Champion Hill

Decisive Battle for Vicksburg

Timothy B. Smith

• Publisher: Savas Beatie
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781932714197
• eBook ISBN: 9781611210002
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The Mississippi battle between Grant's and Pemberton's forces that sealed Vicksburg's fate.
 
The Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The fighting on May 16, 1863, took place just twenty miles east of the river city, where the advance of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army attacked Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's hastily gathered Confederates.
 
The bloody fighting seesawed back and forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line, sending Pemberton's army into headlong retreat. The victory on Mississippi's wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him the command of the entire US armed forces.
 
Timothy Smith, a historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive account of this long-overlooked battle. This book, winner of a nonfiction prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, is grounded upon years of primary research, rich in analysis and strategic and tactical action, and a compelling read.

Contents

Foreword

Preface / Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Trial and Error

Chapter 2: Port Gibson

Chapter 3: Raymond

Chapter 4: Jackson

Chapter 5: Prelude

Chapter 6: Commencement

Chapter 7: Trapped

Chapter 8: Collapse

Chapter 9: Counterattack

Chapter 10: Procrastination

Chapter 11: Retreat

Chapter 12: Tally

Chapter 13: Aftermath

Postscript: Thereafter

Appendix: Order of Battle

Notes

Photographic Gallery

Bibliography

Index

Maps and Photographs

Maps and photographs are located throughout for the convenience of the reader. A gallery of modern photographs begins on page 462.

Foreword

ON MAY 16, 1863, JOHN A. LEAVY, A CONFEDERATE SURGEON IN THE Army of Vicksburg, took pen in hand to write in the pages of his diary critical observations of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton and the battle of Champion Hill. “To-day proved to the nation the value of a general,” he began. “Pemberton is either a traitor, or the most incompetent officer in the Confederacy. Indecision, Indecision, Indecision.” He lamented, “We have been badly defeated where we might have given the enemy a severe repulse. We have been defeated in detail, and have lost, O God! how many brave and gallant soldiers.” Leavy’s sentiments were echoed by hundreds of soldiers clad in butternut and gray who on that day and into the next streamed toward the Confederate Gibraltar on the Mississippi River cursing their commanding general stating, “It’s all Pem’s fault.”

News of Confederate defeat spread as wildfire throughout the city. Mrs. Emma Balfour, a Vicksburg socialite, wrote with trembling hand, “My pen almost refuses to tell of our terrible disaster of yesterday…. We are defeated—our army in confusion and the carnage, awful! Whole batteries and brigades taken prisoners—awful! Awful!”

Details of the engagement at Champion Hill were slowly pieced together by the shocked citizenry of Vicksburg. To those who listened to the woeful details of battle, one fact became apparent. The incisive Mrs. Balfour, sensitive of the discontentment with General Pemberton being freely expressed by soldiers and officers alike, recorded the essence of failure with these words: “I knew from all I saw and heard that it was want of confidence in the General commanding that was the cause of our disaster.” Late that night, overcome by emotion, she confided her fears to the pages of her diary as she wrote, “What is to become of all the living things in this place…shut up as in a trap…God only knows.” Mrs. Balfour’s perception of affairs proved both accurate and ominous, for less than two months later, the Stars and Bars atop the courthouse in Vicksburg was replaced by the Stars and Stripes.

The momentous events that transpired in Mississippi in the late spring and early summer of 1863 were largely ignored by the Northern press. Overshadowed by the bloodier, but less significant actions in the Eastern Theater at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, the campaign for control of the Mississippi River failed to gain the national attention merited by such a large scale and complex operation. A century would pass before British military historian J. F. C. Fuller, in writing of the Vicksburg campaign, declared, “The drums of Champion’s Hill sounded the doom of Richmond.”

Despite General Fuller’s observation, only a few stalwart historians, most notable of whom are Edwin C. Bearss (author of the monumental three-volume work The Vicksburg Campaign) and Warren Grabau (whose work Ninety-eight Days: A Geographer’s View of the Vicksburg Campaign stands as the most analytical volume on the military operations that focused on Vicksburg) have ventured to analyze the impact of Champion Hill on the Vicksburg campaign and the fate of the Confederate nation. Perhaps more significant than any larger or bloodier action of the Civil War, the Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive action of the campaign for Vicksburg, led directly to the fall of the Confederate bastion on the Mississippi River and, truly, sealed the fate of Richmond. Thus the battle that raged on the heights of Champion Hill on May 16, 1863, warrants further investigation.

Tim Smith has risen to the challenge to help fill this void in the vast field of literature on the Civil War and adds a desperately needed volume to the scholarly works available on the Vicksburg campaign. With a talented pen, he has produced the first ever full-length study on the Battle of Champion Hill. Tapping on scores of previously untouched sources, the author has woven a tapestry worthy of this action, and the delightful mix of detail and human interest will thrill the general reader and intrigue the serious student of the Civil War.

This volume appears at an important point in time as attention to the battlefield is at its height from competing interests. Long undisturbed, the pastoral setting of Champion Hill is now being dotted with residential development that threatens this hallowed ground and will serve to deprive future generations of a site where events crucial to the history of this nation occurred. The level of development now threatening Champion Hill has led to its listing among the Ten Most Endangered Battlefields by the Civil War Preservation Trust and a similar listing among state-wide endangered historic sites by the Mississippi Heritage Trust.

