. Two of our craft sank to the bottom,
but the soldiers were saved by getting into trees. All the boats were
torn half to pieces. One day as we pushed our way along the crooked
streams amid the vine-covered forests we ran onto a Rebel fort built on
a bit of dry land. In front of it were great rafts that completely
obstructed our way. An ocean steamer was also sunk in the channel in
front of us. To our amazement we learned that it was the _Star of the
West_, the ship that received the first shot fired in the war of the
Rebellion. That was when it was trying to take supplies to Fort Sumter.
Our gunboats shelled this "Fort Greenwood" in vain, and now Rebels were
gathering around and behind us and guerrillas were beginning to fire on
the boats. The waters, too, might soon subside, and our fleet and army
be unable to get back into the Mississippi. We could not go ahead.
Suddenly the orders came to turn about and steam as fast as possible to
a place of safety.
By April 8 we had made the journey through the woods and cane-brake back
to the pass. The picturesque farce was ended. We could now hunt some
other road to Vicksburg. We know nothing of what the generals thought of
this fiasco, but we private soldiers had great fun, and the long stay on
the boats had been a rest from hard campaigning. We had not lost a man.
A whole campaign and not a soldier lost!