Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana wrote, “The bravery of the blacks in the battle at Milliken’s Bend completely revolutionized the sentiment of the military.” Indeed, starting that summer of 1863, blacks wer increasingly recruited into the Union army, with nearly 200,000 eventually fighting for the North. Toward the end of the war, the South, which had some black soldiers all along, would recruit them as well.
Black soldiers, who quickly proved their worth and willingness to fight, were commanded by white officers, many of whom died in combat alongside their men.
But for now, in Vicksburg, many blacks were with their white masters in the caves, simply hoping to survive the siege. As much as he wanted his freedom, Rice remained loyal to Lucy’s family. Their fate was his fate. At night, when Lucy covered her ears and tried to bury her head in her pillow so she couldn’t hear the exploding shells, Rice was there, too.
After reading the newspaper printed on the back of wallpaper, some residents hung the patterned side on the walls of their caves as decoration.
ONCE A PROUD and beautiful community of grand homes and splendid gardens, Vicksburg was almost in ruins. Anyone pausing long enough to study the buildings around them saw that every glass pane in every house and building had shattered. Many windows had been boarded up.
Townspeople held on. Both Willie and Lucy read the one-sheet newspaper that was issued daily, though it had to be printed on the back of wallpaper once all the regular paper had been used up. It always offered assurance that “Old Joe” was going to come to the rescue and that together he and General Pemberton would defeat General Grant.
BY THE END OF JUNE, dwindling supplies of food and water grew critical. The city’s wells were almost dry, and drinking water was rationed to only one cup of water per day per person. Confederate soldiers dipped water out of mud holes and sometimes resorted to drinking dirty river water. A few residents had their own wells, and some of them sold water—Margaret Lord had to buy it for her family, paying for it by the bucket. Others with wells freely gave away the water until it was gone. It was the same with food: some who had it sold it on the black market for high prices, while others gave it to whoever needed it—proving, as always, that hard times could bring out the best, as well as the worst, in people.
After all the chickens, cows, horses, and mules had been used for food, dogs and cats and other family pets began to disappear. Soon there were no birds or squirrels to be seen. Mary Loughborough finally consented to her little daughter’s pet bird being made into soup for the child, who was ill and needed nourishment.
Lucy said of her family’s situation, “Our provisions were becoming scarce, and the Louisiana soldiers were eating rats as a delicacy… Mother would not eat mule meat, but we children ate some, and it tasted right good, having been cooked nicely. Wheat bread was a rarity, and sweet-potato coffee was relished by the adults.” Indeed, there were several variations on “Confederate coffee,” including concoctions made of corn, okra, or even rye flour, if it could be had.
The specter of hunger haunted both soldiers and civilians. Everyone’s stomach rumbled. Willie reported that his family was down to “a half-barrel of [corn] meal and about the same quantity of sugar, so that like everyone else, we began to look forward with anxiety to what might await us in the near future.”
Poor people in Vicksburg had even less to eat than the soldiers, and the threat of starvation was very real for them. Hardest hit were impoverished mothers whose husbands were at war or had died and who had hungry children to feed. They searched for tree buds, weeds, and cane shoots, mixing them with blackberries and half-ripe peaches to make a sort of stew. They pulled up the flooring in smokehouses in search of crystals of salt. Soldiers raided gardens, and townspeople, both rich and poor, had to guard what few vegetables they still had.
Soldiers’ daily rations were cut, and then cut again, shrinking to a couple of biscuits, a little bacon, and a handful of rice. By the end of June, army rations had been reduced to 14.5 ounces of food per day—just a little rice, and pea bread.
Pea bread. No one who survived the siege of Vicksburg would ever forget it. The one food item still plentiful, for some reason, was peas, and army cooks learned to make bread from pea meal. “It was awful,” one soldier recalled, “either rubbery or hard as rock, and in either case foul-tasting.” Another said it was like leather to digest. Townspeople and patients in the hospital also ate the terrible bread when there was nothing else to eat, and some got sick from it.
