Under Siege! Read Online Free

assault.
    It was more important than ever to keep an eye on the river. On Sky Parlor Hill, bundled against the cold, Lucy did her part.

THE GENERAL’S BOY GOES TO WAR
Spring 1863
    A t age twelve, Frederick Grant knew that he was lucky. Most military children rarely saw their fathers in wartime, but Ulysses Grant was a devoted family man and he wanted his wife and four children with him as often as possible—even if that brought them directly into the theater of war.
    Some wives wanted nothing to do with the inferior housing and food that were part of military life—especially during a war—but Julia Grant didn’t mind. “Whenever she could, Mother got as near to Father as possible,” Fred recalled as an adult, noting that she willingly endured camp life and that she felt the experience was good for her children. During the summer of 1861, when Fred was ten, he had left the family home in Ohio to spend three months with his father in Illinois, where Grant was helping to train Union troops for war. Fred had begged to go along, and his father had consented. “I, being the eldest, was treated by him always as if I were already a man, and was permitted to do many things that would have been considered too dangerous for the other children,” Fred said.
    His mother supported Fred going. “I considered it a pleasant summer outing for both of them,” Julia Grant wrote in her memoir. But when thewar began in earnest and Grant received orders sending him to Missouri, he refused to take his son. “We may have some fighting to do, and he is too young to have the exposure of camp life,” Grant wrote to Julia. She immediately wrote back, “Do not send him home; Alexander was no older when he accompanied Philip. Do keep him with you.” Her letter, with its reference to the young Alexander the Great and his father, arrived too late, for Fred was already on his way back.

    Fred is standing to the left of his mother in this formal portrait of the Grant family. The other children include, from left, Nellie, Jesse, and Ulysses, Jr.
    Now, a year and a half later in this spring of 1863, Fred was with his father once again. He had been thrilled when his parents allowed him to leave school and join the army at his father’s headquarters on the Mississippi River fifty miles north of Vicksburg. This time Fred was determined not to be sent home. His goal was to be there when the guns of Vicksburg were finally silenced and the Mississippi River was totally in Union hands.At the moment of surrender, Fred would be at his father’s side, sharing sweet victory.
    When he arrived onboard the ship that served as Grant’s headquarters, his father greeted him warmly. He showed Fred the cabin they would share belowdecks. Grant’s officers fussed over the boy. One gave him a personal tour of one of the ironclads—the most powerful fighting machines in the Union navy, with metal hulls that offered protection against gunfire. Another officer presented him with a pony. He even received a regulation army uniform that had been specially made for him. Fred was a handsome boy with his father’s strong spirit. Dressed smartly in his uniform and sitting proudly on his pony, he accompanied the general on daily troop inspections.
    Since his infancy Fred had been around soldiers, and he enjoyed their company. He quickly settled into life on the ship. Instead of dining with the officers, he ate most of his meals with the enlisted men. Many nights he left his father’s cabin belowdecks to sleep up top where it was cool, soldiers stretched out all around him.
    As happy as Fred was to be with the army, he was aware of the pressure on his father to finish the job he had come to do. Grant’s inability to take control of the river was a topic of both speculation and derision throughout the North. Grant and his army of 33,000 men had joined Sherman and his nearly 30,000 men in January 1863, a few weeks after Sherman’s defeat at Chickasaw Bayou. In the months