Chickasaw Bayou
December 26-29, 1862
All photo's for this pager were taken from: http://www.civilwaralbum.com
Grant planned a two pronged assault against Vicksburg. Grant himself led the first prong, an overland move toward Oxford, which collapsed when Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn attacked and destroyed Grant’s main supply base at Holly Springs. Sherman launched the second prong, an assault called the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, at Johnson’s Plantation located on the Yazoo River.
The Yazoo River at Johnson's Plantation
Sherman pushed his men through the bayou against the Confederate works on the Walnut Hills north of Vicksburg fronting the Yazoo River. After severe losses suffered in a frontal assault, Sherman realized he could not take the position, re-boarded his boats and left. Sherman lost 208 men killed and another 1,000 wounded to a total of 187 casualties for the Confederates: a six to one loss ratio.
The Indian Mound, the center of the Confederate position
Looking toward the Union advance
The place of Sherman's re-embarkation after the battle
Under the numbers though, the Confederate casualties included 10 missing. Something not talked about much was the large number of poor farmers in Mississippi who did not support the Confederate Cause. They did not own slaves and did not see any reason why they should go off to protect the property rights of the rich plantation owners who looked down on them.
One of these poor farmers was a man by the name of Newton Knight from Jones County Mississippi. Newton unwillingly found himself in the fighting at Holly Springs. On October 11, 1862 the Confederate legislature passed the Twenty Negro Law which exempted wealthy plantation owners with twenty or more slaves from military service. Later Newton found himself reposted to Vicksburg where by his own admission he was just looking for a way to leave.
Through out the ranks of the Confederate army the cry “this is a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” reverberated. Large numbers of men threw down their weapons and went home. Not content with the damage done to moral by the Twenty Negro Law the legislature also passed a tax in kind law that gave Confederate tax officials the right to confiscate 10% of everyone’s provisions. For the rich planters this was an annoyance at worst, for the families of the poor farmers off fighting at the front this was a disaster at best.
Newton and others who had not already quit, or were trapped place like Vicksburg, received letters from their wives pleading with them to come home because they were starving. Later in the war Sherman cut loose from Atlanta promising to “make Georgia howl” but the Confederate government had already done a much better job of it than he ever would. The upshot of all this was that a fair number of the soldiers in the Confederate trenches just wanted out. At the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou ten of them apparently made it.
Next see: Battle of Arkansas Post