Under Siege! (11 page)

A
LL THAT NIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE
, Pemberton’s defeated soldiers retreated toward Vicksburg. When they got to the Big Black River bridge, twelve miles from the city, most of the army crossed on over. Because the hour was so late, the last 5,000 men, exhausted from their grueling day of battle, bedded down next to the river and slept behind a barricade of cotton bales. Many of them were injured, and all of them were demoralized. They were startled awake early the next morning to cries of alarm. As they pulled themselves to their feet, they learned that the Yankees had pursued them and were preparing to attack.

With their backs to the river, 5,000 Rebels faced 17,000 Federals. Suddenly, without waiting for anyone else, one of Grant’s officers gave the signal for his division to advance, and 1,500 Yankee bluecoats, their bayonets ready, surged forward across a field and through the waist-high water of a bayou, then charged directly into the Confederate lines.

The mayhem lasted only three minutes. Overwhelmed, the retreating Rebels swarmed across the Big Black’s bridge. Those who could not get to the bridge tried to swim the river, and many drowned. Another 1,700 were killed or captured before the Confederates could finally set fire to the bridge to stop the Yankee pursuit.

Fred was there and saw it all. When the Union troops charged the Confederate line, he recalled, “I became enthused with the spirit of the
occasion, galloped across a cotton field, and went over the enemy’s works with our men.”

Fred was thrilled. The Confederates were in retreat. They were on the run! But at that very moment, as he savored this victory, his luck ran out. “Following the retreating Confederates to the Big Black, I was watching some of them swim the river,” he recalled, “when a sharpshooter on the opposite bank fired at me and hit me in the leg.”

With a cry of shock and pain, Fred fell to the ground. His leg was bleeding. Was this how his life would end? Bleeding to death on a battlefield? A moment later, one of Grant’s aides “came dashing up and asked what was the matter. I promptly said, ‘I am killed!’ Perhaps because I was only a boy, the colonel presumed to doubt my word and said, ‘Move your toes,’ which I did with success.

“He then recommended our hasty retreat. This we accomplished in good order.”

P
EMBERTON
’
S BEATEN ARMY
struggled back to Vicksburg with less than half of the 22,000 soldiers that had set out days earlier to meet the Yankees. At the Big Black River, Grant and Sherman put part of their men to work constructing three temporary bridges to replace the bridge the Confederates had burned. Other soldiers foraged for food and looted homes in the area. Sherman stopped to drink water from a well near a log cabin and learned that the property belonged to Jefferson Davis. The house had been plundered by his troops, and Sherman found a book on the ground that was a copy of the United States Constitution. It would become a prized souvenir, for he noticed to his amazement that on the title page was written the name of the owner: Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.

That night, when the bridges were complete, Grant’s army began to move across the river. Sherman, an amateur artist, viewed the scene with a
painter’s eye. He wrote, “After dark, the whole scene was lit up with fires of pitch-pine. General Grant joined me there, as we sat on a log, looking at the passage of the troops by the lights of those fires; the bridge swayed to and fro under the passing feet, and made a fine war picture.”

Fred’s leg was attended to by a physician who removed the bullet and dressed the wound. Fred knew such an injury could be fatal if it became infected. The next day, he was still shaken from his experience and in pain from the wound, but he rode with his father and Sherman all the way to the bluffs north of Vicksburg. In the distance they could see the Mississippi River.

Grant felt Vicksburg was as good as taken. Very quickly he would silence the guns along the water, and the great Mississippi River would be completely in Federal hands. How could anyone doubt it? He had successfully transported his army south of Vicksburg. In the last eighteen days he had marched his men 200 miles into enemy territory and won five battles:

After Confederates burned the bridge over the Big Black River, Sherman’s engineers constructed a pontoon bridge similar to this one on the James River in Virginia.

Grant’s successes at Champion’s Hill and the Big Black River put him in position to attack Vicksburg only eighteen days after getting his army onto Mississippi soil.

Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, Raymond, Champion’s Hill, and the Big Black. He had defeated Pemberton, badly damaging and demoralizing the Rebel army.

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

T
he 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.”