Henry Foster apprenticed as a bricklayer in the Ohio River town of Jeffersonville, Indiana. The city of 4,000 was a prosperous place, just across the river from Louisville, Kentucky the two towns separated by the Falls of the Ohio River (above).
They had been been building and launching steamboats at Jeffersonville since 1819. By 1860 there were 6 ship building firms along an 11 mile stretch downriver from Jeffersonville to New Albany, Such prosperity meant steady work for a bricklayer.
Still, on 1 July, 1861, 23 year old Henry Foster signed up to defend the Union of the States for 3 years. Two weeks later in New Albany he was mustered in as a sergeant in Company “B”, of the 23rd Indiana Volunteer infantry. Approximately 15% of the 1,300,000 Hoosiers actually fought for the federal cause, most coming from the southern half of the state, which had been settled the longest. Henry remained a sergeant during drilling in Indianapolis and St. Louis. In 1862, after fighting at the battles of Forts Henry and Donaldson, he was promoted to Lieutenant.
Before the 1863 Vicksburg campaign the 23rd Indiana was transferred to the 1st Brigade of General Logan's division, of the XVII Corps under of Major General James Birdseye McPherson. They had their first major engagement of that campaign on Tuesday, 12 May at Raymond, Mississippi. At the very outset of the battle the 23rd stumbled into a trap and suffered 127 causalities in the space of a few minutes – twice their losses at Shiloh. As the Official Record put it, “The only thing that saved the 23rd...(was) that the Confederates had never been issued bayonets.”
Four days later the 23rd was on the right flank at Champion Hill, where the regiment lost another 19 officers and men. The Hoosiers were also heavily involved in the attack on the Louisiana redan of 22 May, and suffered another 40 dead and wounded in the mine operation of 25 June. The surviving members of the regiment had become what could be termed “hardened veterans”.
As evidence of their hardness, Lieutenant Henry Foster had begun his own private war on the 3rd Louisiana regiment. The bricklayer had earned a reputation as a marksman, and had taken to wearing a coonskin cap, like a later day Daniel Boone or Davy Crocket. Except instead of killing animals for food, Henry Foster was killing human beings and doing it with a swagger. During the first month of the siege of Vicksburg, Henry would gather provisions and, at night, crawl closer to the rebel lines and secret himself in a shell hole or “holler”. During the day, he would snipe at any rebels who raised their heads above the redan's wall. It seems likely that Confederate William McGuinness lost his eye to 25 year old Lieutenant Foster's aim.
After the new forward position was constructed on 26th June, Lieutenant Foster spent nights, assembling cross ties from the Vicksburg and Jackson railroad into what he called the “Coonskin Tower” (above). His elevated spy post allowed Henry to look down upon the the Louisiana redan. The cross ties were thick enough to absorb most musket shots, and the rebel artillery could no longer spare the ammunition to obliterate the tower. Foster spent hours during daylight in its narrow confines, gunning down confederate soldiers.
The tower became infamous, and Henry and his mates from company “B” began selling 15 minute “tours” of the tower for 25 cents apiece. Legend has it that even General Grant paid a visit. And that while he was watching the rebels, one yelled for the “damn old man” to keep his head down. Where upon a Confederate officer chastised the rebel soldier's use of foul language. Then realizing who the “damn old man” was, shouted that the soldier should quickly shoot him. But by then, Grant had climbed back down. Or so the story went.
In another version, a private in the 4th Minnesota infantry saw an older soldier in a rumbled uniform standing on an unnamed observation tower near the front lines. He shouted at the old man, “Say! You old bastard, you better keep down from there or you will be shot!” The old man paid no attention. When the north star boy started to shout again, an officer grabbed him and explained, “That's General Grant.” It was the kind of story soldiers often told at the expense of commanders who held the power of life and death over them. The tales were related with a kind of cold affection. But as far as I can tell, they never told those kind of stories about Confederate Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton.
Two Irish born brothers named Christie, Thomas and William, were servicing guns of the First Minnesota Light Artillery behind the 23rd Indiana. On 23 June William Gilchrist Christie had written home to his father that, “Spades are trumps here, and are likely to be for a long time yet.....There are a few deaths from 'secesh' bullets every week, and occasionally one from the premature bursting of a shell from our own guns...one of the 11th Illinois infantry was, I fear, mortally wounded yesterday by a...shell from the first Missouri's Battery...his bowels were torn and both of his lungs visible.” It should not be surprising that William then immediately added, “We have been amusing ourselves for the two past evenings in throwing shells over into the enemies' lines...” The boys from Minnesota had not been ordered to play this game. But idle hands had become the devil's plaything.
