The Better Angels of Our Nature (38 page)

The hot, sultry days and steamy nights of summer were gone. In their place were cold days and even colder nights. Now ice lay on the ground when company cooks lit the breakfast fires at reveille and enlisted men stirred, shivering and reluctant, from their warm blankets. Some said it looked like snow, but though Jesse stared hopefully into the lowering sky, the snow that it looked like never came.

In the east, November had started as badly as possible for the Army of the Potomac. By order of the president, McClellan had again lost his army, this time to General Burnside, who said he didn’t want it.

Meanwhile the equally inept General Nathaniel Banks, so confused by Stonewall in the Valley, had replaced General Butler, following charges of cruelty, speculation, and dishonesty, during his reign over New Orleans.

As for Sherman, he could look at his record and be content in knowing that his tenure as military governor at Memphis had been a success. He had itchy feet. He’d fought courageously against the Northern profiteers who’d taken advantage of the war by flocking into Memphis to buy up cheap cotton from Southerners for gold, which they used to buy arms in the British colonies to fight the
very
people who were protecting these speculators and preserving their nation.

Then, one rain-filled, blustery cold morning in mid-November, Jesse watched as the general mounted his new mare, Dolly, a deceptively benign name for a horse with a prickly temperament, and rode down to the river landing accompanied by Major Sanger, Colonel Hammond, and Captain Jackson, to meet up with Grant at Columbus, Kentucky, to discuss their next campaign.

Five long days later, just before midnight, Sherman returned in a torrential downpour. Without pausing to remove his wet clothes or wipe the mud from his face, the general spoke to his assembled staff. Impatiently tossing back his soaking-wet half-cape, he jabbed at the map with the two bony fingers that held his cigar.

“Gentlemen—it’s time. We are going for Vicksburg, to open navigation of the Mississippi.” He paused to stare at the eager, intense faces ranged before him

There was a loud and generalized murmur of approval, this was the exciting news that Sherman’s officers and men had been waiting to hear for months.

“General Grant feels that the way forward is for us to use the plan that has worked so far,” Sherman continued, shadows from the lamp playing in the crevices of his gaunt cheeks as the rain beat its loud tattoo upon the canvas above their heads. “The plan that began with the capture of forts Donelson and Henry and won us the Battle of Shiloh, and then gave us Corinth—an advance in land, parallel to the river, flanking all river defenses but well removed from them. I’m sure none of us need reminding that although there was a naval battle for this city, Memphis finally fell because a large Federal force was in its rear. General Grant will move south from Grand Junction, along the line of the Mississippi Central Railroad.” Sherman used his finger to trace Grant’s proposed route on his map, spread out on the table before them, La Grange, Holly Springs, Wyatt, Abbeville, Grenada, Canton, and finally Jackson, where his finger remained, obliterating the name as he said, “Our ultimate goal, if we want to capture Vicksburg and break the enemy’s blockade of the river, must be the Mississippi capital, Jackson, forty-five miles due east of Vicksburg, the railroad hub for the area. If we can take Jackson we will have control of the Mississippi Southern Railroad.” His finger left Jackson and followed the railroad line. “Leading directly into Vicksburg, and Vicksburg’s only contact with the rest of the Confederacy. We’ll be able to get supplies to our own men and stop supplies to the enemy. We move when I hear from General Grant.”

“Do we know when that will be, sir?” asked Major Van Allen.

“Right now General Grant is massing his troops at Grand Junction, halfway between here and Corinth and along the Mississippi Central Railroad. He has General McPherson with two divisions and General Hamilton with three.”

When everyone had filed out into the stormy night Sherman turned to see Jesse standing in the shadows, watching him with a burning, almost feverish devotion. He unfastened the buttons on his field coat and allowed her to take the coat and the oilskin off his shoulders. Though lines of fatigue had etched themselves deeply into his cheeks and around his firm mouth, his eyes were no less alert than if he had just enjoyed a long night’s sleep, and he acted with a decisiveness that belied the long, arduous journey he had just completed. He said not a word. Jesse hung his coat over the chair back before going out into the rain.

