Jackson

Fighting broke out just beyond Jackson, Mississippi on May 14, 1863, as part of the larger effort to seize Vicksburg during the Civil War. Union commander Ulysses S. Grant had begun ferrying his forces across the Mississippi River on April 30, establishing a foothold that his men secured the following day by winning at Port Gibson. Pushing inland from there, Grant aimed to turn his army northward and sever the rail link connecting Vicksburg with the state capital. That plan shifted on May 12, when James B. McPherson's XVII Corps overcame John Gregg's Confederate command near Raymond, an outcome that warned Grant of a sizable enemy presence at Jackson itself. In response, he redirected both McPherson's corps and William T. Sherman's XV Corps toward the city.

Joseph E. Johnston received orders placing him in charge of the Confederate buildup at Jackson, yet upon reaching the town he judged it indefensible almost immediately, a call that later drew criticism from historians studying the campaign. As McPherson pressed in from the northwest and Sherman closed from the southwest, Gregg's assignment for May 14 became one of buying time so wagons could be emptied of supplies before the city fell. Unaware at first that Sherman's men were also converging, Gregg arranged his troops to stall McPherson alone. Once Sherman's approach became clear, a hastily assembled unit under Colonel Albert P. Thompson was sent out to slow him down. Persistent rain and muddy roads worked against the advancing Union columns throughout the day. Thompson's men initially held the ground behind the area's only bridge over Lynch Creek but pulled back when Union artillery began pounding them heavily. Once the weather cleared, McPherson's soldiers pushed the Confederates all the way back into Jackson's ring of defenses.

Word reached Gregg around two in the afternoon that the supply wagons had safely left the city, prompting him to pull his troops out entirely. Sherman's men, meanwhile, seized a group of Mississippi State Troops along with armed townspeople who had been left to man artillery pieces as a diversion covering the Confederate retreat. Federal soldiers who then entered Jackson unleashed widespread destruction and looting, though civilians and Confederate-set fires also contributed to the damage. The following day, May 15, McPherson's corps marched west to back up John A. McClernand's XIII Corps, while Sherman's troops stayed behind to finish wrecking the city's infrastructure and industry, with the railroads receiving particular attention.

At Vicksburg, Confederate commander John C. Pemberton received instructions from Johnston about coordinating their efforts, even as Johnston's own army continued to move farther away. Pemberton tried at first to follow these orders, but a council of war led him instead to target what Confederate leaders believed was Grant's supply line. That decision proved costly, as Grant's forces crushed Pemberton at Champion Hill on May 16, and by May 18 Union troops stood before Vicksburg's outer defenses. A siege followed, ending with Vicksburg's surrender on July 4. Johnston, who had gathered reinforcements meant to relieve the besieged city, moved back into Jackson but never mounted a genuine effort to break the siege. His army would be pushed out of Jackson once more that July, in the aftermath of the renewed Union expedition there.

Background

At the outset of the American Civil War, Winfield Scott, serving as General-in-Chief of the United States Army, put forward the Anaconda Plan as a strategy for defeating the Confederacy, and the plan gained informal acceptance. Securing the Mississippi River formed one piece of this strategy, since the waterway served as a crucial economic artery for states lying west of the Appalachians. By the close of 1862, Union forces held most of the river, yet Vicksburg, Mississippi remained under Confederate control. Because of its formidable natural defenses, Vicksburg let the eastern Confederacy stay linked to the Trans-Mississippi Department and blocked any Union passage further downstream. A mid-1862 effort by the Union Navy to seize the city fell short. Later that year, in December, a land campaign under Major General Ulysses S. Grant also failed, along with a simultaneous water-based assault directed by Major General William T. Sherman. Grant then spent early 1863 launching several operations, threading troops through nearby bayous and digging canals, in hopes of either taking Vicksburg outright or finding a way around it by water.

