GENERAL GRANT AND THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN

What flag is this you carry
Along the sea and shore?
The same our grandsires lifted up--
The same our fathers bore.
In many a battle's tempest
It shed the crimson rain--
What God has woven in his loom
Let no man rend in twain.
To Canaan, to Canaan,
The Lord has led us forth,
To plant upon the rebel towers
The banners of the North.
--Holmes.


GENERAL GRANT AND THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN

On January 29, 1863, General Grant took command of the army
intended to operate against Vicksburg, the last place held by the
rebels on the Mississippi, and the only point at which they could
cross the river and keep up communication with their armies and
territory in the southwest. It was the first high ground below
Memphis, was very strongly fortified, and was held by a large
army under General Pemberton. The complete possession of the
Mississippi was absolutely essential to the National Government,
because the control of that great river would cut the Confederacy
in two, and do more, probably, than anything else, to make the
overthrow of the Rebellion both speedy and certain.

The natural way to invest and capture so strong a place, defended
and fortified as Vicksburg was, would have been, if the axioms of
the art of war had been adhered to, by a system of gradual
approaches. A strong base should have been established at
Memphis, and then the army and the fleet moved gradually forward,
building storehouses and taking strong positions as they went. To
do this, however, it first would have been necessary to withdraw
the army from the positions it then held not far above Vicksburg,
on the western bank of the river. But such a movement, at that
time, would not have been understood by the country, and would
have had a discouraging effect on the public mind, which it was
most essential to avoid. The elections of 1862 had gone against
the government, and there was great discouragement throughout the
North. Voluntary enlistments had fallen off, a draft had been
ordered, and the peace party was apparently gaining rapidly in
strength. General Grant, looking at this grave political
situation with the eye of a statesman, decided, as a soldier,
that under no circumstances would he withdraw the army, but that,
whatever happened, he would "press forward to a decisive
victory." In this determination he never faltered, but drove
straight at his object until, five months later, the great
Mississippi stronghold fell before him.

Efforts were made through the winter to reach Vicksburg from the
north by cutting canals, and by attempts to get in through the
bayous and tributary streams of the great river. All these
expedients failed, however, one after another, as Grant, from the
beginning, had feared that they would. He, therefore, took
another and widely different line, and determined to cross the
river from the western to the eastern bank below Vicksburg, to
the south. With the aid of the fleet, which ran the batteries
successfully, he moved his army down the west bank until he
reached a point beyond the possibility of attack, while a
diversion by Sherman at Haines' Bluff, above Vicksburg, kept
Pemberton in his fortifications. On April 26, Grant began to move
his men over the river and landed them at Bruinsburg. "When this
was effected," he writes, "I felt a degree of relief scarcely
ever equaled since. Vicksburg was not yet taken, it is true, nor
were its defenders demoralized by any of our previous movements.
I was now in the enemy's country, with a vast river and the
stronghold of Vicksburg between me and my base of supplies, but I
was on dry ground, on the same side of the river with the enemy."

The situation was this: The enemy had about sixty thousand men at
Vicksburg, Haines' Bluff, and at Jackson, Mississippi, about
fifty miles east of Vicksburg. Grant, when he started, had about
thirty-three thousand men. It was absolutely necessary for
success that Grant, with inferior numbers, should succeed in.
destroying the smaller forces to the eastward, and thus prevent
their union with Pemberton and the main army at Vicksburg. His
plan, in brief; was to fight and defeat a superior enemy
separately and in detail. He lost no time in putting his plan
into action, and pressing forward quickly, met a detachment of
the enemy at Port Gibson and defeated them. Thence he marched to
Grand Gulf, on the Mississippi, which he took, and which he had
planned to make a base of supply. When he reached Grand Gulf,
however, he found that he would be obliged to wait a month, in
order to obtain the reinforcements which he expected from General
Banks at Port Hudson. He, therefore, gave up the idea of making
Grand Gulf a base, and Sherman having now joined him with his
corps, Grant struck at once into the interior. He took nothing
with him except ammunition, and his army was in the lightest
marching order. This enabled him to move with great rapidity, but
deprived him of his wagon trains, and of all munitions of war
except cartridges. Everything, however, in this campaign,
depended on quickness, and Grant's decision, as well as all his
movements, marked the genius of the great soldier, which consists
very largely in knowing just when to abandon the accepted
military axioms.

