Under Siege! (19 page)

Just as Pemberton had suspected, having Vicksburg officially surrender on the Fourth of July pleased the Union officers. And they were sympathetic to Pemberton’s request that the Confederate soldiers not be sent to prison.
Every
soldier dreaded the prisons, both North and South. Besides, transporting 30,000 men to prisons in the North would tie up trains, boats, and wagons needed elsewhere in the war effort.

Grant decided to offer Pemberton’s men parole—which required them to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States government and state that they would not fight again. He knew the risk was that they would go join Joe Johnston, but he believed that most of these battle-weary men would just go home. Though he might draw criticism in the North for being this generous, he had respect for these defenders of Vicksburg. He didn’t want to humiliate them. He also felt that they would be better citizens once the war was over if he treated them with some consideration now.

That evening, Grant sent Pemberton his final terms, which included the offer of parole. Then he waited for a reply. Fred was with his father. “I remained in the tent, sitting on my little cot, and feeling restless, but scarcely knowing why. Father sat at his writing table.” Fred tried to be quiet as his father “began to write very hard, and with great interest in what he was writing.” The minutes ticked by. When Fred thought he could stand it no longer, “at last there came an orderly with a dispatch.”

Fred held his breath. He watched as his father “opened it, gave a sigh of relief, and said calmly, ‘Vicksburg has surrendered.’ I was thus the first to hear the news officially, announcing the fall of the Gibraltar of America, and, filled with enthusiasm, I ran out to spread the glad tidings. Officers rapidly assembled and there was a general rejoicing.”

The forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg was over.

I
N
V
ICKSBURG ITSELF
that evening of July 3, a Confederate officer stopped by the Lords’ cave and told the family that General Bowen had gone to see Grant that day. Margaret Lord reported that everyone felt sick with anxiety and dread.

That same evening, Lucy, who knew nothing of what was happening, feared that the Yankees were preparing to storm the city. What else could the guns’ silence mean? Mosquitoes whined in the hot, muggy darkness. Lucy wrote, “All was quiet. People could be seen walking around, concluding that the silence meant dreadful things on the morrow.”

To her surprise, she saw her father, who had steadfastly refused to leave the family home, coming toward them. “We were all sitting outside the cave, twilight approaching, when Father came in sight,” Lucy remembered. “Mother thought Father had decided to die with his family the next day, for everybody thought that General Grant would make the effort of his life to take the city on the 4th. Father came to mother, looking sad, with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘You can all come home for a night’s rest. General Pemberton has surrendered, and General Grant will enter the city in the morning.’”

And so, Lucy said, “We went home.”

D
R.
L
ORD WAS OUT AND ABOUT
in the city the next morning when he learned the news. He returned quickly to his family’s cave.
Mrs. Lord recalled that he was “pale as death and with such a look of agony on his face as I would wish never to see again.” He told her, “Maggie, take the children home directly. The town is surrendered, and the Yankee army will enter at ten o’clock.”

“I was speechless with grief,” Mrs. Lord said. “No one spoke, even the poor children were silent, [and] all the weary way home I wept incessantly, meeting first one group of soldiers and then another, many of them with tears streaming down their faces.”

The family had not left the area around their cave for weeks. As they walked home, they looked at the defeated town—at the craters in the streets, the torn-up sidewalks, flattened shrubbery and gardens, broken windows, and badly damaged or destroyed homes and businesses. Spent shells covered the ground. They were glad to see that the grand courthouse had suffered little damage, perhaps because captured Union officers had been held prisoner there, and when word of this had reached Admiral Porter, he made certain his cannon avoided it.

Finally the Lords made it to their home. Willie’s mother never forgot it. “Such a scene of desolation you can hardly imagine … every room in the house injured and scarcely a window left whole.”

More bad news awaited the family. They soon learned that everything they had stored at the Flowers plantation outside Vicksburg—furniture, other valuables, and Dr. Lord’s vast collection of books—was lost. Willie reflected that had their possessions been stored in the church cellar, they probably would have been all right. Instead, one of Flowers’ slaves later told the family how camp followers broke into the house and destroyed everything they couldn’t carry with them. As for Dr. Lord’s treasured books—Homer, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, and more—a sad fate had befallen them.

“A huge plantation wagon was loaded with my father’s invaluable library … and the contents were scattered upon the muddy road between the Flowers plantation and the Big Black River, so that for a mile and a half, as we were told, one might have walked on books.”

When Rebel soldiers surrendered their arms, Union soldiers watched respectfully.

A
T TEN O
’
CLOCK
on the morning of July 4, 1863, Confederate soldiers lined up, saluted the Confederate flag, and laid down their guns. Union soldiers, flush with victory, could have jeered. But none did. They stood by their trenches in silence, watching the thin, worn-out Rebels who had fought well and suffered gravely. Then one of the Northern boys started to clap. A few others joined in, and then more and more, until all up and down the line could be heard clapping, and then shouting, in recognition of a brave foe. At the tops of their voices, the boys in blue cheered themselves hoarse for the boys in gray. Breaking line, they came over to shake hands and to press food upon these defenders of Vicksburg who were enemies no more.

I
N TOWN
, in front of their damaged home, Lucy and her brothers and parents watched the Confederate soldiers gathering for the formal surrender. Lucy wrote, “How sad was the spectacle that met our gaze; arms stacked in the center on the streets; men with tearful eyes and downcast faces walking here and there; men sitting in groups feeling that they would gladly have given their life-blood on the battlefield rather than hand over the guns and sabers so dear to them!”

Lucy watched as “the drummer-boy of a Tennessee regiment, rather than give up his drum, gave it to my brother, but it was very soon taken away from him … The instruments of the band of the Tennessee regiment were stacked in the middle of the street. Men looked so forlorn, some without any shoes, some with tattered garments, yet they would have fought on.”

Like everyone in Vicksburg, she knew the town could not have held out much longer. Still, she reported, “men felt very bitterly toward General Pemberton because they were so determined that the place should not be taken on the Fourth and never dreamed that a surrender was ever thought of.”

In 1865, when this photograph was taken, the Stars and Stripes had been flying over the Vicksburg courthouse for nearly two years, a painful sight for many in the city.

As townspeople watched, most from behind the curtains of their homes, they saw several units of Grant’s army march into town accompanied by a band playing Northern patriotic songs. In her badly damaged house, Willie’s mother reported, “You can imagine our feelings when the US Army entered, their banners flying and their hateful tunes sounding in our ears … You may be sure none of us raised our eyes to see the flag of the enemy in the place where our own had so proudly and defiantly waved so long.”

The Union soldiers had waited for this moment when they would see their flag flying atop the grand courthouse. As they watched the Stars and Stripes replace the Confederate flag, they stood at attention and saluted with pride.

Then, just as the men who fought in the trenches had done, Union soldiers broke line and shared whatever they had with the Confederates. Grant arrived in the city a short time later and observed, “Our men had had full rations from the time the siege commenced, to the close. The enemy had been suffering, particularly towards the last. I myself saw our men taking bread from their haversacks, and giving it to the enemy they had so recently been engaged in starving out. It was accepted with … thanks.”