THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 2

Champion Hill

The below account describes the fate of two Confederate organizations, the Botetourt (Virginia) Artillery and three regiments of Cumming's Georgia brigade, atop the crest of Champion Hill on May 16, 1863.

On May 15, 1863, three Confederate divisions, under the command of Lieutenant-General John Pemberton, marched out of Edwards Depot with the intent of getting astride Grant's line of communication. The target was a place called Dillon's Plantation on the Cayuga-Port Gibson Road, some nine or ten miles to the southeast.

Hardly a regiment in the column looked the same – butternut, yellow, or white uniforms were nearly as common among the units as grey – giving the army a multihued appearance as it clanked along the dirt road. But the men were well armed and marched as one beneath battle flags snapping in the breeze.

Heavy rains the day before, however, had inundated the countryside and flooding caused long delays. As a result, the army did not get far, moving no more than four or five miles as the crow flies. By the time it crossed the only remaining bridge over Bakers Creek, it was nearly dark.

Once across the rain-swollen stream, the army turned south at an intersection where the bulk of the army camped along the Ratliff Road – a country path of over two miles distance running north and south. The head of the column camped at its juncture with the Raymond Road while the rear of the column bivouacked all the way back at the intersection where three roads converged: The Jackson, Middle and Ratliff roads. History would come to call this juncture "the crossroads."

And, so, this is how it came to be that some 24,000 butternuts found themselves bivouacked in line of march instead of line of battle, with both flanks dangling in the air and a flooded creek to their backs.

Across the way, General Grant was wise to the movement and had been converging on Pemberton's army all day by three main roads. By nightfall, a large portion of Grant's army was in position and camped within cannon shot of the Rebels.

Years later, some Confederates would claim to have seen the enemy's campfires twinkling in the east. If so, not a soul told Pemberton that night.

The wolf was in the henhouse.

Dawn next morning sized up to be an easy one for the Confederates. With a cloudless sky and the land beaming under the new-green shine of spring, the day's march looked to be unhurried, if not leisurely.

But not long after the first blush of daylight, the scattered popping of muskets could be heard in the distance, wafting in the air from the east. Future historians would come to know that it meant certain trouble, or that a spy had betrayed the Confederates. But at the time, Yankee cavalry were known to be hovering around in the distance like wolves sizing up its prey.

To most butternuts that morning, it was an issue for pickets. So, other than a few sidelong glances in that direction, soldiers continued kindling campfires and waiting for the march to be taken up again.

What the men did not know, however, was that earlier that morning Pemberton had received a disturbing message - not about the enemy, of which he had heard nothing, but from General Joseph Johnston.

The dispatch informed Pemberton that Johnston's army had abandoned Jackson, the state capital, and was withdrawing north toward Canton.

Infuriated that Pemberton was moving south toward Dillon's Plantation, in completely the opposite direction from his own army, Johnston's message ordered Pemberton to cease his movement to Dillon's and to form a junction with his army in Clinton, Mississippi.