None of these efforts had succeeded by late March, leaving Grant to weigh three possible paths forward. One option involved a hazardous amphibious strike straight at the city's fortifications across the river. Another was pulling his forces back north to Memphis, Tennessee, to mount a fresh overland campaign. The third called for marching his army along the Mississippi's west bank before crossing to the eastern side to move against Vicksburg from there. Heavy losses seemed likely under the first plan, while retreating to Memphis threatened to damage morale back home. Despite the geographic and supply challenges tied to advancing down the west bank and crossing afterward, Grant settled on that route. As his men made their way south in April, a series of diversionary Union actions, most notably Grierson's Raid, kept Confederate commander John C. Pemberton occupied and off balance.

Once the downriver march was complete, Grant hoped to cross the Mississippi at Grand Gulf, but the Union Navy could not suppress the Confederate artillery positioned there on April 29 during the Battle of Grand Gulf. He therefore pushed his troops farther south and crossed instead at Bruinsburg on April 30 and May 1. A Union win at the Battle of Port Gibson on May 1 secured his foothold beyond the river. Confederate forces to the north held a defensive line stretching from Warrenton to the Big Black River, but rather than attacking it directly, Grant chose to swing northeast. This maneuver aimed to sever the railway connecting Vicksburg to Jackson, the Mississippi state capital. Grant's plan called for his men to hit the rail line between Bolton and Edwards Station, tear up the tracks, and then swing back west toward Vicksburg itself. His army was made up of Major General John A. McClernand's XIII Corps, Sherman's XV Corps, and the XVII Corps under Major General James B. McPherson, arrayed from left to right in that order as the advance began. McPherson and McClernand set their corps in motion on May 7, but Sherman's men, who had not yet finished crossing the river as Grant had assumed, did not start moving east until the next day. Pemberton weighed giving up the Confederate post at Port Hudson, Louisiana, to mass his forces against Grant instead, but Confederate president Jefferson Davis insisted both Port Hudson and Vicksburg be held.

Prelude

Command of Confederate forces across the region stretching from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains fell to General Joseph E. Johnston. Under his department stood two major armies: Pemberton's force, called the Army of Mississippi, and the Army of Tennessee, led by General Braxton Bragg in Tennessee. Johnston believed these two armies, facing superior Union numbers in the theater, ought to be merged into one. Davis disagreed, preferring that Pemberton and Bragg operate independently while Johnston moved reinforcements between them as circumstances demanded. On May 9, Richmond directed Johnston to travel to Mississippi and take direct charge of the forces stationed there. Johnston, then in Tennessee, resisted this order. His reasoning centered on the claim that Bragg's army required closer oversight than Pemberton's, and that lingering pain from old wounds left him unfit for active field duty. Historians remain split over whether these health concerns were genuine or simply a pretext for avoiding the assignment. Regardless, Johnston departed Tennessee on May 10, bound for Jackson.

As Grant advanced northeast along the eastern bank of the Big Black River, Pemberton concentrated on protecting the river crossing. Confederate units shifted north along the western bank in response to Grant's parallel movement. By May 11, convinced that Grant's push toward Jackson was merely a diversion, Pemberton repositioned three of his five available divisions to Edwards Station in order to safeguard the railroad bridge spanning the Big Black. Meanwhile, additional Confederate troops were funneled toward the theater, with plans to gather them at Jackson. Some of these reinforcements followed Johnston down from Tennessee. Though General Robert E. Lee objected to withdrawing any units from his own command, soldiers were nonetheless pulled from South Carolina and from Savannah, Georgia, and dispatched toward Jackson. In a bold maneuver, Pemberton sent Brigadier General John Gregg's brigade away from Jackson to an exposed post at Raymond, hoping it could threaten Grant's flank from there.

