USA > Texas > A comprehensive history of Texas, 1685-1897 > Part 24
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amid such novel and exciting scenes. Pickets were thrown out to guard against surprise, and food, water, and ammunition distributed along the trenches. Repairs were made in the earthworks where needed, so far as it was possible to do so, and five or six smooth-bore muskets, with plenty of buck-and-ball cartridges, were dis- tributed to each man. The next day passed with the same exciting seenes, and with preparations for the expected assault. At peep of day on the morning of the 2Ist a signal-gun is heard from the hill near General Grant's head-quarters, and in a moment the whole line of the enemy, seven miles long, bursts forth in one con- tinuous blaze with a tremendous roar. The earth quakes and the hills tremble for an hour or more beneath this fearful eannonading. After daylight, the infantry join the infernal chorus, and lend their rattle, and whiz, and whir to the tumult. The day wears away with some terrific artillery duels, and many guns. are dismounted ; but the Texans have become accustomed to the fearful din, and, grown tired of long- range rifle practice, so they occupy their time with games, and with chopping into slugs the Minie-balls shot into the breastworks by the enemy, with which to load their smooth-bore muskets and return them to their owners. Late in the evening the morning's revelry of eannonading is repeated, and after an hour or two the din dies gradually away and leaves the night's entertainment to the sullen roar of the mortar batteries on the river-side and the random firing of the siege-guns on the land-side.
The morning of the 22d dawned bright and clear, and the Texans having become more accustomed to the unwonted noise, rose refreshed by the night's rest in the trenches, ready and anxious for the fray. An ominous silence pervaded the entire lines. The curling smoke from the enemy's camp-fires could be seen rising far and near in a semicircle around the beleaguered city, and just as the sun rises upon the peaceful scene the signal-gun again wakes the echoes of battle, and the whole line of the enemy, from the Mississippi River on its left to the bluffs of the Yazoo on its right, is instantly one continuous semicircle of fire. The awful roar from this blazing crescent is deafening, and the fearful concussion throws many men off their feet. The din and roar cease as suddenly as it had begun, and an ominous and death-like stillness pervades the scene of the late tumult. Many eyes are peering over the breastworks to see what it means. Every man stands to his place with one gun in his hand and five others leaning against the breastworks within easy reach. Every eye is strained to catch the first view of the advancing hosts, and every muscle is set with the rigidity of steel. Presently the cry is heard from many lips, "There they are! here they come!" and, as if by magic, a line of blue bursts into view over the brow of the hill not over a hundred yards away ; and as it advances at double-quick with bayonets at the charge it is quickly followed by four others in double ranks. It was certainly the most superb spectacle that the eye of a soldier ever beheld. Their step is firm, their bearing erect and confident ; their faces beam with determination, and their eyes glisten with the anticipation of certain victory.
When the front line was within fifty yards of the trenches, and while the cry of "Vicksburg or hell!" was upon their lips, the order, "Fire!"' ran down the trenches, and the report of the answering volley was as of one gun. Without looking to see what execution had been done, each man drops his empty piece and
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TEXAN TROOPS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.
takes the loaded guns nearest him, one after another, and fires as rapidly as nimble fingers and experienced hands can bring them to bear, and the firing thus continues for several seconds. There is no wavering in the front line of the enemy ; it is absolutely mowed down as with a scythe,-utterly annihilated. Those following stagger and reel under the deadly fire of the Texans ; then they break and run from the top of the hill, some to the rear and some to the right and left, staggering and falling as they run, seeking protection in the gullies on either side. A shout of victory, a regular Texas yell, makes the welkin ring, and runs around the entire line. One lone man is seen approaching the trenches in a run, with the United States flag in his hand. Not less than a hundred men take deliberate aim at him. some of them firing two or three times, but he does not falter. A shout is heard from many lips, "Don't shoot him ! he is too brave! don't kill him ; let's capture him alive!"' and the firing ceases ; the color-bearer mounts the breastworks to the right of the fort, and the colors of the Ninety-ninth Illinois Regiment are taken from his hand by a member of the Second Texas and waved in triumph at the enemy."
