Sherman’s Neckties

(Union Troops destroying railroad track by heating and bending them around trees. They became known as “Sherman’s Neckties” during the destruction. Image Library of Congress).

Oh, man, this could be dry as hell, but it is required for the set-up for what happened to GG Grandfather and the 72nd OVI. So, bear with me. What I want to attempt to do is get the strategic picture out there.

Vicksburg has fallen. Arkansas and Texas are cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. Union commerce is now free to traverse the length of the Mississippi River.

After the 1863 Vicksburg Campaign, Great Great Grandfather’s 72nd OVI performed “other duties as assigned. “Siege of Jackson” July 10-17, and then they burned the Rebel capital of Mississippi. Then to Brandon Station on the 19th of July; camping at the remains of the Big Black Creek Bridge until November. Expedition to Canton October 13-20. Bogue Chitto Creek October 17. Ordered to Memphis, Tenn., and guard the Memphis & Charleston Railroad at Germantown till January, 1864. Not a lot of glory in that. There certainly would be some later, though it might not be theirs.

In February of 1864 the 72nd joined Union forces under Sherman and began to march toward Meridian, MS. The town was a railroad junction and site of a Confederate arsenal, military hospital, and prisoner-of-war stockade, as well as the headquarters for a number of state offices. Sherman planned to take Meridian and, if the situation was favorable, push on to Selma, Alabama, and possibly even threaten Mobile on the Gulf Coast.

Sherman ordered Brigadier General William Sooy Smith to lead a cavalry force of 7,000 men from Memphis, Tennessee south through Okolona, along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and rendezvous with the rest of his Union force at Meridian.

With the main force of 20,000 men, Sherman set out for Meridian, but made feints toward various other locations. To counter the threat, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered troops to the area from other localities. The Confederate commander in the area, Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, consolidated a number of commands in and around Mortona, but, lost his nerve and retreated rapidly eastward, leaving Meridian to Sherman who sacked the place when he tired of waiting for Smith to arrive.

This is what war looked like to Tecumseh Sherman: he ordered his troops “to wipe the appointed meeting place off the map” by destroying the railroads and burning much of the area to the ground. Sherman’s troops destroyed “115 mi of railroad, 61 bridges, 6,075 ft. of trestles, 20 locomotives, 28 steam cars, and 3 steam sawmills.”

After the troops departed, inhabitants of the city were without food for some days, but the soldiers had not directly inflicted any personal injuries during the attack that were reported. Sherman is reported to have said, “Meridian with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists.”

When Sherman left Meridian he headed west by way of Canton, which was dutifully recorded in the duty log of the 72nd OVI.

General Sooy Smith had been both remarkably indecisive, and unlucky as he ran into Nathan Bedford Forrest. Smith had delayed eleven days attempting to march toward Meridian; he wound up at West Point, fifty miles north of the city and encountered the gentleman we met yesterday, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his brother, Colonel Jeffery Forrest.

At West Point, Forrest and his army forced Smith to begin to retreat to Tennessee. When Forrest saw Smith’s army retreating, he ordered his troops to chase the army down. Forrest caught Smith and his troops in Okolona, MS, and forced them to retreat more rapidly. Like, really rapidly. In the fighting, Jeffery was shot in the neck, and reportedly died in his brother’s arms.

The Confederate victory resulted in an estimated 100 Union casualties, and 50 Confederate casualties.

Frustrated by the AWOL Smith, Sherman returned to Vicksburg to plot his next moves. The 72nd OVI was committed to operations against Forrest in West Tennessee and Kentucky (March 16-April 14), then the defense of Paducah, KY, April 14, and then to Sturgis’ Expedition to Ripley, MS, April 30-May 2.

Forrest’s operations came to be called the “Defense of Mississippi, June-August 1864,” though Union General Samuel Davis Sturgis might have thought it was the other way around.

(General Samuel Davis Sturgis. Image Wikipedia).

His boss, General Sherman, had long known that his fragile supply and communication lines through Tennessee were in serious jeopardy because of Forrest’s cavalry raids. To suppress Forrest’s activities, he ordered Gen. Sturgis to conduct a penetration into northern Mississippi and Alabama with a force of around 8,500 troops to destroy Forrest and protect the railroad lifeline in Middle Tennessee. Sherman had a date with Atlanta, and he wanted nothing to prevent his making it.

Sturgis departed Memphis on the first of June with some trepidation. Forrest was notified of the movement. Already in transit to Tennessee, Forrest moved his cavalry toward Sturgis, but was unsure of Union intentions. His intentions were unambiguous. He would close with and destroy the enemy if he could.

The first two battles of the campaign were fought in Mississippi at Tupelo and Brice’s Cross Roads, also called the Battle of Tishomingo Creek.

The latter is going to be the subject of a special edition of The Daily, since it is where Nathan Bedford Forrest kicked the crap out of my family. On my birthday, of all things.

If you don’t think that made the hair on the back of my neck to go up, you clearly have another think coming.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Furstest With the Mostest

(Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Library of Congress).

We will get to the strategic picture on the progress of the Union Anaconda squeezing the Confederacy tomorrow, since I need to introduce you to a figure of some note in this tale of the future brother-in-laws. His name is Forrest, Nathan Bedford Forrest, in full, and the greatest cavalry soldier of his age.

Round these parts, of course, we would probably bestow that title on the dashing cavalier J.E.B. Stuart, who spent the winter of 1862-63 in Culpeper, and attended the Episcopal Church on East Street. So we consider him a local boy with a certain proprietary pride.

John Singleton Mosby has his partisans as well, and he never got caught as he harried the Federals in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties with gusto. On the Union side, bold George Armstrong Custer fought here before going to his eternal fame- or infamy- in the war against the Souix and phlegmatic John Buford who saved the Union bacon on the first day at Gettysburg.

