Under Siege! (18 page)

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

R
esponding 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.

P
EMBERTON 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 soldiers 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.”