but none but the dead remain to lift it. Dam Grant and his Yankees to hell.They are not men but demons placed on this earth to torment us until judgement.

Prior to the War, Vicksburg was a vibrant town and a commercial hub with a population of 4200. During the long battle for control of the town, Grant subjected the civilian population, whose place in the Union the Federal forces were ostensibly fighting to preserve, to incessant bombardment. Grant turned the town into a battlefield where civilians were indiscriminately starved into submission. After eating all the horses and mules, the starving population turned to eating rats.Even in surrender Grants forces held out the siege for another 2 weeks just to hand a "4th of July victory" to their master Lincoln on a silver platter

The bombardment of Vicksburg violated like so many other actions of Grant not only the universal code of war but his own Lieber Code, which protects civilians, “especially women and children” from bombardment. Paragraph 25 of the code protects civilians from the type of “privation” Grant’s forces subjected it to.