But I think the greatest horseman of them all was a Tennessean named Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was so effective at harassing Federal forces in Tennessee and Mississippi that that William Tecumseh Sherman once wrote a dispatch to Lincoln’s Secretary of War Stanton: “Forrest is the very devil, If we must sacrifice 10,000 lives and bankrupt the Federal Treasury, it will be worth it. There will never be peace in Tennessee till Forrest is dead.”

The Union press termed him a brigand and a butcher, and a case can be made that he was a war criminal. The same case could be made about Sherman himself, or Phil Sheridan for their campaigns of total violence in the Shenandoah Valley and later in Georgia on the March to the Sea.

(William Tecumseh Sherman’s memorable quote was “War is Hell.” Photo Library of Congress).

In the end, though, only one man was ever held accountable for crimes against humanity in the sprawling conflict. I will get to him and his bill of particulars against the comrades of my Great Great Grandfather presently.

Before the war, Forrest was a self-made millionaire who came from humble stock. His family included eleven children. Back-woods skills were the stuff of existence there, including hunting and tracking and subsistence farming. Formal schooling was not a priority.

One tale told by author Rick Montes about his formative years demonstrates the origin of his boldness. “Young Bedford (was) being intimidated by a group of young toughs at his Uncles tailor shop. The boys seemed intent on harassing the younger boy and continued to taunt him. Finally, Nathan had enough, grabbed a pair of shears and sprang from his seat towards his antagonist. The boys ran in fear. This taught young Bedford a valuable lesson: He could intimidate and disarm an apparently superior foe.”

Forrest was a gambler, and enjoyed the tumult of commerce, though part of that commerce was the trade of human beings. He is said to have been a humane master, insofar as that was unusual in the Peculiar Institution, though goodness knows at this distance it is an appalling thing.

Was his belief a criminal delusion? During an interview after the War with the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper, Bedford was quoted as saying: “When I entered the army I took forty-seven Negroes into the army with me, and forty-five of them were surrendered with me. I told these boys that this war was about slavery, and if we lose, you will be made free. If we whip the fight and you stay with me you will be made free. Either way you will be freed. These boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better confederates did not live.”

When war broke out in April 12,1861, Forrest appeared at the recruiting station with his entourage and walked into the office of Captain Josiah White’s Tennessee Mounted Rifles. He enlisted as a private along with his brother Jeffrey and fifteen year old son, Willie. This would become the renowned 7th Tennessee Cavalry, and Forrest decided to open his substantial wallet and equip them himself.

His philosophy was made clear in the advertising broadsheets for the unit: “I wish none but those who desire to be actively engaged. COME ON BOYS, IF YOU WANT A HEAP OF FUN AND TO KILL SOME YANKEES.”

If that seems a bit blunt, put it in context. Legendary Five-star Admiral Bill “Bull” Halsey had a completely sign erected on a hillside on the island of Tulagi that welcomed newcomers with the admonition to: “KILL (the enemy)! KILL (the enemy)!KILL MORE (of the enemy)! You will help to kill the (racial characterization) bastards if you do your job well”

I know, I know. I have sanitized the phrase in the interest of delicacy, though there is nothing delicate about total war. These days when we terminate people with prejudice we are supposed to be humane about it, or at least look a little embarrassed, but it has been a while since we actually won a war. Both Forrest and Halsey recognized an important component of warfare: niceties are best reserved for the peacetime that comes after victory.

As part of the process of outfitting the 7th Tennessee, Forrest was appointed Colonel, an impressive rise in circumstance, and by the end of 1862 when this chapter of the family story is being told has put on the one-star of a Brigadier.

At the end of things in 1865 he was a Lieutenant General. Along the way he is personally credited with killing two-dozen Yankees. Author Montes draws a distinction from current rhetoric with Forrest: “He never led from the rear but always from the front,” and he never sent his troops anywhere he was not prepared to go himself.

In 1862 at Fort Donelson, where Uncle Patrick’s unit was captured, Forrest outfought Ulysses S. Grant’s regular army soldiers. As the Rebel leadership made the decision to capitulate, Forrest was quoted as saying “To Hell with that, I did not come here to surrender!” He and his horsemen slipped away to fight another day, and fight they did.

I suspect the Marines in France in 1918 who were ordered to retreat at Belleau Wood might have read Forrest’s history, since they told the French: “Retreat? Retreat hell. We just got here.”

Forrest operated very much like a Marine with his own scheme of logistics. He replenished his men’s kit with captured Yankee arms, allowing his men to be some of the best-equipped men in the Confederate army, including the new Sharp’s repeating rifle that was a remarkable force multiplier.

When he captured a vanquished Union army officer’s sword and noticed that it was only sharp for the first couple of inches on the blade, Forrest demanded a grindstone. When one of his military-educated officers indicated that it was more for show than for fighting, Forrest made one of his more famous quotes: “Damn such nonsense. War means fightin’ and fightin’ means killin’. Turn the grindstone.”

Part of the Forrest legacy is the allegation of a war crime. On April 12, 1864, he led his forces in the attack and capture of Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi River near Henning, TN. There is no question that a massacre took place against US Colored Troops; the question is whether the Union Command had ever surrendered, or whether this was a question of the enforcement of “no quarter” was being applied. Whatever it was, the incident demonstrated the evolving and savage nature of the subsequent conduct of the War by both sides.
Forrest is often misquoted to highlight his lack of formal education. The New York Tribune claimed he said his strategy was to “git thar fustest with the mostest.” Now often recast as “Getting there firstest with the mostest,” The folksy quote was corrected by a New York Times story in 1918 to be: “Ma’am, I got there first with the most men.”
He normally did, being one of the first generals in the war to apply the principals of mass and maneuver on a grand scale.
Some of Bedford’s greatest victories came by using psychological warfare. He repeatedly used deceit to trick his foes into thinking that he had greater numbers then he actually had and would sometimes capture twice his number.
That becomes part of this story and I will tell it on the anniversary of the battle on the 10th of June, which leads to a direct encounter with the only man who was hanged for what he did.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Parole

(Five unidentified prisoners of war in Confederate uniforms in front of their barracks at Camp Douglas Prison, Chicago, Illinois. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress).

