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the winter of 1863, while Grant's army was lying before Vicksburg, a young gentleman of Virginia, serving in the Confederate Army of Vicksburg, disappeared under circumstances of extraordinary mystery, and to this day his fate remains as inexplicable as it was on that when he was first missed by his comrades.

On the 27th day of January, 1863, the Confederate army occupying Vicksburg and its vicinity numbered near thirty thousand effectives. Major-General Carter L. Stevenson was in chief command, and Major-General Dabney H. Maury was next in rank, and commanded the right wing, holding the lines from Hayne's Bluff on the Yazoo River to the city of Vicksburg.

On the morning of January 27th, General Maury, accompanied by Colonel William E. Burnett, his Chief of Artillery, and by his young aide-do-camp, John Herndon Maury, son of Commander Matthew F. Maury, rode to General Stevenson's head-quarters in Vicksburg, and, after concluding his business there, sent those two gentlemen of his staff to make a reconnoissancereconnaissance [sic] of certain positions near the Big Black Road. This was about 10 He has never seen his young aide-de-camp and kinsman John Maury since that moment; nor has he ever been able to ascertain with certainty what has been the fate of the young man.

Burnett returned to dinner at head-quarters, and reported that about one o'clock having finished their business about the Big Black Road, young Maury left him in order to ride down to a point opposite the mouth of the canal, and observe what the enemy was about there. No uneasiness was felt on account of his non-return that night. But when ten o'clock had passed next morning, and "Johnny," as all called him, had not yet been seen or heard of, a vague anxiety began to make itself felt. This was soon increased by hearing that on the previous evening, at about three o'clock. Generals Stevenson, Barton, and other officers from Fredericksburg, Virginia, of which town John H. Maury was