Ominous reports of enemy gunboats passing Vicksburg came in during the day, and Pemberton wired General Loring at Meridian not to leave the railroad. “Keep me hourly informed, as troops may be required here at any time.”13
Pemberton would have been discouraged indeed, could he have foreseen that within twenty-four hours several miles of the very wires that carried these messages would be ripped and tangled into an inextricable snarl.
* “All honor to the gallant captain, whose intrepid coolness and daring characterize him on every occasion.”—Grierson’s official report of the raid, O.R., ser. I, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 528.
ACTION AT NEWTON STATION
WHILE GRIERSON’S RAIDERS WERE approaching Newton Station in the early morning of April 24, a hundred miles to the west General Ulysses Grant was boarding the flagship of Admiral David Porter for a reconnaissance run along the Mississippi. He was going down for a close look at Grand Gulf. Tomorrow or the next day he would have to give the order that would send the first wave of infantrymen in a river crossing against that well-defended bluff, twenty-five miles below Vicksburg, the point which he had selected weeks ago as the necessary foothold for his encirclement from the south.
This would be Grant’s eighth try at Vicksburg; he knew it would be his last, win or lose. He believed that he had planned this assault as thoroughly as any military campaign could be planned. He was counting heavily on the cavalry raids in eastern Mississippi to throw his enemy, General Pemberton, off balance. He remembered Pemberton from the time when they had served in the same division during the war with Mexico. Pemberton always liked his fighting to be neat and tidy, with well-defined lines, and would be thoroughly fretted by enemy cavalry disarranging his rear. And if Grierson’s cavalry could reach and wreck the rail line between Jackson and Meridian, Pemberton would have good cause to fret.
Grant’s principal concern today was General John McClernand, one of his three corps commanders. McClernand already had marched his corps into position at Hard Times Landing across from Grand Gulf, and only last night had practically demanded of Grant that he issue immediate orders for the attack. McClernand was bound to lead the first crossing, being the glory hunter that he was—McClernand the political general, the Yankee Democrat who had sold President Lincoln a deal, and had almost won command of the Vicksburg campaign over Grant. Against orders he had brought his wife down on the eve of the big crossing, had invited the governor of Illinois for a grand review, a Roman carnival—McClernand, a man with sharp eyes, a fox nose, and a face hidden under an untrimmed brush of beard.
When Admiral Porter’s flagship swung around a bend in the river, there against the sun was Grand Gulf two miles away, a bluff honeycombed with defenses, twelve big guns on its frowning brow. Somewhere up there was Grant’s old friend and neighbor, General John S. Bowen, a Missourian who had chosen to fight on the side of the South.
Admiral Porter insisted that Grand Gulf was too strong to be captured; a few hours earlier a Confederate informer had told him the garrison was 12,000 strong. Grant was stubborn. He had rejected an alternate plan for landing below Grand Gulf because the ground was too swampy south of the bluff. He wanted dry, hard ground for a base, no more of that oozing mud in which his armies had bogged themselves on other attempts to reach Vicksburg. If the Navy guns could silence the enemy batteries, he was sure that his river-borne infantry could land and hold at Grand Gulf.1
As the flagship turned and headed back towards his new headquarters at Smith’s Plantation near New Carthage, Grant was probably thinking about the wounded. McClernand had not planned a line of transportation to take care of the casualties. Sherman would not have overlooked that necessity.
The only man Grant could trust, General William T. Sherman, was opposed to the entire plan of attack. Sherman had told Grant frankly that to cross the river and begin a campaign without a supply base was against all the rules of warfare. He recommended that the army return to Memphis to try again by land from the north.
