My Cave Life in Vicksburg: With Letters of Trial and Travel: Civil War

The next morning we heard that Yicksburg would not in all probability hold out more than a week or two, as the garrison was poorly provi- sioned ; and one of General Pemberton s staff officers told us that the effective force of the gar- rison, upon being estimated, was found to be fifteen thousand men ; General Loring having been cut off after the battle of Black Eiver, with probably ten thousand. The ladies all cried, " Oh, never surrender ! " but after the experience of the night, I really could not tell what I wanted, or what my opinions were. How often I thought of M upon the battle- field, and his anxiety for us in the midst of this un- anticipated danger, wherein the safety lay entirely on the side of the belligerent gentlemen, who were shelling us so furiously, at least two miles from the city, in the bend of the river near the canal. So constantly dropped the shells around the city, that the inhabitants all made preparations to live under the ground during the siege. M sent over and had a cave made in a hill near by. We seized the opportunity one evening, when the gunners were probably at their supper, for we had a few moments of quiet, to go over and take pos- session. We were under the care of a friend of M , who was paymaster on the staff of the same General with whom M was Adjutant. We had neighbors on both sides of us ; and it would have been an amusing sight to a spectator to witness the domestic scenes presented without by the number of servants preparing the meals under the high bank containing the caves. Our dining, breakfasting, and supper hours were quite irregular. When the shells were fall ing fast, the servants came in for safety, and our meals waited for completion some little time ; again they would fall slowly, with the lapse of many minutes between, and out would start the cooks to their work. Some families had light bread made in large quantities, and subsisted on it with milk (provided their cows were not killed from one milking time to another), without any more cooking, until call- ed on to replenish. Though most of us lived on corn bread and bacon, served three times a day, the only luxury of the meal consisting in its warmth, I had some flour, and frequently had some hard, tough biscuit made from it, there be ing no soda or yeast to be procured. At this time we could, also, procure beef. A gentleman friend was kind enough to offer me his camp bed, a nar- row spring mattress, which fitted within the con- tracted cave very comfortably ; another had his tent fly stretched over the mouth of our residence to shield us from the sun ; and thus I was the re- cipient of many favors, and under obligations to many gentlemen of the army for delicate and kind attentions ; and, in looking back to my trials at that time, I shall ever remember with gratitude the kindness with which they strove to ward off every deprivation. And so I went regularly to work, keeping house under ground. Our new habitation was an excavation made in the earth, and branching six feet from the entrance, forming a cave in the shape of a T. In one of the wings my bed fitted ; the other I used as a kind of a dressing room ; in this the earth had been cut down a foot or two below the floor of the main cave ; I could stand erect here ; and when tired of sitting in other portions of my residence, I bowed myself into it, and stood impassively rest- ing at full height one of the variations in the still shell-expectant life. M's servant cooked for us under protection of the hill. Our quarters were close, indeed ; yet I was more comfortable than I expected I could have been made under the earth in that fashion. "We were safe at least from fragments of shell and they were flying in all directions ; though no one seemed to think our cave any protection, should a mortar shell happen to fall directly on top of the ground above us. We had our roof arched and braced, the supports of the bracing taking up much room in our confined quarters. The earth was about five feet thick above, and seemed hard and compact ; yet, poor M , every time he came in, examined it, fearing, amid some of the shocks it sustained, that it might crack and fall upon us.

This book is a rare and affecting personal narrative of the Civil War from a Southern woman. At the age of twenty-seven, along with her two-year old daughter and her husband, Confederate Major James M. Loughborough, Mary Ann Webster Loughbrough, arrived in Vicksburg. Shortly thereafter, the Union armies began a month and a half seige against the fortification in order to gain control of the Mississippi River. As she and her daughter took refuge in dugout caves in the hills above Vicksburg, Mary Loughborough recorded her daily life. Her personal account of the events of 1863 vividly documents some of the many extraordinary experiences of ordinary people on American soil during the Civil War. Many consider General U.S. Grant's Siege at Vicksburg (May 25-July 4, 1863), along with Robert E. Lee's defeat at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, the turning point of the Civil War. During the siege, Union gunboats lobbed over 22,000 shells into the town. As the barrages continued, citizens of Vicksburg, Mississippi sought refuge on a ridge located between the main town and the rebel defense line, where over 500 caves were dug into the yellow clay hills of Vicksburg. Whether houses were structurally sound or not, it was deemed safer to occupy these dugouts. People did their best to make them comfortable, with rugs, furniture, and pictures. They tried to time their movements and foraging with the rhythm of the cannonade, sometimes unsuccessfully. Because of these dugouts or caves, the Union soldiers gave the town the nickname of "Prairie Dog Village." Despite the ferocity of the Union fire against the town, fewer than a dozen civilians were known to have been killed during the entire siege. Mary Loughbrough tells the story of the Siege from the citizen's point of view.

1836-1887

A rare first-hand account from a Southern woman of life in dugout caves during the siege of Vicksburg.