8. An unsuccessful naval attack had been made upon Vicksburg as early as June, 1862. An attempt was then made, by digging a canal, to change the channel of the Mississippi River, and thus leave Vicksburg an inland town. Various efforts were made to reach the rear of the place by the Yazoo Pass, the Lake Providence Canal, and the Big Sunflower Bayou; and in one of these attempts, near the close of December, 1862, General Sherman was repulsed with heavy loss. Finally, on the 30th of April, 1863, General Grant, after long preparation, landed an army at Bruinsburg, marched inland, and after fighting the battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion's Hill, and Black River Bridge, drove the enemy within their fortifications.

9. Vicksburg was formally invested on the 18th of May. Attempts made on the 21st and 22nd to carry the place by storm, resulted in heavy loss to the assailants; when it was decided to resort to a regular siege. For more than a month, while the approaches and parallels around the beleaguered city were daily pushed nearer and nearer, the city itself was exposed to an almost constant bombardment from the army, and the coöperating gunboats in the river. Many of the citizens, driven from their dwellings by the bursting shells, lived in cellars and caves which they dug in the earth.

10. At length provisions grew scarce; even the flesh of mules began to fail; the long hoped for re-enforcements were driven back; and on the 4th of July the Confederate General Pemberton surrendered the place, together with more than 200 cannon, 70,000 stand of small arms, and his entire army of 30,000 men, prisoners of war. Four days later Port Hudson, with a garrison of more than 6,000 men, surrendered to General Banks. The Mississippi River, in its entire length, was thus opened to the Union forces, and the Confederacy was cut in twain.

11. During the summer extensive cavalry raids, attended with the destruction of a vast amount of property, were made by the opposing forces. In April and May the Federal Colonel Grierson passed from La Grange,* Tenn., southward to Baton Rouge, in Louisiana, a distance of eight hundred miles, capturing over 1000 prisoners, 1,200 horses, and destroying railroads, military stores, and other property, valued at four

*See map, p. 399.

millions of dollars; and in the latter part of June the Confederate General John H. Morgan, at the head of 2,500 men, passed rapidly through Kentucky, entered Ohio, and destroyed much property, designing to pass into Virginia and join Lee in his invasion of Maryland; but in a series of engagements his forces were nearly all killed or captured, and he himself was taken prisoner.

12. As showing the character of Northern opposition to the war, which, to some extent, still existed, it should be mentioned that shortly before the great Union victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, a "peace meeting" was held at New York, under a call signed by several Democratic anti-war politicians, who assumed to declare the cardinal principles of the Democratic party. The meeting took grounds in favor of State Sovereignty; declared that " no State can be constitutionally coerced by other States by force of arms;" that the war was unconstitutional; that Democrats could not consistently support it; that the North had been beaten throughout; that the war was establishing a military despotism; and that it ought immediately to cease. But, fortunately, although there was much discontent with the management of the war, such were not the sentiments of the great mass of the Democratic party.

13. Congress had previously passed an "Act for enrolling and calling out the national forces," commonly called the "Conscription Act," which made all able-bodied citizens, between the ages of 20 and 45, with few exceptions, liable to be called into service, but allowed any person drafted to furnish an acceptable substitute, or pay to the Government $300 for the purpose of obtaining such substitute. But the measure was unpopular, and the passions of the laboring classes were violently excited against it by the harangues of political leaders; and when in July a draft for 300,000 men was ordered, riots in different quarters were the consequence.

14. On the 13th of July, while the draft was progressing in New York City, an armed mob attacked the office of one of the marshals engaged in the drawing, scattered the lists, and set the building on fire. On this and the two following days mob law prevailed throughout the city; gangs of desperadoes paraded the streets, levying contributions, and ordering buildings to be closed; negroes were assaulted, beaten to death, or hung; buildings were sacked and burned; and a colored or

phan asylum was destroyed. The police did their duty manfully; but, unfortunately, the city regiments were absent in Pennsylvania, whither they had gone to aid in repelling the invasion. After three days of riot, in which more than a hundred persons, but mostly rioters, had been killed, and property to the amount of $2,000,000 had been destroyed, a sufficient force was assembled to restore order.

