June 6, 1863

June 6, 1863

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 15

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 10

---Battle of Franklin’s Crossing, near Fredericksburg, Virginia – Union engineers lay down another bridge across the Rappahannock River for an attack against the Confederate defenses there.  Gen. Hooker orders this reconnaissance in force, since indicators are that Lee is on the move, and sporadic reports have the Confederates moving west and north, toward the Shenandoah Valley.  A sergeant in the 50^th New York Engineers writes in a letter home about the rather savage fight there:

The news had come in camp that the Rebs. had left the city, but when we got there we found lots of them. We started with our boats, and as we commenced to unload them, the Rebs. opened fire on us. Our men fired all their cannon at once. They were loaded with grape and cannister, – the shot went in among them like hail, still they kept marching on toward their rifle pits, where they could get out of sight. When they got there, they sent the shot into us. We had eighteen men wounded in our regiment. I don’t think there were any killed, but I am not sure, as there are some missing.

It is hard to see the men fall by your side, when you can’t fire back. Well, they kept up their fire for about two hours. By that time, we had all our boats in the river and commenced crossing. We had landed about one thousand men on the opposite side, and directly they made a charge up the hill, when the Rebs. surrendered and came to them, and we brought them across in the boats. Some of them escaped, but our men were close on their heels. I went across in one of the first boats, and I got on the hill in time to see the Rebs. taken prisoners. I saw a wounded man and went to him; it was a Rebel officer. He was shot just below the heart. He asked me for a drink of water, and I gave it to him. . . . Then he raised his head and got hold of my hand, and said, “Sergeant, I am dying.” He shook my hand and fell over dead. That was the hardest thing I ever saw, – he never spoke a word to any one but me, – I couldn’t help thinking of it, and could not sleep last night. . . . There was a letter in the Rebel officer’s pocket with his name on it. He was a married man and has a little girl; his folks expected him home in a few days, but they will never see him again. I suppose they will feel bad when they hear of it. He was a fine looking fellow. On the field there were some with their arms, some with their legs, shot off, and others shot in every imaginable way.

Your affectionate husband

GEORGE.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker and staff
 

---In coastal South Carolina, the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment has arrived, and Col. Shaw writes home to his mother:

This is an odd sort of place. All the original inhabitants are gone — and the houses are occupied by Northerners & a few Florida refugees. The Northern ladies here are a fearful crowd — ungrammatical and nasal.  I had a taste of them the first evening we arrived, having unawares booked into a house where 8 or 10 teachers live.  Ned Hooper extracted me by taking me to tea to his house, and I have not ventured in town, on foot, since.

 Col. Higginson came over to see us, day before yesterday.  I never saw any one who put his whole soul into his work as he does.  I was very much impressed with his open-heartedness & purity of character.  He is encamped about 10 miles from here.

 The bush-whacker Montgomery is a strange compound.  He allows no swearing or drinking in his regiment & is anti tobacco—But he burns & destroys wherever he goes with great gusto, & looks as if he had quite a taste for hanging people &c throat-cutting whenever a suitable subject offers.

All our stores are very acceptable now, and the Hungarian wine Father sent us is excellent. Genl Hunter doesn’t impress me as being a great man. There is some talk of his being relieved. If we could have Fremont in his place, wouldn’t it be fine? . . .

 It is impossible to keep clean here for two hours — the fine sand covers everything. Every one here has received us very kindly; though there are a great many opposers among the officers they show no signs of it to us.

 Love to the girls & yourself dearest Mother.

 Your loving son

June 5, 1863

June 5, 1863

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 14

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 9

 

---Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart holds a grand cavalry review in honor of Gen. Lee (who is unable to attend).  Over 9,000 Confederate cavalrymen, along with several batteries of flying artillery, are on hand for the event, very close to Brandy Station, Virginia.

 

---George Michael Neese, a Virginian serving in Chew’s battery in the Horse Artillery, witnesses the festivities at Stuart’s Grand Review:

As soon as the whole line was formed General Stuart and his staff dashed on the field. He was superbly mounted. The trappings on his proud, prancing horse all looked bright and new, and his side-arms gleamed in the morning sun like burnished silver. A long black ostrich feather plume waved gracefully from a black slouch hat cocked up on one side, and was held with a golden clasp which also stayed the plume. Before the procession started General Stuart and staff rode along the front of the line from one end to the other. He is the prettiest and most graceful rider I ever saw.  When he dashed past us I could not help but notice with what natural ease and comely elegance he sat his steed as it bounded over the field, and his every motion in the saddle was in such strict accord with the movements of his horse that he and his horse appeared to be but one and the same machine. Immediately after General Stuart and staff had passed along the front of the whole line he galloped to a little knoll in the southeast edge of the field near the railroad, wheeled his horse to a front face to the field, and sat there like a gallant knight errant, under his waving plume, presenting in veritable truth every characteristic of a chivalric cavalier of the first order. He was then ready for the review, and the whole cavalcade began to move and pass in review before the steady, martial, and scrutinizing gaze of the great cavalry chieftain of America.

