St. Paul daily globe., 1895-12-23
LOADED WITH FOOD.
a Scheme to Supply Besfeged
City With Provisions.


Maj. Thomas O. Farquhar, of An
n1ston, Ala, on a visit to Buffalo re-
Gently, told an Express reporter a
humorous story of the war. During
the siege Of Vicksburg he was in COM
mand of Confederate regiment out
side of Gen. Grants lines. 1--WE had
plenty of food" he said. "It was a
fertile territory that we had to draw
from, and there was no difficulty in
getting enough to eat. We intercepted
a poorly guarded supply train of the
Yanks and had enough to feed a regi-
ment for a month stored right in our
little camp. In spite, ,of the Yankee
vigilance, spies would now and then
steal out of the city, and we saw and
talked with several of them. Each
had a p.tiful story to tell of how the
inhabitants of Vicksburg suffered for
food, and we ransacked our brains to
devise some means of sending them
portion of our plenty. HsII 'taf'
An old negro who was acting as
gunner under me was the one to sug-
gest what looked at first like feasible
plan. His idea was to load supplies
into the four cannon which we had,
and fire them boldly over the heads of
the Yankees into the city itself. 1t was
great idea, and after some study we
decided that it was worth while making
the experiment. The supplies which
we had captured consisted of hard-tack
in tins, that would go into the guns
like grapeShot, and we calculated that
by giving them plenty of elevation we
could send the food directly into the
city, where even such morSelS would
be welcome. 1 was in command of the
detachment, and gave my consent to
what an older and more experienced
officer would probably have frowned
upon as being contrary to all rules of
war.
Next morning at sunrise we loaded
the guns. We put a plentiful charge
of powder in each and then rammed
home as many cans of hard tack as
WQuid equal IN weight an ordinary can
non bail, and that was not a great
many, l assure you. In one of the
guns we put four cans of tomatoes.
This we considered an experiment, as
we had little hope that such fluid stuff
would survive the impact of falling in
the city, but it was worth trying We
pointed the guns and just before the
lanyard of the first was pulled the old
negro gunner ran a few rods down the
hill, where he would be below the
our novel shot struck.
The first gun to be fired happened to
be the one we had loaded with toma-
toes. The gunner pulled the lanyard,
there was a roar and a puff of smoke
that obscured our sight for an instant,
then it blew away, and we saw running
up tho hill towards us an old negro,
covered from head to foot with what
looked like blood, while he waved his
arms wildly and shrieked, I'm killed.
It'll ID1f r how
souln We We're alarmed and ran down
toward him. He still screamed and
shrieked and fell down in a faint as he
saw us. We rushed up to him, and
then every man of us burst into a laugh
that would have walked the dead. 1t
roused old Tom, who opened his eyes
and shrieked the louder when he saw
our apparently inhuman levity. AS
soon as we were able to speak or move
we picked the old negro up, stood him
on his feet, to assure him that he was
still alive, and then ordered him to
scrape the tomatoes off himself. He
was the most thoroughly bedaubed
specimen 1 ever saw. You see, the
heat of the discharge of the cannon
Helteq the solder in the tomato cans,
on leaving the gun, while their con-
tents had been propelled just far
enough down the hill to spatter ali over
the old negro" The major paused and
chuckled again.
How did the hard-tack work?"
asked, the reporter.
1--WE didn't get a chance to try it,
was the reply "The Yanks, thinking
we We're about to lombard them from
the rear started up the hill after us,and
as there would have been no use in
making any resistance against so su
perior force, we spiked the guns and
retreated What they thought when
they found the hard-tack in them L
Int I 1T
confirmed their idea that we were going
to attack them