We are going to have to spend a minute on the social issues that went along with the Civil War. I would rather contemplate the remarkable Triple Crown win by American Pharaoh, but I am ambivalent about the Sport of Kings and how the horses are treated. So, despite the fact that this is the first horse to win the three races since Secretariat, I will leave it at that.

I think most folks agree that there was never as transformational a period in American History as the years between 1861-65. The conflict started over the most profound issue possible, though it was clearly seen in radically different contexts.

Neither of my Irishmen had much to do with Slavery, the abomination of our history. James joined the Union because he lived in Ohio. Patrick joined the confederacy because he lived in Nashville, and Colonel McGavock, the dashing former mayor, was recruiting a Company of troops to fight for his state, not a perverse and immoral institution.

Blogger Bill Borst summed it up nicely when he cited the dialogue in the epic movie, Gettysburg, based on the late Michael Shaara’s powerful novel The Killer Angels. He wrote: “A young Union officer asked a group of prisoners why they were fighting the bloody war. The most vocal of the trio said that “we’re figthin’ for our rats!”

He probably perceived the Northern invasion of their sovereign state territory as a wildly aggressive action of the central government, rather than a struggle over the South’s distinctly limited definition of human rights.

I doubt if the irony of the situation could be fully appreciated, since no mention was made of the injustice of slavery or the fact that he was standing in Pennsylvania when he uttered his principled words. Of course the only response would have been who started what.

Obviously, views on the matter were strong enough that hundreds of thousands of young men were willing to die over it, though at the beginning it was beyond the comprehension of most participants of the scope and brutal nature of the total war to come.

Just one of the issues confronting the two governments in America- there were several dozen major ones- was the subject of what was to be done with prisoners taken on the battlefield.

An early (and continuing) solution for the North was the establishment of prison camps. There is one of them that is little known now, but resonates with me strongly: Camp Douglas, located on the South Side of Chicago. It was out in the country then, and occupied roughly four square blocks, or about eighty acres.

Originally a camp for Union enlistments and training, it was converted to a prison in February of 1862 after Sam Grant’s troops opened the River War. He captured 5,000 Confederate soldiers at Fort Donelson on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. With nowhere else for the captured troops to go, Camp Douglas became a Army prisoner-of-war camp, and it stayed one for the duration of the war.

Chicago’s role as a transportation hub made it an ideal location for a prison. It was directly off the Illinois Central Railroad. At the time, this was the longest railroad in the world, running from Cairo, Illinois, along the Ohio River, to Chicago. Once captured, Confederate prisoners were only a steamboat and train ride away from Camp Douglas.

One of them was Great Great Uncle Patrick.

I will let him tell you about it himself:

“…the “Tinth” (Tennessee ) was surrendered at Fort Donelson without their knowledge or consent, and for the first time since we left Nashville, Lieut. Col. McGavock and I were parted. He was sent to Camp Chase, and I with Company H to Camp Douglas.

Most of you are conversant with the routine of prison life. I will not go into detail regarding it Suffice it to say that I served with distinction as orderly sergeant of Company H, having been sent to the “Black Hole” oftener than any other orderly sergeant for overdrawing rations and clothes. Doubtless I would have gotten into very serious trouble during the first few months of our imprisonment were it not that Col. Mulligan, the commander of the post, was an Irishman, and, hearing that my name was Pat, he took me for an Irishman, too; and, although he was a Yankee, he had a heart. Some of our fellows were in bad shape there, and they certainly needed all that I could get for them.

All of the prisoners regretted the removal of Col. Mulligan; and well they might, for it was a “son of a gun” that came after him—Col. Tucker. It makes me mad now to think about him. We had to fortify our bunks, and did not dare to poke our heads outside of the barracks after night- fall unless we were willing to have bullets pitched our way. We were offered every inducement to take the oath or join the Yankee army. But after meeting Col. Tucker, I knew that it would be impossible for me to ever become a Yankee.

Very few of the boys went over to the other side. I think those of us who were there found the latter portion of that seven months about the worst part of our existence. It is needless to say that the news of exchange was a matter for general rejoicing; and when Col. Tucker and Chicago faded from sight we felt as if we had gotten out of the devil’s clutches.”

As many as 5,000 Confederate troops died there, and Patrick and his comrades in Company H were lucky. They were the beneficiaries of the extended negotiations that resulted in a thing called the Dix–Hill Cartel, an agreement concluded on July 22, 1862 between Union General John A. Dix and Confederate General D. H. Hill to handle the general exchange of POWs from both sides.

The agreement became necessary because of parallel pressures. At the outbreak of the conflict, Washington struck a tough attitude regarding Rebel prisoners. The Lincoln Administration wanted to avoid any action that might appear as “an official recognition of the Confederate government in Richmond, including the formal transfer of military captives.”

Understandable, of course, but the fate of the thousand Union prisoners taken at First Bull Run (Manassas) directly influenced public opinion. Prior to Dix-Hill, Union and Confederate forces only exchanged prisoners sporadically, usually as an act of humanity between opposing field commanders. In many cases, transfers were only made for sick and wounded captives. Everyone was new at this business of Civil War, and many commanders were reluctant to negotiate with the enemy without guidance from their respective Chains of Command.

