front and close to our lines. The dead had become offensive, and the living were suffering fearful agonies. General Pemberton, therefore, under a flag of truce, sent a note to General Grant proposing a cessation of hostilities for two and a half hours, so that the dead and dying men might receive proper attention. This was acceded to by General Grant, andfrom six o’clock until nearly dark both parties were engaged in performing funeral rites and deeds of mercy to the dead and wounded Federal soldiers. On this occasion I met General Sherman for the first time. Naturally, the officers of both armies took advantage of the truce to use their eyes to the best possible advantage. I was on the Jackson road redan, which had been terribly pounded and was the object of constant attention from a battery of heavy guns in its immediate front. The Federáis were running toward it in a zigzag approach, and were already in uncomfortable proximity to it. While standing on the parapet of this work a Federal orderly came up to me and said that General Sherman wished to speak to me. Following the orderly, I reached a group of officers standing some two hundred yards in front of our line. One of these came forward, introduced himself as General Sherman, and said: “I saw that you were an officer by your insignia of rank, and have asked you to meet me, to put into your hands some letters intrusted to me by Northern friends of some of your officers and men. I thought this would be a good opportunity to deliver this mail before it got too old.” To this I replied : “Yes, General, it would have been very old, indeed, if you had kept it until you brought it into Vicksburg yourself.” “So you think, then,” said the general, “I am a very slow mail route.” “Well, rather,” was the reply, “when you have to travel by regular approaches, parallels, and zigzags.” “Yes,” he said, “that is a slow way of getting into a place, but it is a very sure way, and I was determined to deliver those letters sooner or later.”
The general then invited me to take a seat with him on an old log near by, and thus the rest of the time of the truce was spent in pleasant conversation. In the course of it the general remarked: “You have an admirable position for defense here, and you have taken excellent advantage of the ground.” “Yes, General,” I replied, “but it is equally as well adapted to offensive operations, and your engineers have not been slow to discover it.” To this, General Sherman assented. Intentionally or not, his civility certainly prevented me from seeing many other points in our front that I as chief engineer was very anxious to examine.
The truce ended, the sharp-shooters immediately began their work and kept it up until darkness prevented accuracy of aim. Then the pickets of the two armies were posted in front of their respective lines, so near to each other that they whiled away the long hours of the night-watch with social chat. Within our lines the pick and shovel were the weapons of defense until the next morning.
On the night of the 26th, while we were trying to place an obstruction across the swamp between our right and the river, our working party and its support had a sharp engagement with a detachment of Federáis who came to see what we were doing. We captured one hundred of our inquisi-
.
I
I
THE “ BLACKHAWK,” ADMIRAL PORTER’S FLAG-SHIP, VICKSBURG, 1863.
siege the mortar-boats shelled the city and the batteries on the heights. At times the gun-boats joined in the bombardment, notably on May 27, when the Cincinnati was sunk by fire from Fort Hill, and June 20. The navy threw16,000 ׳ shells into the enemy’s lines. Siege-guns, landed from the gun-boats and placed in position in rear of Vicksburg, were manned by naval crews under command of Lieutenants T. O. Selfridgc and J. G. Walker.
INCIDENTS OP THE SIEGE OP VICKSBURG PROM THE CONFEDERATE SIDE.
BY COLONEL S. H. LOCKETT, C. S. A.
Chief engineer of the defenses.
. . . On the 25th the Federal dead and some of their wounded in the fight of the 22d were still in our

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services against the enemy’s vessels at Vicksburg and in the Mississippi and the Red rivers helow. In March two of Farragut’s vessels ran the batteries at Port Hudson, and from that time on the fleets were in communication.
The naval operations directly connected with the attack upon Vicksburg were conducted by Rear-Admiral David D. Porter, of the Mississippi flotilla. On the night of April 16th he ran the Vicksburg batteries with the ironclads Benton,Lafayette, Tuscumbia,Carondelet,Louisville, Mound City, and Pittsburg, and the ram General Price. Thereafter that fleet occupied the river from Vicksburg to Grand Gulf. On the 29th of April It silenced the batteries at Grand Gulf.