Grant shut his mind to that, even though it meant he was siding with McClernand, the man he distrusted, against Sherman, the man he respected. But today, as soon as he landed and returned to his headquarters at Smith’s Plantation, Grant’s first thought was of Sherman, waiting patiently up at Milliken’s Bend. He sent Sherman a long message. “My impressions are that if an attack can be made within the next two days, Grand Gulf will easily fall.” Then he admitted that there were no preparations for taking care of casualties. He was sending a surgeon up to the Bend tomorrow to consult about the “best policy to pursue for caring for our sick and wounded.”2
This would probably mean a delay of three or four days. But perhaps by that time news might have come of cavalry raids against the Vicksburg railroad. Hurlbut’s last message from Memphis had assured him that Grierson would cut the railroad by Wednesday or Thursday, and today was Friday.3 He would like to catch Pemberton on his front while he was busy tidying up his back yard.
II
Lieutenant-Colonel William Blackburn’s battalion was six miles from Newton Station when the sun rose. In a few minutes they reached a creek ford, halting briefly to unbit and water horses. This would be the big day, the day of action. In Sergeant Surby’s words, “Colonel Blackburn ordered me to proceed lively with my two men to the station, reconnoiter, and report what force was stationed there, what time the train would arrive, and so forth.”4
The three Butternut Guerillas went off at a gallop, the sound of their horses’ hooves muffled in the red soil. In less than an hour, as they topped a rise in the road, they saw the town suddenly in front of them, the single track of the railroad slicing through the few scattered buildings. They took cover quickly, Surby studying the landscape. He saw no camp but several men were walking aimlessly around a large building near the railroad station. They appeared to be unarmed and he saw no pickets anywhere. He guessed that the men were convalescent patients and that the building was the hospital mentioned by his Decatur informant of last night.
“I told the men we would proceed and see a little more before reporting. We started leisurely along and stopped at a house just at the edge of town; found a white man, called for a drink of water, and asked him how long before the train would be in. He said it was due in three quarters of an hour. I ascertained that no force was stationed here. Was obtaining other information, when my ears were startled by the whistle of a locomotive. It seemed a long way off. I then inquired what train that was. The man said it was the freight train coming from the east, due at nine o’clock A.M.”5
Realizing that there was no time to lose if they hoped to capture the freight train, Surby sent one of the scouts back at a gallop to inform Colonel Blackburn. If the battalion could not be brought up immediately there would be no chance to seize the freight train, and they might also lose the passenger train.
With his remaining scout, Surby hurried down into the town, halting and fastening their horses to a hitching rail at the tiny railroad station. He was determined to capture the telegraph station to prevent warning of the raiders’ presence being flashed to any nearby Confederate forces. But the station office was closed and they could see no telegraph instruments through the dingy windows.
As Surby and his companion came around the end of the building, they saw several convalescent Confederates coming out of the hospital a hundred yards away. Confident that Blackburn’s column would be arriving within a few minutes, the sergeant drew his revolver and walked slowly toward the rebels. “Remain inside!” he shouted. “Don’t come out on peril of your lives!”6
In a few moments the cavalry came charging down the street beside the railroad tracks. Blackburn was waving his hat and cheering. Less than a mile to the east, above the pine forest, a black streamer of smoke marked the slow approach of the freight train.
Blackburn immediately sent pickets scattering through the little town to block the roads and approaches. He ordered his company commanders to conceal their troops from view of the oncoming train;
the men were dismounted and the horses were quickly led back behind the buildings. Two men were sent on the double to each of the sidetrack’s switches, with instructions to hide in the tall grass beside the railroad. They were to spring up and throw the switches if there should be any attempt on the part of the engineer to take sudden flight.
In a moment the oversized cowcatcher of the squat little freight engine emerged from the pines. It was a noisy train, the wheels pounding, the cars rattling, the locomotive puffing and blowing with its weight of twenty-five loaded cars. Blackburn stood beside the station, inconspicuous in the shade, watching its slow approach. The engineer was forcing the engine to a squealing stop. A brakeman dropped off a side-step, moved in a slow trot to the switch, turned and locked it in place. The train crept slowly onto the rusted tracks of the siding.
This train, like most other southern trains after two years of war, was approaching disintegration, there being no railroad equipment factories in the South. Wheels were badly worn on ramshackle cars; engines wheezed out their power through leaky boiler pipes. And along the tracks, crossties were rotting, rails breaking, bridges sagging. Empty woodpiles forced frequent stops along the way while trainmen gathered fuel from the forests. The standard pre-war speed of twenty-five miles an hour had dropped to ten, and few engineers would take a train out after dark.
