Hi again. It’s me – Cooper the Cocker.

Do you recognize this Civic War Memorial? It’s in Vicksburg, MS. My lady has done a lot of studying about this siege. It was a terrible summer for soldiers and civilians.

Women and children lived in hollowed out caves on the eastern bank of the Mississippi just to survive. So what might that summer have been like? Read my lady’s story below and see. You will learn a lot and perhaps decide that the life you have now is not so very bad.

Special thank you to Adam Lang for helping with the geological information.

This story was published in the latest edition of Longleaf Style magazine, Anniston, AL. Paws with me and let’s read! Woof! Woof!

As Always, your furry pal, Cooper

Letter from Vicksburg, 1863

May 20

Dearest M,

I dare not use your name lest you be associated with my time here. Please destroy this correspondence as soon as you read it.

As you know, Capt H brought me to stay with my Auntie V when Sherman overran Jackson and blocked our return to Mobile by destroying the rails. Yankees have held Vicksburg under siege since May 18.

When I arrived by rail May 5, I refused to leave Auntie’s home. It was not until a cannon ball uprooted a camellia that shaded the south veranda yesterday during heavy shelling that I recognized our true danger. I was sitting in that shade, Dear M, when dirt showered down on me like rain. At that point, Auntie and I ran down the bluff on which her house sits. I had to drag my slave J with me all the way. She is such a simpleton.

We moved into the cave Auntie had her manservant cut into clay before he disappeared. It was just before the cannon hit that we learned Grant had moved south from Memphis and Farragut had blockaded New Orleans and sent vessels north.

My residence is quite primitive as I am forced to live the life of a backwoodsman with only a bed and chair for comfort. J cooks our food on an open fire at the entrance. With what little money I have, I send her up the bluff and into market when shelling is light. She cries and begs to remain with me in the cave, “Them guns they scares me, Mz R,” she says. I tell her to get up off the floor, and I send her on her way. I must eat.

May 23

The earth here is unlike any I have known. It looks like white clay. It is soft and hard at the same time. It can be cut easy as butter. If it is cut perpendicular, it stands strong as a wall and holds its shape, so unlike Alabama riverbank clay. Cut it on an angle, and it crumbles. Locals call it loess.

Before I arrived, multiple caves had been carved into these bluffs for shelter against the Yankees. Each cave is one or two rooms with an opening facing the Mississippi. From the western banks, the bluffs must look like gigantic honeycombs. Shelling and shooting have been constant since we moved underground`, but it rarely reaches us here.

June 6

Auntie V is dead. She died from dysentery. I laid her near the back wall, for J refused to go in and out the entrance if she could see Auntie. “Don’t make me go past no dead body,” J begged. No amount of beating would make her go foraging, which she must do now, for my resources are gone and there is little left to buy. The burial brigade called from above the next morning, and I answered with “Female body. One.” I know not where she was taken.

How lonely here with only myself and J.

June 17

It was after the moon rose that the soldier came. He had crawled to the entrance, but he could not make it over the ledge J cut to block heavy rain. J found him before the sun rose. She ran into the back room where we store what food and water she manages to gather. I have my bed there so she cannot steal what I have. She awakened me, jabbering about a dead man. She hopped up and down, pointing toward the entrance, her eyes round as a cow’s.

He still lived. We dragged him across the threshold, clay crumbling beneath his weight.

The soldier, a Yankee, would tell me between gasps that ruffians found him on the outskirts of town and beat him with axe handles. They threw him over my bluff for dead. Perhaps they thought he would sink in the Mississippi as it has been high several times since I arrived.

I pulled him and J pushed. We laid him in my bed to hide him from the cave’s opening. I sent J to Auntie’s house for petticoats to use as bandages. We have no sulfur or lard to make salves. But J took some of the wood she had stowed and traded it among her people for healing herbs.

He moans days and cries out at night. The leg festers and swells. I have to bring out the leather strap to make J cleanse his wounds. His body is battered, but his most serious injury is his lower calf where bone sticks through skin three inches or more. All we can do is wrap the leg to keep away flies.

June 19

He does not improve and is often delirious. The wound is shades of purples, greens and, in places, black. The stench of rot fills both rooms of the cave.

I doubt he will survive the leg.

June 21

How I have tossed about my choices, Dearest M. Yankees come from all directions. Our soldiers have been crossing from the western bank at night to visit family or, I am ashamed to write these despicable words, to desert. When I am discovered, how will I explain a Yankee in my bed when Capt H has spent these last 35 days of siege defending his Confederacy? Defending me his wife?

June 24

J ran away last night. I am alone with the Yankee. I sent her yesterday to find meat. She returned carrying a fat skinned gopher tied to an oak limb. This is all that remains. Two weeks ago, I refused for four days to eat soup made from bark and a dog skeleton she scavenged.

I understand why she ran. I would run myself, but I have no place to go. And I have the soldier.

J will not survive unless she meets some of her kind beyond the embankments surrounding Vicksburg, for she knows nothing that is true and lacks direction unless I tell her what to do.

You recollect her. Capt H bought her across the river from Tuscaloosa before she could walk. She and her mother who came to cook for us. Her mother jumped to her death from our barn loft while she was heavy with her next child. It died. Capt H said, “No matter.” I was surprised at his lack of concern, for he places high value on his house slaves. But I digress.

It has fallen to me to feed and bath him. His body differs so from Capt H, who is fair. He has much coarser hair and it covers his entire body. While here, he has grown a beard that tints red when I hold the candle near. But his blood dries the same color as Capt H’s when he cuts his cheek shaving.

June 25

The young man worsens. I groped my way up the bluff last night while there was a new moon. I took an axe Auntie had hidden under the woodpile and brought back as many logs as I could carry. Coming down I slipped and dropped several, but I believe I have enough for a fire to cleanse the axe. I have heard stories that one can chop off a leg at the knee. If the leg is tightly bound at the hip, the patient will not bleed to death. The only thing left to do is sear the wound.

I go now to build a hot fire.

June 26

I could not do it, Dearest M. I lifted the axe over my head and aimed at the putrid leg.
As I was about to drop the weapon with all my strength garnered toward that point, the boy opened his grey eyes and whispered, “I cannot live without my leg.”

He knew!

How like a monster I must have seemed. Perhaps he saw only the raised axe. I do not know. The agony in those young eyes forced me to relax. He closed his eyes and waited. Yes. He knew.

I clinched my teeth and slammed the axe blade into his face.

June 28

Last night late, I whittled out bloodstained clay from the walls and scattered it over the floor. I managed to roll the boy whom I now call Isaac over the bluff, and I burned the bloodied bedding. The cave is hot as Hades.

June 30 I received word from a group of stragglers, more of our soldiers flooding the city this morning, that Capt H crossed the Mississippi under cover of darkness last evening. He should be here mid-day.

Your loyal and devoted Cousin,

RH

Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, CSA surrendered his remaining 30,000 troops at Vicksburg, MS to Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, USA July 4, 1863. The City of Vicksburg would not celebrate the Fourth of July again until 1943.