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October 11, 2008

New at Pearce — The Last Wallpaper Citizen

By Holly B. Wait The Corsicana Daily Sun Sat Oct 11, 2008, 07:34 PM CDT

Editor’s note: The Daily Sun welcomes Holly Wait, director of the Pearce Civil War Museum and Western Art Collection, as a contributing columnist. Her column will appear twice-monthly.

“…the Yankee Generalissimo, surnamed Grant — has expressed his intention of dining in Vicksburg on Sunday next, and celebrating the 4th of July by a grand dinner … Ulysses must get into the city before he dines in it. The way to cook a rabbit is ‘first catch a rabbit …’”

So quotes the last printing of the Vicksburg Daily Citizen, July 2, 1863. The last runs of the Daily Citizen were printed on the back of wallpaper because newsprint, along with so many other supplies and necessities, was long gone after a siege of some forty-seven days.

The fact that the wallpaper newspaper was printed, through the end of the Siege, speaks to the determination and heroism of the citizens of Vicksburg during what must have been the worst days of their lives. The Siege of Vicksburg did not just happen between opposing Union and Confederate forces, men with guns and cannons, great armies. The Siege of Vicksburg went on in the streets of town, in the surrounding fields, on the river docks, and at kitchen tables. On May 18, the bombing started, and what had been a kind of fairytale was became stark reality for the locals. Lida Lord recalls “a bombshell burst into the very center of the dining room … crushing the well-spread table like an eggshell, and making a great yawning hole in the floor …”

In May 1863, the three thousand residents of Vicksburg were encouraged to take to the hills — or caves, dug in the hillsides around the town. Cramped, hot, and dangerous; the caves were safer than the city streets. Between bombings the cave dwellers came out, went to church and wandered the streets, visited with neighbors, cared for the wounded. But when the bombings began, it was a race for cover, with sometimes 25 people packed in a single small cave.

Foodstuffs disappeared quickly, or were rationed severely. On the black market you could get flour for $200 a barrel or bacon for $5 a pound. The locals became used to eating mule meat and pea-flour bread — and often nothing at all. Pets began to disappear.

But all the while, the citizens of Vicksburg remained strong in sentiment, courageous in the face of death, persistent, and willing to help their fellow neighbor. Letters in the exhibit attest to that and so does the Vicksburg Daily Citizen. In the final July 2, 1863 edition, the paper proclaims thanks to Major Gillespie for a steak of Confederate “beef.” It goes on to describe the meat as “sweet, savory and tender, and as long as we have a mule left we are … content to subsist on it.” The Citizen thanked Mr. F. Kisser for his donation of surplus corn to families that desperately needed it. Not so kind to a fellow newspaper, the Memphis Bulletin; the Citizen defiantly described its new proprietor as a “pink nosed, slab-sided, toad-eating Yankee …”

On July 4, the reprinted Union version of the Vicksburg Daily Citizen stated that “General Grant has ‘caught the rabbit;’ he has dined in Vicksburg, and he did bring his dinner…” Upon his victory General Grant did disperse all available rations to the starving local population, and they were able to leave the relative safety of their caves to return to their homes. But in many cases there were no homes to return to. Though defeated, in rags, and all but starving, the population of Vicksburg remained defiant, determined, and in many cases unforgiving.

Visitors can see the Vicksburg Daily Citizen, printed on that back of torn wallpaper, at the Pearce Collections Museum in the Cook Center at Navarro College. An exhibition detailing the Vicksburg Campaign, from the eyes of the common soldier, common citizen, and of course the local newspaper, will be up through the end of October.

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Holly B. Wait is the director of the Pearce Civil War Museum and Western Art Collection at Navarro College. She may be contacted by e-mail at holly.beasley@navarrocollege.edu

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