Nurse and Spy in the Union Army

General Grant steadily approached the doomed city by means of saps and mines, and continued to blow up their defenses, until it was evident that another day’s work would complete the capture of the city.

Such was the position of affairs on the third of July, when General Pemberton proposed an armistice and capitulation.

Major General Bowen, of the Confederate army, was the bearer of a despatch to General Grant, under a flag of truce, proposing the surrender of the city, which was as follows:

    Headquarters, Vicksburg,
    July 3d, 1863.

Major General Grant, commanding United States forces:

General – I have the honor to propose to you an armistice for – hours, with a view of arranging terms for the capitulation of Vicksburg. To this end, if agreeable to you, I will appoint three commissioners to meet a like number to be named by yourself, at such place and hour to-day as you may find convenient. I make this proposition to save the farther effusion of blood, which must otherwise be shed to a frightful extent, feeling myself fully able to maintain my position for a yet indefinite period. This communication will be handed to you, under flag of truce, by Major General James Bowen.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

    J. C. PEMBERTON.

To which General Grant replied:

    Headquarters, Department of Tennessee,
    In the Field, near Vicksburg,
    July 3d, 1863.

Lieutenant General J. C. Pemberton, commanding Confederate forces, etc.:

General – Your note of this date, just received, proposes an armistice of several hours for the purpose of arranging terms of capitulation, through commissioners to be appointed, etc. The effusion of blood you propose stopping by this course can be ended at any time you may choose by an unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. 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 be treated with all the respect due them as prisoners of war. I do not favor the proposition of appointing commissioners to arrange terms of capitulation, because I have no other terms than those indicated above.

I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

    U. S. GRANT.

Then the following document was made out by General Grant, and submitted for acceptance:

General – In conformity with the agreement of this afternoon, I will submit the following proposition for the surrender of the city of Vicksburg, public stores, etc. On your accepting the terms proposed, I will march in one division, as a guard, and take possession at eight o’clock to-morrow morning. As soon as paroles can be made out and signed by the officers and men, you will be allowed to march out of our lines, the officers taking with them their regimental clothing, and staff, field and cavalry officers, one horse each. The rank and file will be allowed all their clothing, but no other property. If these conditions are accepted, any amount of rations you may deem necessary can be taken from the stores you now have, and also the necessary cooking utensils for preparing them; thirty wagons also, counting two two-horse or mule teams as one. You will be allowed to transport such articles as cannot be carried along. The same conditions will be allowed to all sick and wounded officers and privates as fast as they become able to travel. The paroles for these latter must be signed, however, whilst officers are present authorized to sign the roll of prisoners.

After some further correspondence on both sides this proposition was accepted, and on the fourth of July the Federals took possession of the city of Vicksburg.

A paragraph from General Grant’s official despatch will best explain the result of his campaign, together with the surrender of Vicksburg: “The defeat of the enemy in five battles outside of Vicksburg, the occupation of Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi, and the capture of Vicksburg and its garrison and munitions of war, a loss to the enemy of thirty-seven thousand prisoners, among whom were fifteen general officers, at least ten thousand killed and wounded, and among the killed Generals Tracy, Tilghman and Green, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stragglers, who can never be collected and organized. Arms and munitions of war for an army of sixty thousand have fallen into our hands, besides a large amount of other public property, consisting of railroads, locomotives, cars, steamboats, cotton, etc., and much was destroyed to prevent our capturing it.”

On the thirteenth of July the President sent an autograph letter to General Grant, of which the following is a copy:

    Executive Mansion, Washington,
    July 13th, 1863.

To Major General Grant:

My Dear General – I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg I thought you should do what you finally did – march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gipson, Grand Gulf and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Banks; and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make a personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong.

    Yours, very truly,
    A. LINCOLN.

It is stated on good authority that at the time the news of Grant’s success reached the President, there were several gentlemen present some of whom had just been informing Mr. Lincoln that there were great complaints against General Grant with regard to his intemperate habits. After reading the telegram announcing the fall of Vicksburg, the President turned to his anxious friends of the temperance question and said:

“So I understand Grant drinks whiskey to excess?”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“What whiskey does he drink?”

“What whiskey?” doubtfully queried his hearers.

“Yes. Is it Bourbon or Monongahela?”

“Why do you ask, Mr. President?”

“Because if it makes him win victories like that at Vicksburg, I will send a demijohn of the same kind to every general in the army.”

