A day like no other: on a rainy late spring day in 1863, the city of Jackson was overcome by invaders.

Seven score and four years ago, a horde of Northmen bent on death and destruction rode into Jackson cloaked in Lincoln blue. The date of May 14, 1863, is seared into the memories of Jacksonians as the darkest day in the long history of the capital city. It was the day that the horror of a long-feared invasion became reality.

Only two weeks earlier, Claiborne Countians awoke to find that their worst nightmare had come true. Federal General Ulysses S. Grant, at the head of three armies of 24,000 battle-hardened soldiers, had clandestinely come ashore at Bruinsburg near Port Gibson in the largest amphibious invasion in world history. (This military feat was not surpassed until World War II.) The dreaded news spread quickly, and most residents were well aware that a large portion of Jackson's men had left two years earlier for Virginia and the Carolinas to help defend the South's borders. It was no secret that there wasn't a large army of Southern defenders anywhere near Jackson.

By the time word was received on May 12 that the chivalrous Major General John Bowen and his 5,000 men in gray had failed in their attempt to stall the enemy southwest of Port Gibson, it was too late for many of Jackson's women, children, old, and infirm to flee to safety. When it appeared the situation couldn't get any worse, late on the night of May 13 a heavy downpour forced the majority of citizens inside their homes, where they could only pray for shelter in a time of storm.

At 5 a.m. on May 14, reveille was sounded in the Federal camps scattered from Clinton to Mississippi Springs, near where the Central Mississippi Medical Center is located today. The driving rain still had not let up, but the determined Northerners prodded eastward, pulling their big guns with them through the proverbial Mississippi mud. The thousands of men, horses, and mules splashed their way virtually unopposed to the edge of town. Their plan was to be inside the city by daylight, but the storm and swollen streams held them back temporarily.

The defense of Jackson was placed upon the shoulders of General Joseph E. Johnston, a personal friend of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately, Johnston proved himself not to be the man for the job. From the beginning, he issued confusing orders that, as it turned out, clearly aided the enemy. Some believe the 56-year-old professional soldier wasn't fully recovered from his near-fatal injuries suffered at the Battle of Seven Pines in Virginia less than a year earlier. In his defense, it must be noted that he didn't receive word that he was to command the forces in Jackson until the evening of May 9, when he was still on the recovery list at Tullahoma, Tennessee. Disregarding his health issues, he departed by train for Lake, Mississippi, and from there rode to Jackson on horseback, arriving just hours before the attack. Consequently, he was never able to strategically place many troops, nor was he successful in rallying his soldiers in the field.

The torrential rain began to let up around 11 a.m., and the Yankees began their attack in earnest. By 1:30 p.m., 100 dead men--blue and gray--lay along what is now West Capitol Street. (Note: The final official Union count was Union losses, 299; CSA losses, 845.) Two hours later, Captain Lucien B. Martin of the 59th Indiana raised the Stars and Stripes over the old Capitol, indicating that the city's fate now lay in the hands of Generals U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

No time was wasted as Grant's men began a spree of burning and looting that ran well into the night and all the next day. By 10 a.m. on May 15, Grant and most of his army left in haste for the depot at Bolton, where they regrouped before engaging Confederate forces at the Battle of Champion Hill the next day. Before leaving, Grant ordered Sherman placed in charge of "finishing up," and finish up he did. When the sun finally set on the smoke-filled city that day, more than 100 businesses and homes lay in ashes. For weeks afterward, the stench of slaughtered livestock and family pets overpowered the fragrance of all the blooming flowers and shrubs that the late springtime could offer.

When it appeared safe to move about, A.J. Frantz, the editor of the Brandon Republican newspaper, came over from Rankin County to see the damage. On May 21, 1863, he printed a lengthy article naming the various businesses, stores, hotels, and other establishments, as well as many of the homes, that had been ravaged by the Northmen. Some of the structures were of military importance, and their ruin was more or less accepted as part of war, but many, perhaps even most, were private homes and shops. A partial listing of Frantz's inventory is as follows: "... all the stores in the city were pillaged, their contents either carried off or thrown into the street and burned. The Mississippian newspaper office was broken open, the type thrown into the street and the presses and furniture broken up. The post office was rifled of its contents. The governor's mansion was broken open and pianos and furniture destroyed. The Episcopal church (Sherman's father and mother were Episcopal) was entered and the whole interior defaced. Nearly all the private residences were entered and trunks (where almost everyone kept their most precious possessions) broken open, fine dressers torn to pieces, and all jewelry, silverware, and provisions taken ... watches and breast pins were forcibly taken from gentlemen on the street ... and almost every horse, mule, cow, and hog in the city was taken ... intelligent gentlemen estimate the total loss of property at five million dollars."

Also included in the 48-hour rampage was the burning of the Mississippi Baptist office, the firing into by cannon of the Methodist church, and the burning of St. Peter's Catholic Church and rectory. The Catholic church's consecrated chalice was stolen, and church records were destroyed. It may be noted, however, that the Catholics didn't give up. They prepared "a new chapel over the engine house," but this too was destroyed by the Yankees during their next trip through the city on their way to burn and pillage Meridian. Before the second burning, a plea was made by the priest, Father Orlandi, to Generals Grant and Sherman, but no action was taken.

