Other than saying of McClernand’s departure that “not an officer or soldier here but rejoices he is gone away,” Sherman had little time to think about anything but the campaign at hand. Worried about reports that the elusive and skillful Joseph E. Johnston was leading an army of thirty thousand toward Vicksburg from the east, Grant ordered Sherman to ready himself to move out immediately toward the Big Black River. Feeling that Sherman was the best man to find Johnston and oppose him, he used characteristically concise instructions: “You will go and command the entire force.” To Admiral Porter, Grant wrote of Johnston, as if he could see it happening, “I have given all the necessary orders to meet him twenty-five miles out, Sherman commanding.”
Grant knew that Sherman had hoped to take part in a final victorious entry into the city, riding in at the head of his troops and perhaps becoming for a time the military governor of Vicksburg, as he had been of Memphis. Disappointed, Sherman would write Ellen, “I did hope Grant would have given me Vicksburg and let some one else follow up the enemy inland.” But he obeyed without discussion and headed out with thirty-four thousand men. (Describing the closeness of his relationship with Grant, Sherman wrote his brother John that “with him I am as a second self. We are personal and official friends.”)
As Sherman moved his force through the countryside, seeking to find and engage Johnston, Grant expressed the strength of his support for him in a letter he wrote on June 23. Grant referred to troops he had with him at a place “Near Vicksburg” and others at nearby Young’s Point, and listed the units he had ready to reinforce Sherman if he should need them, closing with, “Use all the forces indicated above as you deem most advantageous, and should more be required, call on me and they will be furnished to the last man here and at Young’s Point.”
The shortage of food caused by the siege began to take its toll on Vicksburg’s defenders. Meat sold as beef was described in one account as “very often oxen killed by the enemy’s shells, and picked up by the butchers.” A bitter Vicksburg resident invented a fictional “Hotel de Vicksburg” and wrote out a bill of fare that began with Mule Tail Soup, offered Mule Rump Stuffed with Rice as a roast, and included among its entrées Mule Spare Ribs Plain and Mule Liver Hashed. Sergeant William H. Tunnard of the Third Louisiana Infantry, entrenched in the besieged city, recorded this in his regimental history: “How the other troops felt, we know not, but the boys of the Third Regiment were always hungry.” Soon dogs and cats began disappearing; the city’s stoic citizens and soldiers made jokes about “What’s become of Fido?” but no one doubted the animals’ fate. While Vicksburg was running out of food, hundreds of tons of ammunition were available.
As the Union forces pushed nearer the town’s defenses, constantly digging trenches that snaked toward the enemy positions, the proximity of the two armies produced both sniping at closer range and occasional impromptu truces. In places, the Union and Confederate soldiers were so near each other that, although they kept their heads down, they needed only to raise their voices slightly to communicate across the narrowing no-man’s-land. Blackberry bushes grew in profusion between the opposing trenches; the troops of both sides suffered from diarrhea and knew that blackberries helped to cure it, so quick conferences produced agreements that allowed men from both sides to go out and pick the berries.
One hot June day, after hours of desultory sniping, a private of the Eleventh Wisconsin said to his comrades, “I’m going down into the ravine and shake hands with them Rebs!” and he did just that. More men from both sides came out, shaking hands with their enemies, until hundreds of men were milling about in the no-man’s-land of this ravine. They talked about everything: how hot it was, the kind of illnesses they had, what they thought of their generals. Union soldiers traded rations of coffee for Confederate tobacco. Farmboys swapped knives and chatted about their hometowns, and some soldiers even pulled out tintypes of their wives and sweethearts to show to men who had been shooting at them an hour before. A young Confederate, talking with some Wisconsin boys, suddenly blurted out, “I want to see my ma,” and went off to sit by himself on a fallen tree trunk.
A Union officer came walking into the middle of this friendly gathering and began berating the men of both sides for all this fraternization. The young men fell silent, said good-bye to one another, slowly walked back up the slopes to their respective trenches, and soon began shooting at one another again.
While the siege continued, with Sherman maneuvering to the east and finding that the wily Johnston had no intention of fighting his superior force unless he could catch the Union regiments by surprise, Grant dealt with a variety of matters at his headquarters. On June 25, he wrote to Lorenzo Thomas in Washington, asking for the speedy assignment of Ely S. Parker to his army as an assistant adjutant general. “I am personally acquainted with Mr. Parker,” Grant said, “and think [him] eminently qualified for the position. He is a full blooded Indian but highly qualified and very accomplished. He is a Civil Engineer of conciderable [sic] eminence and served the Government some years in superintending the building of Marine Hospitals and Custom Houses on the upper Miss. river.”
Parker was duly assigned to Grant and quickly proved to be one of the ablest members of his staff. A thirty-five-year-old Seneca who had been educated at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Parker had at first been rejected by the army because he was not a white man. The recommendation from Grant, who had known Parker when he worked on projects at Galena, brought him into Grant’s “military family” as a captain, and he stayed with Grant through all that lay ahead.
