The end of the siege of Vicksburg.
Lieutenant Mark M. Bassett, Company E, 53rd Illinois, wouldn’t consider the irony of his situation until over a year later.
“The negotiations were going on slowly. During the 2d and 3d of July we would get up on the works three or four times a day when the white flags were up and visit,” scribbled Private Ranstead of Company D, 53rd Illinois in his diary.
The men in blue and the men and grey would rub elbows, and perhaps exchange a little tobacco or coffee.
“Pretty soon, way up the line, the flags would begin to go down. Then you would hear everybody shout, ‘Look out, we are going to shoot,’ and it would not be a minute till all along the line they were shooting as hard as ever,” recorded Ranstead.
It was always a good thing to be warned before they started shooting at you.
End of the Siege of Vicksburg
By the morning of Saturday, July 4, 1863, Vicksburg, Mississippi was ceded to Union forces. It was a major loss for the Rebels. The siege was over. The Rebels inside the city were out of supplies and starving.
July 4th was the United States’ 87th birthday. But Lieutenant Bassett and the other members of the 53rd Illinois found themselves celebrating the nation’s birthday in a foreign country located on the outskirts of Vicksburg.
They were a part of more than 77,000 Union forces who had spent their time living in rifle pits and trenches for almost two months. They were tasked with blocking a potential Confederate escape route at Hall’s Ferry Road, located on the southeast side of Vicksburg.
Vicksburg’s unusual 4th of July Celebration
“And so it went till the 4th of July, 1863, when the city and the Confederate army were surrendered to the Union forces, and on that day, after the Johnnies had stacked their arms, they were allowed to mingle freely with the men and you would not suppose we were a lot of men that had been trying to kill one another for the last two months. We gave the Johnnies as good a dinner as we could, and had a general good time to celebrate the glorious Fourth,” said Private Ranstead.
After forty-five days of siege, the two sides got together. It must have been the strangest 4th of July celebration anyone has ever attended. They celebrated the birth of the nation, in what was at the time a foreign country known as the Confederate States of America. Both sides partied together. Even so, a sense of relief passed through the ranks of the 53rd Illinois including Company E and its First Lieutenant, Mark Bassett. It wouldn’t last long.
The Iowa Boys
Seven miles north of Bassett and the 53rd Illinois, Company D’s Captain John Page, Lieutenant Michael Hoffman, and the rest of the 5th Iowa which included Major William Stanhope Marshall were experiencing the same sense of relief. Hoffman was in good spirits, having finally recovered from a minor shrapnel wound to his side received at Champion’s Hill east of Vicksburg in mid-May.
The Iowa boys didn’t yet know the Lieutenant from Illinois, that would come later.
They would become close, because their lives depended on it.
Onward to Jackson, Mississippi
The relief Lieutenant Bassett felt from the victory at Vicksburg would be short-lived. On July 5th the 53rd Illinois, along with several other regiments, were sent east toward Jackson, Mississippi.
Eight days later 200 men and officers of the 53rd charged an impenetrable Rebel earthworks. Just sixty-six came out of it. The number killed and wounded was eighty-eight with forty-six reported as “missing in action.” Those “missing” were all prisoners.
Slightly wounded, Lieutenant Bassett was reported killed-in-action to his family in Kerton township, Illinois. One of the first to learn the news was his wife and their three small children. In the confusion of the botched charge, authorities got the information wrong. Bassett was very much alive but his war was now over. He was a prisoner of the Rebels.
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