On a cool Saturday morning southeast of Edwards, visitors gathered at the former site of the Champion Plantation to sit under the oaks on the grounds of the Champion Hill M. B. Church and listen to the great-great-grandson discuss the major battle of Gen. Ulysses Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign and tour the Champion Hill battlefield — the site of the battle that led later to the Siege of Vicksburg.

“Where you’re sitting is the front yard of the Champion Plantation,” Rebecca Drake, historian, author and coordinator for Champion Hill events with the Champion Hill Heritage Foundation, told the 60 people attending the program. “The house served as Grant’s headquarters and served as a field hospital, so this is hallowed ground.”

She said the property was later donated by the Champion family to the black community for a church.

Bertram Hayes-Davis, Jefferson Davis’ great-great-grandson, who has made three previous appearances at Champion Hill for the observance of the battle, recalled his first visit there for the 150th anniversary of the battle in 2013, adding the Champion Hill observances provide a sense of unity, bringing the community and visitors together.

“The 150th was one of the most wonderful events I’ve attended in my life,” he said. “We had descendants from the north and the south come together in unison to honor their descendants, not the conflict, not the politics, nothing other than their descendants.

“Three years ago, that event had 200-300 people, but we had 100 descendants of both the north and south honoring the individuals who came to this battlefield. It wasn’t anything but us coming together as a country to acknowledge the fact there was a great battle here, there were tens of thousands of men here, there was great carnage, there was much death,” he said.

“We came here as a group to look at this event in unity. We’re together in our belief that we want to learn something; we want to experience something. What I’m hearing from America is this is what we’re thirsting for. We want to have an opportunity to experience those things further than we have before.”

Davis, who now holds history programs and talks about his great-great-grandfather, said history has forgotten the battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson and Champion Hill when it discusses the Siege of Vicksburg.

When those battles are included in the story of Vicksburg’s fall to the Union in 1863, he said people have a different perspective of the Vicksburg Campaign and the Siege. He added he also talks about the men who fought at Champion Hill, and considers what happened when men from both sides picked up their dead and wounded from the battlefield.

“They stopped in the middle of the battle,” he said. “They stopped. They had to pick up dead and wounded. They would come out on this very field and pickup their wounded and their dead. They’d stop (fighting) and they’d go out.

“The union and confederate soldiers would be this close together (holding his hands apart) gathering their dead and wounded. They weren’t silent. They were having a conversation. It might have been ‘Hey, Johnny Reb, you got any tobacco? Well, I might. I’ve got a little coffee, I’ll trade you for it.’

“There’s a conversation between individuals. These are courageous soldiers in the battle conflict, in the worst scenario they could ever imagine, taking a moment to be humans.”

It was that human element, he said, that bought unity 150 years later to the observance.

And when he talked about the battle three years ago, he said, “I felt like I was speaking about something we had in common.

“We’re all trying to come together to pledge our allegiance to those individuals that were here before. It had nothing to do with politics; it had everything to do with these men on this field. They were the same as you and me, and they were taking a break (from war) the same as you came out here today to take time off from whatever you were doing to have a further understanding of what this place can mean.”

He said it’s the stories of the participants rather and the details of battles, that create the interest in its history and can serve to give people a better understanding of history.

Drake said before the event the Champion Hill observance is held every year, adding visitors get to tour the battle site every two years.