The field being now cleared in front of the Texans, it could be seen that the enemy had made a lodgement on the outside of a fort some four hundred yards to the right, just on the Jackson Railroad, and had planted three stands of colors on it. The Texans in the fort and riffe-pits now turned their attention to some very effective rifle practice at the enemy there, and as their advanced position enabled then to cover the entire front and left of the captured fort, it was not long until those of the enemy who were exposed to the unerring aim of the Texans moved around to the right of the fort or tumbled into the ditch below. It was not more than an hour, however, until a portion of Waul's Texas Legion advanced from the reserve and recaptured the fort, with a number of prisoners, throwing ropes over the flag-staffs in regular Texas cow-boy style and drawing in the colors which the enemy had planted on the parapets.
A view of the field in front of the Texans revealed a saddening sight. Upon the ground occupied by the foremost line of the enemy when the first volley of the Texans was fired lay two rows of dead and desperately wounded men, almost as perfect in alignment as in life, but a short while before, as they gallantly advanced to the assault ; and from there on back to the brow of the hill the ground was literally covered with dead and disabled men.
Most of this carnage was committed with the rifles and muskets of the Texans, for but one cannon in the fort was used against the assaulting columns, the other having been dismounted before the assault was made. The losses among the Texans were not great, but several were killed and wounded in the fort during the bombardment before the assault, and, as there was no opportunity for removing them, the men in many places stood astride of their dead and wounded comrades in the narrow ditch while defending against the assault.
A small body of the enemy had got into the ditch outside the fort occupied by a portion of the Second Texas, and tried to scale the parapet, but every one of them who attempted it was killed, and they soon abandoned the effort and began to
' The name of the color-bearer of the Ninety-ninth Illinois Regiment was Thomas J. Higgins, and Charles I. Evans, corporal of Company G. Second Texas Regiment, took the flag from his hand as he mounted the breastworks.
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throw hand-grenades into the fort. The Texans immediately caught on to this game, and threw them back before they exploded, and the explosion usually took place about the time they fell back into the ditch, with very disastrous effect among those who had set them in motion. They very soon became tired of the game, and sadly repented having suggested it, for as soon as they quit it, the Texans, having a quantity of six-pounder shells in the fort, began preparing thein with very short fuses and throwing them over in the ditch with deadly effect. The men in the ditch soon called for quarter and begged piteously for their lives, when the slaughter was suspended. But they could not get out of the ditch, so they remained prisoners there until night, when the living, dead, and wounded were all brought out.
Until about five o'clock that evening the rifle practice at long range was spirited, and the artillery kept up a desultory firing. At that hour the enemy were seen to be again massed in large numbers for an assault. The advancing line was soon discovered at different points, but the assault was not general like the one in the morning. It seemed as if the enemy had picked out several different places as weak points, one of which was the fort occupied by the Second Texas, to hurl themselves against these. This time there was only a slight demonstration in front and on the right of the fort occupied by the Texans, but on its left, and on the rifle-pits occupied by the left companies of the regiment, the assault was most per- sistent and determined. Immediately following the charging lines of infantry, one field-gun of the Chicago Mercantile Battery was run by hand up the ravine to the left of the fort, and, when within about fifty yards of it, commenced a rapid fire at the top of the parapet and into the embrasures. The gun was most skilfully handled, and did the fastest firing ever known. The embrasures had been filled up with cotton-bales, and they were knocked out almost as fast as they could be rolled back. At the same time a perfect shower of Minie-balls was skimming the top of the parapet so closely as to prevent a head from appearing above it ; and as they glanced upon the cotton-bales cach one picked off a small piece, and the fort was so thickly filled with cotton floating on the air as to obscure the vision for any con- siderable distance. Quantities of this cotton caught fire, and it required the greatest care to prevent its communicating to the ammunition-chests. The enemy were repulsed in front of the rifle-pits in gallant style and with fearful slaughter, but this seemed to drive the survivors back into the head of the gully, or ravine, on the left of the fort, and from this cover they made their way into the cut in the road which wound around the left side of the fort. Here they soon massed in large numbers and threatened the fear of the fort. At this juncture, just at twilight, a portion of Company B in the rifle-pit on the right of the fort was ordered into the fort to reinforce it, and Colonel Smith called out from the fort for some of the men on the extreme right to run to the deep cut in the road at the rear of the fort. Immediately some fifteen or twenty men from Company G rushed over the hill and around the rear of the fort into the cut, where they poured an unerring fire from behind some cotton-bales into the confused, struggling mass of the enemy. Those of the enemy in front were falling and crying for quarter, while their comrades were pushing them on from the rear in a vain endeavor to get into the rear of the fort. While this handful of Texans in the road, assisted by their comrades in the fort,
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TEXAN TROOPS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.