When she returned, she was sopping wet. Her jacket bore dark patches, the brim of her battered slouch hat sagged, and her handsome face glistened with water. Sherman tore his gaze away from the map to look at the coffee miraculously appeared on his table by the lantern, and then at the girl.

“Don’t you have an oilskin?” He peered more closely at her. “Were you
sick
while I was away?” his hoarse voice demanded to know. “Your eyes are overbright. See Dr. Cartwright.” He returned to his map, rubbed a hand up and down his coarse beard, across his thatch of hair, then ran a finger down the river that he loved so well. Perhaps in death his spirit would protect the mighty Mississippi that he sought so determinedly to guard in life.

“I’m not sick, sir, I missed you so terribly while you were gone, and now you are returned, that causes my eyes to shine.”

A growl somewhere deep in his throat greeted this ardent declaration.

“You have mud on your face,” she said.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his gaunt cheek. “I have mud on my trousers and mud on my boots. Mississippi mud. Look out there at that river, nothing like it exists anywhere on this continent, anywhere in the world. There.” He struck the map with his balled fist. “The enemy still holds the river from Vicksburg to Baton Rouge, navigating it with his boats, and the possession of it enables him to connect communications and routes of supply, east and west. To deprive him of this would be a severe blow, and if done effectively, will be of great advantage to us, and will probably prove the most decisive act of the war. The Rebels won’t allow us to take Vicksburg without a battle, without terrible cost to ourselves and to them.” Then, staring at her face, his expression seemed to say, we can no longer ignore reality. “You know what this means? Hard fighting and hard marching, in conditions not fit for man nor beast.”

He indicated the entrance beyond which the slanting torrent was turning the ground to a sticky, slippery mire as the wind howled around the canvas.

“Without rest, perhaps for months. Come closer.” He was calculating swiftly in his head. “You look at least…eight months older than when you first insinuated yourself on me at Pittsburg Landing. For
eight
months, you have been allowed free rein like a colt before he is broken to the bridle. Well, now it’s over. I cannot take you with me on such an expedition. I’ll give General Hurlbut instructions to ship you back North. If you won’t say where you come from, you’ll be sent to a workhouse or orphanage. My decision is final, so tell young Cartwright to save his breath. He can gaze fondly upon the photo you gave him and let that be comfort enough on cold nights. Pack your belongings and take leave of your friends in this army and your gambling cronies.” Sherman’s red head remained stubbornly bowed over the rivers, roads, fields, bridges, and railroads across which he would soon be leading his divisions.

“I have no intention of going home,” Jesse said in a balanced but decisive voice. “I will remain beside you until the end, until your work is done.”

Sherman looked up. All was silence, except for the sound of the rain, the loud spattering on canvas, and the howling wind. The tent was almost in darkness, the lamp throwing its yellow light over the map, and his grimly furrowed face seemed only to add to the otherworldly atmosphere. His cigar glowed between fingers that were shaking with exhaustion.

Suddenly his brief contemplation was interrupted by a loud crash of thunder, which rolled across the heavens, ending in a whip-strike of lightning that turned night to day beyond the tent flaps, illuminating the girl’s solemn young features. For an instant, no more than the blink of an eye, the open sides of her sack jacket, catching a sudden gust of wind, stood out and fluttered, like wings. A shiver passed down Sherman’s spine. The last time this vision had appeared, it was at Chewalla, when, so debilitated with malarial fever, he could barely separate fact from illusion. He had regarded it then as the product of his delirium and he dismissed it now as fantastical, superstitious claptrap. Tired eyes played tricks on a man so nearly spent.

Nevertheless, it occurred to him, and he laughed that halting laughter to show he refused to take it seriously, that nature—the heavens, the gods, the Almighty—was displeased with his decision and making it known.

