Known by both Union and Confederate soldiers simply as the “White House,” the Shirley House is the only wartime structure that remains on the battlefield.
Built in the late 1830s, James and Adeline Shirley purchased the house in 1851. Although the Shirleys were slave owners, they were not for disunion. When the Secession Crisis came, James supported the Union, as did the majority of Vicksburg voters who recognized that their fortunes were bound to the free flow of commerce on the Mississippi River.
In early spring 1863, the Shirley House boasted a manicured walkway, a beautiful garden, and fruit trees in the back yard; a pastoral scene that conflicted with the raw Confederate fortifications built the previous year just a few hundred down the Jackson Road leading toward Vicksburg.
In May, the Shirley’s lives would change forever.
James and daughter Alice found themselves trapped in Clinton, Mississippi, and separated from the rest of the family when Union soldiers cut the railroad running to Vicksburg.
Home alone with son Quincy, Adeline found herself defending her house—literally.
Fearing that the Shirley’s house would be used by Union sharpshooters, the Confederates ordered it burned down, and sent a soldier with a torch to complete the task.
But Adeline Shirley, unwilling to let her house go up without a fight, begged the soldier not to, delaying him so long that advancing Union soldiers shot the unfortunate man.
Although she had saved her home, the shot and shell coming from both sides became too dangerous, and she and her son Quincy had to seek shelter in a cave in the Union lines.
They eventually ended up moving into one of their former slave cabins, but never lived in the white house again, the war had damaged it too much.
Her daughter Alice sold the house to the U. S. Government in May 1900, on the condition that her parents would be buried in the back yard, and that the home be fully restored - circumstances both met at the time.
