Under Siege! (2 page)

Was the enemy out there somewhere? Would
this
be the day that Yankee gunboats steamed into view to attack her town?

But she saw only the usual river traffic—barges, flatboats, a sailing ship or two. Had the Yankees realized they could never silence the guns at Vicksburg?

No one believed that. Sooner or later, everyone said, the enemy would be back.

Though Lucy could view the river from the second-floor porch of her home in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on a clear day she could see for fifty miles from the top of Sky Parlor Hill. This was the favored spot of well-to-do residents who lived in nearby homes high in the hills of this very hilly river town, and some of Lucy’s neighbors were usually there. Everyone was watchful these days. When the weather was warm, the climb up the steep wooden steps to the top of the hill was punishing for ladies wearing tight corsets and high-button shoes, and carrying silk parasols to keep the strong
sun from darkening their delicate skin. But they still came. On winter days like today, with a cold early December wind blowing off the river, they wore capes and gloves. Even with a hat over her blond curls, Lucy could hear the rustling of their silk skirts atop layers of petticoats.

Since she attended the all-girls academy in town, it was usually later in the day before she could get to the hill. Sometimes her brothers Colin, who was fourteen, and Fulton, twelve, were there when she arrived. Both boys were excited about the war and planned to join the Confederate army just as soon as their parents allowed it. Lucy’s two oldest brothers, Allen and John, both in their early twenties, were already in the army. Fortunately, John was stationed right here at Vicksburg. But Allen’s regiment was far away in Virginia. The family worried all the time about him. One of these days they might have to worry about John as well.

Lucy McRae.

Many in Vicksburg had mixed feelings about the war—some were even pro-Union—but out of loyalty to their families and community they supported the Confederacy. Mississippi had been the second state to secede. When the war had started in the summer of 1861, nobody had thought it would last more than a month or two. Southerners agreed that the North needed to be taught a lesson, and the South would do it swiftly and surely. Gradually, however, it became clear that this would be a long struggle, and that much of it would be fought on Southern soil. Now, in December 1862, Yankee bluecoats were steadily moving into Mississippi from the north. Their stated objective was to capture Vicksburg and silence the cannon guarding the Mississippi River, keeping it from Union control. Lucy knew that her little city was of such strategic importance that sooner or later the Yankees would attack.

E
ARLY
L
AST
A
PRIL
, townspeople had seen firsthand the awful consequences of war. Rebel troops had bravely fought the Yankees at the bloody two-day battle of Shiloh in southwestern Tennessee, but had been defeated by the Union generals Ulysses Grant and William T. Sherman. The next day, trains rolled into Vicksburg, their cars spilling over with badly wounded Rebel soldiers. Townspeople helped the Catholic Sisters of Mercy care for the survivors at Vicksburg’s two hospitals and also helped bury the dead. Families like Lucy’s, confronted with the realities of the battlefield, now worried even more about their own boys. Lucy had not been allowed to see the wounded soldiers, but she had heard townspeople talking about how young they were—some even younger than her brothers—and she saw the fear in her parents’ eyes.

Before the war, life in Vicksburg had been quite pleasant for the McRae family. For anyone traveling on the Mississippi River, a first glimpse of this city was always an impressive sight. The town’s hills and bluffs rose 200 feet in the air. The majestic courthouse and even some of the elegant homes high in the hills were visible from the water. With 5,000 residents, Vicksburg was the second largest city in Mississippi. Lucy described it as “a place of education, culture, and luxury.” There were several opulent hotels, an opera house, fine grocery stores, six newspapers, and several private educational academies. The new courthouse, built by slave labor, had been completed just two years earlier, and its impressive dome, said to be the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, dominated the skyline.

Though the North had imposed a blockade on Southern ports after the start of the war, preventing the arrival of foreign merchandise, townspeople still had their choice of banks, pharmacies, tailors, shoe stores, liquor stores, and gunsmith shops. Dressmakers and the millinery shop were open for business. The candy store still had treats, and the bookstore was still stocked with books—just not the latest offerings from publishers in New York or London.

Travelers along the river were always impressed by their first glimpse of Vicksburg and the magnificent courthouse high in its hills.

Lucy’s father was a prosperous businessman. Lucy was the youngest of William and Indiana McRae’s five children and the only girl. She admitted that she was spoiled. When she went downtown with her mother to shop, the contrast between her life and the lives of poor children in the city was apparent. As Rice, the family’s house slave, carefully eased their horse-drawn carriage down the steep streets, Lucy saw the dilapidated homes of children too poor to go to school. Most of them could not read or write and had to work at whatever menial jobs they could find, earning only pennies a day. Near the river, Lucy saw seedy hotels and cotton warehouses. Sailors and dockworkers milled about, and the air smelled of coal smoke and tar.

Before the war, steamboats landed at the docks several times a day, releasing a colorful stew of passengers—gamblers, businessmen, and families traveling the river between Memphis, 200 miles to the north, and New
Orleans, 200 miles to the south. Now the Yankees controlled those two ports, and, though there was still river traffic, there were no more steamboats going back and forth to those cities.

Before the blockade, Vicksburg was a busy riverport. During the blockade, the cost of basic staples like sugar, salt, and coffee soared.

Since the start of the war, Lucy had gotten used to the sight of the cannon that stood guard on the bluffs and on the waterfront to protect the river from the Yankees. And anywhere she went, she saw soldiers. More were arriving all the time. There were now 10,000 Confederate troops stationed around the perimeter of Vicksburg to safeguard the city and its guns. The Mississippi River was vital to the Southern cause. It started in Minnesota and flowed 2,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, and the North now controlled all of it but this small section at Vicksburg. If Federal troops could seize control of Vicksburg, they could split the South down the middle,
into an eastern half and a western half. The Mississippi River would become their highway, giving them a direct route to invade the Deep South.

This 1863 map shows Vicksburg’s location on the Mississippi River, the hairpin curve just north of the city, and the location of the Confederate batteries along the bluffs and shoreline.

When planning strategy with his generals, President Abraham Lincoln had said, “Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket. We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg.” It was only a question of how and when the North’s all-out assault would occur.

Vicksburg intended to be ready. Because of its location, reaching it would be a challenge for the enemy, for it was surrounded by swamps, ravines, and steep gullies. The river was the more obvious path of invasion, but it flooded in hard rains and its currents were treacherous to navigate. If enemy boats came from the north, they had to slow down just before reaching Vicksburg to negotiate a hairpin curve in the river. This made them easier targets for the huge cannon on the bluffs and the smaller cannon along the waterfront—a total of forty big guns in all.

Still, the Yankees had tried, and would try again.

N
O ONE IN
V
ICKSBURG
would forget their first attempt. One day the previous May, several gunboats had steamed into view and dropped anchor. A delegation of Union officers climbed into a small boat. Waving a white flag so no one would open fire on them, they handed over a demand that the city surrender. From Vicksburg had come the reply, “Mississippians don’t know and refuse to learn how to surrender. If the
Federal commanders think they can teach [us] otherwise, let them come and try.”