were pouring a deadly fire into this body of the enemy, General Martin Green with a brigade marched out between the road and the rifle-pits of the left companies of the Second Texas, attacked the enemy on the right flank with great vigor, and they surrendered just after dark. This closed the carnage of the day.
The guns of the Texans had set fire to the cotton-bales in the road, from behind which they fired on the enemy, and by the time the attack by General Green was made, the whole scene was lighted up by the bright flames of the burning cotton, and the fierce conflict between the enemy and those Missourians and Louisianans under General Green presented a grand and brilliant spectacle from the elevated position of the Texans. The Second Texas lost seventeen men, killed in the fort, and several wounded, but the loss in the trenches was very small.
The night was spent in repairing the works, replenishing ammunition, and cleaning up arms. Another large cannon was brought into the fort to replace the one which had been disabled in the morning, and all necessary preparations were made for a renewal of the conflict the next day. The enemy were remarkably quiet all night ; the only reminders of their presence were the regular periodic roar of the mortars on the river-side and the rising shell as seen by the lighted fuse as it poised in the air and exploded with terrific sound above the city, or crashed through houses as it descended to the earth, and the moans of the brave men who lay dying but a few feet away.
No further attempt was made by the enemy to carry the works by assault, but they sat down to a regular siege. Morning and evening there was a regular serenade of all arms. Throughout each day the crack of the sharp-shooter's rifle, with an occasional volley of musketry, was heard ; and all night long, as regular as a clock could tick the minutes, the roar of the mortars sent forth their immense shells, and the rising and falling of the twinkling fuses and the terrific explosions in the air lighted up the midnight gloom. But the incidents of each day were exciting and kept the nerves strung to the highest tension, and each to-morrow was looked forward to for a renewal of the assault.
As each day passed, the moans of the enemy's wounded became more distress- ing, but they also became fewer in numbers, because, from lack of attention, most of the wounded had died. Every day the Texans would call out to the Union soldiers to come and carry off their wounded comrades and give them proper atten- tion, assuring them that they would not be fired on, but they heeded not the appeal. They even offered to go out on the field and bring them inside themselves, if assured that they would not be fired on, but this was refused ; and they fired at the Texans whenever they discovered them on the field at night, trying to relieve the sufferings of the Union wounded. Two days after the assault, the groans of a wounded man lying in the head of a ravine about forty yards in front of the trenches became so loud and piteous as he begged for water, that a young man in the Second Texas proposed to go out to him with food and water, if his captain would permit him. With the acquiescence of his captain, he mounted the breast- works with a canteen of water and a haversack in one hand, and waved his handker- chief to the enemy. They cried, "Come on !" and the Texan advanced to the ravine where the wounded man lay, and handed him the food and water, for which he was very grateful. He talked with him a few minutes, and ascertained that he
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was a lieutenant in the Eighth Indiana Regiment, and that his thigh was broken. The Texan bade him good-by and started to return to the trenches, when nearly every Union soldier who could see him fired at him. His clothes were cut in many places, but not a shot broke the skin.
