Damn the Torpedoes!

Greetings from way down south in the land of cotton. This is the floral arrangement in our B&B in Vicksburg, Mississippi:

Today we cycled 45 miles along the Natchez Trace Parkway, starting in Natchez which is a Mississippi River town:

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The Natchez Trace Parkway was created by President Roosevelt during the Depression as a partial payback to Mississippi Senator Pat Harrison, the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a key figure who helped pass Social Security legislation. The Trace originated centuries earlier as a footpath used by the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes to travel between the fertile areas by Natchez and the then rich hunting grounds by Nashville. We ended our ride today by one of the last remaining original segments of the footpath, next to the modern road:

When Natchez was settled, flat bottom boats carrying agricultural and manufactured goods floated down the many rivers that joined the Mississippi to Natchez. When products were unloaded, the boatmen returned north on the Trace footpath by walking or horseback. That ended with the steamship era. Why walk or ride 400+ miles when you could sit in a steamship?

There is a lot of history on the Trace. Had my wife or my friends expressed any interest in that history, I would have pointed out the Trace town of Washington, MS where Aaron Burr was arrested, tried and acquitted on sedition charges. Or explained how Andrew Jackson brought his Tennessee troops down the Trace to New Orleans to defeat the British and end the War of 1812. His troops gave him the name “Old Hickory” since he was as tough as the hardwood trees that were then all along the Trace. To spice things up, I might have also mentioned how Jackson had earlier committed bigamy in a town we passed today by marrying his not-quite-divorced bride Rachel Robards. And I had a lot more information to share! But no — six highly educated cycling companions seemed only interested in cycling today. With good reason as here are a few pictures from our lovely ride today on a terrifically smooth road with little traffic:

We hope that conditions are the same all the way to Nashville. Tonight we are in Vicksburg, site of a major 1863 Civil War battle. The Confederates had heavily fortified positions on the bluffs with cannons and artillery pointing down at the River. While we unfortunately did not have time to visit the Confederate fort, here is a picture I found showing the view from there of the river:

Controlling the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg was vital to the Confederacy, which shipped food and ammunition from Texas and Arkansas down the Red River and up the Mississippi to Vicksburg which was the beginning of a railroad heading east. One of the greatest Union Civil War feats occurred on the night of April 16, 1863, literally 163 years ago today. About the same time of night as I am writing this blog, “ironclads” under the command of Admirals Farragut and Porter steamed south of Vicksburg through a gauntlet of Confederate artillery fire, while the Vicksburg garrison was undermanned due to a General Grant diversionary maneuver:

The ironclads then obliterated several Confederate forts along the Mississippi, preventing all Confederate shipping and allowing General Grant’s army to encircle Vicksburg, which eventually surrendered on July 4, 1863.

This naval daring starved the South of resources and resulted in General Sherman’s “march to the sea” that destroyed much of the South. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” was Admiral Farragut’s famous battle cry (actually from the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay, not Vicksburg). But that kinda describes the cycling style of several of my friends, such as Liz who cycled today as if she is completely ready for an upcoming 200 mile Kansas gravel race and Kevin who apparently had something different for lunch than most of us as he was an afternoon blur.

I could not find a good musical coda relating to Vicksburg, but here’s a song from the Damn the Torpedoes album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbMsdCMC_N0