Gregg badly misjudged the strength of the Union troops facing him and launched an assault against McPherson's leading elements on May 12, triggering the battle of Raymond. The engagement, marked by considerable confusion, ended with Confederate forces pushed back; Gregg's soldiers made their way back to Jackson on May 13. Grant had not anticipated the clash at Raymond. He further reasoned that the Confederates surely knew the true size of McPherson's command, and would only have risked battle if confident of victory. This encounter prompted Grant to revise his strategy. Although he had previously instructed Sherman and McPherson to pivot north toward the rail line, he now recognized that the Confederate buildup at Jackson posed a far greater danger than he had originally supposed, and so redirected his army toward Mississippi's capital. Grant respected Johnston's military skill and had learned that Johnston was now headed to Jackson, which made the prospect of overlooking the gathering forces there seem even riskier. Beyond that, a successful strike against Jackson promised to inflict far more damage on Confederate rail and communication lines than merely severing the short stretch of track between Jackson and Vicksburg. Grant's plan called for McClernand's corps to shift west and guard against a possible strike from Pemberton, while Sherman's corps moved up alongside McPherson's right. This arrangement was not without danger, since McClernand would be facing the division commanded by Confederate Brigadier General John S. Bowen, a man known for his aggressive and capable leadership. Still, Grant calculated that Pemberton's inherently cautious nature would restrain Bowen, at least long enough for McClernand to safely pull away.

Carrying out these orders required McClernand to break contact with Pemberton's larger force and establish a line running from Bolton to Raymond, a maneuver executed on May 13. McPherson, meanwhile, had been ordered to advance on Clinton, destroy the railroad there, and then approach Jackson from the northwest, a task he completed by the afternoon of that same day. Sherman's route brought his corps toward Jackson from the southwest. Roughly 14 miles, or 23 k

Battle

At three in the morning on May 14, Gregg began arranging his forces, knowing his job was to slow the enemy rather than defend the city outright. He dispatched roughly 900 men under Colonel Peyton Colquitt toward Clinton, instructing him to establish a defensive position at the O. P. Wright farm, three miles from Jackson. From the Wright house, cleared land descended for three quarters of a mile toward a wooded ravine. Two batteries backed Colquitt's position, and Brigadier General W. H. T. Walker's brigade stayed close enough to lend support if needed. Gregg kept his own brigade, commanded that day by Colonel Robert Farquharson, in reserve within Jackson itself. Weeks earlier, Mississippi's civil government had ordered defensive works built around the city, which sat along a curve of the Pearl River, with the fortification line anchored at both ends by the water. Impressed slaves and white volunteers had done the labor. Though unfinished when the fighting began, these earthworks held seventeen cannons, manned by civilians bearing arms alongside Mississippi State Troops. Gregg chose to fight beyond these fortifications partly because the point where they crossed the Clinton road formed a salient that would be hard to hold, especially since he believed the entire Union force was bearing down from that direction and that he was badly outnumbered. According to Grabau, Gregg probably placed Walker's brigade in a second line behind Colquitt so that Union forces would have to repeatedly redeploy against consecutive defensive positions.

Brigadier General Marcellus M. Crocker's division led the XVII Corps out of Clinton at five that morning, marching through a downpour that turned the roads into mud. Two miles along, Colonel Samuel A. Holmes, commanding the lead brigade, pushed an advance guard from the 10th Missouri Infantry ahead of the column, expecting to meet Confederate resistance. That same morning, Sherman's corps departed Mississippi Springs, with Sherman and McPherson coordinating their movements by sending riders along the road connecting the two starting points, aiming to converge on Jackson around the same time. Grant traveled with Sherman's column, which likewise struggled through rain and mud; Grant later described stretches of the march passing through water more than a foot deep. The 10th Missouri's advance guard traded fire with Confederate troops over several miles, and Sherman's men faced skirmishing along nearly the entire route up the Mississippi Springs road. Brigadier General James M. Tuttle's division led Sherman's advance, though the usual order was altered so that Brigadier General Joseph A. Mower's brigade marched in front instead of Brigadier General Ralph Buckland's.

Around nine that morning, McPherson's men reached Colquitt's main position. Gregg pushed Farquharson's brigade into a field to Colquitt's right, positioning it to threaten the flank of any Union troops advancing on Colquitt. Four guns of the Confederate Brookhaven Light Artillery opened up on the approaching Federals, prompting the Union command to bring forward Battery M of the 1st Missouri Light Artillery. This battery took position near the W. T. Mann house and, with four 10-pounder Parrott rifles, began firing on the Confederates around ten o'clock. McPherson arranged his men for battle but held off attacking because of the rain; his infantry carried paper cartridges that would have been ruined if their cartridge boxes were opened in wet conditions. For about ninety minutes his troops maneuvered into place under fire from the dueling artillery, exposed to solid shot and shell. Holmes's brigade held the center of Crocker's line, flanked by Colonel George B. Boomer's brigade on the left and Colonel John B. Sanborn's on the right. Meanwhile Major General John A. Logan's division moved along the railroad on Crocker's left, tearing up track as it advanced, and its presence made any flank attack by Farquharson against Crocker impractical. Bearss suggests McPherson saw through Farquharson's positioning as a bluff and simply disregarded it.