It is also stated on the same authority that General Grant is strictly temperate.

His men are almost as much attached to him as are the Army of the Potomac to General McClellan. He is a true soldier, and shares all the hardships with his men, sleeping on the ground in the open air, and eating hard bread and salt pork with as good a grace as any private soldier.

He seldom wears a sword, except when absolutely necessary, and frequently wears a semi-military coat and low crowned hat.

The mistakes which people used to make, when coming to headquarters to see the general, often reminded me of a genuine anecdote which is told of General Richardson, or “Fighting Dick,” as we familiarly called him. It occurred when the troops were encamped near Washington, and was as follows:

The general was sauntering along toward a fort, which was in course of erection not far from headquarters, dressed in his usual uniform for fatigue, namely: citizen’s pants, undress coat, and an old straw hat which had once been white, but was now two or three shades nearer the general’s own complexion.

Along came one of those dashing city staff officers, in white gloves, and trimmed off with gold lace to the very extreme of military regulations. He was in search of General Richardson, but did not know him personally. Reining up his horse some little distance from the general, he shouted: “hallo, old fellow! can you tell me where General Richardson’s headquarters are?”

The general pointed out the tent to him, and the young officer went dashing along, without ever saying “thank you.” The general then turned on his heel and went back to his tent, where he found the officer making a fuss because there was no orderly to hold his horse. Turning to General R., as he came up, he said: “Won’t you hold my horse while I find General R.?” “Oh yes, certainly,” said he.

After hitching the horse to a post near by for that purpose, the general walked into the tent, and, confronting young pomposity, he said in his peculiar twang, “Well, sir, what will you have?”

When the Federal troops marched into Vicksburg, what a heart-sickening sight it presented; the half-famished inhabitants had crawled from their dens and caves in the earth, to find their houses demolished by shell, and all their pleasant places laid waste.

But the appearance of the soldiers as they came from the entrenchments covered with mud and bespattered with the blood of their comrades who had been killed or wounded, would have touched a heart of stone.

The poor horses, and mules, too, were a sad sight, for they had fared even worse than the soldiers – for there was no place of safety for them – not even entrenchments, and they had scarcely anything at all to eat for weeks, except mulberry leaves.

One man, in speaking of the state of affairs in the city, during the siege, said: “The terror of the women and children, their constant screams and wailings over the dead bodies of their friends, mingled as they were with the shrieks of bursting shell, and the pitiful groans of the dying, was enough to appall the stoutest heart.” And others said it was a strange fact that the women could not venture out of their caves a moment without either being killed or wounded, while the men and officers walked or rode about with but little loss of life comparatively.

A lady says: “Sitting in my cave, one evening, I heard the most heart-rending shrieks and groans, and upon making inquiry, I was told that a mother had taken her child into a cave about a hundred yards from us, and having laid it on its little bed, as the poor woman thought, in safety, she took her seat near the entrance of the cave. A mortar-shell came rushing through the air, and fell upon the cave, and bursting in the ground entered the cave; a fragment of the shell mashed the head of the little sleeper, crushing out the young life, and leaving the distracted mother to pierce the heavens with her cries of agony.”

How blightingly the hand of war lay upon that once flourishing city! The closed and desolate houses, the gardens with open gates, and the poor, starving mules, standing amid the flowers, picking off every green leaf, to allay their hunger, presented a sad picture.

I will give the following quotation as a specimen of cave life in Vicksburg: “I was sitting near the entrance of my cave about five o’clock in the afternoon, when the bombardment commenced more furiously than usual, the shells falling thickly around us, causing vast columns of earth to fly upward, mingled with smoke. As usual, I was uncertain whether to remain within, or to run out. As the rocking and trembling of the earth was distinctly felt, and the explosions alarmingly near, I stood within the mouth of the cave ready to make my escape, should one chance to fall above our domicile.

“In my anxiety I was startled by the shouts of the servants, and a most fearful jar and rocking of the earth, followed by a deafening explosion, such as I had never heard before. The cave filled instantly with smoke and dust. I stood there, with a tingling, prickling sensation in my head, hands and feet, and with confused brain. Yet alive! was the first glad thought that came to me – child, servants, all here, and saved!

“I stepped out and found a group of persons before my cave, looking anxiously for me, and lying all around were freshly-torn rose bushes, arborvitæ trees, large clods of earth, splinters, and pieces of plank.