On the Fourth, the white flag floated over Vicksburg. The Gibraltar of the Mississippi had surrendered and 31,000 brave Confederate soldiers had become prisoners of war.
Grant treated the prisoners with every consideration. Rations were issued to them by their captors, and the men who for months had faced each other as enemies became friends. The prisoners were not sent north, but men as well as officers were paroled and turned over to Major Watts, Confederate Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners.
There was no cheer or taunt from the Federal soldiers, who stood at arms as the prisoners marched out of the city; they seemed to feel sorry for the fate of their late enemies. Haggard from the hardships of the siege, the men marched out in silence. Sad and silent the officers rode away on tired and dispirited horses, that had for weeks fed on nothing but mulberry leaves.
In the city also, friendly relations were at once established between the Union soldiers and the inhabitants, nor was there a lack of comic and funny incidents.
A negro servant, overcome by his desire to shine, rode about the city on his master’s silver-mounted saddle. After an hour, he returned with a very long face and a very old saddle.
“George, where is my saddle!” asked his master.
“I met a big Yankee soldier and he says to me, ‘You get off dat horse. I’s gwine to hab dat fine saddle.’
“I wa’n’t gwine to git off, but he pointed his pistol at me, and he says, ‘You black nigger, you git off,’ and I got off, and he gives me dis old saddle.”
The fall of Vicksburg was an important event in the Civil War. A few days later, on the ninth of July, Port Hudson, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, also surrendered, giving the Federals complete control of the great river and cutting the Confederacy in two by detaching Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana.
The Civil War settled a great question which had grown so vexing that no man or party was great enough to settle it, without appeal to arms. It brought untold sadness and suffering to thousands of homes, both North and South, but the South suffered much more than the North.