Pressing forward, Grant met the enemy, numbering between seven
and eight thousand, at Raymond, and readily defeated them. He
then marched on toward Jackson, fighting another action at
Clinton, and at Jackson he struck General Joseph Johnston, who
had arrived at that point to take command of all the rebel
forces. Johnston had with him, at the moment, about eleven
thousand men, and stood his ground. There was a sharp fight, but
Grant easily defeated the enemy, and took possession of the town.
This was an important point, for Jackson was the capital of the
State of Mississippi, and was a base of military supplies. Grant
destroyed the factories and the munitions of war which. were
gathered there, and also came into possession of the line of
railroad which ran from Jackson to Vicksburg. While he was thus
engaged, an intercepted message revealed to him the fact that
Pemberton, in accordance with Johnston's orders, had come out of
Vicksburg with twenty-five thousand men, and was moving eastward
against him. Pemberton, however, instead of holding a straight
line against Grant, turned at first to the south, with the view
of breaking the latter's line of communication. This was not a
success, for, as Grant says, with grim humor, "I had no line of
communication to break"; and, moreover, it delayed Pemberton when
delay was of value to Grant in finishing Johnston. After this
useless turn to the southward Pemberton resumed his march to the
east, as he should have done in the beginning, in accordance with
Johnston's orders; but Grant was now more than ready. He did not
wait the coming of Pemberton. Leaving Jackson as soon as he heard
of the enemy's advance from Vicksburg, he marched rapidly
westward and struck Pemberton at Champion Hills. The forces were
at this time very nearly matched, and the severest battle of the
campaign ensued, lasting four hours. Grant, however, defeated
Pemberton completely, and came very near capturing his entire
force. With a broken army, Pemberton fell back on Vicksburg.
Grant pursued without a moment's delay, and came up with the rear
guard at Big Black River. A sharp engagement followed, and the
Confederates were again defeated. Grant then crossed the Big
Black and the next day was before Vicksburg, with his enemy
inside the works.

When Grant crossed the Mississippi at Bruinsburg and struck into
the interior, he, of course, passed out of communication with
Washington, and he did not hear from there again until May 11,
when, just as his troops were engaging in the battle of Black
River Bridge, an officer appeared from Port Hudson with an order
from General Halleck to return to Grand Gulf and thence cooperate
with Banks against Port Hudson. Grant replied that the order came
too late. "The bearer of the despatch insisted that I ought to
obey the order, and was giving arguments to support the position,
when I heard a great cheering to the right of our line, and
looking in that direction, saw Lawler, in his shirt-sleeves,
leading a charge on the enemy. I immediately mounted my horse and
rode in the direction of the charge, and saw no more of the
officer who had delivered the message; I think not even to this
day." When Grant reached Vicksburg, there was no further talk of
recalling him to Grand Gulf or Port Hudson. The authorities at
Washington then saw plainly enough what had been done in the
interior of Mississippi, far from the reach of telegraphs or mail.

As soon as the National troops reached Vicksburg an assault was
attempted, but the place was too strong, and the attack was
repulsed, with heavy loss. Grant then settled down to a siege,
and Lincoln and Halleck now sent him ample reinforcements. He no
longer needed to ask for them. His campaign had explained itself,
and in a short time he had seventy thousand men under his
command. His lines were soon made so strong that it was
impossible for the defenders of Vicksburg to break through them,
and although Johnston had gathered troops again to the eastward,
an assault from that quarter on the National army, now so largely
reinforced, was practically out of the question. Tighter and
tighter Grant drew his lines about the city, where, every day,
the suffering became more intense. It is not necessary to give
the details of the siege. On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg surrendered,
the Mississippi was in control of the National forces from its
source to its mouth, and the Confederacy was rent in twain. On
the same day Lee was beaten at Gettysburg, and these two great
victories really crushed the Rebellion, although much hard
fighting remained to be done before the end was reached.

Grant's campaign against Vicksburg deserves to be compared with
that of Napoleon which resulted in the fall of Ulm. It was the
most brilliant single campaign of the war. With an inferior
force, and abandoning his lines of communication, moving with a
marvelous rapidity through a difficult country, Grant struck the
superior forces of the enemy on the line from Jackson to
Vicksburg. He crushed Johnston before Pemberton could get to him,
and he flung Pemberton back into Vicksburg before Johnston could
rally from the defeat which had been inflicted. With an inferior
force, Grant was superior at every point of contest, and he won
every fight. Measured by the skill displayed and the result
achieved, there is no campaign in our history which better
deserves study and admiration.

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