After a trench had been started, the Union troops used large sap rollers constructed of cane and other materials to protect the diggers as they worked at the head of the trenches. The rollers were 5 feet in diameter and about 10 feet wide — light enough to be moved forward with relative ease by several men but still impervious to Minié bullets. Sap rollers of solid cane offered excellent protection, but they were too heavy to maneuver. Union troops improvised lighter sap rollers by tying fascines around a gabion, but they usually collapsed under their own weight when sappers attempted to move them. To give the bundle more support, some sap rollers were made with an inner core of cotton bales.

Lieutenant Haines designed a sturdy sap roller that contained a core of two well-braced barrels that he placed head to head with fascines secured around their exteriors. Haines then tied smaller cane bundles between the fascines. Telegraph wire was wrapped around the exterior to hold everything together.

Soft lead bullets could do no damage to Haines’ rollers, so some Confederates stuffed cotton soaked with turpentine in the hollow of their Minié bullets. On a few occasions, those flaming bullets started fires that destroyed rollers.

As the Union saps edged toward the Confederate works, sharpshooters on both sides were given more opportunities to pick off enemy soldiers. In the Union lines opposite the 3rd Louisiana Redan was 2nd Lt. Henry C. Foster of the 22nd Indiana Infantry, a celebrated marksman who wore a distinctive cap of raccoon fur that earned him the nickname Coonskin. Foster would load up with provisions and creep close to the Confederate lines at night, where he would construct a burrow with a peep-hole in it close to the enemy lines. He would stay in his hole for several days at a time, sniping at the Rebels. Coonskin took things a step further when he used railroad ties from the destroyed Jackson & Vicksburg Railroad to construct a tower that gave him a clearer view inside the enemy lines. Using the tower as a sheltered firing platform, Coonskin became a terror to the Confederates.

Despite the deadly atmosphere of the siege and the promise of more violence to come, the pickets of the opposing armies could also be friendly. An Iowa Yankee remarked: The rifle pits of the two armies were now so close that the pickets talked with each other and nightly traded tobacco for coffee. At some places in the lines, the Rebel pickets and the Union guards for the working parties were within 10 yards of each other, and the sentinels agreed not to fire on each other at night. Such a bargain allowed the foes to spend a little time swapping stories and trading for minor necessities. Toward morning, the Union pickets often called out a warning: Going to shoot, Johnny.

In one incredible instance, the two lines of sentinels were so close that the uneven ground caused them to be intermixed. To lessen the confusion, officers from both sides met to discuss how to untangle the mess and where their respective troops should be placed. After the positions of each side were established, the picket lines were peacefully rearranged.

As the network of Union trenches around Vicksburg grew, the style of work the bluecoats performed began to vary. Reveting, protection on the outside of the parapets, and gun platforms depended upon the materials at hand. Although textbook gabions, fascines and plank platforms were common, other areas of the trenches were shored up with rough boards, rails and cotton bales. Gun platforms were made of boards and timber liberated from a nearby house, barn or cotton-gin house. Detached shutters, collars made of wood and sandbags were also used to reinforce the openings around the Union cannons.

Rebel sharpshooters taught the Yankees to keep their heads well below the top of the revetments, but that did not prevent the Union officers from surveying their progress. Late in the siege, Lieutenant Haines reported: I made a novel reconnaissance of the enemy’s ditch this morning, by means of a mirror attached to a pole, being raised above the sap-roller, and a little to the rear, and then inclined forward. A perfect view of the ditch was by this means obtained. At times when the sharpshooting was particularly heavy, the sappers who were working close to the enemy lines considered it too dangerous to revet the trenches. At those dangerous stretches, the work parties dug down a few extra feet to create 6-foot-high walls. When the trenches were near enough for the Confederate defenders to lob hand grenades on the workers, pioneers more hardened to the dangerous work replaced the riflemen.

The Confederate works were too high for even strong-armed Union soldiers to toss grenades over them. To compensate for that inequity, Yankee troops improvised wooden mortars for 6- and 12-pounder shells, which were very effective from 100 to 150 yards.

Eventually, the Union saps reached a point so close to the Confederate works that they were exposed to a constant rain of hand grenades, shells and other explosives from the enemy lines, forcing the Yankees to tunnel underground in order to place explosives beneath the Confederate lines. On June 22, Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, chief engineer of the XVII Army Corps, reported on the digging that had been edging toward the 3rd Louisiana Redan: We reached the rebel fort to-day at 10 o’clock with main trench, and cleared away a place to commence mining operations. Experienced considerable annoyance to-day from rebel hand-grenades thrown among the workmen.

Hickenlooper collected all the XVII Corps men who had previously worked in mines and organized 36 of the strongest and most experienced miners into work parties. On the night of June 22, the miners in the first detail were issued drills, short-handled picks and shovels and set to work.

The dense soil of the Vicksburg region served as an advantage for the Yankee sappers. The compact earth made lining the mining galleries with supports unnecessary, and the troops were able to dig toward the 3rd Louisiana Redan, which the Federals referred to as Fort Hill, with ease. Within two days, the Union miners had burrowed a tunnel 3 feet wide, 4 feet high and 40 feet long. Satisfied that they were somewhere beneath the Confederate works, the Yankee miners began work on branch mines.

The farther they dug, the darker their mine became. The cramped miners also began to detect the deep, dull sound of picks and shovels at work that indicated the Rebels were digging a countermine. It seemed to be above and to the left of a Union gallery. As they worked in the dark, stifling underground chamber that lacked room for a man to stand, the Yankee diggers were petrified that a Rebel sapper might collapse the wall, roof or floor at any moment.

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