Sixth, which had done such noble work during the day. The little army bivouaced on the north side of the bayou, and with the soft loamy soil were soon strongly entrenched and prepared for another assault.

The day's work had made General Bowen's division famous. With an insignificant force of five thousand men he had held in check for a night and a day a thoroughly equipped army of fifty thousand men, inflicting severe losses. upon them with but comparatively slight damage to himself, and had succeeded in removing all his stores and supplies except the siege guns, which were spiked. Colonel Cockrell thought, and he was unquestionably correct, that with ten thousand more men, who could easily have been spared by General Pemberton, we could either have driven Grant back into the river or have checked his march to such an extent as to have disarranged and nullified all his plans.

The most reliable statistics (at least so appearing) of the losses in this battle, I find in H. C. Clark's "Diary of the War." He estimates the Confederate loss at six hundred and seventy, and the Federal loss at nine hundred and thirty. This I think is possibly exaggerated, although he includes all the causalties of the retreat and up to the battle of Baker's Creek.

On the morning of the 2nd the Yankees, from across the bayou, opened a heavy cannonade on the improvised entrenchments, doing but little harm. General Bowen sent a flag of truce asking twenty-four hours' armistice to bury the dead. The refusal to accede to this request was accompanied by a demand for our surrender. Of course this was promptly declined, but during the night the entrenchments were evacuated, the fortifications at Grand Gulf dismantled, and the army commenced a retreat towards Bovina station.

General Grant had found an upper ford across the bayou, by way of which a heavy force marched to gain Bowen's rear, and came very near doing so. A lively race ensued for the upper ferry on the Big Black. The skirmish companies (Wilson's of the Second and Caniff's of the Fifth

infantry,) moved cautiously but rapidly on the right flank, striking and driving back a Federal cavalry regiment, but at Rocky Spring running in upon the enemy's main column. Landis' battery was hardly in position before the enemy appeared in force, in a large field that lay in our front. They advanced several times into it from the woods beyond, but were driven back to shelter by the well-directed fire of Landis' guns. The rapid and skillful management of this battery, and the style in which the boys handled their pieces, were certainly splendid. Covered with black stains. of powder, and almost enveloped in smoke, they worked in a manner and with a will that indicated plainly they were in their element, and their hearts in the work they were doing. The appearance of the enemy in the edge of the field, about five hundred yards distant, was invariably the signal for cheers from the boys, when thundering away with their twenty-four pounders, the men who fought each piece seemed to vie with the others in driving him back as quickly as possible to the cover of the woods.

Without further resistance Bowen effected a junction with General Loring's division and with General Pember ton at Hankerson's ferry on the Big Black, and arrived at Bovina about midnight on the 4th of May, with his men completely exhausted by hunger and fatigue. On the next day large details were made for the purpose of erecting fortifications to protect the railroad bridge across the Big Black. Heavy embankments were thrown up in the bottom land, some hundreds of yards east of the river, shaped like a horse-shoe, with the convex side to the front, and admirably arranged for a fatal enfilading fire.

Nothing ever so aroused the ire and animosity of the Missourians as did the digging of ditches. They would fight, march and starve for days in succession, without a murmur, but put them to work on trenches or parapets, and at the first opportunity they would tell the commander-inchief, or whoever was responsible, what they thought about it, in terms often not very complimentary. From that time they hated Pemberton as earnestly as men hate each other who differ about the modes of baptism. There seemed

some justice in their strictures on this occasion, for the West bank of the river was a high bluff, most admirably calculated for defence with cannon and rifle-pits, from whence the bridge could have been effectively and safely protected, without incurring the risk which subsequently proved so disastrous, of trying to pass a defeated and demoralized army over a single foot-bridge.

On the 13th, the fortifications having been completed, the army was moved to the eastward, and on the 15th of May bivouaced on Baker's creek, where General Pemberton issued an order in which he exhorted the soldiers to nobly do their duty in the coming contest, and stating that he had staked his reputation, his own fate and that of the army, on the result of the battle which would probably be fought on the morrow.

The two armies camped within three-fourths of a mile of each other, and by the light of their camp fires were informed of each other's exact position and probable force.

CHAPTER XX.

THE BATTLE OF BAKER'S CREEK, OR CHAMPION HILLS, MAY 16TH, 1863.-BIG BLACK, MAY, 17TH, 1863.

