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Chapter 5
VICTORY AT FORT PEMBERTON
Clinton, Mississippi, lies between Jackson and Vicksburg, much closer to the capital city than to the river, and in September 1862 when Pvt. Baxter returned to his native state after seven months in Camp Douglas as a prisoner of war, the little college town (almost the state capital in 1829) was beginning to feel the burden of the Civil War. Rail traffic on the Southern Railroad on Mississippi from Jackson to Vicksburg had mounted steadily as the strategic importance of the latter?s guns on and below its river bluffs became obvious.
Anticipating the exchange of some seven thousand Confederates from Camp Douglas, Southern authorities had turned Clinton into a sort of staging cantonment that hopefully would assure quick return to duty for these men. A tent city had been laid out on the outskirts of town; rations and supplies had been moved in; and the administrative paperwork needed to put the scattered regiments back together had been begun. Baxter was in Clinton in time to celebrate his 15th birthday anniversary on Thursday, September 25, and by then, he had cast off the ragged garments of the Chicago experience and had been issued satisfactory replacements. The uniform probably did not match initial CSA regulations, but it was clean and serviceable. With it he got shoes and a rifle-musket and perhaps a canteen. The rest of his gear was likely dependent on his ability to barter, trade, and scrounge.
While Baxter was in Chicago a lot had happened in the western theater of war.
Federal capture of highly fortified Island No. 10 near New Madrid, Missouri, and the fall of Memphis gave the Northern forces an unobstructed river supply line down the Mississippi to near Vicksburg. Shiloh, though not a decisive engagement, was a defeat for the South. Killed in the battle was Albert Sidney
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