Battle of Champion’s Hill

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The Confederates flowed back down the plantation road, pouring across the Baker’s Creek bridge. Harried sergeants got them back into line along the west bank of the creek. At the crossroads, the Federals pulled up. The heat was taking its toll on the soldiers, and their officers allowed them to rest.

East of the Baker’s Creek bridge, Tilghman’s brigade still blocked the Raymond Road. Suddenly, A.J. Smith’s artillery opened fire. A moment later, the Confederate batteries responded. Shells arched across the valley, landing short of the Union guns.

Tilghman cursed and went to the nearest gun, sighting it himself. Satisfied, the general stepped back to observe the fire. As he did, the Union battery spoke again. A shell exploded directly over Tilghman. He staggered back a few steps and fell, a chunk of shrapnel in his chest. A minute later, he was dead.

Col. A.E. Reynolds took command of the brigade. Learning that his artillery was almost out of ammunition, Reynolds moved off the road and turned toward Baker’s Creek. He neared the bridge just as the rest of Loring’s division regained the Raymond Road. Reynolds fell in at the rear of the division as it hastened for the bridge. Before Loring could get there, however, artillery shells were falling across the creek. A Federal brigade had crossed the creek on the Jackson Road and had pushed south, hoping to cut off the Confederates escape.

On the west bank, Bowen and Stevenson put their divisions on the march at once. Realizing he could not cross the bridge, Loring turned south, moving down the east bank in search of another ford. After darkness and muddy roads forced him to abandon his artillery and ordnance wagons, Loring gave up on rejoining Pemberton. He followed a circuitous route to Crystal Springs and entrained his men for Jackson.

Pemberton’s remaining two divisions painfully marched to fortifications built earlier at the railroad bridge over the Big Black River. The battered grayclads gratefully bivouacked there for the night, joined by the fresh troops of Brig. Gen. J.C. Vaughn’s East Tennessee Brigade.

The Union forces encamped on the bloodied slopes of Champion’s Hill. They struggled for sleep as hospital teams prowled among them by torchlight, searching for wounded. Hovey was almost in shock as he surveyed the battlefield. ‘Champion Hill was, after the battle, literally the hill of death,’ he wrote. ‘Men, horses, cannon, and the debris of an army lay scattered in wild confusion. Hundreds of the gallant Twelfth Division were cold in death or writhing in pain, and…lay dead, dying, or wounded, intermixed with our fallen foe.’

The Confederates had suffered 381 killed and better than 3,400 wounded or missing. The Union army lost 410 killed and just over 2,000 wounded or missing.

Early on the 17th, McClernand’s fired-up XIII Corps struck the Big Black line with such fury that the battle-weary Confederates broke and ran. Their panic spread to Vaughn’s Tennesseans and very quickly they, too, were fully routed. The stunned Confederates retreated to the Vicksburg fortifications. Grant was right on their heels. He laid siege to the river city and, nearly seven weeks later, it was his.

Grant would no longer have to worry about his critics. He went on to establish the ‘cracker line’ at Chattanooga, breaking Braxton Bragg’s grip on the Union army trapped there, and to the bitter fighting at the Wilderness, where Grant swore that his army had taken its last backward step. He moved on through Cold Harbor and Petersburg, until eventually he caught up with Robert E. Lee in Wilmer McLean’s parlor at Appomattox.

But had Pemberton joined his army with that of Joe Johnston right away, had Loring moved his division to Carter Stevenon’s aid when Pemberton first summoned him, or had Grant been defeated that day on Sid Champion’s plantation, Vicksburg might not have fallen. Grant would almost certainly have been relieved of command, and history would now read very differently, were it not for the drums of Champion’s Hill.

This article was written by Jon Stephenson and originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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