But this train was loaded with ordnance and commissary supplies for Vicksburg, with new railroad ties and bridge timbers and planking. It could still move. It carried death for the Union men before Vicksburg. It was precious to the Confederacy, necessary for the continuing defense of Vicksburg.
If the engineer glanced at the railroad station, he saw only Colonel Blackburn in his dusty, mud-caked blues, and the three scouts near him in their Confederate disguises. The town itself must have seemed deserted. Unseen horses nickered, answered by others. The engine began to slow, its wheel flanges clanking. Steam and smoke swirled across the front of the little sunlit station.
On a signal from Blackburn, the cavalrymen in a sweeping charge swarmed out on foot from behind the buildings. Within a few seconds they had captured their first train.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Surby had informed the colonel of the second train, and as soon as the freight’s crewmen were under guard the soldiers were once again ordered out of sight behind the buildings. Blackburn and the three scouts resumed their studied poses beside the station.
In a few minutes the Jackson-Meridian passenger train—it was a mixed freight and passenger—was whistling for Newton Station. “On she came rounding the curve,” Surby wrote, “her passengers unconscious of the surprise that awaited them. The engineer decreased her speed. She was now nearly opposite the depot. Springing upon the steps of the locomotive, and presenting my revolver at the engineer, I told him if he reversed that engine I would put a ball through him. He was at my mercy, and obeyed orders. It would have done any one good to have seen the men rush from their hiding places amid the shouts and cheers which rent the air of ‘the train is ours.’”7
The mixed train consisted of one passenger car and twelve freight cars, four loaded with ammunition and arms, six with commissary and quartermaster’s stores, and two with household goods belonging to families fleeing from Vicksburg. The train’s sudden stop startled the passengers in the rear coach; they looked out upon a depot and a town that one moment was empty of life, and then in a flicker of time was crowded with the movement of a hundred blue-clad men. When the passengers began tossing their valuables out the car windows on the side opposite from the station, everything fell into a water-filled ditch. “A few revolvers, some papers and a considerable amount of money was unceremoniously thrown out. Some of the men, who never let anything pass unobserved, accidentally picked up a few articles. One old wallet which was floating on the water contained about eight thousand dollars in Confederate greenbacks.”*8
III
Newton Station swirled with dust, smoke, steam, and confusion. Capturing two trains so effortlessly within a few minutes of each other had lifted Colonel Blackburn’s travel-worn men into a state of giddiness. They were beginning to get out of hand, smashing in the doors of the cars, breaking the windows of the depot office, scampering off in pursuit of personal loot before the official pillaging could begin.
Blackburn restored order by rallying the troopers on the depot and forming them into their regular platoons. A systematic inspection of the trains was then begun. While this was going on, one of the Vicksburg refugees begged that his household goods not be burned, and Blackburn assigned a squad to remove the Southerner’s furniture from the car.
When he discovered that both trains carried several hundred loaded artillery shells and other explosives, Blackburn had them moved down the tracks some distance from the hospital. Then he sent fire details into action, and within a few minutes each car was ablaze. The heated shells began exploding, not all simultaneously, but in ragged volleys, booming like an artillery duel at close quarters.
At this moment Colonel Grierson’s main column was only a short distance from Newton Station. Being completely unaware of the captured trains and the burning ammunition, Grierson assumed that Blackburn had walked into a trap and was being shelled by artillery. Trot, gallop, march! he ordered.
“And on they came,” said Sergeant Surby, “expecting battle, but instead, found the men had charged on a barrel of whisky, which they were confiscating. I did not see a man that had more or less than a canteen full.”9
Grierson naturally was delighted by Blackburn’s unexpected haul, but he wasted no time in getting on with the real business of the raid. He dispatched Major Mathew Starr with two battalions of the Sixth Regiment to the east with orders to burn bridges and trestlework, cut telegraph poles, and destroy the lines all the way to Chunkey River. Captain Joseph Herring of Company K was sent with a battalion of the Seventh to the west on a similar mission.