19

Like a pack of hungry wolves

Vicksburg! Vicksburg! Vicksburg!—was all Jesse heard for the next couple of weeks. What it was, why it could not be taken so easily, and why it
had
to be taken.

Admiral Farragut had tried that very year to take it, after capturing New Orleans. He had secured the river for the Federals as far north as Baton Rouge, and then proceeded up the Mississippi, unopposed to Vicksburg. After bombarding the citadel through June and July with gunboats and mortars, he abandoned the attempt and returned to New Orleans and the Gulf declaring, “Vicksburg will never be taken from the river. Ships cannot crawl up hills three hundred feet high.”

“The Gibraltar of Dixie” was how many people referred to it, not that Jesse knew what or where Gibraltar was, until Sherman showed her on his Colton’s
Atlas.
Gibraltar was situated off the south coast of Spain, built on and around a big rock, in fact, Gibraltar
was
a big rock, and Vicksburg was the same, a city stronghold dominating the vital waterway of the Mississippi.

It sat on top of a high bluff, overlooking the mighty river at a hairpin bend, where the Yazoo River drained into it, and was protected by artillery batteries along the riverfront, its wharves and docks down by the water’s edge, its streets climbing to the plateau above, giving an unrivaled field of defensive fire, making it impossible to assail from the river. That wasn’t all, to the rear, the city was protected by a maze of bayous north and south, and by a ring of heavily manned forts whose guns guarded all land approaches.

Right now Vicksburg shut off the Mississippi to Northern navigation. Any Yankee ship attempting to get past these riverfront batteries could easily be picked off, especially when heading north against a four-knot current. Vicksburg and the river it commanded also linked the two halves of the Confederacy, on the east Mississippi and Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Alabama, and on the west Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. If Vicksburg could be overcome, and their guns, to the landward side and those facing across the river, silenced, this would cut off the Confederate States west of the Mississippi; they could never again reinforce their comrades in the east. If then the Federals could add Port Hudson, another Rebel strongpoint guarding the river about twenty-five miles north of Baton Rouge, to their successes, they would then have the entire Mississippi, could travel up and down the river, just as they pleased, unhindered, moving troops and supplies and equipment, with control of all the main crossing points.

In late November, Sherman heard from Grant that the first phase of the campaign had been completed. He had captured Holly Springs and set up his supply and ammunition depot. He now wanted Sherman to meet him at his temporary headquarters in the university town of Oxford, Mississippi, to discuss the next leg.

Corporal Jesse Davis was in Sherman’s party as they left Memphis on a rainy morning in early December with three small divisions totaling eighteen thousand men. They reached the little town of Wyatt, where the Mississippi Central Railroad crossed the Tallahatchie River, to find the enemy had burned the bridge since Grant had used it. But Sherman had brought along boats.

When the anticipated Rebel resistance did not materialize, he sent his cavalry on to Grant and spent the next couple of days at Wyatt, using the houses of the locals to build a new bridge.

The morning of their departure Jesse watched as the residents of Wyatt whose barns and smokehouses had gone into the construction of the bridge gathered to protest.

Sherman sat atop his impatient mount, a cigar wedged into the left-hand corner of his mouth, turning his animal in an erratic circle so he could face each one, as he told the protesters in his loud, surging voice, “You allowed the Rebel soldiers to burn the bridge that was once here, so I have given you a fine new one. Take damn good care of it, and do not force me to build you another. If you seek compensation for the old bridge, see Jeff Davis!” With that he galloped across this fine new bridge, the clatter of his horse’s hooves echoing in the villagers’ ears long after he had disappeared into the woods beyond.

Jesse, remembering the young Rebel at Pittsburg Landing, waved her hat in the air and shouted “Yahoo!” at the top of her lungs, as she urged her horse across in the commander’s wake. Behind her, so little remained of the town it was from that day on known as Wyatt Bridge.

