This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

Chapter 6
SOUTH TO VICKSBURG
A week after the Federals gave up, Baxter and the rest of the 20th Mississippi got aboard river steamers and went down the Yazoo to Yazoo City, arriving there on April 15. The regiment then marched east to Vaughan?s Station on the Mississippi Central and rode the cars south to Jackson. Company E, it appears, was shuttled between Jackson and Clinton on several occasions. Baxter, after the war, said that the regiment spent some time at Canton during this period.
By now it was clear to Grant that he could not take Vicksburg from the north, either by land or by any river except the Mississippi, and this route posed problems of gigantic proportions. The gunboats, transports, and supply steamers had to run past the batteries along and atop the Vicksburg bluffs; the majority of the Federal forces and their immediate supplies (now concentrated at Milliken?s Bend on the Mississippi?s west bank about 15 miles north-west from Vicksburg) had to move south across terrain that consisted mainly of swamps and a narrow thread of dry land.
On the night of April 16 (the 20th Mississippi and Pvt. Baxter must have been in Jackson), a Federal squadron - gunboats and steamers - managed to slip past Vicksburg with minimal casualties, and the Federal move on the beleaguered southern city began to gather momentum. This successful maneuver by the Federals made Pemberton change his orders that would have sent Baxter and the 20th (still a part of Tilghman?s Brigade) north-east to reinforce the Confederate forces in middle Tennessee. Attendant special orders directed Tilghman to mount part of his brigade, and he chose the 20th Mississippi and the 8th Kentucky for this duty. Baxter, in later life, revealed few details about the transformation of an infantry regiment into one of cavalry, but it must have been a difficult operation. Horses, bridles, saddles were virtually unobtainable, but somehow Tilghman, bolstered by
51