Unknown to Grant, at just this time something extraordinary occurred in Kentucky. In parts of that state, Confederate raiders moved about periodically and unpredictably. Julia Grant’s sister Emma, who had first met Grant thirty years before, when, “pretty as a doll,” young Lieutenant Grant rode into the yard at White Haven to call on the Dent family, was now living near Caseyville, Kentucky, close to the Ohio River. She was the wife of James F. Casey, who in the custom of the day she always referred to as “Mr. Casey.” Emma described the situation in her area in these terms: “There were a good many bands of guerrillas prowling about the country at this time, as well as several other bands of irregular Confederate soldiers, but, as they never molested us, we were scarcely aware of their presence.”
Grant’s son Fred, who had been with him during much of the Vicksburg siege, had begun feeling sick, and to improve his health Grant had sent him north from Mississippi to Kentucky to stay for a week or more at Emma’s house. She said of her thirteen-year-old nephew, “He was very fond of us, and we of him.” On a morning when Fred rode into nearby Caseyville with his uncle, Emma recounted what happened:
A man dressed in the tattered uniform of a Confederate officer rode into the yard and [after dismounting] asked me for a drink of water. I gave it to him, and as he lifted the cup to his lips he said, casually:
“I guess Fred Grant is visiting you, isn’t he?”
Instantly a cold suspicion struck me like a dart through the heart, and I answered him as casually as he had questioned me:
“Why, no.”
“OH!” he said. “Isn’t he?”
“No, he’s gone.”
“Gone, has he? Is that so?” He looked at me with a smile slowly breaking out over his face. “Surely, he has,” he said again, as if speaking to himself. Then he remounted his horse, took off his hat, made me a sweeping bow, and rode away. I did not lose a moment, but as quick as one of the horses could be caught out of the pasture, I put a black boy on his back and sent him to find my husband. I sent Mr. Casey word to put Fred on a coal boat and get him down the river to Cairo as fast as ever he could. I also suggested that if he could communicate with a gunboat on the river it might be very well.
Later, Emma reported:
A squad of eight hard-riding, grim-looking, and tattered cavalrymen rode up to the gate. One of them, heavily armed, and looking as fierce as a Greek bandit, came up to the porch.
“Is this Mr. Casey’s?” he asked, politely. I told him that it was.
“Isn’t there a boy visiting here?”
“No, he has gone back to his mother, at Cairo.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And I think there is likely to be some gunboats coming up the river very shortly, looking for some one. Perhaps you gentlemen will be interested in seeing them.”
The fierce-looking bandit laughed pleasantly, said that it was a nice day, and rejoined his companions at the gate. They talked in low voices for a while, then sprang on their horses and rode away.
As Emma put it, had they captured Fred, “It is mere speculation to consider what effect this might have had on the cause of the Union.” What needs no speculation is what Grant thought later in the war, when he was presented with a plan to abduct Jefferson Davis and bring him north as a prisoner. Grant cut off the discussion with the observation that he and his men were not kidnappers.
Inside Vicksburg, on June 28, Confederate general Pemberton received a letter that was signed, “Many Soldiers.” Down to a quarter of their normal rations a day—and in some units there was less than that to eat—his men told him, “If you can’t feed us, you had better surrender, horrible as the idea is, than suffer this noble army to disgrace themselves by desertion … This army is now ripe for mutiny, unless it can be fed.” Pemberton could see that, strong as the besieging Union forces were, hunger was even stronger and that he would probably soon have to surrender to both that and Grant.
The following day, in a letter to Julia, Grant, whom the Caseys had not told about his son’s near capture, wrote her that “Fred. Has returned from his uncle[’]s. He does not look very well but is not willing to go back until Vicksburg falls.” Grant added that Joseph E. Johnston was “still hovering beyond the Black River.” Johnston faced a painful choice. As things stood, if he did not act, the city’s defense seemed certain to collapse. If he took the risk of fighting Sherman’s larger numbers in an effort to break through to Vicksburg, he might be defeated in the area east of the city. Then Vicksburg would have to surrender in any case, and Johnston would lose additional thousands of his own men who could otherwise be used in future campaigns. Grant told Julia that he thought Johnston would feel compelled to advance and fight Sherman, but that, either way, Vicksburg would have to surrender within a week. With his often uncanny sense of a military situation, he told Julia that “Saturday or Sunday next [July 4 or July 5] I set for the fall of Vicksburg.” As usual, he closed his letter with, “Kiss the children for me. Ulys.”
At ten in the morning of July 3, white flags began appearing along the crest of Vicksburg’s fortified slopes. Confederate major general John Bowen came riding out of the Confederate lines, sent by Pemberton and accompanied by one of Pemberton’s staff. Taken to Union headquarters, Bowen handed one of Grant’s staff a letter to Grant in which Pemberton said that he wanted to arrange “terms for the capitulation of Vicksburg.” Grant soon composed a letter in which he told Pemberton that there would be no discussion of terms other than unconditional surrender. He did, however, add, “Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg, will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you will always be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war.” Bowen asked to speak directly with Grant but was told that if Pemberton wanted to meet Grant face-to-face, he was welcome to come out of Vicksburg for that purpose “at any hour in the afternoon which Pemberton might appoint.”