Neese goes on to say that “I do not pretend to know or guess at the number of men in line, but there were thousands, and it was by far the largest body of cavalry that I ever saw on one field. . . . three bands of music were playing nearly all the time while the procession was moving, a flag was fluttering in the breeze from every regiment, and the whole army was one grand magnificent pageant, inspiring enough to make even an old woman feel fightish.”

 

---Lt. Col. Arthur Fremantle, of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards, visiting on assignment from the Crown, has visited the Confederate Army in Tennessee, and is preparing to travel on to Virginia.  He has a singular encounter there with meeting a woman who had served in combat:

I left Chattanooga for Atlanta at 4.30 P.M. The train was much crowded with wounded and sick soldiers returning on leave to their homes. A goodish-looking woman was pointed out to me in the cars as having served as a private soldier in the battles of Perryville and Murfreesborough. Several men in my car had served with her in a Louisianian regiment, and they said she had been turned out a short time since for her bad and immoral conduct. They told me that her sex was notorious to all the regiment, but no notice had been taken of it so long as she conducted herself properly. They also said that she was not the only representative of the female sex in the ranks. When I saw her she wore a soldier’s hat and coat, but had resumed her petticoats.

June 4, 1863

June 4, 1863

 

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 13

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 8

 

---Lt. Stephen Minot Weld, of Massachusetts, writes home to his father about life in the Army of the Potomac along the Rappahannock:

We are under orders to march at any moment, probably to resist any attempt the enemy may make to cross the river. The rascals are up to something, and I think it may be that they will try to cross the river above, and attack us. I think that we are waiting here simply to prevent the rebels opposite from going to Vicksburg.

June 3, 1863

June 3, 1863

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 12

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 7

---On this date, the Gettysburg Campaign begins, as Lee’s troops begin to leave their prepared camps and then march on the road as part of Lee’s invasion of Northern territory this summer. 

---Black troops of the 2^nd South Carolina Volunteers, U.S. (Colored) attack and destroy the town of Ashepoo, South Carolina.  Under command of Col. Montgomery, who has a relish for punishing the local civilians, these troops regularly conduct such raids often in the area.

---Navy Secretary Gideon Welles contemplates some recent actions by the government, particularly the unfortunate Burnside closing newspapers and arresting Clement Vallandigham, clearly a mistake:

The arrest of Vallandigham and the order to suppress the circulation of the Chicago Times in his military district issued by General Burnside have created much feeling. It should not be otherwise. The proceedings were arbitrary and injudicious. It gives bad men the right of questions, an advantage of which they avail themselves. Good men, who wish to support the Administration, find it difficult to defend these acts. They are Burnside’s, unprompted, I think, by any member of the Administration and yet the responsibility is here unless they are disavowed and B. called to an account, which cannot be done. The President — and I think every member of the Cabinet—regrets what has been done, but as to the measures which should now be taken there are probably differences.

June 1, 1863

June 1, 1863

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 10

 

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 5

---Maj. Gen. John McClernand, commander of the XIII Corps in Grant’s Army of the Tennessee, issues a letter of congratulations to his corps for their service in the recent attacks on the Vicksburg defenses.  At the time of the assault of May 22, McClernand falsely claimed that he had captures a couple of Confederate strong points, in a bid to get Grant to send him more reinforcements from other corps, so that he might indeed accomplish the break-through himself that he now falsely claimed---and thus become the hero of capturing Vicksburg.  Grant had discovered the bogus nature of McClernand’s request, and therefore denied him the reinforcements.  McClernand’s letter of this date details the claim that the XIII Corps could have carried the works, had Grant provided the requested reinforcements: that McClernand’s requested assistance surely, “by massing a strong force in time upon a weakened point, would have probably insured success.”  However, McClernand commits one error that Grant cannot ignore: instead of submitting his Order to Grant’s headquarters for approval, he gives copies to reporters for two newspapers back in Illinois which are his political allies.  This is a violation of army regulations.

 

Maj. Gen. John Alexander McClernand, USA
 

---Stephen Minot Weld, a Union officer serving in the Army of the Potomac, on the staff of the I Corps, writes in his journal of the boredom of camp life:

June 1.— The first day of summer, and as dusty and disagreeable a day as one often passes. Nothing of any interest occurred, except in the evening, when we had some officers over here, and the band to play for us. After the band left we had some banjo-playing and nigger dancing. Egbert returned to-day.

