‘you’ve got a friend from Pennsylvania’
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch June 6, 1863:
General Pemberton to the army.
–The Mississippian, of Saturday morning, publishes a speech made by Gen. Pemberton, after repulses of the enemy. It is as follows:
You have heard that I was incompetent and a traitor, and that it was my intention to sell Vicksburg. Follow me, and you will see the cost at which I will sell Vicksburg. When the last pound of beef, bacon, and flour; the last grain of corn, the last cow, and hog, and horse, and dog, shall have been consumed, and the last man shall have perished in the trenches — then, and only then, will I sell Vicksburg.
It is said that the tremendous repulse and slaughter of the Yankees at Vicksburg on Sunday was due to a stratagem of Gen. Pemberton, who made a feint of evacuating part of his works, when the enemy rushed in, only to be met with immense slaughter from artillery placed so as to take them with a raking fire-
Born in Philadelphia in 1814, John Clifford Pemberton was a career American army officer who chose to go with the South after the war started:
At the start of the American Civil War in 1861, Pemberton chose to resign his commission in the Union and join the Confederate cause, despite his Northern birth and the fact that his two younger brothers both fought for the Union. He resigned his commission, effective April 29. His decision was due to the influence of his Virginia-born wife and many years of service in the southern states before the war.
Even though Southerners questioned his devotion to the cause, Pemberton remained loyal to the Confederacy for the duration of the war.
