2013 Civil War Travelogues — Vicksburg Campaign

Welcome to my 2013 travelogue pages, commemorating the third year of the Civil War Sesquicentennial! This report covers my April/May trip to examine the Vicksburg Campaign with the Blue and Gray Education Society (BGES). To see the entire list of my 2013 trips, go here.

Here is a reminder about the reason I write these pages the way I do. They record my experiences and impressions of Civil War trips primarily for my future use. Thus, they sometimes make assumptions about things I already know and focus on insights that I receive. They are not general-purpose descriptions for people unfamiliar with the Civil War, although I do link to various Wikipedia articles throughout. Apologies about the quality of interior photographs—I don't take fancy cameras with big flashes to these events. If you would like to be notified of new travelogues, connect to me via Facebook.

National Geographic and BGES published a book in 2010 called Receding Tide by Ed Bearss, with Parker Hills, describing the waning of Confederate fortunes in 1863, focusing on the Vicksburg and Gettysburg campaigns. This seminar/tour is meant to cover the Vicksburg portions; a follow on tour in August will cover Gettysburg (although it is very likely I will be unable to attend that). The Vicksburg program is described in the program announcement. (Gettysburg is here.)

Saturday, April 27

It's Ulysses S. Grant's birthday today! I flew from San Francisco through Denver to Memphis, the starting point for the tour, and checked into the Courtyard at the airport. (NB: This is not a hotel that I would recommend very highly. Although it was comfortable, it is way outside the airport in a business park and has no restaurants or points of interest within walking distance.)

The program started in the hotel meeting room. To my surprise, only six people signed up for the program; I had been expecting a full busload. Now things will be a lot more intimate. I was disappointed that the BGES director, Len Riedel, couldn't make it, because I have been with him on a number of programs and he is always fun as well as knowledgeable. In his place, his brother Karl came along to do the driving duties. I had never met him before, but he has a very strong family resemblance so I recognized him immediately. The program leader is Parker Hills, with whom I have done a number of programs over the years, and he was one of the main attractions that motivated me to sign up for this one. BGES has an extremely comprehensive series of seven or eight multiple-day programs that cover the entire Vicksburg campaign, all engineered by Parker, and this weeklong program is a concentrated version. It is actually the second time I have been to Vicksburg with Parker. The first was an Elderhostel program in 2008, which you can read about here.

Parker did a PowerPoint presentation to cover the early days of the Vicksburg campaign, starting with the strategic situation and the lines of communication for both sides, but quickly jumping into the two significant Confederate cavalry raids early in the campaign: the Earl Van Dorn raid that destroyed the federal supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi, and the Nathan Bedford Forrest raid in Tennessee. Both of these caused Grant to interrupt his advance down the railroad and return to Memphis. Along the way, Parker covered some of the politics involved with the control of the Mississippi, and the military rivalries between some of the key players, including Grant, Rosecrans, and McClernand. He described an interesting controversy about the capture of Col. Murphy, the commander of the Holly Springs Depot. Murphy stated afterward that he was working late in the depot when he was captured, but accounts from others indicated that the Confederates surprised him while he was sleeping in his bed. Parker thought the latter was the more likely story.

We all jumped in the van for a relatively late dinner at a barbecue restaurant called Marlowe's, a few miles from the hotel and just up Elvis Presley Boulevard from Graceland. Pretty decent food, although the clientele was very loud.

Sunday, April 28

Today is my wife's birthday. Many thanks to my lovely Nancy for encouraging me to travel on a program like this on her special day. (Actually, however, she has taken to spending the entire month celebrating her birthday, so perhaps this is not as big an accommodation as you might think. :-))

Today was also a long day in the van, covering probably 270 miles. To follow up on our presentation from last night, we concentrated on the two cavalry raids that caused Grant to abort his first Vicksburg initiative, which Parker has designated the "Mississippi Central Railroad campaign." We started by driving to downtown Memphis to visit what used to be called Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. That name is no longer politically correct and it is now officially known as something like Health Services Park. The large equestrian monument is over the graves of Forrest and his wife, so apparently the city is not willing to relocate the bodies as well as the statue and have settled for a new meaningless name for the park. The city was absolutely deserted on a Sunday morning so we did not think we would have a problem parking in the empty Office Depot lot across the street, but immediately a lady ran out to the store completely incensed that we would do so and made us move the van. Parker retaliated by failing to replenish his dry erase markers in her store, even though his were running dry (or drier, I suppose). At the statue, Parker reviewed biographical information about the general and went over the campaigns on a large map that he had prepared.

We drove about 110 miles to Parker's Crossroads, the site of the most significant battle on the first of the two raids, "Forrest's West Tennessee raid," in which he was sent by Braxton Bragg to disrupt the railroad supply line leading to Ulysses S. Grant's army. The raid was a great success, but just before it concluded and his troopers were able to slip back over the Tennessee River, he was intercepted by two Union brigades at Parker's Crossroads, an extremely small community that was essentially a road intersection with a house owned by a Rev. John Parker. This was a really neat, small battlefield. Very easy to understand the unit actions, visualize the terrain, and take advantage of numerous interpretive signs and maps. The interstate highway runs right through the middle of the battlefield, but I did not find that this detracted from my understanding at all. There is a brand-new visitor center and we watched a relatively brief video about the battle, which took place on December 31, 1862. We visited the city park, which has a walking trail that leads to the crossroads, but we did not take the entire trail because it is almost a mile long and we were a little short on time for the day. Then we drove to Hicks Field, where the initial engagement took place. Forrest ran into the brigade commanded by Col. Cyrus L. Dunham and pushed them back, subjecting them to really murderous artillery bombardment. It interesting that Forrest had earlier captured three 3-inch Ordnance Rifles that had been built from steel rather than wrought iron—only six of these rifles had ever been constructed.

