Under Siege! Read online

  Also by Andrea Warren

  Escape from Saigon:

  How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy

  Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story

  Pioneer Girl: Growing Up on the Prairie

  Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps

  We Rode the Orphan Trains

  BY ANDREA WARREN

  MELANIE KROUPA BOOKS

  FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX

  NEW YORK

  A Note to Readers

  In writing this book I have made every attempt to verify information. My sources include what people wrote about themselves and their experiences, and what others who knew them wrote of them. I also interviewed several experts on the Vicksburg campaign and studied the works of Civil War historians.

  Copyright © 2009 by Andrea Warren

  All rights reserved

  Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Designed by Robbin Gourley

  First edition, 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  www.fsgkidsbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Warren, Andrea.

  Under siege! : three children at the Civil War battle for Vicksburg / by Andrea Warren.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-374-31255-8

  ISBN-10: 0-374-31255-9

  1. Vicksburg (Miss.)—History—Siege, 1863-Juvenile literature. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Children—Juvenile literature. 3. Children—Mississippi—Vicksburg—History—19th century-Juvenile literature. I. Title.

  E475.27.W37 2009

  973.7’344-dc22

  2008001136

  For Jay,

  in loving memory

  “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.”

  —President Abraham Lincoln

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter One War Comes to Vicksburg: December 1862

  Chapter Two The Christmas Eve Ball: December 24, 1862

  Chapter Three The General’s Boy Goes to War: Spring 1863

  Chapter Four Burying the Family Silver: Late Spring 1863

  Chapter Five At the Battle Front: Late Spring 1863

  Chapter Six The Yankees Are Coming! May 1863

  Chapter Seven The Road to Vicksburg: May 15-19, 1863

  Chapter Eight Enemy at the Gates: May 17-25, 1863

  Chapter Nine Into the Caves: Late May and Early June 1863

  Chapter Ten Dangerous Days: Early June 1863

  Chapter Eleven Growing Desperation: Mid June 1863

  Chapter Twelve Empty Stomachs: Late June 1863

  Chapter Thirteen Surrender! July 4, 1863

  Chapter Fourteen The Unfinished War: July 1863 and Beyond

  Afterword

  For More About the Civil War

  Selected Bibliography

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgments

  Illustration Credits

  Index

  This map of the Confederate States, created in 1862, shows how the Mississippi River (shown in white) ran through the center of the Confederacy (the states outlined in dark gray), providing a great water highway. Once the North had seized New Orleans in April 1862 and Memphis two months later, only the guns at Vicksburg kept it from controlling the river. Silencing those guns was key to a Northern victory.

  INTRODUCTION

  The first time I read about Vicksburg’s role in the Civil War, I was amazed to learn that this American city had been under siege for forty-seven days. What happened at Vicksburg was not only important to the outcome of the war—it was also a great human story, for inside that besieged city were 5,000 townspeople, including an estimated 1,000 children.

  I am interested in the Civil War, in part because my great-grandfather, John Wesley Forest, fought in it. He was a Yankee from Vermont, and thankfully he was not injured. Though he could not have known it at the time, the war he participated in would be the pivotal event in the history of America, determining whether we would become one country or two. Amazingly, perhaps miraculously, we managed to emerge as one.

  But the price paid by both sides was appalling, and it wasn’t just soldiers like my great-grandfather who paid it. Civilians often sacrificed as much or more. Families lost their soldier fathers, uncles, and brothers who died from injury and disease. In the South, where much of the war was fought, countless people lost their homes and businesses and were plunged into poverty. Wherever there was fighting, civilians were in danger, and many died. In the forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg, everyone, including the children, endured tremendous hardships. To escape the shells raining down on them day and night, many lived in caves. Starvation threatened to kill them if the explosions did not.

  I have always had a special interest in the stories of children in war because my adopted daughter was orphaned by the Vietnam War. In tribute to her and to all children caught up in the chaos of war, I wanted to tell the story of Vicksburg, as much as possible, through the eyes of children who were there. You will meet three of them: Lucy McRae, the ten-year-old daughter of a well-to-do Vicksburg merchant; Willie Lord, the eleven-year-old son of an Episcopal minister; and Frederick Grant, the twelve-year-old son of the Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, who was with his father during much of the Vicksburg campaign. Lucy and Willie endured hunger, fear, desperation, and brushes with death. Fred saw the horrors of war firsthand, suffering from illness and a bullet wound.