Even as the situation grew more desperate, few people talked about surrender. They still believed in Joe Johnston. Humor helped. A citizen distributed cards for the fictitious “Hotel de Vicksburg,” featuring a menu of Mule Tail Soup, Pea Meal Pudding, and Genuine Confederate Coffee.
Soldiers also managed an occasional laugh. Confederate pickets asked their Union counterparts one night what they had to eat. The Northerners, who had ample supplies, gave a long list: good coffee, beef, bread, and so forth. They then asked what the Southerners had, knowing that they were starving. But the Southerners replied with what could only have been a wish list, stating that they had butter and cake and biscuits, among other tasty items—to which a Yank added for them, “and pea meal.” The Southerner who told this story said, “Then we all roared.”
Though some Confederates deserted, going over to the Federals so they would be fed, most held fast. A Southern general said of his men, “I have rarely heard a murmur of complaint. The tone has always been, ‘This is pretty hard, but we can stand it.’”
But they could not do so forever.
By the first day of July, forty-five days into the siege, the men were so weak that General Pemberton feared they didn’t have the strength to withstand an all-out attack from the Federals, or to try to break out from their lines—even if Old Joe did arrive to help. Half the men were on the sick list or in the hospital. Many had swollen ankles, a symptom of scurvy, which was caused by vitamin deficiency. So many soldiers died that coffin builders could not keep up, and the dead were buried in trenches, covered by blankets. An officer wrote, “Graves are dug today for use tomorrow.”
Union troops continued digging tunnels, thirteen in all, and filled them with explosives. They would all be set off on July 6, the day that Grant planned a major attack on Confederate forces. It was time to end this.
General Sherman, still guarding the eastern front, was certain that any attempt to take Vicksburg would come with a price. One thing he knew by now was that Southerners, weak or not, would fight to the finish. He told his wife in a letter that he needed all his cunning and all his strength, for these Rebels, he said, fight like devils.
SURRENDER!
July 4, 1863
Responding to Confederate pressure to try to save Vicksburg, Joe Johnston finally set out for the city on July 1. But by the time General Pemberton received his message to expect him on July 7, it was already too late.
PEMBERTON KNEW IT WAS THE END. He had received an anonymous letter, probably from his own troops (though this was never determined), that was signed “Many Soldiers,” telling him, “If you can’t feed us, you had better surrender us.” On July 2 he called his generals together to decide what to do. Their meager rations would run out in a few days. Doctors treating the sick and wounded had no more medicine. Because so many men were ill or injured, the 19,000 soldiers still in the trenches had to stay there all day and night, with no relief. They were too weak to fight well, and if the North launched an all-out attack, it would surely be a bloodbath. The generals also knew how much the townspeople were suffering.
Nobody wanted to give up. But was it right to continue in the face of such overwhelming odds? Was it fair to sacrifice more lives to a cause that now seemed hopeless?
At Champion’s Hill, General John Bowen led a counterattack that almost defeated the Federals.
Pemberton was painfully aware that he would be blamed for the loss of Vicksburg. The only way to salvage his reputation was to lead his soldier
s in an attempt to break through the Union lines and unite with Johnston’s army to fight Grant and Sherman. “This is my only hope of saving myself from shame and disgrace,” he told his generals. But when they voted to surrender, Pemberton nodded in agreement, feeling he must “sacrifice myself to save the army which has so nobly done its duty to defend Vicksburg.” He said he would officially surrender the city on the Fourth of July.
Startled, his generals protested that doing so on America’s greatest holiday would be too humiliating for Southerners. Pemberton reminded them that he was a Northerner and knew the North’s “national vanity.” He said, “I know we can get better terms from them on the Fourth of July than on any other day of the year. We must sacrifice our pride to these considerations.”
