As they gazed at the river on May 19, Sherman shook his head with amazement. He knew that what Grant had already accomplished would go down in military history as nothing short of brilliant.
“Until this moment,” he said to his old friend, “I never thought your expedition a success. I never could see the end clearly until now.”
ENEMY AT THE GATES
May 17-25, 1863
The weather in Vicksburg was sunny and clear the morning of Sunday, May 17. Mary Loughborough and a friend decided to go to church. They had not heard any news of Pemberton’s army for several days and talked about this as they walked along. Near the Methodist church they met an officer they knew. He was visibly upset and told them the army had been twice defeated and that many citizens and all the town’s doctors were headed out to care for the wounded. Mary was ready to turn around, but the church bells rang just then, beckoning her into the sanctuary. During the service, she worried about the men. Her husband had not marched out with Pemberton and was safe, but what did this news mean for Vicksburg?
Mary later wrote in her journal that as she and her friend walked home from church, they “passed groups of anxious men … In all the pleasant air and sunshine of the day [there was] a sorrowful waiting for tidings, that all knew now, would tell of disaster.” Soon they saw the first retreating soldiers. The men, dirty and exhausted and some with bandages covering bloody wounds, kept their heads down as they trudged along. A few helped prop up injured comrades.
A woman standing near Mary and her friend asked the men, “Where on earth are you going?”
The embarrassed soldiers muttered, “We are running.”
“Shame on you all!” another woman cried.
But quickly, sympathetic townspeople joined forces to feed them. Mary helped gather and prepare food. While the men ate, she listened to their stories of what had happened at Champion’s Hill and the Big Black River. Some of the soldiers accused General Pemberton of selling them out to the Yankees because he was a Northerner. Mary observed, “Afterward we were told that General Pemberton behaved with courage—that the fault lay in the arrangement of troops … And where these weary and worn out men were going, we could not tell. I think they did not know themselves.”
All that day and the next, retreating soldiers dragged into Vicksburg. Wagons and ambulances brought the wounded to the city’s hospitals where townspeople joined the Sisters of Mercy in caring for them. Frightened refugees also poured in from the countryside to escape the Yankees-families with wagonloads of belongings, wealthy plantation owners riding in carriages, and poor folks on foot.
Pemberton faced a grave crisis. He was certain that Grant would lay siege to Vicksburg by surrounding the Confederate fortifications that ringed the little city, and that Union gunboats would not only attack from the river but also prevent any supplies from coming into the city by boat. How long could Pemberton’s troops and the townspeople hold out? He knew his military history: a city under siege had to have help from the outside, or eventually it would starve. Pemberton had 32,000 soldiers and 5,000 townspeople—including 1,000 children—in his care. At most, current food supplies would last for a few weeks.
General Joe Johnston and his army needed to come to their rescue—and quickly.
In the meantime, Pemberton ordered his men to canvass the countryside around Vicksburg, confiscate any livestock and foodstuffs they could find on farms and plantations, and bring everything to the town’s warehouses. From the porch of her elegant home, Emma Balfour watched the parade of people, animals, and goods coming into the city and wrote in her diary, “From twelve o’clock until late in the night the streets and roads were jammed with wagons, cannon, horses, men, mules, stock, sheep, everything you can imagine … being brought hurriedly within the entrenchment.”
Emma Balfour.
Emma was forty-four and the mother of six children. Her husband, William Balfour, was a prominent Vicksburg physician. Like other well-to-do families in Vicksburg, the Balfours had house slaves to attend to their needs and perform all household duties. The Balfour home high in the hills of Vicksburg had crystal chandeliers, a grand piano, marble-topped tables, luxurious feather mattresses, and canopied beds. Emma was a noted hostess and often entertained. It was in the Balfour ballroom that the Christmas Eve Ball had been held.
Emma dreaded the idea of a siege, but she shared the conviction that Joe Johnston would save them. They would get along until he came. Right now they must help the bedraggled soldiers coming through the streets. That night she wrote, “I had everything that was eatable put out—and fed as many as I could. Poor fellows, it made my heart ache to see them.”