While these two expeditions were destroying bridges and telegraph lines, Grierson kept the other troopers occupied in the town. They burned a building containing 500 small arms and a considerable quantity of Confederate uniforms. With wrecking tools obtained from the depot, they tore out rails and heaped them on piles of crossties, warping them by fire. They exploded the two locomotives. Adjutant George Root of the Seventh Regiment set himself up at a table in the hospital, and seventy-five hospitalized Confederate soldiers filed by to receive paroles which would keep them from being returned to duty until Federal prisoner exchanges were arranged. After permitting the hospital’s surgeon to remove food and other supplies from the storeroom in the depot, Grierson ordered that building burned.10
By two o’clock Grierson was convinced that the Vicksburg railroad had suffered a severe blow, and that days would be required to restore transportation and communication over the several miles of charred pilings and twisted wires on each side of Newton. He ordered his buglers to sound rally call, and the smoke-blackened, bleary-eyed cavalrymen began assembling into companies.*
Where now could they go, now that their mission was accomplished, these men who had scarcely been out of saddles for three days? They sat in the midday sun with eyelids drooping, smelling of sweat and whiskey and woodsmoke, waiting the order to march on mounts going lame with worn and thrown shoes, with nosebags empty and muscles spent to the limit of endurance.
They knew they must move swiftly from this desolate town. The enemy lay at every compass point and would surely pursue them now with renewed fury. Some of Grierson’s officers were fairly certain they would not be marching eastward, for during the work of destruction at Newton Station their commander had advised them to make inquiries of the Confederate convalescents and the townspeople concerning eastbound roads, and to pass remarks within earshot of the rebels which would lead the listeners to believe the Yankee raiders would flee to the east.
Would they turn back north into a countryside filled with aroused citizens and pursuing Confederate soldiers? It seemed unlikely, and no one was surprised when the advance co
mpany of the column wheeled away from the railroad and marched off at a slow pace, southward, facing again toward the unknown heartland of the enemy.
IV
Before Grierson’s cavalrymen marched out of Newton Station, General Pemberton, only fifty miles away in Jackson, received a telegraphic flash of the raid. For the first time since the Yankee raiders had invaded Mississippi, the general could pinpoint their position on a map. He was astounded by their audacity, he was gravely concerned for his supply and communications lines, and he was determined on immediate revenge.
Alarming rumors also were coming in from Grand Gulf on this day. Grant’s army was in movement around Hard Times Landing. But Grant’s soldiers could wait; the broad waters of the Mississippi would hold them off for a time. Nothing seemed to stop these Yankee cavalrymen raiding in the east.
Pemberton evidently believed they would actually march on towards Jackson. In his orders to General John Adams directing the latter to take two infantry regiments and a battery of artillery to meet the raiders at Morton, Pemberton assumed that the enemy would have already reached Lake Station, ten miles west of Newton.
Significantly, General Adams was delayed in leaving Jackson by lack of transportation. Not until four o’clock in the afternoon did the two infantry regiments depart by rail, leaving the battery and its six pieces of artillery waiting for another train. Adams did not reach Morton until well after dark, and he spent the night forming his force of one thousand men to do battle with the raiders, supposedly heading westward along the Vicksburg railroad.
Satisfied that General Adams could block and defeat the invaders before they reached Jackson, Pemberton dispatched a series of messages to other parts of the state, hoping to prevent escape of the cavalrymen no matter which direction they might take. Because of the severed wires at Newton, he could not reach General Loring at Meridian, but he was rather certain that Loring would have heard of the raid from the other end of the line. To prevent escape to the northeast he wired General James Chalmers at Panola: “Move with all your cavalry and light artillery via Oxford to Okolona to intercept force of enemy now at Newton.” To block the northwestern routes, he ordered General Lloyd Tilghman at Canton: “Send one half of your command, under a reliable officer, to intercept the enemy should he attempt to retreat by Carthage.”