In what must have been one of the hardest things he had ever done, Pemberton wrote to Grant, requesting that they meet to discuss Vicksburg’s surrender. He chose General John Bowen, who had fought valiantly at Champion’s Hill, to deliver this message. Bowen was thirty-two and prior to the war had been an architect in St. Louis, where he and Grant had been friends and neighbors. Bowen hoped their friendship might help in negotiating the terms of surrender.
Bowen was so ill with dysentery that to even get on his horse required all his strength. But the next morning, July 3, with an aide riding next to him holding a flag of truce, the young officer rode toward the Union lines. Soldiers saw the white flag and held their fire. For the first time in forty-seven days, the air was silent. Men in the trenches on both sides climbed out, met in the middle, and talked in hushed tones. Was this merely a break to bury the dead?
Or was it something else?
Riding slowly, the day’s heat and humidity already at suffocating intensity, Bowen reached Union headquarters and handed over Pemberton’s note. He asked to speak to Grant but was informed that the general would not see him, for he was not willing to discuss terms for the surrender. Grant held all the cards: Confederate deserters had confirmed that the Rebels were weak from starvation and could not hold out long. Grant’s all-out assault on July 6 would finish them off. But while Grant’s note back to Pemberton stated that he would only accept an unconditional surrender, he added that he would be willing to meet with Pemberton at three o’clock that afternoon.
This was something, at least, and Bowen rode back to deliver Grant’s message. Then, pale with pain, he turned around and headed back once again to the Union lines to announce Pemberton’s agreement. Shortly before three that afternoon, Bowen was by Pemberton’s side, along with one other officer, as they rode to a spot between the two camps to meet Grant. Men in gray and blue watched in silence. Pemberton was determined to get some concessions for his men. An unconditional surrender would send them all to Northern prison camps—and those vile places, so full of disease, were a death sentence just as surely as was remaining in the trenches at Vicksburg.
In the Union camp, thirteen-year-old Fred was so excited about the afternoon’s meeting that he could almost forget how sick he was. Though already miserable because of his leg wound and typhoid fever, Fred’s dysentery had gotten worse. “Dysentery had pulled me down from 110 pounds to sixty-eight pounds and I had a toothache as well,” Fred remembered. Sick or not, he wasn’t going to miss a moment of what was happening. At three o’clock, Grant’s delegation rode toward the appointed spot. “Soon,” Fred recalled, “a white flag appeared over the enemy’s works, and a party of Confederates was seen approaching … and General Grant met his opponent.”
Grant wrote of this meeting, “Pemberton and I had served in the same division during part of the Mexican War. I knew him well, therefore, and greeted him as an old acquaintance. He soon asked what terms I proposed to give his army if it surrendered. My answer was the same as proposed in my reply to his letter.” Pemberton stiffened. He said that unconditional surrender was not acceptable and that he and his men would resume fighting. Grant wrote, “Pemberton then said, rather snappishly, ‘The conference might as well end,’ and turned abruptly as if to leave. I said, ‘Very well.’”
But John Bowen, who was to die ten days later from his illness, stepped forward and convinced both parties to continue to talk. Though unstated, both sides knew that as long as Joe Johnston refused to fight, the North was assured of victory—yet a final battle would take many lives, both blue and gray. Some concessions by the North could end this now.
Pemberton and Grant talked informally while their respective staffs hammered out details of the surrender.
Grant agreed to let his staff and Pemberton’s discuss terms of the surrender while he and Pemberton moved to the shade of a tree, where they exchanged small talk. When the officers signaled that they were finished, Grant told Pemberton as they parted that he would offer his final terms that evening.
Back in their own camps, both generals called together their most trusted advisers. At his father’s side, Fred took in everything that was happening. He reported, “Father was immediately joined by the largest assemblage of generals and officers which I had ever seen—the heroes of the most brilliant campaign and siege recorded in the history of the world—deciding upon … the fate of their foes.”
Just as Pemberton had suspected, having Vicksburg officially surrender on the Fourth of July pleased the Union officers. And they were sympathetic to Pemberton’s request that the Confederate soldiers not be sent to prison. Every soldier dreaded the prisons, both North and South. Besides, transporting 30,000 men to prisons in the North would tie up trains, boats, and wagons needed elsewhere in the war effort.
