vacuate Vicksburg without a fight! Pemberton held a council of war
and refused to give up the Mississippi River without a struggle.
Johnston sat down in his tent and left him to his fate.

Grant closed in on Vicksburg and the struggle began. Pemberton could not
believe that Johnston would not march to his relief.

Women and children stood by their homes amid the roar of guns and the
bursting of shells. Caves were dug in the hills and they took refuge
under the ground.

A shell burst before a group of children hurrying from their homes to
the hills. The dirt thrown up from the explosion knocked three little
fellows down, but luckily no bones were broken. They jumped up, brushed
their clothes, wiped the dirt from their eyes, and hurried on without a
whimper.

When the dark days of starvation came, the women nursed the sick and
wounded, lived on mule and horse meat and parched corn.

Johnston continued to send telegrams to the War Department saying he
needed more troops and didn't know where to get them. Yet he was in
absolute command of all the troops in his department and could order
them to march at a moment's notice in any direction he wished. He
hesitated and continued to send telegrams and write letters for more
explicit instructions.

He got them finally in a direct peremptory order from the War
Department.

On June fifteenth, he telegraphed his Government:

"I consider saving Vicksburg hopeless."

Davis ordered his Secretary of War to reply immediately in unmistakable
language:

"Your telegram grieves and alarms us, Vicksburg must not be lost
without a struggle. The interest and honor of the Confederacy
forbid it. I rely on you to avert this loss. If better resource
does not offer you must hazard attack. It may be made in concert
with the garrison, if practicable, but otherwise without. By day
or night as you think best."

The Secretary of War, brooding in anxiety over the possibility of
Johnston's timidity in the crisis, again telegraphed him six days
later:

"Only my convictions of almost imperative necessity for action
induced the official dispatch I have sent you. On every ground I
have great deference to your judgment and military genius, but I
feel it right to share, if need be to take the responsibility and
leave you free to follow the most desperate course the occasion may
demand. Rely upon it, the eyes and hopes of the whole Confederacy