George's Siege: An Enslaved Boy in Vicksburg, 1863

"The Shell," a painting by Howard Pyle. Public domain.

In May 1863, Union General Ulysses S. Grant's army surrounded Vicksburg, Mississippi, trapping more than four thousand civilians inside the city. Hundreds of them were enslaved or free people of colour. Like the white residents, they lived through 47 days of Union artillery bombardment.

Life in the caves

When the Union Navy began raining mortar shells on the town, civilians quickly moved into caves dug into the hillsides. Slaveholders made the people they enslaved dig their caves; free Black men offered to dig caves for other residents for $30 to $50 each. It was hard work.

Once the caves were finished, the people who had dug them often could not use them. Slaveholders sheltered inside while the enslaved spent most of their time outdoors, cooking, washing and running errands under artillery fire. Only when a shell sounded as if it was coming straight at them were some allowed inside. About a dozen civilians died during the siege, and at least half of them were enslaved or freed people.

George

One enslaved person who lived through the siege was a boy named George, between 10 and 12 years old. The man who enslaved him assigned him to look after Mary Loughborough, a family friend who had followed her husband, a Confederate officer, to Vicksburg from Missouri.

George did many jobs for her. He cooked, gathered food and supplies, kept up the cave, and even chased off hungry stray dogs trying to steal their food. One of the most dangerous was carrying letters and small gifts to her husband on the Confederate siege lines more than two miles away. George rode through town dodging Union Navy mortar shells, and near the lines he had to avoid Union musket balls and artillery. Once the fire was so heavy that his mule froze in fear, and George ran the rest of the way on foot.

At night he slept on the ground at the cave's entrance. It was his job to protect Mary, and she gave him a pistol in case anyone tried to get in. He told her, "Don't be afraid. Anyone that come here would have to go over my body first!" She came to call him "my faithful defender."

Two close calls

One hot June night the cave was stifling, so George slept under a tree a little way off. Mary woke to shelling louder than usual, with the shells landing too close for comfort. She went looking for George, found him asleep outside and woke him — just in time. Right after he got up, a shell fragment struck the spot where he had been lying.

Another night, an unexploded shell fell through the cave's entrance and landed in the middle of the floor. Mary, her friend and George stared at it in horror, waiting for it to go off as it kept smoking. Then George lunged forward, grabbed it with both hands, ran outside and threw it as far into the street as he could. Its fuse turned out to be broken, and it never exploded — but George had risked his life to get it away from the people in the cave.

After the surrender

George's last known adventure came when the Confederate army surrendered and the siege ended. He took a horse into town to watch the Union Army march in, then returned to Mary that night and went on working for her, still enslaved, for a few more days.

Mary's husband was to be marched out of Vicksburg under Union guard with the rest of the Confederate army to a parole camp. Probably knowing that George would be freed if he stayed in Vicksburg, Mary sent him to go with her husband and keep serving him. The last time she saw George, he was wearing the sky-blue trousers of a Union uniform. She never saw him again, and he never reached her husband. No one knows whether George really tried to follow him and was held back by the Union Army, or whether he joined the Union Army, as many formerly enslaved men did.

Questions to think about

• What jobs did George do for Mary Loughborough?
• What dangerous object did he carry out of the cave?
• George was loyal to Mary. Why do you think he still wanted to be free?
• What do you think happened to George after the Union Army arrived in Vicksburg?

Sources

Based on "The Adventures of George in Besieged Vicksburg," published by the National Park Service, Vicksburg National Military Park; rewritten in hubnx's own words.

• George's words and Mary Loughborough's name for him are quoted as the article gives them; Loughborough told the story of her time in the cave in a memoir published during the war.
• The article's modern drawing of George chasing away dogs is not reproduced.