At three that afternoon, Pemberton, along with Bowen and several other officers, rode out to meet with Grant. They found him standing on a slope near their entrenchments, accompanied by a number of Union officers. His son Fred and Charles Dana were also there. With Sherman still absent while he blocked Johnston from making any last-minute advance, the next officer in seniority to Grant was Sherman’s fellow corps commander, young Major General James B. McPherson. For a time it appeared that there could be no agreement on accepting or softening Grant’s “unconditional surrender” statement and that the fighting would resume. Dana noted that “Pemberton was much excited, and was impatient in his answers to Grant.” Then Bowen suggested that he and McPherson try to talk things through between themselves.
What happened next was ironic: during a formal, intense half-hour session, Bowen and McPherson got nowhere, while Grant and Pemberton stood under a stunted oak tree and exchanged reminiscences about their experiences in the Mexican War. By the time Bowen and McPherson came back and grimly announced that they could find no grounds for a mutually acceptable mode of surrender, Grant informed them that he would have something worked out by ten o’clock that night that might satisfy both Pemberton and himself. The two groups parted, Pemberton going back into the besieged city and Grant returning to his headquarters.
The problem involved not the fact of surrender but whether these more than thirty thousand Confederate soldiers were to be sent to prison camps in the North or be paroled. Pemberton wanted his men to be paroled and, as a matter of honor, be allowed to march out of Vicksburg with their flags flying, before laying down their arms. In the strict sense, this would not be the “unconditional surrender” first insisted upon by Grant, but that evening Grant sent a letter to Pemberton agreeing to these conditions and sat in his tent awaiting an answer. Grant had decided to parole the enemy troops because it would immediately free all the men and ships at his command to continue combat operations rather than having to furnish guards and transportation to take the multitude of defeated Confederates to prison camps.
In Grant’s tent that night, young Fred later wrote that he was “sitting on my little cot, and feeling restless, but scarcely knowing why.” He went on:
Presently a messenger handed father a note. He 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.
At ten in the morning of the Fourth of July, 1863, ending the forty-seven-day siege, Pemberton had the Confederate Stars and Bars lowered from the highest point in Vicksburg’s defenses, and at his command the Stars and Stripes was raised. White flags appeared everywhere along the enemy entrenchments. The hungry, tattered Confederate regiments came marching out as if on parade, muskets on their shoulders, with their bands playing and battle flags flying. They halted, and the men laid down their weapons, in some places stacking them right on the parapets of Union trenches that had been dug forward to within a few yards of the defensive slopes. Quietly watching this, Grant observed of his own men, “Not a cheer went up, not a remark was made that would cause pain.” Union troops moved forward among the disarmed Confederates to give them food and share their kettles of coffee. A soldier from Wisconsin later said, “It was good to see them eat … We could never remember anything that gave us greater pleasure than the eagerness of the rebels to get a drink of coffee … [Later, that night,] many of us did not sleep at all, talking with the prisoners.”
As the day of surrender continued, the dimensions of the victory became even clearer. Grant said, “At Vicksburg, 31,600 prisoners were surrendered, together with 172 cannon, about 60,000 muskets and a large amount of ammunition.” As a result of reports that groups of Union soldiers had entered the city without authorization and were looting it, the Forty-fifth Illinois was ordered to be the first unit of its division to march in, set up advance headquarters at the courthouse, and begin to impose order on everyone.
Inside the city, Lida Lord, the young daughter of the minister of Christ Episcopal Church, a man who was also chaplain of the First Mississippi Brigade, came out of the cave in which she and her mother and brothers and sisters had stayed for safety during the siege. They encountered some disarmed Confederates who apparently had been sent back into the city to await the formalities of signing their paroles.
> We met group after group of soldiers and stopped to shake hands with them all. We were crying like babies, while tears ran down their dusty cheeks, and eyes that had fearlessly looked into the cannon’s mouth fell before our heartbroken glances.
“Ladies, we would have fought for you forever. Nothing but starvation whipped us,” muttered the poor fellows, and one man told us that he had [to avoid surrendering it] wrapped his torn battle-flag around his body under his clothes.
A Southern woman who had endured the siege, watching for nearly two months the daily deterioration of the soldiers and civilians in Vicksburg, saw the Union soldiers march in. “What a contrast to the suffering creatures we had seen so long were these stalwart, well-fed men, so splendidly set up and accoutered. Sleek horses, polished arms, bright plumes—this was the pride and panoply of war. Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of these marching feet.”
Colonel Robert S. Bevier, a lawyer from Russellville, Kentucky, who was serving with the First Missouri Confederate Brigade, dismissed his surrendered troops and watched the surrender unfold.
Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War Page 23