15. The remaining important military events during the year were the continued siege of Charleston, and the contest for mastery in Tennessee and Northwestern Georgia. On the 7th of April Admiral Dupont entered Charleston Harbor with nine monitors and iron clads, and made an unsuccessful attack on Fort Sumter; a coöperating land force, under General Gilmore, afterward landed on Folly Island, and early in September forced the enemy to evacuate Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg, on Morris Island. A destructive fire was opened on Charleston, though four miles distant; and the walls of Sumter were gradually reduced to a heap of ruins under the terrible fire of the land batteries and iron clads.

16. In the southwest, in the latter part of June, General Rosecrans drove the Confederate army, under Bragg, out of

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THE GREAT REBELLION: 1864.

Tennessee. On the 9th of September he entered Chattanooga,* Bragg still retreating; but advancing to the Chickamauga Creek, he was there attacked on the 19th and 20th by Bragg, at the head of superior forces, and driven back, with heavy loss, upon Chattanooga. Chattanooga itself was now seriously threatened by the enemy, who held the neighboring heights of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.* In October General Grant superseded Rosecrans, and on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th of November drove the enemy from the heights, capturing many guns and prisoners. Much of the fighting on these three eventful days was done above the clouds, which hid the combatants from the view of those who were in the valley below. In the meantime the Confederate General Longstreet was besieging Burnside at Knoxville, but the victory of the Federal forces at Chattanooga compelled his hasty retreat into Virginia.

CHAPTER V.

EVENTS OF 1864.

1. At the beginning of the year 1864 the Mississippi River was strongly garrisoned by Federal troops, from St. Louis to its mouth. General Banks, commanding at New Orleans, held but little more than the country along the river. Brownsville, on the Rio Grande, Corpus Christi, and a few other points on the Texan coast, were in our possession; but all Arkansas south of the river of that name, and most of Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, were held by the Confederates, whose forces in that section probably amounted to 80,000 effective men, in addition to numerous bands of guerillas who were constantly harassing the outposts of the Union forces, and plundering and murdering loyal citizens within the Union lines.

2. Eastward of the Mississippi the Federal armies had penetrated the country southward, so as to hold nearly all of the State of Tennessee, with a foothold in Northwestern Georgia, southward of Chattanooga; but they were confronted by

See map, p. 424.

General Forrest, at the head of a large cavalry force, in Northeastern Mississippi, and also by a large army under General Johnston, whose headquarters were at Dalton, in Georgia. On the Gulf, Pensacola and Key West were in our possession, as were also Fernandina and St. Augustine, in Florida, and other blockaded ports where we had no foothold on land. Farther north, on the Atlantic coast, we held Fort Pulaski and Port Royal, some of the islands seaward of Charleston, and important posts on the seaboard of North Carolina; but Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington were still in the hands of the enemy.

3. In Virginia we held Norfolk and Fortress Monroe, and a line a little southward of the Potomac, where we were confronted by the main body of the Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee, strongly posted on the south bank of the Rapidan, covering and defending Richmond, the Confederate capital, against the Army of the Potomac. There was also a considerable Confederate force in Western Virginia and Northeastern Tennessee, and a still larger one in the Shenandoah Valley, the latter constantly threatening an incursion into Maryland and Pennsylvania, and an attack upon Washington.

4. In the South a military despotism prevailed, and conscription followed conscription, until almost every man and boy capable of bearing arms was in the field. The Federal Government had not been backward to meet the crisis, and on the first day of May, 1864, official reports showed a National military force of more than nine hundred and seventy thousand men, of whom six hundred and sixty thousand were available for duty. A contest more gigantic in all its proportions had not been known in the annals of history.

5. The opening military events of the year 1864 were, on the whole, favorable to the Confederates. In February General Sherman, starting from Vicksburg, penetrated the State of Mississippi as far east as Meridian, where he expected a cavalry force from Memphis to join him; but this force having been driven back, General Sherman was compelled to retrace his course to Vicksburg. On his return he was accompanied by nearly 6,000 slaves, who availed themselves of this opportunity to obtain their freedom. On the 5th of February General Seymour left Port Royal for a campaign in Florida; but on the 20th he was met by a superior force at Olustee, fifty