Thankfully, that same development has ignited efforts to preserve the field of action that have thus far achieved significant results. The Conservation Fund, utilizing a generous grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, has secured more than 800 acres of the battlefield. This acreage has been generously given to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and could someday become the nucleus of a national military park. The Jackson Civil War Round Table, which expended its limited financial resources to save the Coker House (one of only two historic structures on the battlefield today), has turned the once-proud home over to the state of Mississippi. And the legislature in Jackson has appropriated sizeable funds for restoration of the Coker House and for battlefield preservation efforts statewide. Thus the preservation community is now locked in a struggle with developers, the outcome of which is of equal importance to posterity as the bloody conflict that was waged by Americans in blue and gray almost a century and a half ago.

Dr. Smith’s work, which places Champion Hill within the broader and complex context of the Vicksburg campaign, serves to deepen our understanding of the significance of the battle and will enhance public awareness of our nation’s rich Civil War heritage. May it also fuel preservation initiatives and help crown those efforts with success, so that Americans for generations ahead are “heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream.”

Terrence J. Winschel
May 2004

Preface

FEW HISTORIANS DISPUTE THE PREMISE THAT THE VICKSBURG campaign was one of the most important operations of the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory opened the Mississippi River for the Union, captured an entire enemy army, propelled Grant and several of his top subordinates into national prominence, led Grant to his victories at Chattanooga and eventually east against Robert E. Lee, and devastated Southern morale. During the researching and writing phase of this book, several people asked me why I was not writing about the entire campaign instead of a detailed battle history of its largest and most important engagement. The answer is a simple one. Many more qualified historians than I have spent entire careers exploring and writing on the campaign. Chief among them are Edwin Bearss, Terrence Winschel, Warren Grabau, and Michael Ballard.

Ed Bearss served as Vicksburg’s park historian for many years and thereafter as National Park Service’s chief historian. Ed has probably studied the campaign more deeply and longer than anyone else, and has written extensively about it. Indeed, his crowning achievement is The Vicksburg Campaign, a massive three-volume work published by Morningside in 1985-1986. Terry Winschel serves as the current Vicksburg park historian. Terry has made a career of Vicksburg and has produced fine monographs on the subject, including Triumph & Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign(Savas Publishing, 1999, reissued in paper in 2004), and Vicksburg is the Key: The Struggle for the Mississippi River, with William Shea (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Many more fine studies await Terry’s pen. Warren Grabau’s Ninety-Eight Days: A Geographer’s View of the Vicksburg Campaign(University of Tennessee Press, 2000) is a definitive geographical study of the campaign. Mike’s outstanding treatment of the Confederate commander in Pemberton: A Biography(University Press of Mississippi, 1991), is available, and he is nearing completion of what may become the campaign’s definitive single volume account. The Vicksburg campaign is in good hands, and I am not in a position to improve upon any of this work.

However, the important battles that made up this complex and important campaign have not yet found their way into print. And at the top of that list is Champion Hill. Without a thorough understanding of the marching and fighting that led the respective armies to Champion Hill, together with an appreciation of the tactical aspects of what transpired on May 16, 1863, it is impossible to fully understand the campaign itself. Champion Hill was the key to the entire operation, and as such it deserves a book of its own. My objective was to evaluate the original sources, walk the ground, and write the history of the battle. As one might expect, many of my conclusions agree with what others have written in broader studies about the Champion Hill combat; some of my interpretations and conclusions, however, differ from what others have written.

As noted above, many fine historians have written about the Vicksburg campaign and have placed it in its proper military, political, economic, and social context. Anyone searching for social, economic, or political history in this volume will, for the most part, be disappointed. I am in general agreement with the new wave of historiography that stresses factors other than purely military movements and actions, but I support them on a case-by-case basis. When there is need for such studies, they should be written. When there is a need for focused military history, that need should be filled. Fine historians such as Gordon Rhea in Cold Harbor and Earl Hess in Pickett’s Chargehave recently written tremendously helpful works without incorporating copious amounts of social, political, and economic history. Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg is a history of a battle that, on its own, had very little impact on social and political events. Seven sizeable battles were fought within twenty-two days. Collectively, the Vicksburg campaign’s battles had a tremendous effect on the nation, but as individual combats they did not. Therefore, the individual effect of each of these battles on American society, politics, and economics cannot be weighed. But it is a simple task to select the campaign’s single engagement that, more than all the others combined, was the key to the entire operation. Therefore, what you are about to read is a battle study molded out of the old school.

My first recollection of anything having to do with Champion Hill was from family lore about my great-great-great grandfather. Private James Franklin Pierce, Company D, 3rd Mississippi Infantry, Featherston’s Brigade, fought in and survived the battle of Bakers Creek. The stories about his service were fascinating. I grew up and became seriously interested in Civil War history and traveled to many ba...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Also by Timothy B. Smith
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Front 1
• Contents
• Maps and Photographs
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Trial and Error
• Chapter 2: Port Gibson
• Chapter 3: Raymond
• Chapter 4: Jackson
• Chapter 5: Prelude
• Chapter 6: Commencement
• Chapter 7: Trapped
• Chapter 8: Collapse
• Chapter 9: Counterattack
• Chapter 10: Procrastination
• Chapter 11: Retreat
• Chapter 12: Tally
• Chapter 13: Aftermath
• Postscript: Thereafter
• Appendix: Order of Battle
• Notes
• Photographic Gallery
• Bibliography
• Index