Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[390] 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 errour. The irresolute commander had, at first, expected to fight at Edwards's 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 Gen. 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 April Gen. 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 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 taken a weapon 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 Lad 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 May, while moving on the road to Raymond, a courier handed him a despatch from Gen. Johnston, stating that, as the attack on Sherman had failed, the only means by which a union could now be effected between the two forces, was that Pemberton should move directly to Clinton, whither Johnston had retired. An order of counter-march was issued. But already heavy skirmishing was going on in Pemberton's front; he found it impossible to extricate himself for a reverse movement; and his situation was such that he was compelled to give battle on the ground selected by the enemy.

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