We went to the site of the Parker House, which is no longer there, and the space is filled by an exceptionally ugly little bank branch. On the other side of the freeway, we walked along a wooden fence line behind which the Union brigade tried to defend itself, but in addition to the artillery, Forrest hit them with a double envelopment. Unfortunately for the Confederates, the second Union brigade, under Col. John W. Fuller, arrived in Forrest's rear, which prompted Forrest to say his famous quote, "Charge them both ways." The Confederates were able to break out of the Union trap, losing about 300 prisoners. We went to Jones Cemetery and visited Rev. Parker's grave. He had been a Unionist, but was so annoyed by Union artillery placed on his lawn that he changed his allegiance for the rest of his life. And his grave is oriented north-south, rather than the traditional east-west used by all of the other graves in the cemetery. He had said that when Gabriel blew his horn, he wanted to be able to jump out of his grave facing north and send the Yankees back to where they came from.

After lunch, we drove southwest to Grand Junction, Tennessee, the site of a giant supply depot established by Grant. There was not much to see here other than some railroad track crossings and we drove by the National Bird Dog Museum. Nearby is the town of La Grange, where we saw the narrow road on which Grierson's raid started. (This was a Union raid that did not start until April 1863, so it was outside of the timeframe we were examining with the two Confederate raids, but we will not return to this town for the rest of the program, I presume.)

Not far over the state line was Holly Springs, Mississippi, which was the forward supply base established by Grant as part of his Mississippi Central Railroad advance—his combat units made it as far south as Oxford. However, on December 20, 1862, Confederate cavalry under Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn raided into Grant's rear and attacked Holly Springs. The Union troops were apparently getting ready for Christmas festivities because they were taken by surprise and their commander, Col. Robert C. Murphy, was captured. We drove around a bit, tracing the routes that two out of the three columns of Confederate raiders took into the town. We visited the railroad depot where Murphy supposedly was captured. It's a giant, unusual structure that has been converted into a residence, one with 20 bedrooms and a dining room that seats 125 people, occupied by an eccentric old lady. We also visited the house owned by a Hugh Craft in the small downtown, which was Murphy's headquarters, and where Parker suspects Murphy was actually captured in his bed clothes. A very impressive house is called Walter Place, a mansion with Corinthian columns and two crenalated turrets, which temporarily housed Julia Grant. There is some controversy about whether her husband ever stayed there and whether she was there the night of the raid—Parker says no, the owner of the $2 million house says yes. We also visited the town cemetery and spotted the grave of Winfield Scott Featherston, one of 13 Confederate generals who came from the town.

On the way back to Memphis, we searched around for a restaurant and ended up at Applebee's, where we had a decent and convivial meal before getting back to the hotel about 9 PM. A long day, but productive.

Monday, April 29

Another long day on the road. We started on the Memphis waterfront, envisioning the 50 boats that William T. Sherman used to head down the Mississippi toward Chickasaw Bayou. They were racing to depart because Grant wanted them out of the reach of Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand, his subordinate and political rival. Nonetheless, before the final boat departed, a messenger arrived with word of Grant's setback at Holly Springs, so Sherman was being forgetful or disingenuous in his memoirs. We spent some time discussing the political relationships of Grant and Lincoln and Grant versus McClernand.

We drove about 70 miles to Helena, Arkansas, which Parker described as being like a third world country. I will admit there were some blighted areas, particularly next to the river, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of large old houses, nicely maintained. We traveled there through the beginning of the Mississippi Delta, which is shaped somewhat like a football, a completely flat floodplain that is surrounded by higher ground. On the eastern side, this is called "loess," a type of soil that was blown in through the air during the Pleistocene era. In Helena, we visited the new Patrick Cleburne statue downtown. He certainly was a short man. Parker, who is a fine arts graduate from way back, gave it less than a stellar review. We walked out on a boardwalk at the River Park and saw signage about the Battle of Helena, July 4, 1863, which was a Confederate infantry assault against the town, beaten back in large part by naval gunfire from the USS Tyler. We also discussed the plight of the SS Sultana in 1865. The famous photograph of the Sultana, grossly overloaded with passengers, was taken not far from the spot.

In Maple Hill Cemetery we examined the Confederate monument that was built in 1892 and the graves of Patrick Cleburne and Thomas Hindman. This was one of the steepest cemetery areas I have ever encountered. We drove by the Tappan Pillow House, which at one time or another house both William T. Sherman and Samuel Curtis. We concluded our visit to Helena at "New Fort Curtis." The original Fort Curtis was replaced by a parking lot and in 2012 a variety of government groups built a replica a few blocks away, just slightly smaller than the original. It was a typical earthwork redoubt, although they impressed railroad ties all around that are apparently there to resist erosion. I was amused by a sign that explained that the original Fort Curtis was built by manual laborers in three months, whereas the replica was built by contractors with power tools and required five months.

