"Let us get Vicksburg .... The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket." - Abraham Lincoln
Mid-October, our RV caravan along the Mississippi River paused to tour the national military park at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
It was a dreary morning but the park was fairly aglow with signs of life. Mounted on 21st century mowing machines, maintenance workers were doing their best to reduce the height of lush, green expanses between rows of 19th-century Civil War cannons.
I found myself rooting for the lush green, which seemed to be winning the battle simply by its ability to cover more ground. And don't get me started on the kudzu.
A hundred-fifty-five years earlier, this was a scene of life-and-death struggles.
On these very fields, a young mother from Boston was fighting for her own life and to save those of her children.
Elsewhere on the field of battle, a machinist from North Brookfield was ordering his troops into positions to counter Confederate forces.
Out on the Mississippi River, a recovering Canadian, now from Northampton, was earning a Medal of Honor.
And their stories are intertwined with the life of another Bay Stater who - 40 years later - memorialized their patriotism and sacrifice.
The soil at Vicksburg is enriched with the blood and treasure of Massachusetts.
Adeline Quincy of Boston
From the "well-known Quincy family" of Boston, Adeline Quincy was 19 when she signed on as governess for the children of a plantation owner identified only as "Mr. Pryor" of Vicksburg. There, she met widower James Shirley, described as "a Whig with a firm allegiance to the Union."
Shirley, a lawyer from Goffstown, New Hampshire, was traveling in Mississippi and stayed at the plantation as a guest of Pryor. A graduate of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Shirley had studied law in Albany, New York, before moving to Georgia where he ran an academy, relocated to Alabama to practice law, then served as a judge in Vicksburg.
Adeline and James married and took up residence at another Vicksburg plantation, living in what had been known as Wexford Lodge. The plantation was described by a local newspaper as "a most desirable residence in a healthy location."
In an era prior to real-estate agents and aggressive marketing, the description - in hindsight - proved downright laughable.
The Shirleys' Unionist views ran contrary to local sentiment. They had already sent oldest son, Frederick, to Indiana because the boy's support for Abraham Lincoln had generated local controversy. While professing allegiance to the Union, the Shirleys were described by one writer as "a composite of North and South ... owning a few slaves and accustomed to the Southern way of living." Yet they remained loyal to the Stars & Stripes.
War knocked on their door one morning in May 1863.
Less than a quarter-mile from Confederate entrenchments, the Shirley House was among structures ordered by Confederate commanders to be burned. The rebel soldier sent to do the job was shot as he attempted to torch the house; another source indicates the arsonist was "run off" by approaching Union forces.
For two or three days, depending on the source, mom Adeline, 15-year-old son, Robert Quincy, and at least two servants huddled beside a chimney as the battle raged outside. A shell fragment tore off the top of a chimney; another made a shambles of an upstairs bedroom.
Hockey had not yet been invented. But Adeline Shirley was a "hockey mom."
And she'd had enough.
Adeline tied a white bedsheet to a broom handle and placed it on the front porch. Yankee soldiers swarmed the house, looting the Shirleys' belongings. The rampage stopped only after a Federal officer arrived; he reportedly believed Mrs. Shirley's story when he heard her "authentic Bostonian accent."
Union forces removed "the frightened occupants" of what they called "the white house" to the safety of a nearby cave or to "a plantation several miles outside Vicksburg."
But son Quincy picked up a musket and jumped into the trenches, joining Federal troops fighting on the doorstep of his own home.
Meanwhile, Adeline's husband, James, had taken a train to retrieve daughter, Alice Eugenia, who was attending Central Female Institute at Clinton, Mississippi. He learned of the siege but was prevented from a quick return because rail lines had been damaged in the fray. So, as any good husband would, James hiked 32 miles back to Vicksburg. He found his family but wrote to his brother, "I have made arrangements to move to Vicksburg. My house and land are so cut up that I cannot at present use them."
The 32-mile trek likely cost Shirley his life; he died three months later.
The widow Shirley wrote to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who forwarded his recommendation to General Grant. In turn, Grant nominated the young Robert Quincy Shirley to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Grant's papers, published in 1985 by Southern Illinois University Press and the Ulysses S. Grant Association, state that the Shirley boy was "one of he most deserving cases in the whole South." Robert Quincy Shirley, Grant stated, showed "the most decided loyalty" to the troops. "He kept his place in the front rank among our men, gun in hand, and only desisted after repeated orders to do so."
Robert Quincy Shirley won appointment as an at-large cadet but was not graduated from West Point. He married and became postmaster at Logan City, Utah. He died of consumption there Sept. 11, 1879.
Adeline survived to 1888 and was buried beside her husband in Vicksburg.
After the battle, the Shirley House was used as a Union hospital, then fell into disrepair. Surviving daughter Alice Eugenia Shirley donated the "white house" to the national military park with the stipulation that it be restored and her parents' graves be moved to the back yard of the property. The Shirley House is the only remaining wartime building inside the park.
The 47-day siege of Vicksburg claimed 10,142 Union and 9,091 Confederates killed and wounded. Massachusetts units serving at Vicksburg included the 35th Massachusetts commanded by Col. Sumner Carruth of North Brookfield, the 36th Massachusetts under the command of Lt. Col. John B. Norton of Charlestown and the 29th Massachusetts commanded by Lt. Col. Joseph H. Barnes of Boston.
