General John C. Pemberton was native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a West Point Military Academy graduate. It was because of the influence of his Virginia born wife and many years of service in the southern states before the Civil War, that he became devoted to the South. Pemberton was made a Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army and assigned to defend Vicksburg and the Mississippi River. Upon Vicksburg's surrender, he voluntarily resigned his commission and served as a lieutenant colonel of artillery for the remainder of the war, a testimonial of his loyalty to the South.