‘Are you dreaming, Artie?’ The story of the Balfour’s Christmas Ball

Do you remember the scene in “Gone with the Wind” when Miss Scarlett and Rhett Butler danced the Virginia Reel?

Folks will be doing the same thing Saturday night, Dec. 14, at the Old Court House Museum during the annual re-enactment of the Balfour Ball. (See details below.)

Lee Daniels recalled the events in writing for Gen. Stephen Dill Lee in 1904.

The story begins on the Mississippi riverbank, south of Lake Providence, La.

“I hears a boat coming,” an excited little girl told the two Confederate officers who sat in a shanty playing cards on Christmas Eve, 1862.

She insisted that the men, Maj. E.P. Earnhart and Maj. Lee Daniels, come outside and listen.

“Are you dreaming, Artie?” one of them asked.

“No, sah! I hears it say choo, choo, pat, pat,” the excited child replied, mimicking the sound of steam engines and the slapping of paddle wheels against the water.

Earnhart and Daniels walked to the porch of the little building, which was located on Horace Tibbots’ plantation about 11 miles south of Lake Providence. Listening intently, they could barely hear the sounds Artie had described, but they could discern something. They went to the riverbank where they waited about 30 minutes.

They could hear the sounds that were getting closer and closer, and eventually, “a monster turned the bend, two miles above us, and came slowly as if feeling the way,” Daniels wrote.

And then Earnhart whispered, “Here comes another.”

Some sparks flew out of Earnhart’s pipe, and Daniels grabbed it and put out the tobacco, warning that those boats would fire a volley at the crack of a match.

Soon, the “large black devil was abreast of us, in easy gun shot from our double barrels, but suicide to fire. We counted, counted, counted in all seven gunboats, fifty-nine transports loaded with blue coats,” Daniels continued.

The night was cloudy, cold, and there was a drizzling rain. The two men waited until they were sure no more boats were in the flotilla, and then Daniels, who had been a telegraph operator in Vicksburg before the war, jumped on his little bay filly and practically flew to the telegraph offices, some three miles back in the woods, where he sent a message to the other end of the line.

Daniels was frantic. He knew that if he didn’t get the message through, unsuspecting Vicksburg would fall to the enemy. It took only 27 seconds to transmit the words, but to Daniels, it seemed that his friend on the other end would never answer.

Col. Philip H. Fall, also from Vicksburg, was on duty at the telegraph on DeSoto Point, across the river from Vicksburg, when the message came through.

“Golly, old fellow, what’s up?” Fall answered when he got the first signal.

Almost half a century later, Daniels recalled the message, which he said was indelible in his brain after all those years:

“Great God, Phil, where have you been? I have been calling, (am afraid I said half an hour instead of half a minute), and the river is lined with boats, almost a hundred have passed my lookout. Seven gunboats and fifty-nine transports chock full of men. God speed you, rush across and give the alarm.”

Fall tapped a reply. “God bless you, Lee, bye, bye we may never meet again.”

The Balfour House in Vicksburg today, where the first Balfour Ball was held in 1862.

Almost immediately, Fall was in a small skiff headed across the river to Vicksburg. It was a tempestuous night, and at times, it appeared the waves on the river would extinguish the colonel’s red lantern, which signaled the men who manned the batteries along the bluffs that he was a friend, not a foe. Had the light gone out, Fall might have been killed.

Despite the possibility of death, he was determined to make the crossing, for the city was in peril. Had the message not been sent when it was, the city probably would have been taken, for only a short time later, the enemy cut the telegraph wires.

The citizens of Vicksburg and the Confederate officers and men were completely oblivious to what was happening.

At the home of the Balfours on Crawford Street, the house was ablaze with lights, and the sounds of music and laughter filled the cold night air.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and a gray-clad courier, disheveled and muddy, pushed his way through the crowd calling for Gen. M.L. Smith, commander of the Confederate forces in Vicksburg. The crowd gave him a wide berth.

Facing the general, the courier breathlessly gave him the news: A flotilla of gunboats and transports had passed Lake Providence, headed toward Vicksburg.

The music had stopped, and in a loud voice, Smith exclaimed: “This ball is at an end. The enemy is coming down river. All noncombatants must leave the city.”

Then, the general turned to Fall, thanked him for the message and apologized for his harsh manner.

Immediately, men reported to their stations. By the end of the week, the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou—north of town where 6,000 Southern boys soundly whipped Gen. W.T. Sherman’s 32,000 Union troops—was history. It was the first time Sherman had held an independent command. Here he learned what he later proclaimed: “War is hell.”

The story might have ended differently had not an idle slave girl first sounded the alarm that broke up the ball.

Gordon Cotton is the curator emeritus of the Old Court House Museum. He is the author of several books and is a renowned historian.