For the rest of the day, we examined the Yazoo Pass Expedition, one of the experiments that Grant tried in an attempt to reach Vicksburg in early 1863. The pass is not far from Helena, at Moon Lake. Engineers blew up a levee and a joint operations expedition was launched to navigate a number of narrow rivers and eventually reach the Yazoo River at the town of Sartatia, where a good road led through the Walnut Hills directly to Vicksburg. We made a number of stops in what was over 100 miles. The first was the beginning of the pass, which made it very easy to visualize the difficulty the Navy had in clearing obstacles from the narrow channel. We also encountered a snake on the path, which got everyone excited. We stopped at the confluence of the pass and the Coldwater River. The next stop was the start of the Tallahatchie River and we saw a bridge that Parker claimed was the one referred to by Bobbie Gentry in her Ode to Billy Joe, although he said he was not certain. I checked later and found a picture of Gentry on a different bridge, in Money, Mississippi.

Stopping in Minter City, the Union force received intelligence of large Confederate guns being placed in their path ahead. Throughout this expedition, the Army commander, Lt. Col. James B. McPherson, expressed extreme displeasure with the dilatory performance of the Navy commander, Lt. Cmdr. Watson Smith, who arguably delayed the mission long enough that the Confederate guns had enough time to be set up. Those guns were at Fort Pemberton in Greenwood, and the rather subtle remains of the fort are in a park there. The fort was essentially a line of earthworks (actually bales of cotton covered with dirt) that extended from near the river across the highway, so that part is obliterated. We climbed up onto the modern levee built by the Corps of Engineers, which is where the two large artillery pieces were sited and we got a good view of the river, where the Tallahatchie flowed into the Yazoo. The battle that ensued was rather an embarrassment for the Navy and the entire expedition had to be abandoned. Parker told us that the Steele Bayou expedition, which we will examine on our return drive to Memphis, was partially devised by Adm. David D. Porter as an attempt to rescue the stalled Yazoo Pass expedition. I regret to say that I got no good photographs of Fort Pemberton or this area. The fort itself was not photogenic and I seem to have deleted some of the river views by mistake. (These rivers all look about alike.)

By this time it was after 6 PM and we had well over 100 miles left to go to get to Vicksburg. I was really starting to drag, being cooped up in the tight seating of the van for most of 13 hours. To put this in perspective, it was the equivalent of a flight from San Francisco to Europe in a coach seat, although I was grateful that the driver could not recline his seat in front of me and that I could get up for some stretching periodically. We had a brief detour in Sartatia—just a quick look about, and a discussion of an allegedly drunken episode involving Grant on a boat trip there during the siege—before we arrived at the Quality Inn, just outside the entrance to the national military park, and then a quick dinner at the Cracker Barrel.

Tuesday, April 30

A beautiful sunny day. We took a quick drive around downtown Vicksburg and saw some landmarks. We discussed in a little detail the house that was John C. Pemberton's headquarters. It is owned by the National Park Service, but is not currently open to the public. We spent the rest of the morning visiting Chickasaw Bayou and William T. Sherman's battle there December 26–29, 1862. I had visited this area once before (see here), but I did not have such an extensive trip through the area. We drove to Johnson's Plantation and saw the landing spots of each of the four Union divisions as well as the large supply base that the Union established in May 1863. In the latter context, we had a discussion of the logistics of the Vicksburg campaign. The conventional wisdom is that Grant abandoned his supply line and lived off the land after he crossed the Mississippi, but Parker said that this cannot be reconciled with the actual reports in the official records. There was a time in which the Union soldiers were given three days of rations and had to make them last for eight, which they did by supplementing with foraging, but supply wagons were traveling constantly at least up through the battle of Raymond. Afterward, there were resupply points at Champion Hill and Big Black. The incorrect impression about the supplies was originally fostered by Charles A. Dana. After seeing the landing points, we followed the road that represented George W. Morgan's march to attack the Confederate line, seeing all the small bayous that had to be bridged on the way. We visited the Indian Mound, which is a noticeable small hill on which Confederate artillery was placed. It is currently fenced off and is topped with a Quonset hut.

We drove across the bridge and entered Louisiana, paying a short visit to the site of Grant's Canal. This was another attempt to bypass the Confederate guns in Vicksburg in early 1863, by digging a relatively short canal across the DeSoto Peninsula, creating a shortcut that would theoretically be out of the range of the Confederate guns. The attempt failed and now only about 100 yards remain preserved. It was designed to be 60 feet wide and 7 feet deep, but the existing little pond/puddle looks much smaller. There was a brand-new monument there to the 9th Connecticut, which we all criticized because it had etched photographs on the stone face, some of which depicted obvious modern reenactors in phony poses. We drove to Young's Point, which was where Grant's headquarters boat parked. Then to Milliken's Bend, the site of a battle on June 7, 1863. The Confederates attacked a supply depot there, defended by largely untrained African-American soldiers, who fought valiantly, but the battle was won essentially by naval gunfire from the USS Choctaw. Parker noted that this was the second battle in which US Colored Troops fought, the first being at Port Hudson.

