The man who misspoke twice at Vicksburg

Brig. Gen. Martin E Green misspoke twice during the campaign for Vicksburg.

At the A.K. Shaifer House on the Port Gibson battlefield, the ladies were busy loading a wagon in fear that the Yankees were upon them.

Green assured them that the Yankees were still a ways off, but at that very instant, bullets started falling around them. The ladies quickly jumped into the wagon and fled.

Later during the siege, Green was in the hospital after being wounded. When he was told of conditions at the Stockade Redan on Graveyard Road where his troops were fighting, he left the hospital against the doctor’s advice.

When he arrived at the stockade, Green was told that a sharpshooter had been playing havoc that day and was warned not to expose himself, to which he replied: “Never a bullet has been molded that can kill me.”

With that, he stepped up to the firing line and was promptly shot dead.

Green was 48. He is buried in the Vicksburg City Cemetery in a corner of the George Marshall lot.