It was reassuring to know that Pemberton had left behind 10,000 soldiers to guard the city when he had gone out to meet Grant. They were rested and ready for combat, and as they marched through the streets, Mary Loughborough reported that chivalry—so much a part of the Southern code of honor—won the day as “the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, cheering them, and crying, ‘These are the troops that have not run. You’ll stand by us, and protect us, won’t you? You won’t retreat and bring the Federals behind you.’ And the men, who were fresh and lively, swung their hats, and promised to die for the ladies—never to run—never to retreat.”
The battle-weary soldiers from Champion’s Hill and the Big Black River began to regroup and join the efforts to shore up defenses around the city. Soon everyone was working together, their spirits much improved. Still, Mary wrote, “What a sad evening we spent—continually hearing of friends and acquaintances left dead on the field, or mortally wounded and being brought in ambulances to the hospital. We almost feared to retire that night. No one seemed to know whether the Federal army was advancing. Some told us that they were many miles away, and others that they were quite near. How did we know but in the night we might be awakened by the tumult of their arrival!”
PEMBERTON felt a surge of confidence when he inspected the eight miles of Confederate fortifications guarding Vicksburg. They were brilliant in concept. In some places, the trenches, rifle pits, and small forts were protected by deep ravines full of cane and underbrush, and in other places they were guarded by steep hills. In areas that were more open, the Confederates had cut down trees, dragged them in front of the trenches, and woven the branches together with wire and sharp stakes. To reach the trenches, the enemy had to get through this barricade first. The Confederates had only a hundred cannon, and to make it look like they had more, they had painted logs black and mounted them so they appeared to be regular cannon. These would help to fool the Yankees until Joe Johnston came to their rescue.
And he would come, wouldn’t he? This worried Pemberton. Johnston’s messages had stated that he felt Pemberton was going to have to surrender now that Grant had reached Vicksburg, and that trying to defend the city was a lost cause. But Pemberton and his generals were in agreement that they had to try. Their president, Jefferson Davis, wanted this, too. Pemberton continued asking Johnston for help. “I still conceive [Vicksburg] to be the most important point in the Confederacy,” he wrote. And in one message he concluded, “I have decided to hold Vicksburg as long as possible.”
LIKE PEMBERTON, Ulysses Grant knew that Joe Johnston was the wild card. Up to now Johnston had avoided any actual confrontation with the Union army, but Grant knew from spies that he was only fifty miles away. Surely he must be getting reinforcements and would soon attack. Grant planned to take Vicksburg quickly, before that could happen. When he saw the hills and ravines and the impressive Confederate fortifications that protected the city’s north, south, and east sides, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. But Admiral Porter’s naval fleet would fight from the river while Grant’s troops attacked on land. There was no stopping his Army of the Tennessee. In the past twenty days Grant had achieved every goal, inflicting 7,000 casualties while losing only 4,500 of his own men. With reinforcements, he still had 31,000 troops. More reinforcements were on their way. Ammunition and supplies were plentiful. Al
l the men were eager to finish this and to be the ones who opened the Mississippi River for the North.
Grant decided that the action would start at two o’clock sharp on May 19. It would begin with artillery fire, followed by the order to charge. At that moment, thousands of bluecoats would rush forward, in some places forging through deep ravines, to scale the Confederate entrenchments, their guns blazing as they quickly overwhelmed the defenders. Grant expected little resistance and was so certain of victory that he had already directed his division commanders on how to keep their victorious soldiers under control when the battle was over.
Vicksburg’s powerful guns.
Not everyone with Grant was as confident as he. A Union officer preparing to help storm the Confederate lines recorded what they were up against: “A long line of high, rugged, irregular bluffs clearly cut against the sky, crowned with cannon … Lines of heavy rifle pits … ran along the bluffs, connecting fort with fort, and [were] filled with veteran infantry. In front, on the slopes, was a tangle of fallen timber, tree-tops, interlaced to make an almost impenetrable abatis … The approaches to this position were frightful—enough to appall the stoutest heart.”