28, and opened communication with Davis hy means of Colonel Alfred W. Ellet’s ram fleet, which met Farragut’s vessels above Vicksburg. Davis reached Vicksburg July 1st. Farragut’s fleet dropped down below Vicksburg on the night of the 16th, and Davis retired up the river to Helena. In October Davis was succeeded by David D. Porter, as acting rear-admiral. In November a fleet of gun-boats under Captain Henry Walke entered the Yazoo and cleared it of torpedoes and other obstructions to prepare for Sherman’s operations at Chickasaw Bluffs. Porter led the fleet in person while the vessels engaged the batteries during Sherman’s attack, and also in the attack on Arkansas Post, January 11, 1863. During the winter his gun-hoats operated in the Yazoo, and the ram fleet under young Ellet performed brilliant
After Grant invested Vicksburg on the east, Porter’s upper fleet cleared the Yazoo River of obstructions and destroyed the Confederate navy-yard at Yazoo City, together with unfinished vessels, stores, etc., effectually guarding Grant’s right flank.
During Grant’s assault May 22, the lower fleet bombarded the hill and water batteries, and throughout the
217
river, and that, to gratify their national vanity, they would yield then what could not he extorted from them at any other time.” This does not support my view of his reasons for selecting the day he did for surrendering. But it must be recollected that his first letter asking terms was received about 10 o’clock a. M., July 3d. It then could hardly be expected that it would take 24 hours to effect a surrender. He knew that Johnston was in our rear for the purpose of raising the siege, and he naturally would want to hold out as long as he could. He knew his men would not resist an assault, and one was expected on the 4th. In our interview he told me he had rations enough to hold out some time. My recollection is two weeks. It was this statement that induced me to insert in the terms that he was to draw rations for his men from his own supplies.
On the 3d, as soon as negotiations were commenced, I notified Sherman, and directed him to be ready to take the offensive against Johnston, drive him out of the State, and destroy his army if he could. Steele and Ord were directed at the same time to be in readiness to join Sherman as soon as the surrender took place. Of this Sherman was notified.
I rode into Vicksburg with the troops, and went to the river to exchange congratulations with the navy upon our joint victory. At that time I found that many of the citizens had been living underground. The ridges upon which Vicksburg is built, and those back to the Big Black, are composed of a deep yellow clay, of great tenacity. Where roads and streets are cut through, perpendicular hanks are left, and stand as well as if composed of stone. The magazines of the enemy were made by running passage-ways into this clay at places where there were deep cuts. Many citizens secured places of safety for their families by carving out rooms in these embankments. A door-way in these eases would be cut in a high bank, starting from the level of the road or street, and after running in a few feet a room of the size required was carved out of the clay, the dirt being removed by the doorway. In some instances I saw where two rooms were cut out, for a single family, with a door-way in the clay wall separating them. Some of these were carpeted and furnished with considerable elaboration. In these the occupants were fully secure from the shells of the navy, which were dropped into the city, night and day, without intermission. . . .
NARRATIVE NOTE.
FROM DONELSON AND NEW ORLEANS TO VICKSBURG—NAVAL OPERATIONS.
On the 9th of May, 1862, Commodore Foote {see page 36) was relieved from the command of the Western Flotilla by Flag-Officer Charles Henry Davis. On the 25th Charles Ellet’s rams joined the fleet, and the combined forces bombarded Fort Pillow above Memphis, which the enemy abandoned June 4. Memphis fell June 6, after a battle between Davis’s and Ellet’s fleets on one side and Captain J. E. Montgomery’s River Defense Fleet on the other. After the capture of Memphis, Davis sent an expedition up White River, and a combined land and naval attack on June 17 drove the enemy from the bluffs at St. Charles. During the fight a Confederate shell exploded the boilers of the ironclad Mound City.
Meanwhile, Farragut’s fleet, operating on the lower Mississippi, passed the batteries at Vicksburg, J une 26 to
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