Now the long drive began again today. We followed the route of John McClernand's XIII Corps from Milliken's Bend all the way to their crossing point on the Mississippi, which must have been 75 miles (and 50 back to the hotel), a lot of which was on levees, dirt roads, and other uneven surfaces. This was frankly somewhat frustrating because the terrain was essentially the same for the entire trip—flat as a pancake, expansive wheatfields, tree lines in the distance, and occasional peeks at rivers and bayous—so the majority of it could have been replaced by a map exercise with no loss of insight. We drove by Richmond, which is an extinct small town—now just a field—just outside of Tallulah, the scene of a small battle on June 15, 1863, and the burning of the town. We stopped near New Carthage and had a discussion of all of the various diversionary tactics that Grant employed in the campaign, such as Grierson's raid and Sherman's feigned attack on Snyder's Bluff. The next stop was New Carthage itself, but Parker was not confident the approach would be on dry land. In 1863, McClernand found that this area was completely flooded and had to use an alternative, longer route. We found that the road was covered in about 6 inches of water for a very short stretch, so we ventured ahead and found a small fishing community of houses and trailers on stilts about 15 feet high. On the other side of the river was Davis Island, which we did not visit, but noted that the Jefferson Davis family had two plantations on the island. We passed by a plantation called Winter Quarters, which is the only remaining plantation from the time, although we did not stop. The final destination would have been the plantation called Hard Times, a few additional miles down the road, but Parker said that it was not possible to reach it and there was nothing to see there anyway. So we turned around and drove back to the hotel, mostly on the more modern roads and highways. We had dinner at a nice restaurant downtown, Rusty's River Front Grill.

Wednesday, May 1

It rained overnight and the forecast calls for more during the day, so we are being careful about the routes we select through the woods. We drove south out of Vicksburg, following the route of Baldwin's brigade as it advanced to challenge Grant's crossing of the Mississippi. The other brigade that was dispatched, Terry's brigade, took a parallel route that would be more difficult for us to drive in bad weather. (After all, we are in a 15 passenger Chevy van, not a four-wheel drive.) We stopped at a locked gate outside of a private rod and gun club and discussed the importance of Hankinson's Ferry, which we could not access. Parker has tried for years to get permission to enter their property, but they are insisting on $3 million liability insurance policy before allowing it. (I guess I can understand that. All they would need is one rich guy shooting a visitor in the woods and it would be mega lawsuit time.)

Parker also told us the story of the Natchez Trace, which has much older historical significance, but was roughly the route that Grant took as he headed northeast. Pemberton and virtually everyone else expected Grant to move north against Vicksburg from here, but as we will find out, he chose a different route. Near Port Gibson, we stopped at Windsor, a ruined mansion that was destroyed in 1890 fire, and now all that is left are gigantic Corinthian columns in a rectangular formation, reminiscent of Luxor. Parker told a funny story about Ed Bearss consulting on the 1957 Civil War movie filmed here, Raintree County. Ed positioned himself strategically to see Elizabeth Taylor in a carriage scene, and he was impressed by his view of the ample decolletage—more than enough for everyone, he said.

Our visit to Windsor was out of sequence because Parker wanted to give the county road crews time to remove any fallen trees on the road to our next stop, Bruinsburg. It was here that Grant's troops first landed after crossing the Mississippi. It was a little difficult to visualize this because the mighty river has moved significantly since 1863 and the landing spot is now a cornfield. Off in the distance is a narrow bayou and then even farther away is the Mississippi. However, a very subtle ridge allowed us to see where the Mississippi shoreline was originally. Parker called this one of the most significant locations in military history that no one knows about. In fact, it is on private land and Parker was able to get special access for us. One of his ongoing projects is to search for a missing cargo boat, the Horizon, which sank after a collision with another troop transport during the crossing. The boat and all the equipment for an artillery battery is now potentially under about 20 feet of dirt in this area, and using ground penetrating radar he thinks he has found the location, but it is all very tentative and he hopes to get a magnetometer on the case one of these days. We had a discussion about the actual location of Bruinsburg, which Parker suspects is not in the location shown on modern maps, primarily because of two ancient cisterns that are about a half mile away.

During a brief lunch break, we happened to meet Terry Winschel, the retired historian of Vicksburg National Military Park, who along with us selected the only reasonable restaurant in Port Gibson, the Sonic drive-in. He and a man from the Civil War Trust are testing out a new iPhone battlefield application for Vicksburg. After lunch, we started to examine the Battle of Port Gibson in earnest. By coincidence (or design?), we are here on the actual sesquicentennial of the battle; because of the pace of the campaign, our tour will not encounter a direct anniversary again. We started at Bethel Church, which was the first landmark for the Union troops after they passed by Windsor. It is actually south of Bruinsburg. Grant had been advised by his spy network not to take the road that went directly east to Port Gibson, so he swung around to a more southerly route, which completely fooled the Confederates in their attempts to intercept him. The church is odd looking because in the 1940s a tornado tore off its steeple. We looked at the narrow historical road and I was amazed to hear that they chose to have artillery pieces leading the march (amazed because a single bullet directed at the leading artillery horse could stop the entire column).

Next was the Shaifer House, which is an attractive, restored house and detached kitchen. It was here that the first shots of the battle were fired. It is near the intersection on Rodney Road that the two Confederate brigades straddled in their attempts to block the Union advance. As we returned to our van, we noticed someone missing and found that he had been inadvertently locked in the house as we left. We also drove by the site of Magnolia Church nearby, but it is no longer in existence.