Upon learning of Sherman

Aftermath

Grant fielded two divisions in the actual fighting, those of Crocker and Tuttle, totaling roughly 11,500 men, while Logan and Steele contributed a further 12,000 troops who saw no direct action. According to historian Timothy B. Smith, Union casualties in the battle numbered 300, with 215 of those falling within Holmes's brigade alone. More than a quarter of all Northern losses fell on a single unit, the 17th Iowa Infantry. Bearss, along with historians William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel, accept this same total and offer a breakdown of 42 killed, 251 wounded, and 7 missing. Smith puts Confederate losses at approximately 200. Colquitt's command lost 17 killed, 64 wounded, and 118 missing, though Farquharson and Walker never compiled casualty figures, nor did anyone tally losses among the armed civilians, the Mississippi State Troops, Thompson's regiment, or the detached Georgia cavalry company. McPherson's account written after the fighting put Confederate casualties at 845, a figure historian Jim Woodrick doubts, remarking that he cannot see Confederate losses exceeding 300 by much. Mackowski suggests McPherson's inflated number might stem from counting captured Confederate civilian volunteers among the casualties. Woodworth judges Confederate losses to have been more than double the Union total. Federal troops seized seventeen cannons in the engagement. Rather than being held as prisoners, captured Confederates were paroled, a choice that spared Sherman the burden of escorting captives on his march and was meant to encourage decent treatment of the Union wounded left behind in Jackson.

Before withdrawing, Confederate forces set fire to stores they could not haul away, and arriving Union soldiers worked to extinguish these flames once inside the city. Grant lodged that night in a local hotel, where he learned his room had been Johnston's the previous evening. Mower's brigade took on provost duties while other Federal units were positioned defensively. Even so, order broke down quickly. Some officers, finding their men short on rations, distributed captured food from the city. The 31st Iowa Infantry made camp inside the Mississippi State Capitol, where its soldiers staged a mock legislative session in the very chamber where secession had once been voted into law. Public buildings suffered damage as well, among them the Institute for the Blind and the local insane asylum. Sherman attempted to rein in the disorder, yet destruction persisted overnight. Private homes were not spared either, and some townspeople joined in the looting. Earlier, Confederate officials had freed prisoners from the state penitentiary, who then set the prison buildings ablaze.

Knowing that Pemberton's force lay to the west and Johnston's to the north, Grant anticipated the two Confederate commands might attempt to join forces against him, a suspicion reinforced by an intercepted Confederate dispatch obtained through a spy. Late on May 14, Grant instructed McClernand to direct all his forces toward Bolton. McPherson received orders to march west in support, while Sherman's corps stayed behind in Jackson on May 15 to dismantle the city's infrastructure and industry. Grant and Sherman together toured a textile factory, and at Grant's suggestion, Sherman ordered it destroyed. Railroads running through the city were wrecked by burning the ties and heating the rails until they could be twisted, a technique that produced what became known as Sherman's neckties. Steele's men handled the tracks south and east of town, while Tuttle's division took care of the remaining directions. The Pearl River railroad bridge was likewise demolished. Though Sherman's intent was to target only Confederate government property, banks, a hotel, a church, and hospitals were consumed by fire as well. Guards proved too few to stop looting of shops throughout the city, and Union soldiers, holding large sums of nearly worthless Confederate currency, sometimes used it to pay for goods.

Bearss judged Grant's success in keeping Johnston from massing a substantial force behind Union lines at Jackson to be of major importance to the campaign east of the Mississippi. On May 14, Pemberton obtained a copy of