S. Emma E. Edmonds

ARRIVAL AT VICKSBURG—ITS SURROUNDINGS—GRANT’S ARMY—ASSAULT ON THE REBEL WORKS—THE SEVEN COLOR-BEARERS—PEMBERTON’S HARANGUE—IN THE TRENCHES—SUFFERINGS OF THE WOUNDED—PEMBERTON’S PROPOSED CAPITULATION—GRANT’S REPLY—TERMS OF SURRENDER—OCCUPATION OF THE CITY—LOSS OF THE ENEMY—COMPLIMENTARY LETTER—GRANT’S SUCCESS—ATTACHMENT OF HIS SOLDIERS—“FIGHTING DICK”—GOLD LACE—REBEL SUFFERINGS—SIGHTS IN VICKSBURG—INCIDENTS OF THE SIEGE—CAVE LIFE.

Our troops at length joined General Grant’s army near Vicksburg, where those veterans had been digging and fighting so many weeks.

The city of Vicksburg is nestled among numerous terraced hills, and would under other circumstances present a magnificent and romantic appearance; but I could not at that time realize its beauty, for the knowledge of the sufferings and distress of thousands within its walls detracted materially from its outward grandeur.

The enemy’s works had consisted of a series of redoubts extending from Haines’ Bluff to the Warrenton road, a distance of some ten miles. It was a vast plateau, upon which a multitude of little hills seemed to have been sown broadcast, giving the enemy a position from which it could sweep every neighboring crest and enfilade every approach. But the rebels had already been driven from this position after a severe struggle.

On the twenty-second of May, at two o’clock in the morning, heavy guns were opened upon the rebel works, and continued until ten o’clock, when a desperate assault was made by three corps moving simultaneously. After a severe engagement and heavy loss the flag of the Seventh Missouri was planted on one of the rebel parapets, after seven color-bearers had been shot down.

After this contest the rebel general, Pemberton, addressed his men as follows: “You have heard that I was incompetent and a traitor, and that it was my intention to sell Vicksburg. Follow me, and you will see the cost at which I will sell Vicksburg. When the last pound of beef, bacon and flour, the last grain of corn, the last cow and hog, horse and dog shall have been consumed, and the last man shall have perished in the trenches, then, and not till then, will I sell Vicksburg.”

It became evident that the works could not be carried by assault, and that nothing but a regular siege could reduce the fortifications.

While the siege was in progress our soldiers endured hardships, privations and sufferings which words can but inadequately express. Our men were closely packed in the trenches, often in water to the knees, and not daring to lift their heads above the brow of the rifle pits, as the rebel sharpshooters lost no time in saluting every unfortunate head which made its appearance above ground.

The sufferings of the wounded were extreme. Those who were wounded during the day in the trenches nearest the city could not be removed until the curtain of night fell upon the scene and screened them from the vigilant eye of the enemy.

General Grant steadily approached the doomed city by means of saps and mines, and continued to blow up their defenses, until it was evident that another day’s work would complete the capture of the city.

Such was the position of affairs on the third of July, when General Pemberton proposed an armistice and capitulation.

Major General Bowen, of the Confederate army, was the bearer of a despatch to General Grant, under a flag of truce, proposing the surrender of the city, which was as follows:

To which General Grant replied:

Then the following document was made out by General Grant, and submitted for acceptance:

General—In conformity with the agreement of this afternoon, I will submit the following proposition for the surrender of the city of Vicksburg, public stores, etc. On your accepting the terms proposed, I will march in one division, as a guard, and take possession at eight o’clock to-morrow morning. As soon as paroles can be made out and signed by the officers and men, you will be allowed to march out of our lines, the officers taking with them their regimental clothing, and staff, field and cavalry officers, one horse each. The rank and file will be allowed all their clothing, but no other property. If these conditions are accepted, any amount of rations you may deem necessary can be taken from the stores you now have, and also the necessary cooking utensils for preparing them; thirty wagons also, counting two two-horse or mule teams as one. You will be allowed to transport such articles as cannot be carried along. The same conditions will be allowed to all sick and wounded officers and privates as fast as they become able to travel. The paroles for these latter must be signed, however, whilst officers are present authorized to sign the roll of prisoners.After some further correspondence on both sides this proposition was accepted, and on the fourth of July the Federals took possession of the city of Vicksburg.

A paragraph from General Grant’s official despatch will best explain the result of his campaign, together with the surrender of Vicksburg: “The defeat of the enemy in five battles outside of Vicksburg, the occupation of Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi, and the capture of Vicksburg and its garrison and munitions of war, a loss to the enemy of thirty-seven thousand prisoners, among whom were fifteen general officers, at least ten thousand killed and wounded, and among the killed Generals Tracy, Tilghman and Green, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stragglers, who can never be collected and organized. Arms and munitions of war for an army of sixty thousand have fallen into our hands, besides a large amount of other public property, consisting of railroads, locomotives, cars, steamboats, cotton, etc., and much was destroyed to prevent our capturing it.”

On the thirteenth of July the President sent an autograph letter to General Grant, of which the following is a copy:

It is stated on good authority that at the time the news of Grant’s success reached the President, there were several gentlemen present some of whom had just been informing Mr. Lincoln that there were great complaints against General Grant with regard to his intemperate habits. After reading the telegram announcing the fall of Vicksburg, the President turned to his anxious friends of the temperance question and said:

“So I understand Grant drinks whiskey to excess?”“Yes,” was the reply.

“What whiskey does he drink?”

“What whiskey?” doubtfully queried his hearers.

“Yes. Is it Bourbon or Monongahela?”

“Why do you ask, Mr. President?”

