Under Siege! (13 page)

G
RANT 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.

F
INALLY
G
RANT 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 storming 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

A
s 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.

This house, behind Union lines and badly damaged by shells, belonged to the Shirley family, who were Union sympathizers. Soldiers who camped in the yard created dugouts for shelter.

The Lord family soon found out that their home could not protect them. Willie’s sister Lida reported that while the family was eating dinner, “a bombshell burst into the very center of the dining room, blowing out the roof and one side, crushing the well-spread table like an eggshell, and making a great yawning hole in the floor, into which disappeared our supper, china, and furniture.”

Margaret Lord did not want to live in a cave, but after this incident her husband insisted. The family moved into a large communal cave that had been dug all the way through a hill. People could enter on one street
and exit onto another. Off the long hallway was a series of rooms, each with an outside entrance. Willie compared this layout to the prongs of a garden rake. He said there were many outside entrances so if “any one of them should collapse, escape could be made through the inner cave and its other branches.” Entrances also gave fresh air, for the caves were otherwise hot and airless. Each of the rooms provided quarters for a family. The only privacy came from hanging blankets or setting up screens. Some house slaves slept in their family’s quarters, while others slept near the entrances, as did soldiers recuperating from injuries. The rest of the hallway became a “commons.” In this space, Willie said, “children played while their mothers sewed by candlelight or gossiped, and men fresh from trench or hospital gave news of the troubled outside world to spellbound listeners.”

Townspeople tried to make their caves comfortable. Sometimes prayer helped ease worry and fear.

This cave, one of the largest in Vicksburg, was only one of an estimated 500 that dotted the city by the second week of the siege. There were so many caves that Union soldiers jokingly referred to the city as Prairie
Dog Town. Some caves were very small—just a dugout where people huddled for protection. Some had clusters of rooms and were elaborately decorated with carpets, mirrors, furniture, and beds. Townspeople brought their pillows and favorite quilts, musical instruments, china, and silver, and they hung pictures and built shelves to hold treasured photos, beloved books, and knickknacks or vases of flowers from their home gardens. Planks were laid on the ground to create flooring. Doorways were framed with wood, and walls were covered with rugs, pictures, or even wallpaper to give an illusion of cleanliness.