Timothy B. Smith - Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg

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. Leavys 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, Its all Pems 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 prisonersawful! 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 placeshut up as in a trapGod only knows. Mrs. Balfours 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 Champions Hill sounded the doom of Richmond.

Despite General Fullers 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 Geographers 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. Smiths 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 nations 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.