The Dix-Hill agreement established a ‘scale of equivalents’ by which a Navy Captain or Army Colonel would be valued at fifteen enlisted troops, while private solider like Uncle Patrick would be exchanged at the rate one one-to-one. Two locations for the exchanges were designated, one at Aiken’s Landing near Dutch Gap, VA, and the other at Vicksburg, MS. Each government appointed agents to manage the parole of prisoners and the exchange of captives between the commanders of two opposing forces.

There is an important distinction between “Parole” and “Exchange.” In addition to provisions for the exchange of non-combatants, Dix-Hill directed authorities to parole any prisoners not exchanged within ten days following their capture. Paroled prisoners were prohibited from returning to the military in any capacity including “the performance of field, garrison, police, or guard, or constabulary duty.”

The system began to fall apart at the end of 1862, when a Louisiana politician named William Mumford was executed for the crime of ripping down a U.S flag by Union General Benjamin Butler. There were other things that were starting to change with the nature of the war, and the massive number of casualties at Shiloh was a large part of it. A battle that produced 27,000 casualties in two days shocked the citizens of both countries, though that would hardly be the bloodiest battle of the war. The Armies were getting much better at the art of slaughter.

As I said, Patrick was lucky. Exchanges were essentially done by the time that Vicksburg fell in 1863.

Patrick described his return this way:

“At Cairo, our officers were waiting for us. Most of them were looking the worse for wear, but oh how good it was to know that those of us who were faithful were together again!

From Cairo we went by boat to the island above Vicksburg, where Grant was trying to change the course of the Mississippi and from this island we were ferried over to Vicksburg. After landing, we marched to a field outside of the city, where the ladies had prepared a grand barbecue for us. It is hardly necessary for me to tell you how we boys did justice to all the good things.”

There were not many good things to come for the troops. There was a growing and systematic brutality to the conflict, and new horrors yet to come. That goes along with the Anaconda Strategy, a system of internal and external blockade by which the North was determined to starve the South into submission.

And then there were war crimes and war criminals, all of which were going to be experienced by Great Great Grandfather and the men of the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and a place that became known as Andersonville.

More on that tomorrow.

(Union General Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan in the popular view. Library of Congress)

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra

Twitter: @jayare303

D-Day

I was sitting with Barrister Jerry at Willow last night, along with the usual suspects aligned in the usual places at the bar. I asked him if he had heard about the major data breech at the Office of Personnel Management, better known in these parts as OPM. For purposes of efficiency, they share their servers with the Department of the Interior. Persons unknown hacked into OPM and exfiltrated the personnel files of around four million current and former Federal employees. Jerry said the NCIS had called him up to warn him about his vulnerability.

“I don’t know whether they tried to contact me,” I said pensively. “I don’t answer my land line any more. It is always politicians asking for money.”

Jerry shook his head and asked Marvin behind the bar for an order of the gazpacho and two salmon tacos.

OPld Jim waved for another Budweiser. “You know what day it is tomorrow?” he asked, carefully wrapping the cord to his earbuds around his little MP3 player , like a sailor coiling his lines after casting off.

“Yep. June 6, the anniversary of The Longest Day at Normandy, seventy-one years ago. And the end of the Battle of Midway in 1942. If the Japanese had won at Midway, they would have eliminated American carrier-based airpower and established a new outer security perimeter for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

“Sort of like what the Chinese are trying in the South China Sea, building all those artificial islands,” said Jim, slipping the music player into the pocket of his denim jacket he wears even in the summer to protect him from that irritating air conditioning vent above the apex of the Amen Corner at the bar.

“There is going to be trouble about that,” said Jon-without. “Maybe not now, but eventually.”

“No doubt. But imagine if we had failed in the Normandy landings. The war in Europe would have dragged on years longer. Hitler could have transferred his elite Panzer units back east and perhaps stopped the Red Army. He certainly would have murdered more people he didn’t like.”

“Ike apparently wrote down some remarks about failure in case the weather went wrong or the beach-heads could not be held. It was something like: “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. What a guy. We don’t have people like that any more.”

“I like Ike,” said Jon. “It was the largest amphibious invasion of all time, with over 160,000 troops in the landing force and another 195,700 Allied and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000 ships and landing craft.”

“Biggest amphibious operation since Grant crossed the Mississippi south of Vicksburg,” I said.

Jim looked pensive- he was a War Baby, after all, one of the rare ones on the Home Front born the year of the invasion. “The 6th of June provides the symbolic date in the struggle against the Nazis. So, on this peaceful moment in Arlington, remember what was given, and what was taken by those young people on the sea, on the beaches, and in the air.” We all lifted our glasses, and for that moment we honored the past and the courage of young people who saved the world.

I took a sip of vodka. Uncle Dick would have been airborne from his base in East Anglia in his B-17 Buzzin’ Betsy. He lost an engine on take off and was barely able to lurch into the air with his load of bombs, but he continued to the target anyway.

We talked about other things, and the difference between the wars we are fighting now and the ones we did then. But it is worth remembering what was given that day, and what those young people confronted afterwards in the hedgerows of France on the long walk to the Rhine that followed, don’t you think?

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Horror Show

The words that account for the activities of the 72nd OVI are prety dry. When my cousin Harold and I were doing research about Great Great Grandfather a couple decades ago we saw his service record, but I took notes on paper and they are long gone.

The unit diary has the places, but not the context. I directed some inquiries to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, and got some encouraging news: James Foley enlisted in Compnay K of the 72nd in January of 1861, and it was a three year enlistment. That means he was with them through probably December of 1864 at leat.