 

---Brig. Gen. E.A. Wild has arrived in Newbern, North Carolina, the bastion of Union occupation of coastal North Carolina, with the design of raising a brigade of black troops from among the local refugees and “contrabands.”  A Samuel A. Glen writes to the New York Herald about the repugnance of many in the Army against this project.  The Herald publishes Glen’s observations about this “experiment”:

The advocates of the colored brigade only claim a fair trial for their experiment, unobstructed by the natural prejudices of the white troops, and say that they will stand or fall by the result. They do not object to fair and impartial criticism—to that more powerful weapon, unlicensed and illiberal ridicule—provided the credit they may justly be entitled to shall not be withheld. There is one thing calculated to impair whatever of good may eventually result from the undertaking—if any good is destined to come of it—and that is, the senseless cry and impetuous and misguided zeal of those Northern fanatics who talk, write and act as if there were no other interests involved in the great contest than the elevation of the negro. It is no wonder the white soldier and the white citizen becomes exasperated when these reckless agitators spur and hound on the blacks in a hasty race for premature emancipation. . . . If some of this class of persons [fanatics], or the whole of them, were lodged in Fort Warren, or Lafayette, or anywhere else, so that they could be kept out of the way of harming the cause of the Union by alienating the affections of the white troops from their love and devotion to the old flag, and stirring up angry and resentful feelings all over the country, it would be of vast benefit to the republic and a merciful response to the cry of suffering humanity wherever tyranny exists. But if the honest advocates of the enlistment of negro troops only ask a trial for the sake of showing to the country what their proteges are capable of doing as warriors fighting inspired by the “battle cry of freedom,” there are many who distrust the policy from first to last, but are yet willing to give them a chance. A few weeks will demonstrate their practicability or impracticability in the Department of North Carolina.

May 31, 1863

May 31, 1863

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 9

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 4

---The Hartford Courant, of Connecticut, reports a story of a Confederate Army captain who enters Union lines outside of Savannah, Georgia, who offers news of conditions in the South:

His accounts of the failure of food at the South corroborate the numerous statements from other sources already published. For some time the army in Virginia has subsisted on quarter rations of bacon and flour. The existence of such an article as beef has become almost traditional. Luxuries like tea and coffee have almost wholly disappeared. Further South the scarcity is less pinching. Yet in Savannah flour sells for eighty dollars a barrel. Board for a laboring man is ten dollars per week. Georgia is nearly exhausted of meat and there is no young stock coming on to supply future necessities.

The railroad lines are rapidly wearing out. A governmental order has been promulgated prohibiting all trains from running faster than ten miles per hour. . . . If the war continues much longer, the great source of Southern resistance—the power of rapid concentration at threatened points by means of the interior lines of communication—will fail.

Of the temper of the confederates he speaks fully. In Lee’s army the soldiers are tired of the war, and ready to welcome peace on any terms. Convinced of the impossibility of wearying out the North, they desire that the North may finish the war by conquering them. On the contrary, the people at home are still as determined as ever. . . .

Their notions of the peculiar institution are as sublimated as ever. In fact, the subject of slavery constitutes the burthen of Southern thought and the chief topic of Southern conversation. They believe in the divinity and perpetuity of the system, and are resolved in the adjustment of peace to compel the United States to sign a bond to return all fugitives. The colored soldiers who have dug trenches, built fortifications and fought battles for the Union, must all be sent back to servitude. This smacks of the habitual modesty of the rebels.

Under the changes of war, the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer. Planters with products to sell have “heaps” of confederate paper, which is now at a discount of seven hundred per cent in Savannah. They take advantage of the necessities of the needy to buy up their Negroes, &c., which these are obliged to sell to procure the means of subsistence.

---Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, of the 11^th Iowa Infantry with Grant’s army near Vicksburg, writes in his journal of the raiding expedition his regiment is part of, and the emphasis, apparently, of destroying civilian property:

Sunday, 31st—We camped by the river last night, and early this morning started for Haines’s Bluff. We marched along some fine cornfields. We reached Haines’s Bluff in the afternoon, and went into bivouac to the south of that place. We were as far east as Mechanicsville, forty-two miles from Vicksburg. On this raid we burned some fine plantation houses and other improvements. I saw only one residence left standing, and that was where the family had the courage to remain at home. The weather has been hot and the roads dusty.

---Osborn H. Oldroyd, a young officer in the 20^th Ohio Infantry Regiment, in Grant’s army, writes in his journal of his experiences on the same raid through the Mississippi countryside---which includes a somewhat surprisingly frank observation about the attractions of being a slave owner:

MAY 31ST.—We were aroused by the bugle call, and in a few minutes on the march again. Halted at noon on a large plantation. This is a capital place to stop, for the negroes are quite busy baking corn-bread and sweet potatoes for us. We have had a grand dinner at the expense of a rich planter now serving in the southern army. Some of the negroes wanted to come with us, but we persuaded them to remain, telling them they would see hard times if they followed us. They showed indications of good treatment, and I presume their master is one of the few who treat their slaves like human beings.