Our final stops of the day were in Grand Gulf. This was originally Grant's desired landing spot, but a big naval battle on April 29 failed to subdue the Confederate forts. We visited one of them, Fort Cobun, and Parker did a map exercise showing us all of the gunboat actions during the battle. We did not actually see the Mississippi from where we were because it has moved west significantly. The road that led to the river had been closed because of flooding. We visited the Grand Gulf Museum, which has a very eclectic set of artifacts on display, including Civil War, World War I and II, fossils, Indian arrowheads, etc. By the time we finished with the museum, a major thunderstorm had descended upon us, so we did not get out of the van again. Parker talked about Grant deciding not to follow orders from Washington to join forces with Nathaniel Banks at Port Hudson. We drove by Fort Wade, the other fort in Grand Gulf, which had been successfully put out of action by the Union Navy. We also saw the field in which the Union supply depot was set up after the Confederates abandoned the area. There were 2 million rations stored there, which discredits any story about Grant completely cutting his supply line. Mercifully, we were able to return to the hotel by 6 PM, which means sufficient time for an adequate sleep tonight!

Thursday, May 2

Today was a pretty poor day for photographs, as you'll see. The weather was rainy or threatening all day and then we had a mishap in the mud. We resumed from where we left off yesterday and drove to Willow Springs (the 19th century name) where there was a skirmish on May 2 and McClernand camped his troops. We drove south on part of the historic Natchez Trace to Buena Vista and got a view of Grindstone Ford on the Big Bayou Pierre. (Apparently, what we know of as the Natchez Trace today has quite a number of deviations from the original road/trail, oftentimes because of political considerations, but the original road popped up as minor local roads and walking trails from time to time in our travels.) The original Buena Vista house is no longer there. It has been replaced by an odd little brick house that faces itself away from the nice view. Then we returned north, pointing toward Hankinson's Ferry, which the Confederates expected Grant to cross and drive straight north to Vicksburg. Another one of Grant's deceptions was that he had James B. McPherson's engineers busily preparing the crossing point, even though he had no intention of going in that direction.

Short of the ferry, we stopped at Bagnell's farm, which is where Grant headquartered May 3–7, planning the rest of his campaign. The original house is no longer there and the property has a few old trailers on it, so we stood at the side of the road as Parker lectured on his maps (now in a pretty steady rain). Although popular histories say that Grant was heading northeast toward Jackson, the state capital, in fact he was planning to cut the Confederate line of communication, the railroad between Vicksburg and Jackson. He laid out plans for the three corps to hit the railroad on three parallel roads, using the Big Black River as a buffer between him and the Confederates.

The next stop was Rocky Springs, where Grant spent two days waiting for Sherman's XV Corps to catch up with the rest of the army. (His corps crossed at Grand Gulf a few days after the other two crossed at Bruinsburg.) We visited a church that was built in 1857 on the site, one that still has an active congregation. We took a walk down another part of the historic Natchez Trace, and I was impressed with how steep the sides were. Many of the historic roads that were pointed out as we drove around were severely eroded into the hills, and it was not uncommon to see a road that was 10 feet wide, sunken 10 feet deep. It is amazing they were able to get teams of artillery through these roads. Along the way, Parker told us about a dispute he has been having with other historians about the course of the troops took in this area of the campaign, and how a discovered diary may have resolved it in his favor.

We drove by a field near Big Sand Creek on which a big parade was conducted on May 8 by John McClernand's troops. The next stop was in the town of Cayuga. Some families from the Finger Lakes region of New York originally settled this area and a number of the towns have names copied from upstate New York towns. On May 10, this was Grant's new headquarters. Grant had to deal with some morale problems from his two top West Point–educated officers, and there was also some concern that the Confederates might attack across the Big Black River, using Hall's Ferry or Baldwin's Ferry. We also discussed how Brig. Gen. John Gregg traveled up from Port Hudson to Jackson with his brigade and how the Confederate command issued confusing orders about his cavalry support.

At Dillon's, which was Sherman's camp on May 12, we discussed how he and Grant heard the sounds of Gregg's artillery at Raymond, the start of the battle there. Grant had received intel that Joseph E. Johnston had arrived in Jackson and he quickly made one of the key decisions in the campaign. He reallocated his three corps so that Sherman and McPherson would attack Johnston in Jackson, while McClernand would demonstrate and hold off Pemberton's Confederates on the other side of the Big Black. Parker indicated that this would've been a very risky strategy, except that Grant knew Pemberton would probably sit idle and not take advantage of the division of Grant's army (which is extremely similar to the decision Robert E. Lee made at Chancellorsville 150 years ago today).

We arrived in Raymond and had lunch and then moved to the battlefield, which Parker has played an enormous role in improving and promoting. We stopped briefly on the rise known as Artillery Ridge, which has an excellent view of the battlefield, but Parker has demonstrated to the National Park Service that it was much too far away from the action to be the actual location of the Union artillery. The relocation is where the Friends of Raymond organization has placed 25 replica artillery pieces, creating the only battlefield park that has the correct number and types of cannons used in the battle. We stopped at the bridge over Fourteen Mile Creek, which is where DeGolyer's Battery had cannons far forward. The two guns there are dedicated to Ed Bearss and Warren Grabau. Parker told us a lot about his archaeology projects, determining where units were on the battlefield by finding different types of ammunition. He also found a campfire that he assumes was used by a burial detail.

