“The Devil’s Own Purgatory”: Union boats run a Confederate gauntlet

Author’s note: The Mississippi River Squadron was an essential partner with the army in winning the Civil War. It numbered over 120 boats and destroyed Confederate forts and protected Union supply lines. The fleet was also instrumental in the Vicksburg campaign, which was one of the four major turning points of the Civil War. This excerpt describes how a portion of the fleet ran past the Confederate guns at Vicksburg on April 16-17, 1863. After getting below the city, the ironclads brought Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s army across the Mississippi River to the east bank. Then, the fleet assisted with Grant’s siege of Vicksburg. The city surrendered on July 4, 1863.

The weather was “clear and pleasant” on April 16. Spectators, including Grant and his family, packed onto thirty vessels to watch the passage. At 8:45 p.m. Porter came aboard the flagship Benton, and about fifteen minutes later, the ironclad ran up two white lights, the signal to cast loose. “All lights were extinguished and [the boats] floated down the river in silence and darkness,” Master’s Mate Coffinberry wrote in his diary. Union gunners waited silently at their posts. The mammoth Benton immediately became unmanageable without any motive power and “persistently refused to point her head downstream.” After two hours of cajoling, the ironclad nudged around De Soto Point and drifted into danger. According to the boat’s log, the lights of Vicksburg were then “plainly in sight.”

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Confederate sharpshooters sent musket balls zinging toward the Benton, then rebel cannons joined in. Southern gunners unleashed a storm of shot and shell that “went whizzing shrieking howling” for the Benton “like a legion of incarnate devils from hell,” as one sailor wrote. A Texan on shore recalled that the “booming of Cannon” woke up his men. “Such a grabbing for Boots Pants & [etc.] you never did see.” Confederate soldiers rushed to the levee and aimed their muskets at the gunports. On the west side of the river, sentries lit tar barrels, buildings, and bonfires. The captain of the Mound City thought these made it “almost as light as day.”

The Benton engaged its paddlewheels and “and went ahead at full speed.” Contrary to Porter’s orders, the pilot steered toward the Confederate guns on the east bank. The ironclad got within forty yards of the levee, a perilously close distance. Union gunners blasted the city with enough accuracy to “hear the rattling of falling walls,” a sailor remembered. The Benton made it through the gauntlet relatively unscathed and came to anchor south of Vicksburg at 2:10 a.m. It suffered minimal damage and only five men were wounded, including Charles Doss, who had his “left leg shot away.”

The Lafayette and General Price, which were lashed together, were next into the breach. They “steered very awkward” because the General Price was a faster boat but the Lafayette had the bigger engine. The vessels veered so close to the Mississippi shore that they nearly ran aground. The Lafayette’s pilot then overcorrected and became confused by the bonfires and steered upriver, exposing the vulnerable General Price “to the full rake of the Rebel batteries.” At least eight solid shots slammed into the tandem, and one shell burst so close to the boats that sparks showered on the Lafayette’s pilot. Confederate gunners “set up a fiendish yell of triumph” thinking they were about to sink the boats. The Lafayette’s pilot found his bearings and turned the boats downriver, but a new threat suddenly appeared.

This was the Louisville, the next gunboat in line. The flames on the far shore so confused the ironclad’s pilot that he made two full turns in the river. During one of these, the Louisville was firing a broadside when “suddenly something came crashing on our port side.” It was the Lafayette and General Price. At this time sailors cut the two boats loose. They endured “a heavy concentrated fire for nearly an hour” but made it past the batteries. The Lafayette took no significant damage and had four men slightly wounded, a circumstance the captain chalked up to the boat’s “fortunate pirouette.” The unarmored General Price was a different story. Two rifle shells exploded inside the ram, “destroying the officers’ quarters and setting the vessel on fire twice,” its captain reported. The boat was “badly cut up in her upper works,” with one sailor dead another three wounded. Still, the ram would be repaired and sent back into action.

But the unfortunate Louisville was not done banging into things. As soon as it got clear of the General Price, the ironclad ran into a coal barge. Then a transport came across its bow with a crash “that started everybody off their feet,” according to a sailor on the gunboat. Just as the Louisville passed Vicksburg’s last battery, it collided with yet another Union craft. The Tuscumbia struck its bow with “a very solid rap with her solid iron sides.” Despite pinballing its way downriver, Louisville sustained only light damage. An equal number of Union boats and rebel cannonballs hit the ironclad—four.

Mound City, Pittsburg, and Carondelet had relatively easy passages. Their only scare came when the Carondelet grounded on a sandbar. The “devils cheered and yelled, thinking that we were done for,” wrote John Morrison. “For 15 minutes it was truly awful. Whiz, thump, and again and again we are struck.” A dozen shells slammed into the boat, but only three of them penetrated the casemate. The Irish-born sailor sarcastically thanked “our neutral English cousins” for the duds. Carondelet worked itself free and chugged down the river without further incident. Mound City was the only boat from this trio to sustain casualties when a “heavy shot” smashed through the port casemate and wounded four men.

While the ironclads plunged forward (or sideways), the pilots in the Henry Clay and Forest Queen lost their nerve and turned upstream. Like a giant border collie, the Tuscumbia herded the two transports back in line. Confederate shells thereafter made short work of the Henry Clay, which went up in flames, much like the presidential aspirations of its namesake. The barrage knocked cotton bales into the Big Muddy, and “the river was covered with bits of burning cotton, looking like a thousand lamps,” Porter wrote. The Tuscumbia, even though it was a new boat, had difficulty steering. It struck the Louisiana shore and, while backing off, “got foul” of the Forest Queen. “This collision,” wrote the Tuscumbia’s captain, “caused the rebels great rejoicing, and was made evident to us by their loud cheering.” Confederate gunners concentrated their fire on the two boats, and a few balls clanged off the Tuscumbia’s casemate. One well-placed shot severed the Forest Queen’s steampipe, rendering it powerless. Another ball gouged a hole below the transport’s waterline. The helpless craft drifted downstream but took no further damage. Forest Queen carried fourteen inches of water in its hull when the Tuscumbia took it in tow south of Vicksburg.

Once south of Vicksburg, boats paused to assess the damage. As sailors inspected their vessels, someone in a small boat yelled out, “Benton ahoy!” It was Major General Sherman. He ribbed Porter about being at home on a big river instead of a ditch and then went to check on the rest of the flotilla. Sherman learned that all the boats, save the Henry Clay, had safely run the gauntlet with minimal casualties.

The fleet was then at Diamond Bend, about twelve miles above New Carthage, Louisiana. Union sailors were ecstatic. “All praise to the Lord and Admiral Porter,” wrote Elias Smith on the Carondelet. A sailor on the Louisville declared: “It seems little short of a mirical the way we came out, suffering less than any other boat. We were the third boat into the hell and the last boat out.” While taking stock of the damage, the sailors saw burning driftwood and blazing cotton bales drift past. Once it was clear that the vessels were in good working order, the fleet pressed on to New Carthage, where Grant greeted Porter. Union soldiers from Indiana serenaded the two commanders.

Robert Gudmestad is a professor of history at Colorado State University. Besides his book on the Mississippi River Squadron, he has published material about Mississippi River steamboats, the domestic slave trade, a baseball team in 1880s Richmond, and how professional football has been used to promote patriotic values.