  All three wrote or spoke about their experiences. Lucy said, “Although I was only a little girl, many striking incidents were indelibly impressed upon my mind. I have often had the question asked me, ‘How do you remember so much about the siege?’ My answer is that, being shut up in the place, living in a cave under the ground for six weeks…I do not think a child could have passed through what I did and have forgotten it.”

  I wish all three children had told us more about themselves, or that I could travel back in time to talk to them, for I have many unanswered questions. I have supplemented their testimony with information from others who were present during the campaign for Vicksburg—townspeople, and soldiers and generals from both sides. I went to Vicksburg and interviewed local experts about what life was like for children back then. I walked where Lucy, Willie, Fred, and all the others in this story walked. I explored the military park and experienced the intense Mississippi summer weather and wondered how they did it—how the Northerners, in their heavy wool uniforms, endured the sweltering heat and humidity of the swamps and bogs, and how the Southerners, terrorized by the shelling and with food supplies dwindling, survived at all.

  You are about to be transported back to 1862 and 1863, to a little city on the banks of the Mississippi River. What happened there, what the armies of the North and South, the townspeople and children, experienced there, helped determine the course of the war and the shape of what we have become today: an imperfect, often racist, freedom-loving nation, but with one government, one constitution, and one flag—the United States of America.

  As shown in this 1862 drawing, Vicksburg was a prosperous little city on the banks of the Mississippi River (far right).

  WAR COMES TO VICKSBURG

  December 1862

  From the top of Sky Parlor Hill, ten-year-old Lucy McRae closed one eye and peered through her spyglass at the Mississippi River. She looked as far as she could see in both directions.

  Was the enemy out there somewhere? Would this be t
he 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.

  EARLY LAST APRIL, 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.

  NO ONE IN VICKSBURG 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 Feder
al commanders think they can teach [us] otherwise, let them come and try.”

  The Union officers had been surprised, thinking that once they had their boats in position opposite the town, surrender would quickly follow. But the Confederates knew the Union guns were not powerful enough to damage the Vicksburg cannon. And just as suspected, the gunboats lobbed a few harmless shells at the town and then gave up and went away.

  While townspeople had breathed a sigh of relief, they knew the boats were a warning of what was to come. In preparation, additional Confederate troops arrived to shore up protection of the guns and the city, and more cannon were added to strengthen the artillery batteries on the bluffs and along the waterfront. Some folks boarded up their homes and moved to the country. Most stayed—out of defiance, to protect their property, or because they had nowhere else to go.

  If the Union intended to bombard the city, then townspeople had to find protection. They realized that caves would be the safest place. The Vicksburg soil was soft and easy to dig in, and some people already had caves that they used for storage. The idea of taking shelter in the ground wasn’t appealing—caves were hot, dirty, and full of bugs and snakes. But that was better than being exposed to exploding shells.

  After that first Yankee assault, cave digging began in earnest. People wanted their caves to be as close to their homes as possible so they could get to them quickly. There were so many hills in Vicksburg that it was not hard to find a location. Slaves dug many of the caves that now began to dot the landscape. Most were ordered to do so by their owners, but a few were paid for this task and allowed to keep the money. Joe Davis, the brother of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, owned a plantation near Vicksburg. When there was still steamboat traffic on the river, he had allowed his slaves to sell wood, eggs, and produce from their gardens to the passengers and to keep their meager earnings. But most slaves allowed to work for money earned only enough to make their lives a little easier by purchasing needed food and clothing, for the average slave was both undernourished and poorly dressed. Still, there were rare stories of slaves saving enough money to purchase their own freedom. About fifty freed blacks lived in Vicksburg. Almost all of them had been given freedom by their former masters, and they lived simply, usually doing odd jobs to support themselves. Several had special skills as bricklayers or blacksmiths.