In the big house Grant was using as a headquarters Jesse, feeling somewhat less boisterous now, curled up on one of the armchairs in front of a roaring fire, and listened to Sherman, Grant himself, and their young protégé, the newly promoted major general James B. McPherson, discussing the next stage of Grant’s plan, now slightly amended to accommodate a new enemy, and this one wasn’t in gray. John McClernand, Jesse learned, yawning with delicious indulgence, as the warmth penetrated her always cold feet, was planning a naval and army expedition moving from Memphis down the Mississippi to take Vicksburg. She remembered well the Illinois congressman–turned–general, friend of the president, clinging to Sherman’s coattails on the second day of Shiloh. Grant had no details of this expedition. He knew only that McClernand was in Springfield, Illinois, recruiting as far as Ohio. Henry Halleck, their overall commander in Washington, was proving, uncharacteristically, to be a Grant ally. He was sending fresh troops to Sherman in Memphis, and had told Grant he had permission to fight the enemy any way he pleased. In other words, Grant had a free hand. As for the Rebel troops in Mississippi, as far as Grant knew, they were down around Grenada, under John Pemberton, a Pennsylvanian, married to a Southern girl, and as loyal to Jeff Davis and the rebellion as any died-in-the-wool, fire-eating Secesh.

“Sherman, I want you to hurry back to Memphis, leaving me two of the divisions you have with you, and assemble the troops Halleck is sending us, along with a further force awaiting you at Helena, Arkansas. Then with that wing of my army I want you to steam up the Yazoo River where it enters the Mississippi, just above Vicksburg, with a gunboat escort provided by Rear Admiral Porter, find a suitable place to disembark your troops, and attack Vicksburg from the north. I believe I can get as far as Grenada. Then if I can keep Pemberton occupied, you can overcome the Rebel garrison at Vicksburg. If all goes well, Sherman, we can trap the Rebels at Vicksburg between two armies. No Rebel force could hope to defend the city from both attacks at the same time. But, Sherman, we must hurry, I want you off from Memphis before McClernand arrives.” The tanner’s son became suddenly animated. “Sherman, I know you understand that if there is to be a move downriver from Memphis, I want
you
to lead it, not McClernand.”

At dawn the following day, Sherman had an unexpected visitor. Major Van Allen showed the tall, lean, handsome officer into the front room of the house, where the Ohioan was still studying the map.

“Colonel Ransom, come in, sir, come in. I heard you had asked to be transferred from McClernand back to a field command in General McPherson’s corps?”

“Yes sir. In the past few months I have served as inspector general and chief of staff, commanded the post at Cairo, Illinois, and then at Paducah, Kentucky. Unfortunately, my association with General McClernand did not work out as I had hoped. I now command a regiment in General McArthur’s Sixth Division, which is encamped just outside town.”

“I see you
still
haven’t yet got your star? Too bad. Grant told me he’d given you to McArthur with the understanding that you’d get a brigade.”

“General McArthur says he wishes to give me a brigade, sir, but that all the colonels commanding brigades rank me. He is, however, expecting some new brigades and he then intends to give me one of those.”

“I hope so. You deserve a brigade.”

“Thank you, sir. The president and secretary of war appear to know of my case. I understood that the secretary seemed to think I was already nominated, but when he checked at the adjutant general’s office he found out this wasn’t so. I’m told that nothing much can be done now before Congress convenes.”

“Well, sir, you appear to have all your flanks covered. Grant referred to your Garrettsburg skirmish earlier this month as ‘a great success.’ He called you an excellent officer. At Riggins Hill I heard you netted sixteen dead Rebels, forty wounded, and sixty captured, occupied Clarksville for twenty-four hours, and seized a whole parcel of government property. It was the second time you’d struck Woodward’s guerrilla command in Kentucky, wasn’t it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“Sir, I come to you on a personal matter. Do you recall her—the young lady who was—with you at Pittsburg Landing—and after, at Memphis, Miss Davis? I was wondering if the young lady had left a forwarding address on her departure.”