On 28 June, William's older brother, Thomas Davidson Christie, wrote a more circumspect note to their sister. “I do not very well know what to write you,” Thomas began, “for although there is plenty of what you might consider interesting (events) occurring around me, of the blood and gunpowder style, yet I see so much of it that I do not care to write about it....You will probably see some account of the blowing up of the fort...We are within 400 yards...and saw the whole performance, and opened on the rear of the work to cut up the rebel reinforcements as they hurried them up. Some other time I may give you a description of the assault.” This from the same man who was throwing random bombs into the enemy's trenches every night.
On the “enemy” side of the trench line was 32 year old civilian Henry Ginder. When the war broke out Henry had been an engineer working for the firm of Thomas, Griswold and Company, a weapons manufacturer, at the corner of Canal and Royal Streets in New Orleans. When that city had been captured, he had fled east with his family. He left his wife in Alabama, and then continued to Mississippi, where Henry had joined the Confederate army as a private. Eventually his unit was assigned to Port Hudson, where his skills as an engineer made him valuable. In the summer of 1863 he had been ordered to Vicksburg, to prepare the fortifications there. During the siege Henry was constantly moving along the line, looking to repair the damage done by the Federal artillery.
In a letter to his wife he told a harrowing story. “Last night I was on foot returning from the scene of my labors, and I heard a 13 inch shell coming but couldn’t see it; it came nearer and nearer until I thought it would light on my head, when SPLOSH! It went into the earth a few feet to my left, throwing the dirt into my face with such force as to sting me for some time afterwards. The Lord kept it from exploding … Otherwise it would have singed the hair off my head and blown me to pieces into the bargain.”
The federal army was not aiming to injure civilians, not because of a moral aversion to doing so, but because their weapons simply did not have the excess power to waste on non-military targets. But to the civilians sheltering in the 500 of so caves of Vicksburg whether they were victims of the gunner's intent or incompetence made little difference.
Lucy McRae was the daughter of wealthy merchant and Warren County Sheriff William McRae and his wife Virginia, who had been born Indiana. Lucy was 11 years old in June of 1863. Her family could afford the safety of a cave. But the choice almost cost her, her life. “A shell came down on the top of the hill, buried itself about six feet in the earth, and exploded. This caused a large mass of earth to slide...in a solid piece, catching me under it…As soon as the men could get to me they pulled me from under the mass of earth. The blood was gushing from my nose, eyes, ears, and mouth.”
One of the men who helped dig Lucy out from under the loam was the Reverend William Lord, who had been wounded by the explosion. He noted that same night a baby boy was born in another part of the shared cave.
Above ground, still sheltering in her home, Dora Miller continued to send her slave Martha out every day with 5 dollars, looking to buy food. Martha told her that “...rats are hanging dressed in the market for sale with mule meat - there is nothing else...It was said that when the rats were properly fried, they tasted like squirrel.”
By Tuesday, 30 June 1863, half of the Confederate soldiers in the Vicksburg lines were on excused duties or even hospitalized because of illness or wounds. And the most common illness was dysentery. In the Washington Hotel (above), the Reverend William Lovelace Foster was nursing to those men. He noted that the structure, which had already been hit once, was still, “...comparatively secure from those troublesome mortar shells...All the rooms were soon crowded with the sick and dying – Some in bunks and some upon the floor. Everything was conducted as well as possible. But, Oh the horrors of a hospital!”
Doctor Foster had recorded those horrors back in May. “There lay a man... his face blackened - burned to a crisp with powder. His mother could not recognize him - Every feature was distorted - his eyes were closed - water running from his scalded mouth. His groans are pitiful - low – plaintive...a youth, not more than seventeen, lying on his back-with (his) eye entering his jaw - lodging there in the bone, which could not be removed... Here are several with their arms cut - There is one with his whole under jaw torn off - his shoulder mutilated with a shell. Here is one with his arms (and legs) both amputated...There is one who had a pair of screw drivers driven into his jaw (and) temple. He floods his bed with blood...The weather is excessively hot. The flies swarm around the wounded...” .
And now, after the first mine had wiped out 50 men in the 3rd Louisiana redan, Dr. Foster wrote, “The sixth week (of the siege) had now closed...Our fate seems to stare us in the face. Still we hear rumors...Can't our government send us relief?...Will all the blood shed be spilled in vain? For the first time dark doubts would cross my mind.”
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