Grierson’s Raid During the Vicksburg Campaign

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By now, the Confederates had plenty else to keep them occupied. Grant’s troops crossed the Mississippi on May 1 and were moving up to take Grand Gulf from the rear. Bowen moved his 6,000 available troops to Port Gibson, intercepting Grant. But the unfortunate Bowen, stripped of his cavalry and having received no reinforcements, was outnumbered 4-to-1. He fought all day, inflicting a disproportionate number of casualties, but was inevitably forced to retreat and abandon Port Gibson. Grant, at last, had a secure bridgehead on the east side of the Mississippi.

Grierson’s men reached Sandy Creek at dawn on May 2, surprising and capturing a Southern cavalry unit camped there. The camp, with 150 tents, plus guns, ammunition and documents, was destroyed.

The raiders kept going, surprising another cavalry unit at Roberts’ Ford across the Comite River. After a brief skirmish, 40 Rebels were captured along with their horses and equipment. They forded the river, with many of the horses forced to swim across the deep water.

The men reached their limit just six miles short of Baton Rouge. Grierson called a halt, letting them sleep alongside the road. Grierson himself wound down by playing a piano found in a nearby plantation house, but was interrupted by a picket shouting that they were about to be overrun by Rebels coming at them from the west.

Grierson guessed the identity of the approaching men and rode out to meet them. As he suspected, they were Union cavalry from Baton Rouge, riding out to meet the raiders. Grierson’s exhausted and filthy troops rode into the Louisiana capital at 3 p.m., greeted by cheering soldiers and civilians alike. They paraded around the public square, then found a magnolia grove south of town where they could simply collapse and catch up on two weeks’ worth of sleep.

Grierson’s raiders had traveled more than 600 miles in 16 days, virtually without rest and often limited to one hastily eaten meal per day. One hundred Confederates had been killed or wounded and another 50D had been captured (most of whom were later paroled). The raiders destroyed more than 50 miles of railroad and telegraph, 3,000 stand of arms and thousands of dollars worth of supplies and property. A thousand mules and horses were also captured. In addition, they had tied up virtually all of Pemberton’s cavalry, one-third of his infantry, and at least two regiments of artillery.

All this was accomplished at a cost of only three dead and seven wounded. Five men too sick to continue had been left behind, and nine men, presumed stragglers, were missing. The 7th Illinois’ surgeon and sergeant major stayed behind with a mortally wounded officer at Wall’s Bridge. Added to Hatch’s losses, the casualties numbered 36, only about 2 percent of the total command. Grierson was quite justified when he later remarked, ‘The Confederacy is a hollow shell.’ Rebels in Mississippi, as everywhere else in the South, were spread too thin to do their jobs.

Grierson suddenly and uncomfortably discovered he was a hero. ‘I, like Byron,’ he wrote his wife, Alice, ‘have had to wake up one morning and find myself famous.’ He was sent by steamboat to New Orleans, where he encountered ‘one continuous ovation.’ His picture was featured on the covers of Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s Illustrated. He was breveted to brigadier general and later major general of volunteers.

Grierson continued to serve with distinction, commanding first a division, then a cavalry corps in Tennessee. Despite his continuing distrust of horses, he remained in the Regular Army after the war, battling Indians as a colonel with the 10th U.S. Cavalry. He retired as a brigadier general in 1890 and died in 1911.

Following the raid, Grant continued to advance eastward. Joined by Sherman’s division, he now had 40,000 men in Mississippi. Pemberton had 30,000, but many of them were scattered across the state and he lacked time to concentrate his forces. Bowen was forced to abandon Grand Gulf, and Grant was virtually unopposed as he marched to Jackson, burning that city, and then swung west to besiege Vicksburg. He advanced with a supply line–Grierson had helped to demonstrate that troops could live off the land, appropriating food from farms and plantations as they progressed. It was a lesson dramatically learned and daringly taught–that others would study in the flame-darkened days to come.

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

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