CHAPTER XXVIII. VICKSBURG. VICKSBURG.-ITS GREAT IMPORTANCE.-GRANT'S PLANS.-CAPTURE OF HOLLY SPRINGS.--SHER. MAN DEFEATED.-FORT HINDMAN TAKEN.-ARRIVAL OF GRANT.-CANAL DIGGING.-JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON.-RUNNING THE BATTERIES.-GRIERSON'S RAID.-GRANT LANDS AT BRUINSBURG.-BATTLE OF PORT GIBSON.-GRAND GULF EVACUATED.-SHERMAN JOINS GRANT.TAKING A REST.-BATTLE OF RAYMOND.--CAPTURE OF JACKSON.-A GOOD UNION MAN. JEFF DAVIS'S BOOK.-BATTLE OF CHAMPION HILLS.-BATTLE OF BIG BLACK RIVER. -BRIDGE BUILDING.-VICKSBURG Surrounded.-TWO REPULSES.-CALIBRE 54.-CAVE LIFE. -MINES AND COUNTERMINES.-SCARCITY OF FOOD.-GRANT AND PEMBERTON.-THE SURREN DER.-EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT.-THE HOTEL DE VICKSBURG.-THE VICKSBURG CITIZEN. WHAT WAS GAINED AT VICKSBURG.-GRANT AND THE STEAMBOAT MEN. SOON OON after General Grant succeeded General Halleck in command of the Army of the Tennessee, he began to turn his attention to the capture of Vicksburg. Before the war Vicksburg was a little city of between four and five thousand population, but its position on the Mississippi River soon made it one of the most important places in the Confederacy. Its situation can be best understood from the map, which gives a view of the city and the country around it, as far on the east as Jackson, the capital of the State. The Confederates drew a large part of their supplies of cattle and grain, needed for food for their armies, from Western Louisiana and Texas. When they controlled the whole of the Mississippi River from Columbus, Kentucky, to New Orleans, a brisk trade was carried on by steamboats on the Mississippi and the rivers flowing into it from the west; but after the fall of Memphis and New Orleans, the Union gunboats patrolled all the upper and lower parts of the Mississippi, and the Confederates were confined to the part between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the latter about twenty-five miles above Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As their supplies had to be brought across the river between these two places, it became of the greatest importance that they should be held, and both Vicksburg and Port Hudson had been strongly fortified. It was no less important that the Union troops should capture these places both to cut off its food supplies from the Confederacy and to open the great Mississippi to navigation. We have seen how Farragut steamed up the river with his fleet, bombarded Vicksburg for many days, and finally passed and repassed the batteries. At that time the defences were unfinished and only a few guns were mounted, but the Confederates labored earnestly at the works, and by the end of 1862 had made a second "Gibraltar" of it. Besides its river batteries, it was surrounded by a long line of fortifications on the land side, capable of holding many thousand men. The Confederate forces for the defence of Vicksburg were under the command of Lieutenant-General John C. Pember ton, who had succeeded Van Dorn. Grant's plan for taking Vicksburg was to have Sherman go down with his force in boats from Memphis and make an attack on the place in connection with the gunboat fleet. General McClernand was ordered at the same time to go down from Cairo and aid Sherman, while Grant himself was to move against Pemberton, who was then in the rear of Vicksburg. As both Grant and Sherman had more men than Pemberton, it was hoped that Sherman would be able to capture Vicksburg, while Grant held Pemberton in check. But just as Sherman had started down the Mississippi, Grant met with a disaster which spoiled his plan. He had made 1862.] HOLLY SPRINGS DISASTER. 325 Holly Springs, a small town on the line of the Mississippi Central Railroad, his chief depot of supplies, and had gathered there all the food and medicines needed for his army. Grant knew the great importance of keeping clear his connection with this place, and he took care to repair the railroad as he moved. toward Vicksburg; but Van Dorn, with a force of Confederate cavalry, made a long raid round the east of Grant's army and captured Holly Springs (Dec. 20) and the two thousand men who were guarding it. All the railroad buildings and the immense storehouses, filled with clothing and other supplies, were burned; the government property alone was valued at 1 more than two million dollars. This great loss forced Grant to fall back to Holly Springs, and to get more supplies from Memphis. He then determined to give up the movement by land against Vicksburg and to send his army in boats down the Mississippi. Grant's retreat enabled Pemberton to use most of his force against Sherman, who, not knowing of the disaster at Holly Springs, had landed his troops near the mouth of the Yazoo River, which flows into the Mississippi just above Vicksburg. Sherman found the Confederate lines of works behind the city were strong, while