Here is what they did after the Siege of Jackson July 10-17. Brandon Station July 19. Camp at Big Black till November. Expedition to Canton October 13-20. Bogue Chitto Creek October 17. Ordered to Memphis, Tenn., and guard Memphis & Charleston Railroad at Germantown till January, 1864. Expedition to Wyatt’s, Miss., February 6-18. Coldwater Ferry February 8. Near Senatobia February 8-9. Wyatt’s February. Operations against Forest in West Tennessee and Kentucky March 16-April 14. Defence of Paducah, Ky., April 14 (Veterans). Sturgis’ Expedition to Ripley, Miss., April 30-May 2. Sturgis’ Expedition to Guntown, Miss., June 1-13. Brice’s Cross Roads, near Guntown, June 10.

Pretty dry, hiuh? A lot of trudging around Mississippi looking for Rebels. I was checking out the note about Guntown, since I had never heard of it before, and the date means something to me.

It turns out there was a lot more that happened at the crossroads named after Mr. Brice. A Southern gentleman- Sherman called him a devil- named Nathan Bedford Forest kicked the 72nd’s collective butt, and most of the casualties they suffered were right there.

It was a horror show, and is linked to a death camp. I was stunned. I am going to have to tell you more about it tomorrow.

This 1908 image of the survivors of the 72nd OVI is in the archives of the Haye’s Library. Due to his status, it is unlikely (though possible) that James Foley is in it:

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Sliders

I always feel a pang of loss on this day, and think of our pal Mac Showers sitting under the pneumatic tube- the “bunny tube” waiting for messages from Main Communications in The Dungeon at District headquarters at Pearl. He was told by Commander Joe Rochefort to wait for notification from the Fleet about whether or not the predictions of his code-breaking team were correct, and whether the Kido Butai was going to get whacked by American pilots.

I looked down the bar to where Mac used to sit, and remembered the tales of those days long ago.

For the Battle of Midway, it was 73 years ago this morning. We talked about that and some other stuff at the Amen Corner at Willow last night. Jon-without is recovered from his- let’s put this delicately- his procedure- and Old Jim, JPeter, Barrister Jerry and the Missle Twins were making merry. We were celebrating the fact that Heather has ripped this softball season up like a house on fire.

Jon slid onto the stool next to me and signaled Brett for a vodka. He looked over at mine. “Which one are you on,” he asked.

“Encore,” I said.

“What did we decide the first one is called? We had them all organized: “Encore for the second, hat trick for the third, final four for the last one. I can’t remember what we called he first one.”

“Bliss,” I said. “We had provisions for more.”

“Right. You could slide on into the Bonus round.”

“Or careen into the Double Bonus,” growled Jim. “Then a cab.”

Heather was having a snack and celebrating her softball victory. “So, you were four-for-four in the opener. How did you do last night?” I asked.

“Four for five,” she said with a grin. “I was batting eighth, and came up the first time. The chumps in the infield all came in, because they thought I was a girl and couldn’t hit.”

“Well, technically you are one,” observed Jon-without trenchantly.

“Yeah,” I said, taking a sip of my diet tonic and vodka. “But she is a woman who can rip the horsehide off a ball. What happened?”

“I hit a frozen rope to the gap and legged it out for a triple,” she said with a grin. “They should have stayed back. I was coming in high and hard to third and it was muddy and slid in spikes up.”

“You didn’t, did you?” asked Missleer Steve.

“There is a little Ty Cobb in all of us, even on the Nature Conservancy All Stars softball team.”

“They got just what they deserved for disrespecting you,” said Barrister Jerry, surveying the “Clams Casino” crusted cod in the bowl in front of him. “If my math is right, you are now eight for nine, or batting .889. That is a respectable average in any league.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “Cooperstown here she comes.” I looked at his dish with interest. It was a tender flaky filet of fish, smothered with a Buttery Bacon Crumble, Little Neck Clam Broth, Preserved Lemon, House Made Potato Gnocchi, Tomatoes, Sweet Garlic & Italian Parsley .

JPeter looked on with interest. He looked up at Brett the bartender and asked about the special. “We have the mini Willow burgers- two little sliders. They are good.”

“And cheap,” I said. “They are just for the bar, not like the Crusted Cod, which is a full entrée.”

He agreed, and ordered a pair. “You still writing about the Civil War? Those are some interesting times.”

“Yes,” I said. In fact I just found something really crazy about my Great Great Grandfather. In fact, it is sort of eerie. I was writing to the librarian at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and found something that completely freaked me out. More than the fact that his unit helped to save the Union.”

“What was it?” asked Jon-without.

“Hang on. I don’t want to spoil it. We will get to that tomorrow.”

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Honora’s Tale

(The Village of Clifden, in County Galway, where Honora’s odyssey began. The blue eyes in the family came from the Viking raiders who harassed the coast of Ireland in olden days. Original oil by Wayne Wolfe).

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As it turns out, this voyage along the river of history has been quite an eye-opener. I had never thought much about Great-Great-Grandfather’s Civil War Service- my cousin Harold and I had come to the same astonished realization that he had walked away from the Union Army- deserted- just a couple weeks apart at the National Archives. That was truly remarkable- with credentials to prove we were researchers, we put in a request to see his service record, and they located it and delivered it to us on our separate visits in a little wire basket in less than an hour.

When I manage to compile all this material, I swear it will make sense, and even feature a love story, not just the thunder and bluster of war. And so, before the morning gets completely away from me, here is the tale of my Great Great Great Grandmother, and how this all came to be.

I had the most extraordinary dream last night, vivid beyond belief. There was a fair amount of stuff in it that was mildly interesting, to me, anyway. But the most vivid moment was the encounter with my Mother’s ghost. I could see every line in her face and the pale blue of her eyes, which like mine are the color of the sea. We talked briefly- she did not appear to know that she had passed- but was concerned with how everyone was doing.

