July 3rd: “We’ll follow you, Marse George.”
From The Heart of a Soldier:
As Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett (pages 101-103)[1]:
anguished roll-call was like a death knell
On the Fourth – far from a glorious Fourth to us or to any with love for his fellow-men – I wrote you just a line of heartbreak. The sacrifice of life on that blood-soaked field on the fatal third was too awful for the heralding of victory, even for our victorious foe, who, I think, believe as we do, that it decided the fate of our cause. No words can picture the anguish of that roll-call – the breathless waits between the responses. the “Here” of those who, by God’s mercy, had miraculously escaped the awful rain of shots and shell was a sob – a gasp – a knell – for the unanswered name of his comrade called before his. There was no tone of thankfulness for having been spared to answer to their names, but rather a toll, an unvoiced wish that they, too, had been among the missing.
But for the blight to your sweet young life, but for you, only you, my darling, your soldier would rather by far be out there, too, with his brave Virginians – dead.
not a widow
Even now I can hear them cheering as I gave the order, “Forward”! I can feel their faith and trust in me and their love for our cause. I can feel the thrill of their joyous voices as they called out all along the line, “We’ll follow you, Marse George. We’ll follow you – we’ll follow you.” Oh, how faithfully they kept their word – following me on – on – to their death, and I, believing in the promised support, led them on – on – on – Oh, God!
I can’t write you a love letter to-day, my Sallie, for with my great love for you and my gratitude to God for sparing my life to devote to you, comes the over-powering thought of those whose lives were sacrificed – of the broken-hearted widows and mothers and orphans. The moans of my wounded boys, the sight of the dead, upturned faces, flood my soul with grief …
This is too gloomy and too poor a letter for so beautiful a sweetheart, but it seems sacrilegious, almost, to say I love you, with the hearts that are stilled to love on the field of battle.
YOUR SOLDIER.
Headquarters, July 6, 1863.
JEFF DAVIS’S FACE, as seen through South Mountain Gap, FOURTH OF JULY, 1863.
Here’s an update from Vicksburg. The cellar-dwelling woman who feared mutilation from the constant Federal shelling tried to get a pass to get out of the besieged Vicksburg. On July 3rd her husband was going to headquarters to try to get that pass when he “saw General Pemberton crawling out of a cave, for the shelling has been as hot as ever …” The woman and her husband returned to the cellar after they found out they could not escape out of town. “Provisions so nearly gone, except the hogshead of sugar, that a few more days will bring us to starvation indeed. Martha says rats are hanging dressed in the market for sale with mule meat, – there is nothing else.” A neighbor offered to share his cave for the night of July 3rd because the shelling was supposed to be even heavier than usual. The lady woke up in the cave the next morning to a strange quiet.
out of his cave – Pemberton talking terms with Grant
From Introduction to: A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg edited by G.W. Cable:
July 4th. – It is evening. All is still. Silence and night are once more united. I can sit at the table in the parlor and write. Two candles are lighted. I would like a dozen. We have had wheat supper and wheat bread once more. … [The author relates the history of the past 24 hours, including the stars and stripes being raised at the courthouse and federal transport boats coming around the bend full of provisions.] Towards five Mr. J– passed again. “Keep on the lookout,” he said; “the army of occupation is coming along,” and in a few minutes the head of the column appeared. What a contrast to the suffering creatures we had seen so long were these stalwart, well-fed men, so splendidly set up and accoutered. Sleek horses, polished arms, bright plumes, – this was the pride and panoply of war. Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of those marching columns; and the heart turned with throbs of added pity to the worn men in gray, who were being blindly dashed against this embodiment of modern power. And now this “silence that is golden” indeed is over all, and my limbs are unhurt, and I suppose if I were Catholic, in my fervent gratitude, I would hie me with a rich offering to the shrine of “our Lady of Mercy.”
I’m kind of haunted by the image of the powerful blue overcoming the tattered rebels.
Hallelujah! Union fleet at Vicksburg levee July 4, 1863
The cartoon of Jefferson Davis was published in the July 18, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly at Son of the South.
The image of the Vicksburg levee by Theodore R. Davis was published in the August 1, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly
antebellum Vicksburg, 1855
- [1]I copied this from Commager, Henry Steele and Erik Bruun, eds. The Civil War Archive. New York: Black Dog and Levanthal Publishers, 2000. Print. pages 437-438. The text has more love letter than the cited online version↩