A New York Times reporter who was with the Union troops was more succinct in his assessment, stating that the troops were now attempting to take a mountain.
ON MAY 19, the bluecoats were in position. Precisely at two o’clock, commanders throughout the Union line gave the signal and artillery exploded in unison. The bluecoats charged, yelling at the tops of their lungs as they rushed forward. The Rebels were ready for them, and on signal from their own commanders, they fired straight into the Union line. Falling back, stumbling over the injured and dead, Grant’s men tried again and again to storm the Confederate ridge, but each time they were driven back in an explosion of gunfire. Over and over, fresh troops moved forward to take the places of the men who fell.
Finally, with darkness corning on, Grant called a halt. The assault had failed. Almost a thousand of his men lay dead. One Union regimental flag had been shredded by fifty-five bullets.
Sherman said simply, “At every point we were repulsed.” But to his wife he wrote, “This is a death struggle and will be terrible.”
THE REBELS WERE JUBILANT and the citizens of Vicksburg cheered in the streets. All afternoon Mary Loughborough and her friends had watched from Sky Parlor Hill and from the cupola of the courthouse. “The excitement was intense in the city,” she wrote. “Groups of people stood on every available position where a view could be obtained of the distant hills, where the jets of white smoke constantly passed out from among the trees … The hills around near the city, and indeed every place that seemed commanding and secure, were covered with anxious spectators-many of them ladies—fearing the result of the afternoon’s conflict.”
That only 200 Confederate soldiers were killed seemed miraculous, though once again the wounded poured into the city’s hospitals, where doctors, the dedicated Sisters of Mercy, and citizen volunteers cared for them.
Townspeople understood the significance of the day’s victory for Pemberton and his troops. They became both hopeful and determined, their spirits renewed. But that night they had a taste of what would be required of them. Two Union gunboats moved into range and began to shell the city. They took occasional hits from the Vicksburg cannon on shore but were not damaged enough to stop firing.
“We ran to the small cave near the house,” Mary said, “and were in it during the night… The caves were plainly becoming a necessity, as some persons had been killed on the street by fragments of shells … I shall never forget my extreme fear during the night, and my utter hopelessness of ever seeing the morning light. Terror stricken, we remained crouched in the cave, while shell after shell followed each in quick succession … Morning found us more dead than alive.”
Fred (shown here fourth from left) was liked and accepted by his father’s officers. Grant (standing in the middle of the photo) is wearing a hat.
GRANT TOOK TWO DAYS to rethink his strategy. In the meantime, he tightened the noose around Vicksburg: as of May 18 it was under siege. He also readied his men to try again. In spite of the pounding they had received, they had not lost their will to fight.
As Grant visited various points along the Union line, Fred rode beside him. He no longer desired to be in combat and spent part of each day resting in the tent he shared with his father. One of his worst fears had come true, for the wound in his leg had become infected. He had been with the army long enough to know he might lose his leg. He tried not to think of this possibility. He wanted to be an officer when he grew up—a military leader like his father. How could he do that with only one leg?
In spite of his own misery, he was still greatly interested in what was going on, and he listened while Grant and his officers laid out plans for their next assault on the Rebel fortifications. It would take place on May 22. All corps commanders would synchronize their timepieces and open fire in unison, at precisely ten o’clock in the morning.
On the appointed day, Union soldiers were realistic about what was ahead and tried to make certain that loved ones would receive their valuables in the event they were killed. One soldier wrote, “The boys were … busy divesting themselves of watches, rings, pictures, and other keepsakes, which were being placed in the custody of the cooks, who were not expected to go into action. I never saw such a scene before, nor do I want to see it again.”
When the cannon sounded the attack, the men in blue rushed forward. One Union soldier tried to add some humor to his grim report of the assault: “We fixed bayonets and charged point blank for the rebel works at a double quick. Unfortunately for me I was in the front of the rank and compelled to maintain that position, and a glance at the forest of gleaming bayonets sweeping up from the rear, at a charge, made me realize that it only required a stumble of some lubber just behind me to launch his bayonet into the offside of my anatomy … This knowledge so stimulated me that I feared the front far less than the rear, and forged ahead like an antelope, easily changing my double quick to a quadruple gait … During that run and rush I had frequently to either step upon or jump over the bodies of our dead and wounded, which were scattered along our track.”