Before we left we wanted to see up close the long line of the Union artillery, so we drove over and then got the van stuck in the mud! We tried to push it out for about 30 minutes, but then gave up and called for a tow. We had to hold our breath while the tow truck skidded around on its drive in and out of the area, hoping that he would not collide with one of the cannons. While we waited for him to arrive, Parker did a map lecture on the Battle of Jackson (May 14) and the maneuvers up to the start of the Battle of Champion Hill, which we'll visit tomorrow. We skipped our scheduled trip to Jackson because of the time lost, but Parker assured us that there was nothing to see there anyway—all vestiges of the minor battle have been developed over and he had planned a scenic freeway overlook and the map exercise we did while we waited.

Friday, May 3

Because of the rain, we decided to switch the itineraries of Friday and Saturday—it is pretty likely that the Champion Hill battlefield will be too muddy. So today we visited Vicksburg National Military Park out of sequence. We had rain on and off for most of the morning and then it was cloudy in the afternoon, but boy was it cold! It never got above the mid-40s and the wind chill made it seem a lot colder. Unfortunately, I had not been paying attention to this aspect of the forecast. I brought my light rain jacket, but left my sweater and additional layers in the room. I will not make that mistake tomorrow, believe me.

We started at the visitor center, shopping for books, and watching a new 20-minute video about the campaign. I thought it was okay except they over emphasized the use of reenactors and some of the terrain on which they filmed did not seem too authentic. At one point I am sure I saw a woman reenactor marching in a group of soldiers. I was also put off by their map work. They persisted in showing Vicksburg as being located about where the town of Bovina is, well inland from the river. I bought a book about the Meridian Expedition by Margie Bearss, a bargain at $18 (versus $42 on Amazon). We drove on Graveyard Road, which has been oddly renamed as Sky Farm Avenue, and visited the huge civilian cemetery. Parker pointed out the section that was dedicated to prostitutes and to the grave of Douglas the Camel, but our main focus was the Confederate section. The most prominent grave that I saw was for Maj. Gen. John S. Bowen. It incorrectly promoted him to lieutenant general. After that, we wandered around through downtown for a while, looking at some historic homes as best we could through rainy windshields.

We visited the USS Cairo, the ironclad gunboat that was sunk by a torpedo (mine) in December 1862, but discovered and recovered by Ed Bearss and Warren Grabau in the 1960s. It really is in pretty bad shape, with those wooden pieces that are still in place crumbling into dust. Parker found a ranger who took us down into the basement of the museum and we got a look at dozens and dozens of unfired artillery shells and grapeshot. Then we were able to go underneath the boat and see some details that you can't see very well from above. The thing that surprised me was that she is almost like a catamaran. The large paddle wheels are just about in the center of the boat, and there is empty space behind them, surrounded by two narrow sections. Parker reviewed the command history of her skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Thomas O. Selfridge. He was the gunnery officer on Cumberland, sunk by the CSS Virginia, and then commanded two ships that he sank, Cairo and Conestoga, and then his fourth ship ran aground. And yet he was eventually promoted to admiral. It is good to have connections to powerful officers.

After a quick lunch we began touring the battlefield, starting with the installations at the points farthest south: Louisiana Circle (home of the famous gun, the Widow Blakely), South Fort, and Navy Circle. On the way back through town, we admired the many large murals (noting that there was no mural of Ulysses S. Grant marching into town) and stopped to see an interesting model, about 100 feet long, of the lower Mississippi River. Because of the rain, it was entirely flooded, so although they encourage you to walk in the model—but no high heels, ladies—we demurred. We stopped briefly at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lower Mississippi River Museum, primarily because Parker said they were suffering from lack of registered guests. It was moderately interesting, but we did not have time to linger. At the northern end of the battlefield, we visited Fort Hill, where we got a good view of the Yazoo diversion canal and the Port of Vicksburg, but it was very windy and cold as the devil.

We drove to Thayer's Approach and talked about the assault there on May 22. We all were very impressed by the extremely steep slope required to get to the top, and unfortunately none of the Union soldiers were able to make it that far. We spent the most time of the afternoon at the Stockade Redan, which was subjected to Union assaults on both May 19 and 22. On the first day, the Union troops crossed through the large ravine—Parker referred to it as a punch bowl—and the very uneven terrain caused them to channelize into easily targeted areas. On the second day, Sherman launched what Parker called "feeble attacks." He sent only four regiments out of his 25, this time using the Graveyard Road, and they were easily repulsed, although about 80 of the soldiers came very close to the wall, for which they were awarded the Medal of Honor. Parker conducted a lengthy map exercise that showed all of the May 22 attacks and we all ended up being somewhat sympathetic to John A. McClernand. He successfully used his artillery before the attack to soften up the Railroad Redoubt and he also employed all of his troops to gain control of that and the Second Texas Lunette. Unfortunately for him, Grant did not believe his reports of success and did not respond well to his requests for supporting attacks on his flank, so McClernand was repulsed and the entire day was a failure, causing Grant to order a traditional siege of the city. Parker gave Grant rather negative grades for his performance on May 22, and his scapegoating of McClernand. McClernand is the only Union corps commander with a statue on the battlefield.

