Inscription in grave slab of a Confederate veteran buried in Baldwin County (not Mr. Hanks).
During the enthusiasm that followed the early months of the War Between the States, many young men committed their lives and fortunes to the Confederate. In December 1861, a seasoned warrior from Wilcox County, William Howell Hanks, joined the ranks of the Confederate Army as he enlisted in the 23rd Alabama Infantry Regiment. His decision would take him to some of the most gruesome battlefields of the war and have everlasting consequences on his life and family.
Hanks joined Capt. J.J. Longmire's company of the 23rd on December 19th and was officially enlisted on December 27th at Montgomery, Alabama. His original enlistment was for three years. For Hanks, this was not his first taste of war, and certainly the scenes around the military encampments took him back to an earlier time.
In an earlier age an 18 year old Hanks had fought a very different enemy in a far away land. On November 10, 1847, Hanks enlisted under Capt. Thomas E. Irby's Co. B Infantry Battalion of Alabama Volunteers which went to Mexico to fight Santa Ana in the Mexican War. His unit was part of Col. G.J. Seible's Regiment of Ala. Volunteer Infantry. At the close of the war Hanks was in Mexico City.
Hanks was honorably discharged at Mobile, Alabama on June 27, 1848 and returned to his farm in Wilcox County. On February 26, 1856 he married Miss Frances Dunn. Almost six years of quiet farm life would pass before the thunder of war would forever rip apart the canvas of the idyllic life Hanks had known in Wilcox County.
The separations caused by war created many hardships for the Confederate troops fighting so far from home. Hanks is certain to have suffered these hardships with his comrades in that the 23rd moved across the South from Tennessee to Mississippi with little time for furlough or a break from fighting.
Muster rolls show Hanks was on sick leave from April to June 1862. After returning, he reported for every muster from August 31, 1862 until February 28, 1863. It was during this time that he would be reunited with his family for one last visit.
By February 1863 U.S. Grant was planning a determined and daring plan to float his army south of Vicksburg, through the snake infested swamps of the west bank of the Mississippi River, and cross the river south of the town in order to come in from behind the city's defenses.
Grant launched his campaign against Vicksburg, in the spring of 1863, starting his army south from Milliken's Bend on the west side of the Mississippi. He intended to take Grand Gulf by storm while his subordinate Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman deceived the Confederate Army in Vicksburg by feigning an assault on the Yazoo Bluffs.
The move was a success and by May 1st, the first in a long series of bloody battles was set to begin.
As Grant's army prepared to descend on Port Gibson, Sgt. William Hanks and his determined farm boys and men of the 23rd Alabama awaited them.
Shortly after midnight on May 1, advanced elements of the Union 14th Division under Brig. Gen. Eugene A. Carr battled Confederate pickets near the Schaiffer House. Sporadic skirmishing and artillery fire continued until 3 a.m. The rare night fighting resulted in both sides eventually settling down along their picket lines and waiting for first light to resume the battle.
At first light, a Union recon force reported a frontal assault through the twisted cane brakes to their front would be pointless. Union Gen. Carr thereafter devised a plan whereby one brigade would move through the canebrake while the second brigade would descend into the Widow's Creek bottoms and strike for the Confederate left flank. The plan worked and the Confederate lines crumbled.
All would have been lost for the Confederates at this point except that a counter assault by Confederate Missourians weakened the Federal right flank and forced a stop to the Union advance. By sundown the two sides had settled into a stalemate along the Rodney Road several miles from Port Gibson.
The brutal fighting of the day had taken a tragic toll on the Confederate defenders. More than 787 men either were dead or lay dying in the makeshift Confederate field hospitals that now dotted the landscape. Among the mortally wounded was Sgt. Hanks who had led his men in the defense of Port Gibson.
The retreating Confederate army removed Hanks to Grand Gulf that evening where Hanks died among his wounded compatriots most likely in one of the dimly lit canvas tents of a field hospital where perhaps a nurse or friend eased his transition from this world.
The war ended for Hanks on May 1, 1863 but the fighting would carry on for another 2 years until April 1865. The widow of William Hanks, Frances Dunn Hanks, moved her six children, Robert, Aaron, Oliver, Stephen, John Wesley and Mattie, to Conecuh County where they settled in the Old Jackson Store area in Beat One.
The descendants of William H. Hanks continue to live in the area.
