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Today, June 7, is the 156th anniversary of the Battle of Milliken’s Bend in Louisiana. The battle was fought on and near the flood control levees on the west bank of the Mississippi River, not far from Vicksburg, which at that time was under siege by General Grant’s army. The battleground at Milliken’s Bend is long gone, swallowed by the ever-changing path of the mighty Mississippi River.
During my research for writing With Might and Main, my upcoming novel about the 17th Texas Infantry, I did quite a bit of reading about the Battle of Milliken’s Bend, fought on June 7, 1863.
The battle was small by Civil War standards, only one brigade of Texas Confederates attacking a single brigade of Union soldiers were defending a series of high, and partly fortified, levees along the river. Even though the Texans, known as Walker’s Greyhounds, had been in service for nearly two years, they were not battle-tested. Milliken’s Bend was their first time to ‘see the elephant.’
Four of the five Union infantry regiments engaged were comprised of recently freed slaves from the plantations in the region. Men who had spent their lives in the cotton fields along the Big Muddy were swiftly lifted from the forced servitude of slavery to military service as U.S. Army riflemen.
There is evidence that the ‘recruitment’ of the freedmen sometimes more resembled British Navy press gangs when traditional recruiting enticements—the promise of food, clothing, pay, and a chance for some violent payback to their former masters--failed to attract enough freedmen to fill the new U.S. regiments of African Descent.
All the U.S. officers at Milliken’s Bend were veterans from all-white regiments and all had some combat experience. But obviously that was not the case for 1,400 new African-American soldiers who had barely been trained to march and handle their muskets.
Colonel Hermann Lieb led the U.S. Army troops had Milliken’s Bend. Lieb was an immigrant from Switzerland, become an attorney in his new home of Illinois, had risen through the ranks, and was a competent commander. In fact, the month before, while his new regiment was being recruited from freed slaves, Lieb had commanded the skirmishers of another division at the battles at Raymond and Champion Hill.
The battle at Milliken’s Bend was bloody. The Confederate regiment that took the most casualties, the 17th Texas Infantry, suffered greatly while fighting through the gaps in the tall bois d’ arc hedgerows that defined several pastures along the river. Yes, the hedgerows were big, thick, and impenetrable like the ones that befuddled the U.S. Army’s breakout from Normandy 80 years later.
Casualty counts from Milliken’s Bend are contradictory, but no one disputes that the brigade of Rebel Texans killed and wounded numbered about 200 of perhaps 1,200 riflemen. The losses in Lieb’s Federal command were even higher, over 400 men.
By all accounts, even noted in the Confederate officers’ after-action reports, the African American soldiers fought tenaciously in the hand-to-hand, bayonets-fixed, muskets clubbed, melee. There are a number of first-hand accounts that substantiate the brutal viciousness of the brawl on the levee. Here’s an excerpt from a letter that Private Lester of the 17th Texas Infantry wrote the day following the battle:
“We charged the levee and fought bayonet crossing bayonet. My antagonist was a huge Negro who fired and missed me and then clubbed his gun. I slipped my bayonet through him twice. He then struck at me. I threw up my gun at him to ward off the blow and he struck me over the shoulder. I then sent my bayonet clear through him and finished by firing into him which blew him all to pieces.”
Private Henry D. Lester, Company F, 17th Texas Infantry, June 8,1863
The battle ended when the ironclad U.S. Choctaw directed grape shot at the Confederates on the levee, preventing what might have become a Fort Pillow or Petersburg Crater type bloodletting of the African American troops who were trapped between the river and the levee now occupied by the Rebel riflemen. Unable to counter the cannon fire from the ironclad, the Confederates withdrew. The Union troops bordered transport ships and abandoned their garrison at Milliken’s Bend.
Both sides claimed victory, and the war went on.
During my research for writing With Might and Main, my upcoming novel about the 17th Texas Infantry, I did quite a bit of reading about the Battle of Milliken’s Bend, fought on June 7, 1863.
The battle was small by Civil War standards, only one brigade of Texas Confederates attacking a single brigade of Union soldiers were defending a series of high, and partly fortified, levees along the river. Even though the Texans, known as Walker’s Greyhounds, had been in service for nearly two years, they were not battle-tested. Milliken’s Bend was their first time to ‘see the elephant.’
Four of the five Union infantry regiments engaged were comprised of recently freed slaves from the plantations in the region. Men who had spent their lives in the cotton fields along the Big Muddy were swiftly lifted from the forced servitude of slavery to military service as U.S. Army riflemen.
There is evidence that the ‘recruitment’ of the freedmen sometimes more resembled British Navy press gangs when traditional recruiting enticements—the promise of food, clothing, pay, and a chance for some violent payback to their former masters--failed to attract enough freedmen to fill the new U.S. regiments of African Descent.
All the U.S. officers at Milliken’s Bend were veterans from all-white regiments and all had some combat experience. But obviously that was not the case for 1,400 new African-American soldiers who had barely been trained to march and handle their muskets.
Colonel Hermann Lieb led the U.S. Army troops had Milliken’s Bend. Lieb was an immigrant from Switzerland, become an attorney in his new home of Illinois, had risen through the ranks, and was a competent commander. In fact, the month before, while his new regiment was being recruited from freed slaves, Lieb had commanded the skirmishers of another division at the battles at Raymond and Champion Hill.
The battle at Milliken’s Bend was bloody. The Confederate regiment that took the most casualties, the 17th Texas Infantry, suffered greatly while fighting through the gaps in the tall bois d’ arc hedgerows that defined several pastures along the river. Yes, the hedgerows were big, thick, and impenetrable like the ones that befuddled the U.S. Army’s breakout from Normandy 80 years later.
Casualty counts from Milliken’s Bend are contradictory, but no one disputes that the brigade of Rebel Texans killed and wounded numbered about 200 of perhaps 1,200 riflemen. The losses in Lieb’s Federal command were even higher, over 400 men.
By all accounts, even noted in the Confederate officers’ after-action reports, the African American soldiers fought tenaciously in the hand-to-hand, bayonets-fixed, muskets clubbed, melee. There are a number of first-hand accounts that substantiate the brutal viciousness of the brawl on the levee. Here’s an excerpt from a letter that Private Lester of the 17th Texas Infantry wrote the day following the battle:
“We charged the levee and fought bayonet crossing bayonet. My antagonist was a huge Negro who fired and missed me and then clubbed his gun. I slipped my bayonet through him twice. He then struck at me. I threw up my gun at him to ward off the blow and he struck me over the shoulder. I then sent my bayonet clear through him and finished by firing into him which blew him all to pieces.”
Private Henry D. Lester, Company F, 17th Texas Infantry, June 8,1863
The battle ended when the ironclad U.S. Choctaw directed grape shot at the Confederates on the levee, preventing what might have become a Fort Pillow or Petersburg Crater type bloodletting of the African American troops who were trapped between the river and the levee now occupied by the Rebel riflemen. Unable to counter the cannon fire from the ironclad, the Confederates withdrew. The Union troops bordered transport ships and abandoned their garrison at Milliken’s Bend.
Both sides claimed victory, and the war went on.