I must say—whether right or wrong—plantation life has had a sort of fascination for me ever since I came south, especially when I visit one like that where we took dinner to-day, and some, also, I visited in Tennessee. I know I should treat my slaves well, and, while giving them a good living, I should buy, but never sell. . . .

May has now passed, with all its hardships and privations to the army of the west—the absence of camp comforts; open fields for dwelling places; the bare ground for beds; cartridge boxes for pillows, and all the other tribulations of an active campaign. Enduring these troubles, we have given our country willing service. We have passed through some hard-fought battles, where many of our comrades fell, now suffering in hospitals or sleeping, perhaps, in unmarked graves. Well they did their part, and much do we miss them. Their noble deeds shall still incite our emulation, that their proud record may not be sullied by any act of ours.

Camped at dark, tired, dirty and ragged—having had no chance to draw clothes for two months.

 

---John C. West, a Texan serving in the 4^th Texas Infantry in Lee’s army, writes in his journal of his regiment’s move, which indicates how Lee begins to move his army, division by division, west and north in his planned invasion of the North:

Sunday, May 31st.

This morning about daylight we received orders to be ready to march at 8:30. All is bustle now getting ready. I have been to the spring for water and have just returned; have read the 52nd chapter of Isaiah, and 35th Psalm; am now about to pack up.

Sunday evening at sunset.—We have marched about fourteen miles to-day—a hot dusty march. Nothing of interest occurred. We are now bivouacked in a pine grove twenty miles from Fredericksburg, with our arms stacked with orders to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The march has not fatigued me anything like as much as many hunts I have taken at home. Some friend of the soldiers has been kind enough to send us a number of religious papers, and I am now enjoying the “Christian Observer,” published at Richmond.

May 30, 1863

May 30, 1863

---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 8

---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 3

 

Major John Singleton Mosby, CSA

---Battle of Catlett’s Station -- On this date, John Singleton Mosby, the prodigy partisan cavalry raider, rides his 200 rangers to Catlett’s Station, on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad in central Virginia, where they cut the telegraph wires and prepare an ambush.  Having removed several rails, they lay in wait until the intended train comes by, and it derails promptly.  Mosby opens fire with a small howitzer, and the Federal train escort all flee.  The Rebel troopers loot the train, liberating U.S. mail, as well as a load of fresh fish and delicacies such as candies and oranges.  They fire howitzer shots through the locomotive’s boiler and set the train afire.  Federal cavalry nearby, alerted by the noise, sets off in pursuit: troopers from Michigan, New York, and Vermont, led my Col. William Mann, are involved in a sporadic, running fight.  Several times the Yankees get in front of Mosby, and a shell from the howitzer scatters them and opens up the way again.  One officer in blue is going to let them escape, believing he has too few troops to stop the Rebels, when his subordinate, Lt. Elmer Barker, without orders, orders the troop to give chase.  When Baker and his two dozen troopers catch up with Mosby, the Rebels replies with a round of canister that hits nearly ten of Barker’s men.  The Rebels charged into Barker’s line, and it breaks.  But the cordon of Yankee troopers in the neighborhood is drawing tighter around them, were guiding by the sounds of the battle.  A force of Vermonters under Col. Mann crashes into Mosby’s flank, and the howitzer is fired at the Federals until it runs out of ammunition, so the battle devolves into a hand-to-hand fight.  The Rebel raiders beat off the Yankee attack, after losing two killed and another handful wounded, and make good their escape.  In the gathering darkness, Mosby’s battalion disperses and dissolves into countryside.

Mosby (in plumed hat) and some of his Partisan Rangers
 

---Gen. Robert E. Lee reorganizes the Army of Northern Virginia, splitting Jackson’s old corps and making three.  In command of the I Corps would remain Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, Lee’s “old war horse”; the division of Lafayette McLaws, John Bell Hood, and George Pickett are under his command. 

The II Corps will be commanded by newly-promoted Lt. Gen. Richard B. Ewell, widely renowned as an aggressive and savvy battlefield commander, recently recovered from having lost his left leg at 2^nd Bull Run.  The II Corps will consist of the divisions of Robert Rodes, Jubal A. Early, and Edward Johnson. 

The new III Corps, now commanded by the newly-promoted Ambrose Powell Hill, consists of the divisions of Richard Anderson and Dorsey Pender, along with part of Hill’s old division, now commanded by Henry Heth.  Stuart’s cavalry division is organized into five brigades.