It was good to see her, since this is the only means I have to interact with her on this side of the River Styx.

As I set up the mobile office the next morning, waiting for the Dazbog Russian-roast coffee to kick in, I marveled at how real it had seemed, I sipped coffee and thought of her, and her Irish family. They were railroad and river people. Since I recently traveled in the Great State of Mississippi to investigate the scene of conflict where my ancestors fought, I thought I might account for how the extended family flowed down to the Gulf.

Sorry for the timeline being in such a jumble. Eventually we will put it back in something like a coherent order for the book version, though I think the chapters have stood fairly well together on their own.

As I mentioned a couple times on this search for roots along the river, James Foley was my great-great-grandfather. He married Patrick Griffin’s sister, Barbara, in 1864.

It is another wartime story, but this one is not tall tales of cannon-fire and contraband and courtly Colonels, but of the sacrifice of women, who bear the special burden of coping with the madness of the men around them.

Author and historian Becky Black has touched on the story of Honora McDonough, Patrick’s mother, and her amazing trans-oceanic adventures. Becky was mostly interested in Patrick, since his account of the battle at Raymond is one of the most vivid around, and possibly some of it is true.

Having walked the field almost on the anniversary of the fight, it is intensley real to me now.

Honora’s story is just as amazing, but we only have the outlines of it. She married Michael Griffin, Pat’s dad, in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland around 1843. They had four children: Patrick being the eldest and Barbara the second of four. She was the “little mother” to the two younger ones, Mary and William.

The three oldest Griffins departed County Galway as the Famine rose to a peak in 1847, and things were at the worst. On one day alone in that awful year, 160 corpses were picked from the Galway County roads. On another, in November of 1848, 240 died in the Clifden workhouse.

The Griffins were not alone in hunger and the desire to get away from the crushing poverty. All that could flee to the boats in the harbor did so. Honora’s brother Patrick McDonough went off to America as part of the diaspora. Fourteen years later, he wound up a sailor, in service to the Union, on an iron-clad on the Mississippi. It is said that when the war was finally done, he was married in New Orleans, the amazing Creole city at the end of the fabulous Mississippi River.

Our Irish were junction-people, living where the waters and the rails came together.

To escape the troubles, the Griffins left the younger children behind with Mary, Honora’s mother, who kept a small hostel. (She lived to be 111!). They fully intended to return when the bad times at home were over, and Michael and Honora sternly informed mother Mary that they did not want their daughters to wed while they were gone. Little Barbara listened, and younger Mary did not.

Knowing she would be disowned if she began keeping company with a likely young lad, she ran away, hopefully with her suitor, and was never heard from again. Her woman’s story may have led her to America, too, but that branch of the family was sundered forever, and some say she is buried in Irish soil.

Honora and Michael wanted to recover their children, and perhaps take over the hostel. But sunstroke felled Mike in his tracks as he worked on the railroad in Tennessee. He died at Cedar Hill, and Honora abandoned the idea of returning to Ireland. She married a fellow named Thomas Griffin; no relation to Mike, and a perplexing problem in the disparate family archives. She had two children by him; Martin, who lived until 1910, and Myles, who was “lost at sea,” date unknown.

Barbara was fifteen in 1860, and determined to get her mother’s blessing, came to America to get that and find a husband.

She must have been a tough cookie. She said “farewell” to her grandmother and brother and crossed the Atlantic on her own. She landed on the Eastern Seaboard, possibly at Alexandria, and arrived in Nashville in time to spend the war years there.

No one knows how or where, but in 1864, she hooked up with Yankee soldier James Foley, a strapping young blonde with a ruddy complexion who was flush with cash from his part-bonus, and on veteran’s leave. He had concluded his first three-year enlistment in the Union Army, and re-enlisted under great pressure.

Barbara must have had a way with words the same way Patrick did. She convinced James to desert, and not to return to the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The records say he went missing in Cincinnati.

Because he was technically a deserter, he never filed for a pension, and never was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the VFW of the day. But he did live to a great age, not passing away until 1922, the year after his Rebel brother-in-law Patrick.

Honora lived with Patrick and Barbara, by turns, after her second husband died. In her declining years, she loved to walk, though she was bent with arthritis and was compelled to use crutches. She died at the ripe age of 88, in a home for the aged and was buried by her brother Patrick’s son, a Mr. McDonough, “who owned the funeral home from which she was buried.”

The family records say she was short and stout; light complexioned, with a square face. You can see some of that in the period picture of her son Patrick in his uniform of the 10th Tennessee Irish. Pat’s Dad, Mike, by contrast, was the very personification of the Black Irish: dark-completion, with dark eyes and black curly hair. He is said to be buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery (Catholic) six miles outside of Cedar Hill.

After the War ended, and Patrick’s great adventure came to a close, he married Bridget Welsh. They had five children together, including Louisa McGavock Griffin, born on April 10th, 1876, and last-born Walker E. Griffin, in 1880.

He continued the Irish tradition of arms, and served in the Spanish American War, and honored his father by naming one of his sons, born in 1902, Patrick M. Griffin.

After Bridget passed away, Patrick married the melodically-named Annie Deane Breene. They had two children together, and Patrick passed away on June 5, 1921, in the house he built at 300 12th Ave, South, in Nashville. He was 77, and told a good tale to the day he died.

That is when Louisa McGavock Griffin took the place over, and stayed until 1951, when she retired to be with family in Mississippi. It is gone now, as best I can tell from Google Maps, and the area has been mostly flattened by urban renewal and a modern building sits on the site. It is only two blocks away from McGavock Street, named for the Colonel who died in Patrick’s arms.