Usually generals were positioned in safe places during battles, but in spite of the concern of his officers, Grant once again stayed with his men. Fred learned later that his father “had a narrow escape from a shell which was fired directly down a ravine which he had just entered. He was unhurt, but was covered with yellow dirt thrown up by the explosion.”
Fred would never forget one particular incident. He was with his father and Sherman when a boy barely older than he “with blood streaming from a wound in his leg, came running up to where Father and Sherman stood, and reported that his regiment was out of ammunition. Sherman was directing some attention to be paid to his wound when the little fellow, finding himself fainting from loss of blood, gasped out, ‘caliber 54,’ as he was carried off to the rear. At this moment I observed that my father’s eyes were filled with tears.”
The young soldier was Orion Howe, a fourteen-year-old drummer boy from Illinois. His regiment was running low on .54-caliber ammunition, and he had volunteered to go for more. Union soldiers saw him running through heavy fire, determined to complete his errand. Most drummer boys like Orion Howe were very brave. Though they were sometimes as young as nine or ten, they played a critical role in battle, for their drumbeats relayed officers’ orders. They had to stand where the most soldiers could hear them—sometimes in the open—and because they passed along such important information, they were targeted by enemy sharpshooters.
FINALLY GRANT HAD TO GIVE UP. His men were fighting heroically, but they were being mowed down and were accomplishing nothing. Grant called a halt. When it was all over, 3,200 Union soldiers were dead-more than had died in the five battles leading up to this day. The Confederates had fewer than 500 casualties. Grant realized he was not going to win Vicksburg either quickly or by sto
rming the defenses. He would have to shell and starve Pemberton into submission. He would have to do it by siege.
Young Orion Howe with a Union officer.
That night, Union soldiers didn’t dare try to rescue their wounded or dead lying close to Confederate lines. It was Pemberton who solved the problem. He proposed to Grant a truce for several hours so the Yankees could attend to these men and bury their dead.
Grant agreed, and during the truce on May 25, the soldiers from both sides met and mingled. A Union soldier wrote, “All the soldiers came out of their works and hiding places, and gave us a good opportunity to look at them. Many gibes and cuts were exchanged between the lines, in which the Confederates seemed to hold their own.” Another soldier reported that two Rebels and two Yankees played cards and swapped Southern tobacco for Northern coffee.
When the truce was over, the men wished each other good luck. Then they went back to their fortifications, aimed their rifles, and got back to the work of killing each other.
INTO THE CAVES
Late May and Early June 1863
As happy as Willie and his sisters were to be back in Vicksburg with their beloved father, the little city was a dangerous place. Dr. Lord impressed on his son that this was not a story from Ivanhoe or one of his other treasured adventure novels: the family was in real danger. Since May 18, Grant’s army had formed a tight ring around Vicksburg, sealing it from the outside world. The city was under siege, and, as one soldier said, a cat could not slip out unnoticed.
Grant wanted the siege to end quickly, before Joe Johnston showed up. To hasten Vicksburg’s surrender, he ordered his artillery units to shell it around the clock. The army aimed 220 cannon at military targets in the city and at the Confederate lines. Admiral Porter’s navy aimed another thirteen big guns from the river. Shells flew fast and furious, sometimes crisscrossing in the air as they rained down death and destruction on the city and the Rebel soldiers. Cannonballs weighing as much as 250 pounds crashed through walls, tore up streets and yards, and exploded in the Confederate trenches. Highly skilled Union sharpshooters loaded their rifles with minié balls—powerful and precise bullets that could travel long distances and kill or maim in an instant. Thunderous explosions and the z-z-z-z-z-z-pt sound of these deadly bullets whizzing through the air terrorized both humans and animals. Like their elders, children quickly learned that their best chance of survival was to try to dodge minié balls. They should never try to outrun cannonballs, but stop and let them fly on over.
Under Siege! Page 6