Grant decided to offer Pemberton’s men parole—which required them to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States government and state that they would not fight again. He knew the risk was that they would go join Joe Johnston, but he believed that most of these battle-weary men would just go home. Though he might draw criticism in the North for being this generous, he had respect for these defenders of Vicksburg. He didn’t want to humiliate them. He also felt that they would be better citizens once the war was over if he treated them with some consideration now.
That evening, Grant sent Pemberton his final terms, which included the offer of parole. Then he waited for a reply. Fred was with his father. “I remained in the tent, sitting on my little cot, and feeling restless, but scarcely knowing why. Father sat at his writing table.” Fred tried to be quiet as his father “began to write very hard, and with great interest in what he was writing.” The minutes ticked by. When Fred thought he could stand it no longer, “at last there came an orderly with a dispatch.”
Fred held his breath. He watched as his father “opened it, gave a sigh of relief, and said calmly, ‘Vicksburg has surrendered.’ I was thus the first to hear the news officially, announcing the fall of the Gibraltar of America, and, filled with enthusiasm, I ran out to spread the glad tidings. Officers rapidly assembled and there was a general rejoicing.”
The forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg was over.
IN VICKSBURG ITSELF that evening of July 3, a Confederate officer stopped by the Lords’ cave and told the family that General Bowen had gone to see Grant that day. Margaret Lord reported that everyone felt sick with anxiety and dread.
That same evening, Lucy, who knew nothing of what was happening, feared that the Yankees were preparing to storm the city. What else could the guns’ silence mean? Mosquitoes whined in the hot, muggy darkness. Lucy wrote, “All was quiet. People could be seen walking around, concluding that the silence meant dreadful things on the morrow.”
To her surprise, she saw her father, who had steadfastly refused to leave the family home, coming toward them. “We were all sitting outside the cave, twilight approaching, when Father came in sight,” Lucy remembered. “Mother thought Father had decided to die with his family the next day, for everybody thought that General Grant would make the effort of his life to take the city on the 4th. Father came to mother, looking sad, with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘You can all come home for a night’s rest. General Pemberton h
as surrendered, and General Grant will enter the city in the morning.’”
And so, Lucy said, “We went home.”
DR. LORD WAS OUT AND ABOUT in the city the next morning when he learned the news. He returned quickly to his family’s cave. Mrs. Lord recalled that he was “pale as death and with such a look of agony on his face as I would wish never to see again.” He told her, “Maggie, take the children home directly. The town is surrendered, and the Yankee army will enter at ten o’clock.”
“I was speechless with grief,” Mrs. Lord said. “No one spoke, even the poor children were silent, [and] all the weary way home I wept incessantly, meeting first one group of soldiers and then another, many of them with tears streaming down their faces.”
The family had not left the area around their cave for weeks. As they walked home, they looked at the defeated town—at the craters in the streets, the torn-up sidewalks, flattened shrubbery and gardens, broken windows, and badly damaged or destroyed homes and businesses. Spent shells covered the ground. They were glad to see that the grand courthouse had suffered little damage, perhaps because captured Union officers had been held prisoner there, and when word of this had reached Admiral Porter, he made certain his cannon avoided it.
Finally the Lords made it to their home. Willie’s mother never forgot it. “Such a scene of desolation you can hardly imagine … every room in the house injured and scarcely a window left whole.”
More bad news awaited the family. They soon learned that everything they had stored at the Flowers plantation outside Vicksburg—furniture, other valuables, and Dr. Lord’s vast collection of books—was lost. Willie reflected that had their possessions been stored in the church cellar, they probably would have been all right. Instead, one of Flowers’ slaves later told the family how camp followers broke into the house and destroyed everything they couldn’t carry with them. As for Dr. Lord’s treasured books—Homer, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, and more—a sad fate had befallen them.
Under Siege! Page 9
