July, 1863. |
July. |
July 16, 17. |
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of Mississippi.
The commanding general confidingly relies on you to sustain his pledge, which he makes in advance, and he will be with you in the good work, even unto the end.”
A week later these defenders of threatened homes, and the chastisers of “an insolent foe,” twenty-four thousand strong, were flying over the “soil of Mississippi,” toward the heart of the State, in search of safety from the wrath of the “invaders.”
Sherman had invested Jackson on the 10th,
each flank of his army resting on the Pearl River, that runs hard by, with his cannon planted on the hills around.
With a hundred of these he opened upon the doomed city on the 12th, but his scanty supply of ammunition, on account of the tardiness of his trains, would not allow him to continue the attack.
In that assault General Lauman, by misapprehension of orders, pressed his troops too near the Confederate works, and in the course of a few minutes he lost five hundred men, by a galling fire from sharp-shooters and twelve cannon charged with grape and canister shot.
Two hundred of his men were made prisoners, and with them went the colors of the Twenty-eighth, Forty-first, and Fifty-third Illinois.
Johnston was aware that Sherman's ammunition train was behind, and he hoped to remove a greater portion of his stores before it should come up, satisfied that he could not hold the place against the host then hemming it in. Under cover of a fog, on the morning of the 13th,
he made a sortie, but with no other result than the production of some confusion, and a considerable loss of life on his part.
Finally, on the 16th, when he knew that Sherman's ammunition had arrived, he prepared for a speedy departure, and that night
he hurried across the Pearl River, burning the bridges behind him, and pushed on through Brandon to Morton.1 Sherman did not pursue in force beyond the former place, his chief object being to drive off the Confederate army and make Vicksburg secure.
For this purpose he broke up the railway at intervals for many miles in every direction, and destroyed every thing in Jackson that could be useful to the foe, and more.
The place was shamefully sacked by the soldiers;2 and the capital of Mississippi, one of the most beautiful towns, in its public buildings and elegant suburban residences, in all that region, was totally ruined.
The business part of the city was laid in ashes, and many of the fine dwellings in the neighborhood, owned by known secessionists, shared the same fate.
Among these was the residence of Bishop Green, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, that stood on a beautiful shaded eminence.
House, furniture, and fine library of three thousand volumes, were committed to the flames.
When the writer visited the spot, in the spring of 1866, nothing remained of it but broken walls, as delineated in the picture on the next page.
It was a sad sight.
Only the day before he had traveled
1 Sherman's loss in the recapture of Jackson, excepting Lauman's troops, was trifling. Johnston reported his loss in Jackson at about 600, and added that on his retreat desertions were frequent.
2 “The first few hours,” wrote an eye-witness, “were devoted by our soldiers to ransacking the town, and appropriating whatever of value or otherwise pleased their fancy, or to the destruction of such articles as they were unable to appreciate or remove. Pianos and articles of furniture were demolished, libraries were torn to pieces or trampled in the dust, pictures thrust through with bayonets, windows broken and doors torn from their hinges. Finally, after every other excess had been committed in the destruction of property, the torch was applied.” Household furniture, beds, &c., costly and otherwise, were dragged into the streets and burned. It was one of the most shameful exhibitions of barbarism of which the Union soldiers were occasionally guilty, and soiled, with an indelible stain, the character of the Patriot Army.
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