Existing comment:
Cave Life in Vicksburg:
On July 4, 1863, when Ulysses S. Grant captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, it ended a yearlong campaign and put control of the Mississippi River firmly in Union hands. A siege lasting forty-seven days, in which some 200 Federal cannons pounded the city daily, drove many residents into caves dug in the hillsides that were furnished with household possessions, as seen in this sketch. "And so the weary days went on," recalled one matronly cave-dweller, "when we could not tell in what terrible form death might come to us before the sun went down."
Transfer lithograph, 1864 |