Under the guns

by Annie Wittenmyer

Our long line of gunboats were now giving broadside after broadside, keeping well to the Vicksburg side, while the wooden steamers, with their heavily ladened scows or barges, ran through as rapidly as possible, keeping well to the Louisiana side.

The great artillery duel was now on, every gun on both sides of the line was belching forth shot or shell.

Our boat swayed with the concussion of sound. It was as though a thousand electric storms had burst upon us in all their fury. And yet each shot and shell had a voice of its own, and could be heard in thunder tones with awful distinctness. And running through the bass and treble of solid shot and screaming shells, the click of the musketry of the sharpshooters on the wharfs of Vicksburg could be heard, as, by the light of the bonfires blazing high, they aimed the deadly bullets at the captains and pilots who stood up unarmed in full view. My friend, Captain McMillen of Pittsburg, Pa., who owned the Silver Wave, and who commanded her on that expedition, stood on her deck in full view, amid the terrible rain of fire and lead.[1]

There were, history informs us, on the average, one hundred and twenty heavy guns a minute. The scene was grand and awful. The bonfires were kept blazing. The Henry Clay burned to the water’s edge, the tongues of flame leaping above the track of shot and shell. Shells were flying in every direction; with their burning fuses they made their circles, dropping down out of the sky like stars of the first magnitude, now and then some bursting in mid-heaven with a million scintillations of light.

All the officers had gone to the upper deck; and Mrs. Grant and I stood together, out on the guards, looking out on the grand and awful scene before us, shivering with agony.

We were neither of us alarmed for our own safety, but were overwhelmed with anxiety for the safety of our brave soldiers, and the success of the expedition.

Mrs. Grant was very sympathetic and kindly hearted, and stood there looking out upon the grand and terrible scenes of war through her tears. She was a most devoted wife and mother, and, like her noble, generous-hearted husband, was most heartily interested for the safety and welfare of the brave men who were fighting the battles of her country.

“Our men are all dead men.” “No one can live in such a rain of fire and lead,” we said to each other. “All our fleet, and the heroic men who manned the boats, are surely swallowed in that fiery channel,” we moaned with the tears on our faces. Only once, it was while the Henry Clay was burning, we saw for a moment or two the grand old Stars and Stripes.

“See! see! there is our flag,” was the glad exclamation; but the next moment it was hid from our sight by the smoke of the guns.

We stood there, amid the thunders of this greatest artillery duel that was ever fought in the world, for two long hours, unconscious of danger or weariness. Then General Grant came down from the upper deck with the glad news, for he had been watching for the signals or rockets that the boats, one by one, sent up as they got safely through, that all the boats were through but the Henry Clay. The roar of the cannon had begun to die away, when our captain, at the command of General Grant, turned the prow of his boat up the Mississippi River, and steamed back to Milliken’s Bend. We reached there at daylight, after the most exciting night I had ever known, or perhaps will ever know again, on the earth.