There is no doubt that Sherman's method of making war was deliberately turned upon the women and children of Jackson in order to bring pressure upon the defenders. But one question has remained: How were so many rain-soaked Jackson buildings burned so quickly and effectively? From Union staff reports, we are told that kerosene was used, and for the railroad bridge across the Pearl River, 20 barrels of tar were used, but still the heavy rain must have been a problem.

Recently, information gleamed from the State Department of Archives and History sheds new light on this question. The Jackson Daily Clarion-Ledger of March 24, 1911, carried an article entitled "A War Story Dug Out In Grading Streets." Apparently about a year earlier, workmen, "while grading North President Street in front of the property owned by Samuel Livingston," unearthed a large quantity of a whitish-colored chemical, and before the nature of the substance was learned, several people were seriously burned by it. How and why the chemical, phosphorus, came to be there remained a mystery until Charles M. Evans, who had grown up in the city during the war and moved to Cincinnati in 1867, came to Jackson for a visit.

A friend told Evans the story about the phosphorus and asked if he knew anything about it. Evans said he did know just how it came to be there, and his account of the matter is as interesting as it is revelatory. He said, "In May 1863, the Yankees 'took Jackson' and came near taking everything else they could get their hands on. Not content with taking things, they burned many houses and made an attempt to burn the old Capitol, which in those clays was a comparatively new and magnificent building. They used phosphorus as the means through which they did their wholesale burning. The stuff was placed in tin cans and sealed up. When they wanted to set fire to a house, they punched a hole in the bottom of one of those cans and threw it in the house, and it immediately ignited and continued to burn in spite of all efforts to subdue it. A great many houses in and around Jackson were destroyed in this way."

Evans went on to say that during this time, while passing the Capitol one evening, he and his father discovered that several cans of phosphorous had been thrown into the building but had failed to ignite, so they "gathered it up, placed it in a bucket, and covered it with water to keep the air from it and prevent its flaming up, and then carried it in front of the house in which they lived and buried it in the middle of the street."

Just why the chemical did not take fire when it was thrown into the Capitol building was, in Evans' opinion, "probably because they had neglected some little precaution in its preparation." The city of Jackson was burned three different times during the war, but it isn't known if phosphorous was used in each of the burnings.

In the new book Sherman's Mississippi Campaign, author Buck T. Foster records the third burning of Jackson by Sherman's soldiers with a quote from a Federal marcher who was on the scene after the seven-day siege in July 1863. This eyewitness wrote, "'It was truly a vivid picture of war to see the streets filled with armed men, squares of large brick buildings on fire, furniture of every description from rocking cradles to pianos, clothing, books, in fact almost every article of domestic utility and ornament, piled upon the sidewalks. Women and children running hither and thither, pictures of the most abject despair.'"

Writer Lee Kennett in his book Marching through Georgia further illustrates Sherman's willingness for U.S. soldiers to desecrate their uniforms and reputations by allowing them to prey upon civilians. Kennett cites a Mrs. Walton, who in a letter to her daughter describes the Federal army's methods of looting: "'The Yankees broke up and split up two of my bureau drawers, split up one of my secretary doors, they opened up one of your bundles, I don't know what was in it, took the things. They took all my meat, sugar, coffee, flour, knives and forks, spoons, all they could get into ... They broke up my caster, carried off the pepper box top, stamped the caster, and broke it. Tell Mary they took the ambrotype she gave me of Joe's, they took all my corn, hogs, killed the goats, took chickens, broke open every trunk I had in the house... They took my homespun dress and one smarter one, took all my shoes and stockings, my scarf, and the silk that was left of my dress. They got my needles, thimble, scissors, and thread.'"

An article in the October 23, 1917, issue of the Jackson Daily Clarion-Ledger entitled "Old Federal Soldier Visits Capitol City" sheds more light on the plundering of the city. Apparently there had been a few days earlier in Vicksburg a reunion of "the Blue and the Gray" by men who had been with either Sherman or Grant. Many of these men stopped in Jackson to visit the site where they had fought over a half-century before.

One man, H.G. Lehman of Van Wert, Ohio, was reported as saying that "he had been a member of the 32nd Ohio and had fought in most of the battles in and around Jackson in 1863 and had stopped off to look at the scenes of his youth, for he was only 19 when he was in Jackson 54 years ago; that he saw nothing that looked like old times except the Old Capitol, and that the holes made in its walls by the cannon of Grant and Sherman had disappeared."

He went on to say that "he remembered distinctly that when his command marched up State Street, it pillaged stores on every hand and took every pound of tobacco that could be found. 'I was just as bad as the rest and not only took tobacco and other things but captured an old Confederate horse and rode around on my stolen nag and distributed tobacco to friends so freely that I soon found I had nothing left, except a half plug, and the old horse that was not worth six bits.'"

Fortunately for the South, during these terrible four years, the U.S. Army had some leaders of strong Christian character: men like Generals Joshua L. Chamberlain, William McKinley, James A. Garfield, and many others. But many believe that the destructive Major General Sherman--the man who brought dishonor upon his uniform, his men, his nation, and even his own name; who after the war disowned his youngest son for becoming a Catholic priest; who disgraced his wife, a lady of strong Christian heritage, by living with prostitutes during the final 17 years of his life; and who was never successful in any venture except when warring against innocent civilians and outnumbered Southern husbands, fathers, and sons--this man whom some historians still exalt--was not one of them.