Sherman’s naturally fierce expression softened a little, and his eyes even showed some amusement. Now he came to think of it, the rustling of paper that had been as a backdrop to his thoughts as he drank his morning coffee had ceased in the last few minutes. He seemed very much to enjoy removing the stub of his cigar, jabbing it toward the large chesterfield, and saying, “Jesse Davis hasn’t departed, sir, you’ll find her behind that sofa, rolling up the maps.” He then got to his feet. “Excuse me. I’m starting back to Memphis this morning.” And left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Ransom walked to the chesterfield, peered over the top, and stared down at the young girl on the carpet surrounded by map cases, who was staring right back up at him.

“General Ransom,” she said and saluted from the kneeling position.

“Jesse, are you hiding from me?”

“No sir.”

“Surely you heard me come into the room and speak.”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you, sir.”

“Lying is unworthy of you, Jesse. Why didn’t you answer my last letters? I thought you had gone back North and I’d never see you again. It’s been nearly seven months. A long time. I’ve missed you.”

“I have to go, sir.” She stood up. “You heard the general, we’re returning to Memphis.”

As she walked by, he gripped her arm. “Why do my feelings for you cause you such distress?” he asked, with a deep frown, his intense blue eyes holding hers. “Why did you return that ten dollars I sent for you to spend on yourself?”

When she said nothing, he released her.

Outside, Jesse and the rest of the party were already mounted. The Vermonter went straight toward her. He reached inside his tunic and brought out a bunch of violets tied around a slender volume. He stood beside her horse, glanced around him to make certain no one was watching, and pressed them into the girl’s unwilling hands.

“I intend to get your address from Sherman and post this to you.”

Before Jesse could say anything, Sherman’s horse was beside her. His bony hand swooped down with all the alacrity of a hawk, snatching the package and putting the flowers to his beak of a nose, his hard, grizzled features softening a fleeting moment before he asked, “Do you know how to press them in a sheet of paper between the pages of a book so they last as long as you do?” He glared at Ransom. “And you, sir, need not look so astonished. You’re another one who thinks I was
born
old and crusty?” he stated with a pained, defensive sadness. “Well, think again, sir. I once had as many romantic notions as the next man—and probably far more than you have!” He grinned maliciously and rode off, leaving only his hiccuping laughter to mock the Vermonter’s indignant expression.

Jesse pushed the volume of poetry and the flowers at Ransom’s chest and galloped after the general.

Four days later Sherman, designated commander Right Wing, Thirteenth Army Corps, was back in Memphis. While the troops characterized by Grant as one wing of his army were loaded onto the transports, the Ohioan met with David Dixon Porter. Since Sherman did not stand on ceremony, he served his visitor, a thickset individual with crinkly, laughing eyes in a face half concealed by a full beard, refreshment in a tin cup, apologizing for the lack of civilized amenities as he did so.

“Not a bit of it, Sherman,” said the bluff seaman. “I can drink whiskey out of my hat if I have to.”

This set the tone of the friendship, army and navy hit it off immediately, conversing as if they’d known each other for years.

The men who lined the docks in readiness for embarkation on that clear bright winter morning had never seen anything like this grand sight. Sherman had worked miracles to bring about this hurried departure. Bullying quartermasters into stealing mules and horses from civilians, and seizing every vessel they could get their hands on, including coal barges and their cargo. Columns of lively infantry, rumbling artillery and caissons, mounted cavalrymen, marched, rolled, and trotted up the swaying gangplanks onto every conceivable kind of water transport, from ironclads to gunboats, along with commissary wagons loaded with provisions. Filled with confidence Sherman’s boys were calling this movement “the castor oil expedition” since many believed “it would go straight through the rebellion and bring a speedy result.”