background

The following is a brief narrative of the events leading up to the scenario which we will portray:

In January 1863, the 42nd Georgia Infantry and Seth Barton's Brigade were placed under the command of Gen. John Pemberton for the defense of Vicksburg. There the 42nd Ga. participated in the battles of Chickasaw Bayou, Baker's Creek (Champion's Hill), Big Black River and the Siege of Vicksburg. Beginning on May 17, 1863 the Siege of Vicksburg would continue with unabated skirmishing for the next 47 days. Barton's Brigade was placed into the southern portion of the Vicksburg defenses, in support of the large bastion of the river works known as South Fort. Although the action along this portion of the line did not experience the all-out efforts that the Federal army exerted on the Louisiana Redan or the Stockade Redan, the men along Stout's Bayou would suffer grieviously from constant skirmishing, poor and short rations, malaria, as well as little rest.

Under such conditions, and with no hope of help from Gen. Johnston's small army, the outcome was obvious and Gen. Pemberton arranged for the surrender of the Vicksburg garrison on July 4, 1863. The garrison was ordered to stack arms and was marched out of the defenses to Meridian, Miss. in order to await exchange. The

An account of skirmishing along the picket lines of Stovall's Brigade by Pvt. Joseph Bogle, Co. I, 40th Georgia Volunteer Infantry:
"My only Duel, if such it could be called, was fought with a Federal soldier in one of the rifle pits (before Atlanta) just a day of so before I was captured. Our engineers had made a slight mistake in laying out our line of rifle pits and had made too sharp an angle at one point; they remedied this by having a new line of pits made back some hundred yards from the sharp angle and a few pits on the point were abandoned for the new line with a broader curve. I was stationed in one of the rifle pits in the new line just in rear of the angle in the old line, and one evening a daring Federal sharpshooter managed to get into one of our old pits on the point of the angle and commenced firing we thought it was an advance of the Yankee skirmish line and all of us fired a volley at the spot he was firing from, but we soon found that he was alone and as I had a splendid Enfield rifle trained so well that with a good rest I am pretty sure I could hit a tin cup at that distance I told my comrades that there was evidently only one Yankee there, that it was not fair to double team on him, and asked them to let the Yankee and myself have it out; they agreed and the Yankee evidently used the same tactics on me that I did on him, for each of us would try to draw the fire of the other by any little device; I would put my hat on a stick and show it above the bank just a little and whizz would come a ball, generally very close; then I, knowing that his gun was empty and mine loaded, would have a dead level aim at the top of his rifle pit, waiting for about an hour, when I had the 'look' on him, having drawn his fire by some little device, when in reloading his gun it evidently became powder choked, and in trying to ram down his cartridge he unwittingly exposed his hand and a few inches of his wrist for an appreciable length of time, and I fired with a perfect sight on it, and we heard a yell or scream of pain and - he didn't shoot at me any more. That was the only time I ever had satisfactory reason to believe that a bullet from my gun actually hit any one and have always been thankful that I could never KNOW that I really killed a human being. I did not hit this brave fellow in a vital part and alwasy hoped that if I hurt him much tha he was drawing a pension." (From Historical Sketches of Barton's Later Stovall's Georgia Brigade, Army of Tennessee, C.S.A. by Joseph Bogle and Captain William L. Calhoun, page 21-22)

The use of entrenchments and fieldworks was an integral part of the tactics of the Civil War and their use was especially important during the Atlanta Campaign. Most re-enactments give short shrift to the almighty spade. This is usually due to time constraints or lack of permission from the property owner. One goal for Pumpkinvine Creek 1864 is to build and make use of such works in as realistic a fashion as possible.