As the days passed, the scene in front became more ghastly. The bodies of the dead swelled to an enormous size, and their skins turned black as they lay in the hot sun. The stench from the decomposing bodies became so intolerable as to make many of the living sick. Every day it was expected that General Grant would ask for a truce to bury his dead, but the request never came. At last, on the morning of the 25th, General Pemberton tendered to General Grant a cessation of hostilities long enough for him to bury his dead and carry off the wounded. By this time there were but few of the latter. The offer was accepted, and at six o'clock that evening the enemy's details appeared upon the field for this purpose. The soldiers of the two contending armies mixed freely for about two hours, and those of the Northern army were unstinted in their abuse of " Grant the Butcher," as they termed their commander, for his inhumanity. They were anxious to find out how many men the Confederates had in Vicksburg, and in reply to the oft-repeated question some of the Texans would answer, " A million ;" another, "A thousand ;" and one man put the question at rest by assuring his interlocutor that he had taken the trouble to count them all that morning, and that there were exactly nineteen hundred and twenty.
The next day the enemy were quiet, but after this the same routine was gone through every day : a bombardment of all arms in the early morning and late in the evening, regular and spirited rifle practice all day, and the roar and whiz and burst- ing of the mortar-shells all night. The enemy, however, were not idle. They had details at work day and night digging tunnels under the hills so as to reach a point directly underneath the Texans, at which to plant a mine and blow them up. On account of the peculiarity of the soil the strokes of their picks could be plainly heard and their location fixed pretty accurately, and the Texans went to work counter- mining. By digging the ditch around their fort about fifteen or twenty feet deep they were enabled to capture the enemy's miners when they emerged from their tun- nels into the ditch. In this manner the fort was amply protected. One diversion was furnished by the enemy rolling large bundles of green poles, ten or twelve feet long, five feet high, and bound together with wire, up the hill in front of the Texans, with sharp-shooters behind them, to pick off every man who showed his head above the breastworks, and others to dig a trench behind the roller as they pushed it along. These furnished occasion for some spirited and deadly rifle practice ; but at night a small body of Texans would make a sortie on the enemy, destroy their rollers, and sometimes capture the men behind them. Another diversion was fur- nished by the enemy placing a field battery of light artillery about two or three hundred yards from the rifle-pits to the right of the fort, the guns of which, after about an hour's practice, were so trained with small charges of powder as to throw six-pounder shells against the hill-side in front of the breastworks in such a manner as to make them ricochet and fall into the trenches. They were immediately picked up by the Texans and thrown back over the breastworks, but it required very rapid handling to get them out before they exploded. After one man had been killed and
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one or two wounded, the Texans provided buckets of water at regular intervals, and as soon as a shell struck the ground it was seized by the nearest man and soused into the water. This effectually prevented any more explosions, and no other damage was done by these shells ; but it was amusing to see how much the men were entertained with watching and catching these dangerous missiles.
In a short time provisions began to grow scarce. The Texans were put upon half rations, and after a while their rations were reduced to bread made of cornmeal mixed with meal of ground peas. This was varied with bread made of ground rice mixed with wheat flour.
The beef soon gave out, and their only dependence for fresh meat was the tough, stringy flesh of the traditional army mule. Sugar and tobacco were the only things of which they had an abundance, and in these they fairly revelled. There was at no time any absolute suffering for the want of food, but the rations were greatly reduced, and of very inferior quality. It may be that the short rations were better for the health of the men, cramped up in the ditches as they were, with very little exercise. Day after day the bombardment continued, and almost every day some of the Texans were killed or wounded. Every day the rifle practice was spirited, and if a man's head was raised above the breastworks but a second, a dozen or more Minié-balls would come whizzing at it. Many devices were resorted to for drawing the enemy's fire, to find out his exact location, and then to fire on him while his gun was empty. One of these was for a man to place his hat on the end of his ramrod and raise it slowly and cautiously above the works, while several others at various points wide apart would be on the lookout with their guns ready, and pour a terrific and accurate fire into the enemy as soon as their hiding-places were discovered by firing at the hat.