We finished up the afternoon by taking a tour focusing on monuments. We admired the Missouri monument and particularly the recently renovated Iowa monument, which has six relief panels depicting six battles of the campaign. These panels had just been repaired and looked spectacular. We ate dinner together at Goldie's Trail BBQ and agreed that we had not seen everything we wanted to see on the battlefield, so we would allocate some time from the Saturday agenda to get back there.

Saturday, May 4

Last night saw a record cold temperature for this day in Vicksburg, 39°, so today I was prepared with multiple layers. But the weather turned out to be beautiful—brilliant sunshine and quite tolerable temperatures that reached the low to mid 60s. We returned to the park and concentrated this morning on the Union lines and many of the monuments along them, starting with the Memorial Arch at the park entrance. We stopped at DeGolyer's Battery (the same unit that was featured at Raymond) and admired the panoramic view that was dominated by the Great Redoubt and the Louisiana monument. I believe there were fewer trees obstructing the view than in previous visits I have made. Parker said that Terry Winschel had been fighting the Park Service bureaucracy to follow in the footsteps of Gettysburg in restoring the view sheds to their 1863 appearance, but that the Atlanta regional office is dominated by tree huggers. Now that Terry has retired, Parker suspects that no further progress will be made on this front. It is a shame because many important tactical views are completely obscured by trees. Although some signs claim that the forests simply grew up, Parker told us that the trees were deliberately planted by the CCC during the Depression.

We admired the Michigan monument, with the beautiful granite statue of Athena, who I thought looked like a tranny. At the Shirley house, it is usually viewable only from the outside, but we were able to go in because the park is very busy today with reenactors, so the park is making an effort to welcome everyone. There were Union and Confederate units camping out, marching around, and firing their weapons, but they never seemed to get close enough for me to take a reasonable photograph. There were even civilian reenactors inside the Shirley house. From this location, we discussed Logan's approach and the mining underneath the Third Louisiana Redan. (In the photo of the Shirley house, below, you can see a cellphone tower in the distance. That is Mount Ararat, the highest elevation in the area, which served as Grant's headquarters for a time.)

Nearby was the Illinois Memorial, which is a one-quarter sized copy of the Roman Pantheon. (I know this because Parker gave extensive commentary on the artistic and architectural attributes of a number of the monuments we visited. He gave us a free copy of a beautiful color book that he wrote entitled Art of Commemoration.) Parker told us an amusing story about arranging for an Army Chinook helicopter to lift the eagle statue from the memorial so that it could be re-gilded. The powerful rotors interacted with the eagle's wings, causing it to spin enough to make people concerned for its safety. The Wisconsin Memorial is very nice, topped by a large statue of my favorite eagle, Old Abe. We drove around the Grant Memorial and Sherman Circle, but did not stop. We learned that Grant is erroneously carrying a naval sword; it had been swapped from another statue. We drove by Thayer's Approach again, this time viewing it from the Union perspective at the bottom of the hill.

We drove to Clinton, Mississippi, Parker's hometown, but he did not invite us to lunch at his house, so we had a consolation sandwich at a local café run by Mississippi College. We drove around the town a bit, looking at some old homes. It is an attractive little city with a cute downtown, but it suffered from being burned down four times by Union forces. We got onto the Natchez Trace and stopped at the Cowles Mead cemetery, which was the site of Greenwood, an elegant home that served as Grant's probable headquarters after the battle of Jackson. The house is no longer there, but there is a small family cemetery. Here we went through another mapping exercise, getting all the details of the run-up to the Battle of Champion Hill. On the Confederate side, Pemberton hoped to attack and destroy a supply wagon train being escorted by Maj. Gen. Frank Blair around the town of Dillon's, but by the time they got their act together it had already passed by and reached Raymond. This wagon train is pretty definitive proof that Grant did not completely abandon his supply line when he crossed the Mississippi. The Confederates were exhausted by this exercise, taking some wrong turns and marching through the night. (It interesting to note that Grant's army, despite being in unfamiliar territory with poor maps, never got lost during the campaign, whereas the Confederates did on multiple occasions.) Meanwhile, the Union troops were well rested and on the morning of May 16, as seven Union divisions marched on three parallel roads to confront the Confederates.

We drove to the northern end of the Champion Hill battlefield on Lower Jackson Road (now named St. Thomas Road). Parker told us that the Blue and Gray magazine driving tour of the area has given the wrong directions for finding this road. We stopped at a church that is the site of the former Champion house, but now has a modest cemetery in its place. Here we got out the maps again and listened to a full blow-by-blow of the battle. Then we walked through the woods to climb up on Champion Hill, a place that most people do not get to visit. Parker, however, is good friends with Sid Champion, the fifth generation descendent of the owner at the time. We were really glad that we switched our itineraries and allowed the trail to the hill another day to dry out. The mud was quite manageable. Champion Hill is not very large, perhaps 70 feet high, and it has also been truncated by gravel mining in the 1930s. It is a crucial part of the battlefield, where the Confederate Botetourt Artillery (apparently pronounced BOTTEN-tot) guns changed hands three times, in charges and countercharges. From Parker's description of the battle, it really seemed as if this was a Union steamroller over a smaller, ill-prepared, poorly led Confederate force. Gen. Pemberton treated his subordinates and troops poorly and Brig. Gen. William W. Loring was uncooperative and eventually retreated from the battle without informing his commander. We did a bit more driving around, following the Union troops on the three roads they used, but we made no more battle stops. We did stop at the Coker house on the Raymond Road, which saw the major portion of the Confederate retreat and served as a hospital after the battle, and also briefly at a stone marker that commemorated the location that Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman was killed in an artillery duel.

