DANGEROUS DAYS
Early June 1863

For the people inside the besieged city, each new day brought only one goal: survival. Emma Balfour wrote in her diary, “After passing a bad night from the bursting of bombs around us, we were roused this morning by the whistling of parrott shells and I assure you we dressed hurriedly. They came so thick and fast that it seemed a miracle that none came in the windows or against the house.” Another day she wrote, “The most fearful cannonading commenced from the lines. I never saw anything like it. People were running in every direction to find a place of safety. The shells fell literally like hail.”

Like other Vicksburg residents, the Balfours cared for sick and injured soldiers. Almost every home became a hospital. Tents were put up alongside the actual hospitals to house even more patients. Mary Loughborough sent what food she could to recuperating soldiers. She had close calls of her own. During one heavy bombardment, a huge shell landed just outside her cave, “rocking the earth, followed by a deafening explosion, such as I had never heard before. The cave filled instantly with powder, smoke and dust. I stood with a tingling, prickling sensation in my head, hands and feet, and with a confused brain. Yet alive! Child, servants, all here, and saved!”

When a live shell rolled into the cave, only the quick action of one of the slaves, who picked it up and threw it outside, kept them from being killed. After that, Mary’s husband found her a new cave very near the front lines. Ironically, there was less danger there than in the city, where there had already been many injuries and several deaths. Mary felt the weight of all this. “How very sad this life in Vicksburg! How little security can we feel,” she wrote, “with so many around us seeing the morning light that will never more see the night!”

This painting by the noted artist Howard Pyle shows the danger when shells fell on Vicksburg.

Along with other children living in the caves, Lucy had to learn to make the best of her situation. But the close calls were always frightening, especially in the caves. She experienced several incidents when “the shot fell thick and fast. We sat, or stood, under the ground, looking at one another in speechless fear … thinking that each moment would be our last. When we could look out upon the daylight it was with thankful hearts that we had been spared through that battle.” During lulls in the shelling, she and her brothers entertained themselves by playing cards, making up games, and reading books. Some children collected spent shells, cartridges, and minié balls. School had been disrupted by all the troubles, but during the long days in the caves, some children kept up their lessons.

Out and about in the city each day, Dr. Lord had several close calls. He knew to stand perfectly still when he heard an incoming shell and let it go on over him. But one day he was with an acquaintance when they both heard that distinct sound. According to Willie, in spite of his father’s warnings, the other man began to run. He had made it only a few yards, “when the shell exploded directly in his path, leaving him a mangled corpse by the roadside, while my father stood unharmed.”

Dr. Lord also witnessed a highly unusual accident. As Willie related, “The victim … stood holding an officer’s horse … [when a] ball struck [his] head from his shoulders and left the headless trunk, still holding the reins of the horse and standing as erect and soldier-like as when alive. The noiseless cannonball had so quietly done its deadly work that the horse took no alarm, but stood as still as the corpse that held it. In a moment the men on the street rushed to the spot, and the horse then reared in fright and the body fell to the pavement. To my father it seemed an almost interminable length of time that the dead soldier held the living horse, whereas in reality it was a matter of a few seconds.” Willie said his father would never forget the horror of that incident.

A small girl was struck by a bullet but was not seriously injured. A physician removed the bullet and, according to Willie, a clever soldier recovering in the hospital carved it into a miniature set of knives and forks, “to the girl’s infinite pride and delight.”

Willie himself suffered a close call. He bent to pick up something and at that very moment a minié ball flew past him, “so near the top of my head as to stir my hair.” Willie never forgot “that I had narrowly escaped death.” He kept the unexploded shell as a souvenir.

And Lucy was almost killed when she and her mother were in the tent outside their cave entrance. Her mother was brushing Lucy’s hair when they heard a shell coming toward them. “Get in the cave!” Lucy’s mother cried. Lucy recalled, “She did get in, but I had only time to jump into a small hole we children had dug out in the side of the hill when a piece of the shell came down into the tent, demolishing the washstand by which we had stood. I felt the heat as it came down. Mother’s face, white with anxiety for me, peeped out from the cave door. There I sat, stunned with fear.”

One day an officer told Mrs. McRae that firing would be heavy around their cave and he thought they would be safer near the front lines under cover of the hills. Lucy’s mother decided they should go. “So,” reported Lucy, “up came the tent, a large basket was quickly packed with the meager stock of provisions, and away we went across Glass Bayou Bridge, climbing the hill on the other side of the bridge late in the evening, and traveling the road just behind our batteries, where all along were dug trenches for our soldiers to fight behind. This was a very dangerous route by daylight, but under cover of night we felt safe.”

They pitched their tent near other residents also seeking safety and went to sleep. Just before daylight they were awakened by the thunderous boom of cannon “and before we could think where we were, a cannonball that had spent its force on the side of the hill came rolling into the tent… and in less time than it takes to tell it we were all up and out of the tent. Balls were whizzing, cannon booming from the rear, mortars replying in rapid succession from the front.”

Lucy’s mother called out orders. “Rice! Take that tent up and let us go to town!” Rice replied, “Yes, Ma’am,” and set to work “while the shot were falling around. An officer whom Mother knew rushed up and cried, ‘Mrs. McRae, keep close under the bank, and don’t take the road until you are obliged to.’ He afterward said he never expected us to reach town.”

Lucy would never forget that treacherous journey to reach safety and the fear that stalked every moment of it. “On we came,” she remembered, “jumping behind trees, fences, or into trenches, shells exploding above us, scattering their pieces around us. We children were crying, Mother praying, all running between the shells … trying to reach Glass Bayou Bridge … Rice had dropped the tent and Mary Ann the lunch basket, and as we came to the bridge a mortar shell exploded at the other end. We all fell to the ground, and when we got to our feet again not a word was spoken except ‘Run!’ and we did run. Mother had me by the hand pulling me, while my brothers were close by us.”

Finally reaching safety, they collapsed, both exhausted and thankful.

AS THE SIEGE WORE ON, food supplies dwindled. There was still water in the city’s cisterns, but only enough for cooking and drinking, with none to spare for bathing or washing clothes. Residents went weeks without changing clothes, their skin grimy with the dirt from the caves and the residue from all the explosions. At night they huddled in darkness underground, stuffed together, sweltering from the heat and humidity, enduring mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, and other biting insects, fearful of snakes and lizards, suffering temporary deafness from the thunderous explosions, their nerves frayed from fear. Each day houses and businesses burned or were pounded into rubble. Deep craters created by the shelling dotted the landscape. Hospitals overflowed, and those who could do so assisted the Sisters of Mercy in nursing patients.

Yet in spite of how bad the situation was becoming, when several citizens started a petition to get Pemberton to ask Grant for a truce so women and children could leave the city, only those few who proposed it would sign it. Others felt strongly that this was their city and this was their cause and they were in this fight to the finish.

Every day, everyone looked hopefully to the east, straining to hear the sounds of Joe Johnston corning to their rescue. Though persistent rumors said he would appear any moment leading 100,000 Rebel troops ready to fight, try as they might, nobody in Vicksburg could hear anything.