the country was swampy and so cut up by creeks and bayous as to make it very difficult to approach. He made an attack on the works, but found it impossible to take them, and after suffering a loss of nearly two thousand men, he made up his mind to wait for Grant. In the beginning of January, General McClernand came, and being the senior officer, took command. The name of the army was then changed from Army of the Tennessee to Army of the Mississippi. At General Sherman's request, a naval and military expedition was sent up the Arkansas River against Fort Hindman, at a place called Arkansas Post, where the Confederates kept several steamboats that used to come down into the Mississippi and capture supply boats. Sherman commanded the troops and Admiral Porter the gunboats. After a bombardment by the gunboats, by which the Confederate sharpshooters were driven out of their rifle-pits, the troops pushed their way through half-frozen swamps, and bivouacked for the night. In the morning they advanced under a heavy fire, in which nearly a thousand men were lost. They were about to storm the fort when a white flag was hoisted and the place surrendered with about five thousand prisoners. Sherman then returned to Milliken's Bend on the Mississippi, where Grant soon after arrived and took command of the whole army in person. A glance at the map will show that Vicksburg is situated at the end of a long bend in the Mississippi. In July, 1862, when Admiral Farragut went up the river from New Orleans, an attempt had been made to cut a canal across the Peninsula made by this bend, which was only a mile wide. If this could be done, the Mississippi would make a new and shorter channel through the canal, and vessels could go up and down the river without passing Vicksburg, which would thus be left inland. Grant concluded to open this canal, which had never been finished, but after laboring at it for several weeks the river rose and broke through the dam at its mouth, and the work had to be given up. Several attempts were then made to open passages through the bayous, but after long labor in pushing the vessels through dense swamps, where the limbs of moss-covered cypresses broke the chimneys and upper works of the steamboats, and amid stagnant waters filled with wild-fowl and infested by alligators and moccasin-snakes, to say nothing of Confederate sharpshooters along the banks, the attempt had to be given up. Grant then JOHN A. McCLERNAND. 1863.] RUNNING 327 made up his mind to march his army down the west bank of the Mississippi below Vicksburg, to run by the batteries with his gunboats and transports, then to cross the river by their aid and get into the rear of Vicksburg. At that time General Joseph E. Johnston, who, it will be remembered, had been so badly wounded in the battle of Seven Pines that he was obliged to retire for a time from service, was in command of all the Confederate forces in Mississippi. He collected all the troops he could in his department for the purpose of relieving Vicksburg, or at least of saving Pemberton and his army. Grant's object was to prevent a junction between Johnston and Pemberton and to keep the former out of Vicksburg while he forced the latter into that place, so as to capture him and his army. The march down the west side of the Mississippi was made with great difficulty, for much of the country was flooded and the roads were almost impassable. The country passed through was lower than the river, which was all the time rising, and there was danger that the waters might break through the levee and drown the troops. There was danger too that the enemy might cut the levees, which had to be guarded night and day for more than twenty miles. But at last the army reached a plantation called Hard Times. Means had now to be found to get the army across the river and to provide it with supplies enough for an advance against Vicksburg. As the canal had proved a failure, the only way left for the fleet, then under command of Admiral Porter, to get below Vicksburg was to pass the batteries. On the night of April 16, seven iron-clads, one wooden gunboat, and three transports laden with supplies, made this perilous voyage. The plan was to start after dark, the iron-clads ahead in single file and so far apart that there should be no danger of running into each other. If discovered by the batteries, which extended eight miles along the river's bank, the gunboats were to open fire, and the transports were then to run by under cover of the smoke. Bales of cotton and of hay were piled up around the machinery of the boats, and iron chains and timbers were hung along their sides to protect them as far as possible from shot. When the time came the fires were hidden and all lights put out, and the boats began to move silently down the river. A haze had settled over the water and for a time all went well, |