Before the city was invested, a number of the residents left to escape the horrors of the expected siege, but a great many remained. Of these, quite a number left their comfortable homes and moved into caves dug in the hill-sides for greater safety against the shot and shells of the besieging army. Much has been published con- cerning the trials and hardships of these " cave-dwellers," and it is not likely that they have been exaggerated. Many buildings, public and private, were destroyed, and a number of non-combatants were killed and wounded. The hospitals seem to have been a favorite target for the heavy artillery of the besiegers, and the City Hospital, situated on the outskirts, suffered severely. A number of wounded men and several attendants were killed.
A surgeon, his assistant, and a wounded soldier were all killed one day by the same shell, while the former two were engaged in amputating the latter's limb, and two nurses were wounded at the same time. One night a mortar-shell from the river batteries penetrated the building from roof to basement, and exploded in the ground underneath with such terrific force as to hurl some dozen or more men from their cots to the floor ; and many of the wounded were removed by their friends from this hospital into tents in other parts of the city. The courage, devotion, and patriotism displayed by the noble ladies of Vicksburg during the siege have never been surpassed by anything in history. At all hours of the day and night they were constant visitors at the hospitals, serving as volunteer nurses, administering soothing potions, or with their delicate hands washing and dressing the ugly wounds
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of the heroes who had stood between them and a desolating foe in defence of a cause for which both were willing to sacrifice their lives and all save sacred honor. They never entered without bringing such delicacies as they could command ; and cheering smiles and words of hope and encouragement radiated from their very presence. When they departed, they carried with them many blessings and the devotion of many chivalric hearts. They would walk the streets on their errands of mercy, with shells from the land batteries screaming in every direction and the fearful roar of the mortar-shells overhead, with as much unconcern as if on a shop- ping expedition. When a man heard the dreadful roar of a mortar-shell overhead, he was sure to look up to see if it was going to descend upon him, and try to dodge it ; but a woman was always observed to quietly make her way, without seeming to notice the threatening presence of the dreaded monster.
At last the day for the surrender of the garrison arrived. For forty-seven days and nights these heroic men had been exposed to burning suns, drenching rains, damp fogs, and heavy dews, and during all this period they never had, by day or night, the slightest relief. They were on duty all the time, confined to the narrow limits of a trench, with their limbs eramped and swollen, without exercise, constantly exposed to a murderous fire of shot and shell, while the enemy's unerring sharp-shooters stood ready to pick off every one whose head appeared above the breastworks.
Many had met death with a smile upon their lips, all had cheerfully encountered danger, and without a murmur had been borne privations and hardships well cal- culated to test their manhood. They had made a heroic defence. They had held the place for seven weeks against an enemy five times their number, who were admirably clothed and fed and abundantly supplied with all the appliances of war.
Whenever the foe attempted an assault, they drove him back discomfited, covering the ground with his killed and wounded. There was no prospect of relief, nothing was to be gained by further resistance, and the Confederate commander wisely concluded to capitulate.
At ten o'clock on the morning of July 4, 1863, the Confederate army marched out of the trenches, stacked arms, then returned to the rear, and bivouacked in the valleys and upon the hill-sides, while detachments of the victorious army marched in. The Confederates remained prisoners here until the rith, when the ceremony of paroling them was completed and they were permitted to depart. During this time General Grant ordered rations to be issued to them from his own stores, and they were not stinted in the supply.
Nearly all of the regiment made their way back to Texas with their paroles in their pockets ; but a few went with the balance of the ariny into parole camp at Demopolis, Alabama. The regimental flag was not surrendered, but a member of Company B secreted it on his person and carried it out. He gave it for safe-keep- ing to a lady near Snyder's Bluff, who is said to have buried it. What finally became of it is wrapped in mystery ; but some of the men claim that the same old flag was with the regiment after its exchange and reorganization in Texas. If so, it must have been dug up and brought to Texas by some one, but by whom is unknown. In the fall of 1863, after the Vicksburg prisoners had been exchanged, the regiment was reorganized at Houston, and served on the coast in Texas until
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