The first time I read about Vicksburg’s role in the Civil War, I was amazed to learn that this American city had been under siege for forty-seven days. What happened at Vicksburg was not only important to the outcome of the war—it was also a great human story, for inside that besieged city were 5,000 townspeople, including an estimated 1,000 children.
I am interested in the Civil War, in part because my great-grandfather, John Wesley Forest, fought in it. He was a Yankee from Vermont, and thankfully he was not injured. Though he could not have known it at the time, the war he participated in would be the pivotal event in the history of America, determining whether we would become one country or two. Amazingly, perhaps miraculously, we managed to emerge as one.
But the price paid by both sides was appalling, and it wasn’t just soldiers like my great-grandfather who paid it. Civilians often sacrificed as much or more. Families lost their soldier fathers, uncles, and brothers who died from injury and disease. In the South, where much of the war was fought, countless people lost their homes and businesses and were plunged into poverty. Wherever there was fighting, civilians were in danger, and many died. In the forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg, everyone, including the children, endured tremendous hardships. To escape the shells raining down on them day and night, many lived in caves. Starvation threatened to kill them if the explosions did not.
I have always had a special interest in the stories of children in war because my adopted daughter was orphaned by the Vietnam War. In tribute to her and to all children caught up in the chaos of war, I wanted to tell the story of Vicksburg, as much as possible, through the eyes of children who were there. You will meet three of them: Lucy McRae, the ten-year-old daughter of a well-to-do Vicksburg merchant; Willie Lord, the eleven-year-old son of an Episcopal minister; and Frederick Grant, the twelve-year-old son of the Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, who was with his father during much of the Vicksburg campaign. Lucy and Willie endured hunger, fear, desperation, and brushes with death. Fred saw the horrors of war firsthand, suffering from illness and a bullet wound.
All three wrote or spoke about their experiences. Lucy said, “Although I was only a little girl, many striking incidents were indelibly impressed upon my mind. I have often had the question asked me, ‘How do you remember so much about the siege?’ My answer is that, being shut up in the place, living in a cave under the ground for six weeks…I do not think a child could have passed through what I did and have forgotten it.”
I wish all three children had told us more about themselves, or that I could travel back in time to talk to them, for I have many unanswered questions. I have supplemented their testimony with information from others who were present during the campaign for Vicksburg—townspeople, and soldiers and generals from both sides. I went to Vicksburg and interviewed local experts about what life was like for children back then. I walked where Lucy, Willie, Fred, and all the others in this story walked. I explored the military park and experienced the intense Mississippi summer weather and wondered how they did it—how the Northerners, in their heavy wool uniforms, endured the sweltering heat and humidity of the swamps and bogs, and how the Southerners, terrorized by the shelling and with food supplies dwindling, survived at all.
You are about to be transported back to 1862 and 1863, to a little city on the banks of the Mississippi River. What happened there, what the armies of the North and South, the townspeople and children, experienced there, helped determine the course of the war and the shape of what we have become today: an imperfect, often racist, freedom-loving nation, but with one government, one constitution, and one flag—the United States of America.
As shown in this 1862 drawing, Vicksburg was a prosperous little city on the banks of the Mississippi River (far right).
