The pinch of the siege soon began to be felt. On May 28 another lady of Vicksburg (of Union sympathy) wrote in her diary:

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‘I am so tired of corn-bread, which I never liked, that I eat it with tears in my eyes…. I send five dollars to market each morning and it buys a small piece of mule-meat. Rice and milk is my main food; I can’t eat the mule meat.’

The siege was carried on with increasing intensity until surrender of the doomed fortress on July 4. Jubilantly, Seth J. Wells, Company K, 17th Illinois Regiment, wrote:

‘Hail Columbia, Happy Land! Vicksburg is ours! General rejoicing along the line. Gen. Grant and his cavalry are to go in, and capitulation commences. Thus ends one of the most brilliant campaigns the world has known since the days of Austerlitz. No one but Napoleon has equalled it. It has resulted in the complete destruction of the Rebel army at Vicksburg. They have lost without doubt about forty thousand men. The boys are beginning to think Grant is a Napoleon.

‘We passed a number of Confeds. They are as good a looking set of Reb. Troops as we have seen. Most of them are glad they have surrendered. Only a few look sober and sullen.’

Mrs. Lord, naturally, had different reactions:

‘…About _ past 8 o’clock, before I was dressed, Mr. Lord came into the cave, pale as death and with such a look of agony on his face, as I would wish never o see again, and said ‘Maggie, take the children home directly; the town is surrendered, and the Yankee army will enter at 10 o’clock.’ Judge my feelings, even now, after two years of trial and disappointed hopes, the tears will come and my heart sinks within me with sorrow. I was speechless with grief, no one spoke, even the poor children were silent…. As I started up the hill…the tears began to flow 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….

‘You can imagine our feelings when the U. S. army entered, their banners flying and their hateful tunes sounding in our ears. Every house was closed and every house filled with weeping inmates and mourning hearts. 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 so defiantly waved so long.’

Chauncey H. Cooke, 24th Wisconsin Infantry, wrote in a letter to his brother:

‘The late battles won by the Army of the Potomac, along with the victory over Pemberton here at Vicksburg somehow makes us boys feel that the end of the war is near…. Pemberton had nearly 30 thousand. All surrendered to Grant on the 4th of this month. And they were glad to be prisoners and paroled to go to their homes. They cursed the war….’

One Vicksburg lady, although Unionist in sentiment had compassion for the Confederates as she penned:

‘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 panopoly of war. Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of those marching columns; and the heart turned with throbs of added pity to the worn men in gray, who were being blindly dashed against this embodiment of modern power.’

But Mrs. Lord confided sorrowfully:

‘…How sad those two weeks were to see our brave soldiers without arms, paroled and passing sadly out of the place they had so long and so bravely defended. To feel for ourselves that the time had come when honor and duty required that we should leave the happy home and kind friends of 12 years and go out, saddened and homeless with our five children.’

Together with Gettysburg, Vicksburg sounded the death knell of the Confederacy. When Port Hudson surrendered on July 9 the South was cut in half and the Mississippi River was opened to commerce. Grant’s army thus was freed for further operations.

This article originally appeared in the July 1962 issue of Civil War Times Illustrated.

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