The other Griffin daughters, allied with the Piggotts, Smiths and Martins of Tylertown, Mississippi, southwest of Hattiesburg, almost all the way to Louisiana. They made their homes down the river through the 20th century, and right into this one.

If I can find the time in semi-retirement, I will visit the places that James Foley’s and Patrick Griffin’s descendants call home. It’s a family affair, after all.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Prairie Dog Village

(The Siege of Vicksburg. Map by Hal Jespersen).

They did not celebrate the 4th of July in Vicksburg for 81 years. Well, there is some controversy over that and there were some ceremonies some years. The times have changed, but the 4th is a day that no one really wants to remember in Vicksburg. Grant chased Pennsylvania-born Confederate commander John C. Pemberton back into the fortress town after crossing the Mississippi and advancing relentlessly northeast through Raymond and Jackson and Champion Hill. Then Grant turned and moved west as Pemberton slammed the gates of his last command.

On the 19th of May, Grant’s army arrived in front of Vicksburg and he launched an immediate attack. The 72nd OVI has a marker on the field from their part in it. The were located on the northeast corner of the Confederate defenses, near Graveyard Road.

Pemberton’s men had suffered two serious defeats in the last three days, and at Big Black River had broken and run.

Being amid the defenses that Pemberton had been building for more than half a year seemed to stiffen their spines, though. The terrain around Vicksburg was ideal for construction of strong defenses. The high ground was crossed by a series of streams that had eroded steep ravines, leaving a series of ridges that were studded with nine forts and linked y trenches and individual fighting positions.

A second and more methodical attack was conducted on 22 May, and it was done with enthusiasm but came to nothing. Having demonstrated to his men that additional frontal assaults were foolhardy, Grant decided to hunker down and conduct a regular siege.

What followed would be 47 days of hell for the citizens of the Gibraltar of the South.

Considering what was at stake, it is a bit surprising that Department of the West Commander Joe Johnston didn’t do something to try to relieve the city. If it fell, Texas and Arkansas would be lost. Grant had to be concerned with Johnston’s forces behind him, east of the Big Black River.

Johnston made a feint to cross the river, though it was half-hearted and too late. With Tecumseh Sherman sent to block him, Johnston delayed until it was too late to help Pemberton, whose troops and civilian residents of the town were starving. The continuous bombardment forced soldiers and civilians alike to dig caves in the bluff and live underground for protection.

The Union soldiers called the place a “prairie dog village,” since only the foolish would poke their heads up to look around.

Eventually, 70,000 Union men surrounded Vicksburg, with seven divisions under Sherman facing east to deal with any Confederate counterattack. The best Johnston could muster was 30,00 largely untrained men, and that may have added to his timidity.
A pal noted the other day that the frantic canal digging of the previous fall and winter had served to keep the union troops occupied. Idle hands are the devil’s something or other, he said.

Grant was not content to simply wait for famine to force the surrender of Vicksburg. In June, his men constructed a series of trenches just as elaborate as those of the defenders. Slowly these trenches crept closer and closer, and industrious engineers tunneled below them to plant and detonate mines. The first on was on the 25th of June, and to no particular effect except to further demoralize the Rebels. An accompanying Union assault was repulsed with heavy losses.

A second mine, on 1 July, had destroyed a Confederate fort, but had not been followed by an assault. Grant had decided to wait until his engineers had tunneled in several places, and a coordinated series of blasts could be conducted ahead of a general assault in early July.

I should note that elsewhere in America, Robert E. Lee was heading for a town called Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania. e could explode a series of mines and use the confusion to launch a general assault along the line.

The final assault was not needed.

The town was in extremis. All the four-legged creatures had been slaughtered long before, and rats were being caught to augment dwindling stocks of grain. On 28 June, Pemberton received an anonymous note from his men requesting surrender, with the alternative being mass desertion. Pemberton considered a break-out, but his top commanders informed him the troops were too weakened to fight.

On the morning of July 3rd the white flags went up, and Pemberton met with Grant behind the lines. The two generals knew one another but the meeting was not a happy one. Grant insisted on unconditional surrender, and Pemberton demurred and departed. Grant then summoned his corps commanders and Flag Officer Porter for a huddle. They recommended that Pemberton’s forces be permitted to depart the city on the proviso that they go and make war no more under declaration of parole, or unless formally exchanged for Union prisoners.

After all, the Commanders pointed out, that would be 30,000 mouths they would not have to feed. Grant agreed and sent the revised terms to Pemberton, who accepted. The surrender of Vicksburg occurred on the 4th of July, which is why people there are a little sensitive about the day. Lee’s frontal assault on the Union lines had failed, Pickett’s Division had been slaughtered, and the Army of Northern Virginia was falling back in defeat.

There were a few loose ends to be tied up in the West, of course. But the surrender of one of the most important places in the Confederacy on that date was a massive blow to southern morale, and provided a crucial boost to that of the north. 2,166 officers and 27,230 men surrendered at Vicksburg, and within a few weeks were scattering across the south with their tales of the Union triumph.

The surrender of Vicksburg quickly led to the surrender of Port Hudson, now the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. Once the garrison there were sure that Vicksburg had surrendered, they too threw in the towel on July 9th. The Mississippi was now clear for northern ships. Only one week later the first ship reached New Orleans from the north. The Confederacy was permanently split in two, and Arkansas and Texas lost.

There was still stiff resistance in the West, but capture of Vicksburg promoted U.S. Grant to the front rank of Union generals. As the Union armies approaching Chattanooga in northeastern Tennessee they began to encounter trouble. They were defeated at Chickamauga in September 1863, and Lincoln wanted a fighter in charge. He selected Sam Grant to command of all Union armies between the Mississippi river and the Alleghany Mountains, and ordered him to lift the siege of Chattanooga. Grant was on his way to supreme command, and eventually a meeting with Bobbie Lee at Appomattox.