Throughout the war, the 35th counted 10 officers and 138 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded; one officer and 100 enlisted men succumbed to disease. The 36th lost 274 men including six officers and 105 enlisted killed or mortally wounded, three officers and 160 enlisted died of disease. While there are no official numbers, the 29th reported nearly 175 killed in action or succumbing to wounds or disease.
Sumner Carruth of North Brookfield
A machinist by trade, Sumner Carruth of North Brookfield was working in Chelsea when he mustered into federal service in 1861 as an officer of the Chelsea Light Infantry. He first saw combat at First Bull Run and, for a time, served under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker of Hadley. Carruth was wounded June 25, 1862 at the Battle of Seven Pines near Fair Oaks, Virginia.
He was captured by Confederate forces at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in November 1862 and was involved in a prisoner exchange that brought him to Mississippi, where he was put in command of the 35th Massachusetts at Vicksburg.
When mustered out of the Army June 9, 1865, Carruth was promoted "by brevet" to brigadier general for "gallant and meritorious services in the front of Petersburg, Virginia." "Brevet" was the military's way of rewarding gallantry without providing pay commensurate with that rank. He returned to Massachusetts, where he farmed and served as a customs official. He died in 1892 at Andover.
Frank Bois of Northampton
Meanwhile, out on the Mississippi River, Navy Signalman Frank Bois of Northampton was earning a Medal of Honor.
Originally from Canada, Bois joined the Springfield-based 10th Massachusetts but was among a few from the regiment to volunteer for duty on a gunboat. He was aboard the USS Cincinnati May 27, 1863, during the attack on Confederate batteries defending Vicksburg. According to the medal citation, the Cincinnati was "engaging the enemy in a fierce battle" on the Big Muddy.
"Amidst an incessant fire of shot and shell," the Cincinnati "continued to fire her guns to the last, though so penetrated by enemy shellfire that her fate was sealed."
After the gunboat's masts had been shot away, Bois braved enemy fire to nail the U.S. flag to "the "stump of the forestaff" to enable this proud ship to go down with her colors flying. He was cited for being "conspicuously cool in making signals throughout the battle."
Theodora Alice Ruggles Kitson of Brookline
Not far from the Shirley House stands the Massachusetts state monument honoring the men who fought and died at Vicksburg.
Standing atop a 15-ton boulder mined in the Bay State, Theodora Alice Ruggles Kitson's statue of a Union soldier, rifle on his shoulder, steps toward the battlefield.
Erected at a cost of $4,500, Kitson's work was the first state monument placed at Vicksburg Military Park. It was dedicated Nov. 14, 1903, to honor members of the three regiments from Massachusetts involved in the 47-day siege of Vicksburg.
Preferring the abbreviated first name of Theo, Ruggles was born at Brookline six years after the end of the Civil War. At age 15, she began studying in Boston with English-born sculptor Sir Henry Hudson Kitson whose works includes the Minute Man statue on the town common in Lexington.
Ruggles won honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Francais in 1888, becoming the youngest woman, and the first American woman, honored. She and Kitson married in 1893 in what was called "the social event of the season."
Two years later, she was the first woman admitted to the National Sculpture Society. Her works were exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and she won a bronze medal for works exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. She designed 73 works for Vicksburg National Military Park, making her the most prolific artist represented there.
After separating from her husband in 1909, Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson maintained a studio in Framingham until her death in Boston in 1932.
TO LEARN MORE
SIEGE OF VICKSBURG: May 18-July 4, 1863. Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee laid siege to Vicksburg, Mississippi, trapping Confederate forces commanded by Lt. Gen. John Pemberton. Forty-seven days later, without reinforcements, food and supplies nearly gone, Pemberton surrendered. The defeat split the Confederacy and gave the Union control of the Mississippi River. Grant's victory bolstered his reputation and led to his appointment as general of Union armies and, ultimately, to the White House. Nearly 160,000 soldiers and sailors from Massachusetts served in the Civil War; almost 14,000 died.
BOOKS: "A Not So Civil War: Western Massachusetts At Home and in Battle" by Wayne E. Phaneuf and Joseph Carvalho; Pediment Publishing, 2015
"Americans at War" by By Stephen E. Ambrose; University Press of Mississippi, 1997
ON THE WEB: "Civil War in June of 1863 sets the stage for Vicksburg, Port Hudson and Gettysburg" by Wayne Phaneuf, The Republican, June 2, 2013. www.masslive.com/history/index.ssf/2013/06/civil_war_of_june_of_1863_sets_the_stage_for_vicksburg_port_hudson_and_gettysburg.html
Vicksburg National Military Park, 3201 Clay St., Vicksburg, MS 39183. Sprawling over 1,800 acres of rolling hills, the national military park was established Feb. 21, 1899, to commemorate the siege and defense of Vicksburg. The park and cemetery were transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service Aug. 10, 1933. www.nps.gov/vick/index.htm
Vicksburg National Cemetery spans 116 acres and embraces the remains of 17,000 Union soldiers, more than any other national cemetery. www.nps.gov/vick/learn/historyculture/cemhistory.htm
Norm Roy, a retired copy editor for The Republican, lives and travels in a motorhome. He is eager to hear from readers about their own travel adventures. His e-mail address is: lollygaggeratlarge@gmail.com