“Because if it makes him win victories like that at Vicksburg, I will send a demijohn of the same kind to every general in the army.”

It is also stated on the same authority that General Grant is strictly temperate.

His men are almost as much attached to him as are the Army of the Potomac to General McClellan. He is a true soldier, and shares all the hardships with his men, sleeping on the ground in the open air, and eating hard bread and salt pork with as good a grace as any private soldier.

He seldom wears a sword, except when absolutely necessary, and frequently wears a semi-military coat and low crowned hat.

The mistakes which people used to make, when coming to headquarters to see the general, often reminded me of a genuine anecdote which is told of General Richardson, or “Fighting Dick,” as we familiarly called him. It occurred when the troops were encamped near Washington, and was as follows:

The general was sauntering along toward a fort, which was in course of erection not far from headquarters, dressed in his usual uniform for fatigue, namely: citizen’s pants, undress coat, and an old straw hat which had once been white, but was now two or three shades nearer the general’s own complexion.

Along came one of those dashing city staff officers, in white gloves, and trimmed off with gold lace to the very extreme of military regulations. He was in search of General Richardson, but did not know him personally. Reining up his horse some little distance from the general, he shouted: “hallo, old fellow! can you tell me where General Richardson’s headquarters are?”

The general pointed out the tent to him, and the young officer went dashing along, without ever saying “thank you.” The general then turned on his heel and went back to his tent, where he found the officer making a fuss because there was no orderly to hold his horse. Turning to General R., as he came up, he said: “Won’t you hold my horse while I find General R.?” “Oh yes, certainly,” said he.

After hitching the horse to a post near by for that purpose, the general walked into the tent, and, confronting young pomposity, he said in his peculiar twang, “Well, sir, what will you have?”

When the Federal troops marched into Vicksburg, what a heart-sickening sight it presented; the half-famished inhabitants had crawled from their dens and caves in the earth, to find their houses demolished by shell, and all their pleasant places laid waste.But the appearance of the soldiers as they came from the entrenchments covered with mud and bespattered with the blood of their comrades who had been killed or wounded, would have touched a heart of stone.

The poor horses, and mules, too, were a sad sight, for they had fared even worse than the soldiers—for there was no place of safety for them—not even entrenchments, and they had scarcely anything at all to eat for weeks, except mulberry leaves.

One man, in speaking of the state of affairs in the city, during the siege, said: “The terror of the women and children, their constant screams and wailings over the dead bodies of their friends, mingled as they were with the shrieks of bursting shell, and the pitiful groans of the dying, was enough to appall the stoutest heart.” And others said it was a strange fact that the women could not venture out of their caves a moment without either being killed or wounded, while the men and officers walked or rode about with but little loss of life comparatively.

A lady says: “Sitting in my cave, one evening, I heard the most heart-rending shrieks and groans, and upon making inquiry, I was told that a mother had taken her child into a cave about a hundred yards from us, and having laid it on its little bed, as the poor woman thought, in safety, she took her seat near the entrance of the cave. A mortar-shell came rushing through the air, and fell upon the cave, and bursting in the ground entered the cave; a fragment of the shell mashed the head of the little sleeper, crushing out the young life, and leaving the distracted mother to pierce the heavens with her cries of agony.”

How blightingly the hand of war lay upon that once flourishing city! The closed and desolate houses, the gardens with open gates, and the poor, starving mules, standing amid the flowers, picking off every green leaf, to allay their hunger, presented a sad picture.

I will give the following quotation as a specimen of cave life in Vicksburg: “I was sitting near the entrance of my cave about five o’clock in the afternoon, when the bombardment commenced more furiously than usual, the shells falling thickly around us, causing vast columns of earth to fly upward, mingled with smoke. As usual, I was uncertain whether to remain within, or to run out. As the rocking and trembling of the earth was distinctly felt, and the explosions alarmingly near, I stood within the mouth of the cave ready to make my escape, should one chance to fall above our domicile.

“In my anxiety I was startled by the shouts of the servants, and a most fearful jar and rocking of the earth, followed by a deafening explosion, such as I had never heard before. The cave filled instantly with smoke and dust. I stood there, with a tingling, prickling sensation in my head, hands and feet, and with confused brain. Yet alive! was the first glad thought that came to me—child, servants, all here, and saved!

“I stepped out and found a group of persons before my cave, looking anxiously for me, and lying all around were freshly-torn rose bushes, arborvitÆ trees, large clods of earth, splinters, and pieces of plank.

“A mortar-shell had struck the corner of the cave; fortunately, so near the brow of the hill, that it had gone obliquely into the earth, exploding as it went, breaking large masses from the side of the hill—tearing away the fence, the shrubbery and flowers—sweeping all like an avalanche down near the entrance of my poor refuge.

“On another occasion I sat reading in safety, I imagined, when the unmistakable whirring of Parrott shells told us that the battery we so much dreaded had opened from the entrenchments. I ran to the entrance to call the servants in. Immediately after they entered a shell struck the earth a few feet from the entrance, burying itself without exploding.

“A man came in, much frightened, and asked permission to remain until the danger was over. He had been there but a short time when a Parrott shell came whirling in at the entrance and fell in the center of the cave before us, and lay there, the fuse still smoking.“Our eyes were fastened upon that terrible missile of death as by the fascination of a serpent, while we expected every moment that the terrific explosion would take place. I pressed my child closer to my heart and drew nearer the wall. Our fate seemed certain—our doom was sealed.

“Just at this dreadful moment, George, a negro boy, rushed forward, seized the shell, and threw it into the street, then ran swiftly in the opposite direction.

“Fortunately the fuse became extinguished and the shell fell harmless to the ground, and is still looked upon as a monument of terror.”