‘WE CAN NOW REJOICE’
On May 20, 1863, Thomas L. Evans, a lieutenant in the 96th Ohio Infantry, lamented in a letter to his brother: “We are still stationed here guarding this post while the army is taking Vicksburg.” The “here” was Louisiana’s Sommerset Plantation, which belonged to ardent secessionist John Perkins Jr., a member of the Confederate Congress. Evans’ regiment was part of the force detached at Sommerset while the bulk of Maj. Gen. John McClernand’s 13th Corps pressed on toward Vicksburg. Fearful he would miss the capture of the Mississippi River bastion, he felt “exceedingly confident that it must fall in a day or two if it is not already ours. So we will not be in the fight.” His optimism for a quick end to the siege was premature.
After two attempts to batter through the Vicksburg defenses were bloodily repulsed on May 19 and 22, Union commander Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant informed his corps commanders to “immediately commence the work of reducing the enemy by regular approaches.” To conduct the siege phase of his campaign to capture the city and open the Mississippi River, Grant needed to gather all his forces. Evans and his comrades moved to join the rest of their brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Stephen Burbridge, already in the siege lines facing the city. The regiment arrived in early June; not only had Evans badly miscalculated how long the Confederates would hold out, he was also there to witness—and record—the surrender.
A native of Marysville, Ohio, Evans had turned 23 on April 17, 1861—just three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter—but he decided to go into teaching rather than fight. In 1861, he earned a degree from Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, a progressive university that opened its doors in 1847 as a coeducational institution and was on a stop along the Underground Railroad. In August 1862, however—the outcome of the war still in