Free Under Siege! by Andrea Warren

to be the ones who opened the Mississippi River for the North.
    Grant decided that the action would start at two o’clock sharp on May 19. It would begin with artillery fire, followed by the order to charge.At that moment, thousands of bluecoats would rush forward, in some places forging through deep ravines, to scale the Confederate entrenchments, their guns blazing as they quickly overwhelmed the defenders. Grant expected little resistance and was so certain of victory that he had already directed his division commanders on how to keep their victorious soldiers under control when the battle was over.

    Vicksburg’s powerful guns.
    Not everyone with Grant was as confident as he. A Union officer preparing to help storm the Confederate lines recorded what they were up against: “A long line of high, rugged, irregular bluffs clearly cut against the sky, crowned with cannon … Lines of heavy rifle pits … ran along the bluffs, connecting fort with fort, and [were] filled with veteran infantry. In front, on the slopes, was a tangle of fallen timber, tree-tops, interlaced to make an almost impenetrable abatis … The approaches to this position were frightful—enough to appall the stoutest heart.”
    A
New York Times
reporter who was with the Union troops was moresuccinct in his assessment, stating that the troops were now attempting to take a mountain.

    O N M AY 19 , the bluecoats were in position. Precisely at two o’clock, commanders throughout the Union line gave the signal and artillery exploded in unison. The bluecoats charged, yelling at the tops of their lungs as they rushed forward. The Rebels were ready for them, and on signal from their own commanders, they fired straight into the Union line. Falling back, stumbling over the injured and dead, Grant’s men tried again and again to storm the Confederate ridge, but each time they were driven back in an explosion of gunfire. Over and over, fresh troops moved forward to take the places of the men who fell.
    Finally, with darkness corning on, Grant called a halt. The assault had failed. Almost a thousand of his men lay dead. One Union regimental flag had been shredded by fifty-five bullets.
    Sherman said simply, “At every point we were repulsed.” But to his wife he wrote, “This is a death struggle and will be terrible.”

    T HE R EBELS WERE JUBILANT and the citizens of Vicksburg cheered in the streets. All afternoon Mary Loughborough and her friends had watched from Sky Parlor Hill and from the cupola of the courthouse. “The excitement was intense in the city,” she wrote. “Groups of people stood on every available position where a view could be obtained of the distant hills, where the jets of white smoke constantly passed out from among the trees … The hills around near the city, and indeed every place that seemed commanding and secure, were covered with anxious spectators-many of them ladies—fearing the result of the afternoon’s conflict.”
    That only 200 Confederate soldiers were killed seemed miraculous,though once again the wounded poured into the city’s hospitals, where doctors, the dedicated Sisters of Mercy, and citizen volunteers cared for them.
    Townspeople understood the significance of the day’s victory for Pemberton and his troops. They became both hopeful and determined, their spirits renewed. But that night they had a taste of what would be required of them. Two Union gunboats moved into range and began to shell the city. They took occasional hits from the Vicksburg cannon on shore but were not damaged enough to stop firing.
    “We ran to the small cave near the house,” Mary said, “and were in it during the night… The caves were plainly becoming a necessity, as some persons had been killed on the street by fragments of shells … I shall never forget my extreme fear during the night, and my utter hopelessness ofever seeing the morning light. Terror stricken, we remained crouched in the cave, while shell after shell followed