Editors’ Note: This article was written by James Holloway, Special to The Post. Holloway is a writer in the process of moving to Vicksburg, where at least five of his ancestors served in the city’s defense under General Pemberton.

It makes a gripping trailer for a summer blockbuster: a ragged messenger, exhausted and dripping wet, staggers through midnight darkness to the door of a grand mansion whose windows glow with festive light. He bursts through the door into a parlor decorated in green, gold and red for Christmas where officers in their military finest and ladies in splendid ballgowns whirl about the floor.

The enemy is approaching! The soldier shouts to the startled dancers.

The officers, with barely a pause, disengage from the ladies and return to their commands. The enemy is met and defeated.

That, of course, is what happened on Christmas Eve at the Balfour Mansion on Crawford Street: warned of the approach of William T. Sherman’s Union troop transports, the Army of Vicksburg quickly mustered and defeated the Union handily at Chickasaw Bayou.

But who was the messenger?

His name was Philip Hadley Fall, or as he came to be known, Colonel Fall. From youth Fall was fascinated by that innovation in communications technology known as the telegraph, which led to his starring role in that famous episode from the Vicksburg Campaign. He served as a telegrapher for fifty-five of his eventful seventy-three-year life, and on his death in 1913 had been the citizen of three nations.

Fall was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1839 to Dr J.S. and Mrs. Heather Fall. In 1841 his father placed him under the care of two aunts, residents of Houston in what was then the Republic of Texas. Fall’s early education was in that city, but he attended a military school in Kentucky.

The aunts encouraged Fall to seek a career as a civil engineer. Philip had other ideas: the electromagnetic telegraph, patented by English inventors Cooke and Wheatstone in 1837 and improved by Samuel Morse thereafter. Morse obtained Federal backing to build an experimental telegraph line between Washington D.C. and Baltimore in 1843. By 1850 some 20,000 miles of telegraph lines, most following railroad right-of-ways, had been strung across the nation.

Fall joined the Southwestern Telegraph Company in Vicksburg in 1858. “He had a natural aptitude for his chosen calling and soon became an expert,” the Galveston Daily News wrote in a 1913 obituary.

When the war began, Fall enlisted in the Vicksburg Light Artillery, but on learning of his telegraph expertise, General John C. Breckinridge transferred him to the Confederate Military Telegraph Service, in which he served throughout the war. His greatest service was rendered on Christmas Eve, 1862.

On that evening Fall, at a telegraph station across the Mississippi from Vicksburg, received an urgent wire from Colonel Lee Daniels, the commander of the stations north of the city. Daniels had observed the passage of Sherman’s assault force: fifty-nine troop transports and seven gunboats. (One gunboat was the U.S.S. Cairo, sunk during torpedo-clearing operations on the Yazoo River.) The city must be warned!

Fall knew his duty. He crossed the Mississippi in a frail skiff and sought out the Confederate commanders to warn of the danger.

“There was much of the dramatic in the incident,” wrote the Galveston Daily News. “There was a grand ball going on in Vicksburg, and all the officers and belles were in attendance. Right in the midst of this revelry Fall staggered in, wet and weary, and delivered his message to the commander. The ball terminated abruptly and there was the hurrying of the men to their posts.”

Fall’s information helped General Stephen D. Lee meet and defeat Sherman at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. “I reached Vicksburg at the time appointed, landed, assaulted, and failed,” Sherman famously wrote. General Lee gave Fall and Daniels full credit for their role in the Southern victory.

Fall remained in the Confederate Military Telegraph Service through the war. After the Southern defeat he moved back to Houston and joined Western Union. He was made superintendent of the Houston office, and outside several years running the telegraph lines for the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, remained with Western Union until his death.

Fall was active in the activities of the United Confederate Veterans, helping to organize the Dick Dowling Camp in Houston. When General John B. Gordon was named the organization’s commander in chief, he appointed Fall to a position on the staff with the rank of Colonel. He was known by that title ever since. “He always took great interest in the work of the Confederate ex-soldiers, and was never so happy as when engaged in work to further their interests.”

Fall “steadfastly refused to be pensioned” and died on July 18, 1913. He had just begun a three-month vacation but planned to return to his job in the autumn of that year.

At 78, he was one of the oldest telegraph operators in the nation and had served Western Union some forty-eight years.

“Who in Texas can surpass the Colonel in holding a job always?” Fall wrote in an autobiographical letter sent to the Houston Chronicle a few hours before his death. “He was no rolling stone. As true as he has been to his employers he points with pride to his service in the Southern Confederacy.”

Colonel Fall had been the citizen of three nations: the U.S., the Republic of Texas and the Confederate States of America. He was buried in Houston, but he did not forget Vicksburg. Confederate Veteran, the publication of the United Confederate Veterans, records a Confederate Heroes Day memorial service in Houston in 1908. Colonel Fall, in an address, recounted those Houstonians who went to the war who are still in Houston. “You have a few of them with you yet,” he said. “But soon not one will be left to remind the younger generation of that bravest, grandest, most patriotic army, such as the world had never before witnessed and will never see again.”

Colonel Fall then named some 20 Confederate veterans still alive in Houston. But, “so identified with Houston is Colonel Fall himself that a voice cried out: “You have overlooked Philip Fall!”

“No,” Colonel Fall replied. “Philip Fall went into the service from Vicksburg.”