Recollections of the Civil War. Charles A. Dana
that six transport steamers, each loaded with one hundred thousand rations and forty days' coal, should be made ready to run the Vicksburg batteries. The order was executed on the night of the 22d. The transports were manned throughout, officers, engineers, pilots, and deck hands, by volunteers from the army, mainly from Logan's division. This dangerous service was sought with great eagerness, and experienced men had been found for every post. If ten thousand men had been wanted instead of one hundred and fifty, they would have engaged with zeal in the adventure. In addition to bulwarks of hay, cotton, and pork barrels, each transport was protected by a barge on each side of it. Orders were to drop noiselessly down with the current from the mouth of the Yazoo, and not show steam till the enemy's batteries began firing, when the boats were to use all their legs. The night was cloudy, and the run was made with the loss of one of the transports, the Tigress, which was sunk, and a few men wounded.
The day after these transports with supplies ran the Vicksburg batteries General Grant changed his headquarters to Smith's plantation, near New Carthage. All of McClernand's corps, the Thirteenth, was now near there, and that officer said ten thousand men would be ready to move from New Carthage the next day. McPherson's corps, which had been busy upon the Lake Providence expedition and other services, but which had been ordered to join, was now, except one division, moving over from Milliken's Bend. Sherman's corps, the Fifteenth, which had been stationed at Young's Point, was also under marching orders to New Carthage.
Grant's first object now was to cross the Mississippi as speedily as possible and capture Grand Gulf before it could be re-enforced; but first it was necessary to know the strength of this point. On the 22d Admiral Porter had gone down with his gunboats and opened fire to ascertain the position and strength of the batteries. He reported them too strong to overcome, and earnestly advised against a direct attack. He suggested that the troops either be marched down the west side from New Carthage to a point where they could be ferried over the Mississippi just below Grand Gulf, or that they be embarked on the transports and barges and floated past the batteries in the night.
The day after Grant changed his headquarters to Smith's plantation he went himself with General Porter to reconnoiter Grand Gulf. His reconnoissance convinced him that the place was not so strong as Admiral Porter had supposed, and an attack was ordered to be made as soon as the troops could be made ready, the next day, April 26th, if possible.
An irritating delay occurred then, however. McClernand's corps was not ready to move. When we came to Smith's plantation, on the 24th, I had seen that there was apparently much confusion in McClernand's command, and I was astonished to find, now that he was ordered to move across the Mississippi, that he was planning to carry his bride with her servants, and baggage along with him, although Grant had ordered that officers should leave behind everything that could impede the march.
On the 26th, the day when it was hoped to make an attack on Grand Gulf, I went with Grant by water from our headquarters at Smith's plantation down to New Carthage and to Perkins's plantation below, where two of McClernand's divisions were encamped. These troops, it was supposed, were ready for immediate embarkation, and there were quite as many as all the transports could carry, but the first thing which struck us both on approaching the points of embarkation was that the steamboats and barges were scattered about in the river and in the bayou as if there was no idea of the imperative necessity of the promptest movement possible.
We at once steamed to Admiral Porter's flagship, which was lying just above Grand Gulf, and Grant sent for McClernand, ordering him to embark his men without losing a moment. In spite of this order, that night at dark, when a thunderstorm set in, not a single cannon or man had been moved. Instead, McClernand held a review of a brigade of Illinois troops at Perkins's about four o'clock in the afternoon. At the same time a salute of artillery was fired, notwithstanding the positive orders that had repeatedly been given to use no ammunition for any purpose except against the enemy.
When we got back from the river to headquarters, on the night of the 26th, we found that McPherson had arrived at Smith's plantation with the first division of his corps, the rear being not very far behind. His whole force would have been up the next day, but it was necessary to arrest its movements until McClernand could be got out of the way; this made McClernand's delay the more annoying. General Lorenzo Thomas, who was on the Mississippi at this time organizing negro troops, told me that he believed now that McPherson would actually have his men ready to embark before McClernand.
Early the next morning, April 27th, I went with Grant from Smith's plantation back to New Carthage. As soon as we arrived the general wrote a very severe letter to McClernand, but learning that at last the transport steamers and barges had been concentrated for use he did not send the rebuke. Grant spent the day there completing the preparations for embarking, and on the morning of the 28th about ten thousand men were on board. This force was not deemed sufficient for the attack on Grand Gulf, so the troops were brought down to Hard Times landing, on the Louisiana side, almost directly across the river from Grand Gulf, where a portion of them were debarked, and the transports sent back for Hovey's division, six thousand strong. We spent the night at Hard Times waiting for these troops, which arrived about daylight on the morning of the 29th.
There were now sixteen thousand men at Hard Times ready to be landed at the foot of the Grand Gulf bluff as soon as its batteries were silenced. At precisely eight o'clock the gunboats opened their attack. Seven, all ironclads, were engaged, and a cannonade was kept up for nearly six hours. We soon found that the enemy had five batteries, the first and most formidable of them being placed on the high promontory close to the mouth of the Big Black. The lower batteries, mounting smaller guns and having no more than two pieces each, were silenced early in the action, but this one obstinately resisted. For the last four hours of the engagement the whole seven gunboats were employed in firing at this one battery, now at long range, seeking to drop shells within the parapet, now at the very foot of the hill, within about two hundred yards, endeavoring to dismount its guns by direct fire. It was hit again and again, but its pieces were not disabled. At last, about half past one o'clock, Admiral Porter gave the signal to withdraw. The gunboats had been hit more or less severely. I was on board the Benton during the attack, and saw that her armor had been pierced repeatedly both in her sides and her pilot house, but she had not a gun disabled; and except for the holes through her mail, some of them in her hull, she was as ready to fight as at the beginning of the action.
The batteries having proved too much for the gunboats, General Grant determined to execute an alternative plan which he had had in mind from the first; that was, to debark the troops and march them south across the peninsula which faces Grand Gulf to a place out of reach of the Confederate guns. While the engagement between the gunboats and batteries had been going on, all the rest of McClernand's corps had reached Hard Times, having marched around by land, and three divisions of McPherson's corps had also come up. This entire body of about thirty-five thousand men was immediately started across the peninsula to De Shroon's plantation, where it was proposed to embark them again.
Late in the evening I left Hard Times with Grant to ride across the peninsula to De Shroon's. The night was pitch dark, and, as we rode side by side, Grant's horse suddenly gave a nasty stumble. I expected to see the general go over the animal's head, and I watched intently, not to see if he was hurt, but if he would show any anger. I had been with Grant daily now for three weeks, and I had never seen him ruffled or heard him swear. His equanimity was becoming a curious spectacle to me. When I saw his horse lunge my first thought was, "Now he will swear." For an instant his moral status was on trial; but Grant was a tenacious horseman, and instead of going over the animal's head, as I imagined he would, he kept his seat. Pulling up his horse, he rode on, and, to my utter amazement, without a word or sign of impatience. And it is a fact that though I was with Grant during the most trying campaigns of the war, I never heard him use an oath.
In order to get the transports past Grand Gulf, Porter's gunboats had engaged the batteries about dusk. This artillery duel lasted until about ten o'clock, the gunboats withdrawing as soon as the transports were safely past, and steaming at once to De Shroon's plantation, where General McClernand's corps was all ready to take the transports. The night was spent in embarking the men. By eleven o'clock the next morning, April 30th, three divisions were landed on the east shore of the Mississippi at the place General Grant had selected. This was Bruinsburg,