Tennessee Hero Confederate Brigadier General John Adams by Bryan W. Lane

Author:Bryan W. Lane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

At three o’clock in the morning, Adams sent out a wire to Pemberton advising his commander that he had sent out dispatches with couriers. Adams had received word that three hundred enemy troops had left Newton Station headed for Enterprise. The telegraph operator in Jackson even got involved. He wired Pemberton: “Did you get a dispatch from General Adams dated 3 o’clock this morning? The courier being absent (delivering a message) I left it by his bedside with lighted candle near it.” The dispatch was signed, “Operator.”314 The next day, trains from Meridian brought news that there were no other Northern troops there, but Adams’s scouts returned to camp and reported that Federals, perhaps as many as eight hundred, were about fifteen miles south. Adams wanted to stay and contest the movements, but Pemberton, fearful of a movement against Vicksburg, ordered Adams back to Jackson.315

The Federal activity Adams’s scouts discovered was what came to be known as Grierson’s Raid. Former music teacher and Pennsylvania native Benjamin Grierson led 1,700 Federal cavalrymen south from the Tennessee border through central Mississippi, tearing up railroads and generally confusing Pemberton. Grant intended this move to screen his positioning of troops as a prelude to pounce first on Jackson and then Vicksburg. Grierson’s highly successful distracting maneuver finally ended when he and his tired troopers reached Federal-held Baton Rouge, Louisiana.316

Pemberton knew Vicksburg must not fall, so he ordered men, food and supplies be forwarded to the Gibraltar of the Confederacy.317 From Jackson, on May 3, Adams advised Pemberton that he had forwarded 125 men from the Twentieth Mississippi, Federal prisoners of war and their guards. All Adams had left were 350 men and two pieces of artillery. He asked if those two pieces should be forwarded as well. Pemberton replied that Adams needed to retain the artillery because Pemberton intended to hold the capital and he would “make some entrenchments about Jackson.”318

On May 8, Adams wired Pemberton that he was prepared to construct positions for sixteen guns with rifle pits. He planned to anchor the line on the Pearl River yet still only had the two artillery pieces. Mississippi governor John James Pettus offered two state pieces. Pemberton agreed to the offer, and Adams now had four artillery pieces for the state capital.319 General J.V. Harris, with six hundred state troops, arrived in Jackson, but Pemberton ordered Adams to send Harris on to Vicksburg.320 On May 9, Pemberton wired Governor Pettus that he expected to have ten thousand enemy troops descend on Jackson in a few days.321 On May 11, Pemberton ordered Adams to forward all of Brigadier General States Rights Gist’s troops. Adams responded that Gist’s troops had yet to arrive.322

River traffic moving from New Orleans or points north would have to pass beneath the guns of Vicksburg. As long as Vicksburg held, the Southern nation was intact. If it fell, the trans-Mississippi areas, including Texas, would be cut off. Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s concern grew to the point where he exchanged nervous messages with Pemberton.

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