Do not hesitate to quote from Mr. Pollard* his "summing up," as lawyers would term it, of the positions and movements of the two armies just preceding the battle of Baker's Creek. Whilst I do not fully agree with him in his unsparing condemnation of General Pemberton, I have found him unusually accurate in his dates, geography and facts. He says:

"General Johnston reached Jackson on the night of the 13th of May. He received there a dispatch from Gen. Pemberton, dated the twelfth of May, asking for reinforcements, * Lost Cause, page 389.

as the enemy, in large force, was moving from the Mississippi south of the Big Black, apparently toward Edwards' Depot, which will be the battlefield if I can forward sufficient force, leaving troops enough to secure the safety of the place.'

"Before Johnston's arrival at Jackson, Grant, as we have seen, had beaten General Bowen at Port Gibson, made good the landing of his army, occupied Grand Gulf, and was marching upon the Jackson and Vicksburg railroad. "On reaching Jackson, General Johnston found there the brigades of Gregg and Walker, reported at six thousand; learned from Gregg that Maxey's brigade was expected to arrive from Port Hudson the next day; that General Pemberton's forces, except the garrison of Port Hudson (five thousand) and of Vicksburg, were at Edwards' Depot-the General's headquarters at Bovina; that four divisions of the enemy, under Sherman, occupied Clinton, ten miles. west of Jackson, between Edwards' Depot and ourselves. General Johnston was aware that reinforcements were on their way from the East, and that the advance of those under General Gist would probably arrive the next day, and with Maxey's brigade, swell his force to about eleven thousand.

"Upon this information he sent to General Pemberton a dispatch informing him of his arrival and of the occupation of Clinton by a portion of Grant's army, urging the importance of re-establishing communications, ordering him to come up, if practicable, on Sherman's rear at once, and adding: To beat such a detachment would be of immense value. The troops here could co-operate. All the strength you can quickly assemble should be brought. Time is all-important."

"On the 14th of May the enemy advanced, by the Raymond and Clinton roads, upon Jackson. Johnston did not propose to defend the town; had no sufficient force to do so; he therefore ordered Gregg and Walker to fall back slowly, offering such resistance to the march of the Federal columns as to allow time to remove or destroy the stores accumulated in Jackson. This work accomplished, General Johnston retreated by the Canton road, from which alone he could form a junction with Pemberton.

"It will be perceived that Grant was now between the two Confederate armies; but he was superior in numbers, not only to each, but to both united. Johnston had proposed the brilliant hazard of crushing an important detach

ment of the enemy at Clinton, and had urged the paramount necessity of re-establishing communications between the two Confederate forces. Pemberton appears to have been completely blind to these considerations. In disobedience to the orders of his superior, and in opposition to the views of a majority of the council of war, composed of all his generals present, before whom he placed the subject, he decided to make a movement by which the union with Johnston would be impossible. It was a fatal error.

"The irresolute commander had at first expected to fight at Edwards' Depot, being unwilling to separate himself further from Vicksburg. When he received Johnston's order to march on Sherman's rear at Clinton, and when the council of war called by him approved the movement, he hesitated, did not move for twenty-eight hours, and invented a compromise in which, equally abandoning his own preconceived plan of battle, and disobeying the orders of General Johnston, he moved, not to risk an attack on Sherman, but in another direction towards Raymond, flattering himself that he was about to cut the enemy's communications.

"The delay and aberration of Pemberton left Jackson at the mercy of the enemy, and opened the way to Vicksburg. On the 15th of April General Sherman's corps marched into Jackson. The incendiary record of this famous officer commenced here; the first of his long list of conflagrations and peculiar atrocities dates with the burning, the plunder, and the sack of Jackson. The little town of two main streets, with detached villas, inhabited by wealthy planters, was surrendered to a soldiery licensed to rob, burn and destroy. Private houses, the Catholic church, the hotel, the penitentiary, and a large cotton factory were burned. As Sherman's troops marched out a volume of smoke rose over the devoted town, while here and there rolled up fiercely great masses of flame, attesting the infernal work of the man who, not content, in the nineteenth century and in a civilized country, to fight with the sword, had found a weapon taken from another age in the fire-brand of the savage.

Meanwhile Grant, having ascertained Pemberton's movement, directed McClernand's and McPherson's corps to move by the Jackson and Vicksburg railroad, and by the road from Raymond to meet him. Sherman had been ordered to evacuate Jackson and to take a similar direction. Pemberton's disposable force consisted of seventeen thousand five hundred men. On the 16th of May, while mov