In the final days of the siege, the people of Vicksburg ate rats, cane shoots and bark. For 47 days Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ringed the city with 75,000 Union troops. Cannon balls crashed in; the sound of musketry seldom died. Finally the city surrendered. The date was July 4, 1863. After that, for the people of Vicksburg, the Fourth of July was never a day to be celebrated.
National holiday or no, banks and stores stayed open in Vicksburg. Firecrackers never popped, skyrockets never tore the night sky. Instead, the story of the black day was passed on from fathers to children, who could see the cannon balls imbedded in Vicksburg's old courthouse. These bitter memories persisted.
But two years ago, quietly, a few stores closed on the Fourth. Last year a few more joined them. Fortnight ago Ralph Lowen berg, an auto-laundry operator, stood up in Vicksburg's Elks' Club and asked, right out loud: Why not celebrate the Fourth of July?
Everybody was startled, but nobody objected. Vicksburg began to plan for a whopping celebration. Once again Vicksburg would hear Fourth of July oratory—by a Yankee from New Hampshire, Major General Edward H. Brooks, just back from the European War. As far as Vicksburg was concerned, it looked as if the War between the States was over.