The final battle prior to Vicksburg was the Big Black River Bridge on May 17. We got a full map briefing at the Coker house, but we did not stop on that battlefield. The recent rains had made most of the areas of interest unsuitable for driving or walking, so we simply did a drive through. Fortunately, it is a very simple battle to understand, so this was not a big problem. We continued on a road called Warriors Trail, which was the Confederate retreat route into Vicksburg as well as the road that John A. McClernand's corps took in pursuit. We got back late enough to miss happy hour at the hotel, so went directly to dinner at a forgettable diner called Rowdy's.

Sunday, May 5

Our final day of the campaign was another lengthy driving day. The weather turned rather cold again, very unseasonable for Mississippi. On the drive back to Memphis, we examined the Steele's Bayou expedition of March 14–27, 1863. This was out of sequence, of course, but we were able to adjust well enough. It was the final attempt by Grant to approach Vicksburg before he ordered his army to march through Louisiana, cross the Mississippi, and execute the campaign that eventually succeeded. The expedition was suggested by Adm. David D. Porter and it was designed to reach the Yazoo River above the Confederate positions at Snyder's Bluff, which would accomplish either of two objectives: rescue the failing Yazoo Pass expedition or land troops at Satartia, which had a good road into the Walnut Hills, turning Vicksburg.

Our first stop was the mouth of Steele's Bayou, where it flowed into the Yazoo River. We found that its condition, as with the rest of this drive today, probably matched pretty closely to the water level conditions of early, rather than late, spring. (In fact, the weather forecasts have been calling for the Mississippi and related rivers to reach almost flood stage in about a week.) Next we went to Eagle Lake, which used to be called Eagle Bend when it was part of the Mississippi River, but it is now a "horseshoe lake" after the river took a different course. Muddy Bayou connects the lake to Steele's Bayou, and this is where men under William T. Sherman joined the expedition, marching in support of the gunboats and other assorted craft.

We drove on top of the levee along Chatard Lake, also an orphan of the meandering Mississippi. We walked about a quarter-mile from the road on a deer trail, watching closely for snakes, and found the mouth of Black Bayou, which cuts east 4 miles to Deer Creek. We drove to that confluence, where Hill's plantation was located. It was here that Porter requested Army support and Sherman's men arrived on March 17, using the plantation as a forward supply base. I was quite surprised to see the condition of the bayous or creeks in this area. Many of them are little more than streams and it is inconceivable to imagine a formation of five ironclad gunboats like the Cairo, each 175 feet long and 51 feet wide, navigating through the area. In fact, they had to use a technique called kedging, where heavy cables were attached to trees and they winched themselves around tight corners. At this stop, we saw evidence that the sailors had to get out their shovels and soften a particularly tight curve.

We stopped at a general store in Onward, Mississippi, which is a tiny community famous for an episode in the early 20th century when Theodore Roosevelt went bear hunting and refused to shoot a bear that had been tied up for him. A toy company produced a stuffed bear, which they called Teddy in his honor. Or at least that is the local legend. In recognition of Cinco de Mayo, we bought two large bags of pork rinds and managed to eat them all before the end of the day. In Cary, we stood next to one of seven ancient Indian mounds, which the Union troops used as a high (dry) area for guarding the rear. At Egremont plantation, we saw where Confederates trapped the retreating gunboats by felling trees over the narrow Deer Creek, and the USS Louisville collided with a coal barge, which blocked the creek. (This was actually out of sequence because they began their retreat at our next stop.)

In Rolling Fork, Mississippi, we visited a school baseball field where the Widow Watson had a home. From here, we could see both sides of an artillery duel between the gunboats and the Confederates under Lt. Col. Sam Ferguson. The gunboats were in serious jeopardy March 19–20, bottled up in the tiny creek, unable to defend themselves against close fire and being boarded. Two things worked in their favor, however. The first was that Adm. Porter loved mortars and brought four mortar scows along, the fire from which kept the Confederates at bay. The second was that Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott Featherston arrived to take command from Ferguson and he did not press the attack, choosing to wait until morning. This was the farthest point that the expedition reached and they had to back out the gunboats to retreat, not being able to turn them around. So Louisville, the last boat in line, now became the lead, and it was first to get into trouble at Egremont, as we saw at the previous stop. It was at that point that the Union infantry under Sherman linked up with the gunboats and relieved the Confederate pressure so that the Navy could escape. At the confluence of Deer Creek and Rolling Fork Creek, we discussed the ramifications of this relatively obscure action. If Ferguson had been successful in capturing or destroying the gunboats—and he came awfully close—it would have essentially ended the military careers of Porter, Sherman, and Grant. It is mind-boggling to contemplate the course of the war with those three men out of action. We finished up the day with a long drive back to Memphis. My flight is early Monday morning, so I had a quiet evening in the same airport hotel.

Monday, May 6

I had a very uneventful pair of flights home, stopping over in Houston. Despite some of my grumbling about the long hours and uncomfortable van ride, I had an excellent time on the Receding Tide program and learned a lot of new stuff. Parker Hills continues to be the go-to expert on Vicksburg and is a great tour leader and traveling companion. My next scheduled trip is to Gettysburg to attend the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in late June.