(This lithograph recounts the 1863 battle at Vicksburg that took place on water and land. Based on the view of the De Soto Penninsula in the rear, this would be near where the 72nd OVI made their assault on 19 May, 1863 Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Reproduction Number LC-USZC4-1754).

Meanwhile, Joe Johnston avoided being trapped in Jackson by Tecumseh Sherman’s forces and escaped with his army, which was more than Pemberton had achieved. But now, all of central Mississippi was left under Sherman’s control. He used a subsequent operation against Meridian as a precursor for the scorched earth tactics he would perfect on the March to the Sea through the Georgia Campaign.

Between the devastation imposed on civilian populations, massive defensive works and marvelous technology, the Civil War was informing the world of what was to come in an era of mass conflict. The world just wasn’t quite prepared to deal with what was coming.
The war in Georgia was when Great Great Uncle Patrick got back in the fight, and Great Great Grandfather James left it, but I will have to leave that for another day.

Back in Washington, President Lincoln got the telegram about the fall of Vicksburg, and happily announced, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

Maybe the river does, but there are still some folks around those parts who are still a little peevish about the whole thing.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Vicksburg

(Map of the second half of the Vicksburg Campaign. Great Great Grandfather’s Ohio unit moved from Memphis to Young’s Point, LA, in April and then participated in Grant’s long left hook through Jackson, MS, and then into the siege lines around the Gibraltar of the Mississippi River that resulted in the surrender of the city on the 4th of July. That day in 1863, following the defeat of Robert E. Lee’s army at Gettysburg the day before, marked the turning point of the war. Map drawn in Adobe Illustrator CS6 by Hal Jespersen for the USG).

Before we go on, I should mention that the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry saved the Union. Oh, I know. This is chaotic. We did the bit in the middle of this story weeks ago, and cover the events long before that just a week ago. Sorry.

And the other thing- the 72nd OVI was an outfit I considered the Rodney Dangerfield of the Union infantry. It was not the most famous Ohio regiment to fight in the Civil War, nor the most decorated, but on the first day of the fighting at Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing) it bore the brunt of Albert Sidney Johnston’s furious assault. Under heavy fire, the regiment was pushed back beyond its camp. In the afternoon, in conjunction with McClernand’s division, it mounted a determined counterattack.

Remaining under heavy fire the entire day, the 72nd suffered heavy casualties, including the loss of its commanding general. At the end it held the line, allowing Lew Wallace’s division to come onto the field of battle and giving the surprised Grant time to reform his shattered troops at Pittsburgh Landing.

If the men of the 72nd OVI had not rallied, Grant’s entire right wing would have collapsed and his force would have been destroyed, leaving the West securely in Confederate hands. So, if I say that Grandfather James saved the Union, I can make a case for it.

When I wrote before, I thought the unit was with Wallace, since they were listed as being at Crump’s landing. They were not. They were with Sherman, positioned on the right flank of Grant’s army. Sorry. There will be several revisions to all this before it is a real book, but the labor goes on. It is a voyage on the long river of history.

So, today it is Grant’s Operations against Vicksburg.

As the Union forces approached Vicksburg, Confederate General John C. Pemberton could put only 18,500 troops in his lines. Grant had over 35,000, including James, with more on the way. However, Pemberton had the advantage of terrain and fortifications that made his defense nearly impregnable.

Pemberton, trying to please Jefferson Davis, who insisted that Vicksburg and Port Hudson must be held, and to please Johnston, who thought both places worthless militarily, had been caught in the middle, a victim of a convoluted command system and his own indecisiveness. Too dispirited to think clearly, he chose to back his bedraggled army into Vicksburg rather than evacuate the city and head north where he might have escaped to campaign again. When he chose to take his army into Vicksburg, Pemberton sealed the fate of his troops and the city he had been determined to defend.
– Vicksburg, Michael B. Ballard.

Of course, hunger and starvation trumps the advantage of terrain over time.
After crossing the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg at Bruinsburg in the largest amphibious operation in American history (and which would remain the largest until D-Day) and driving northeast, Grant won battles at Port Gibson and Raymond, capturing Uncle Patrick. Then he captured the state capital at Jackson.

Pemberton was forced to withdraw westward to avoid being flanked by Sherman. He fought desperately at Champion Hill and Big Black River, where he withdrew after burning the bridges. He took everything edible in his path, fruit grain and four-legged.

The Confederates evacuated Hayne’s Bluff, which was occupied by Sherman’s cavalry on May 19, and Union steamboats no longer had to run the guns of Vicksburg, now being able to dock by the dozens up the Yazoo. Grant could now receive supplies directly from Union depots to the south, and he was prepared to invest the city and starve Pemberton out.

Over three quarters of Pemberton’s army had been lost in the two preceding battles and many in Vicksburg expected General Joe Johnston, commander of the Department of the West to come to their relief. He did not, and instead Johnston sent a note to Pemberton asking him to sacrifice the city and save his troops. Pemberton was a Northerner by birth, and could have been influenced by his fear of public condemnation if he abandoned the city.

Vicksburg was an imposing objective. The defensive line ran approximately 6.5 miles, and included many gun pits, forts, trenches, redoubts and. The major fortifications of the line included Fort Hill, on a high bluff north of the city; the Stockade Redan, dominating the approach to the city on Graveyard Road from the northeast; the 3rd Louisiana Redan; the Great Redoubt; the Railroad Redoubt protecting the gap for the railroad line entering the city; the Square Fort (Fort Garrott); a salient along the Hall’s Ferry Road; and the South Fort.

The 72nd was there. More on that tomorrow.

(National colors of the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry held at the Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio).

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303