Grant, "The defeat of the enemy in five battles outside of Vicksburg; the occupation of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and the capture of Vicksburg and its garrison and munitions of war; a loss to the enemy of thirty-seven thousand prisoners, among whom were fifteen general officers; at least ten thousand killed and wounded, and among the killed, Generals Tracy, Tilghman, and Green; and hundreds, and perhaps thousands of stragglers, who can never be collected and reorganized. Arms and munitions of war for an army of sixty thousand men have fallen into our hands (there were two hundred and twenty cannon, of which forty-two were guns of heavy calibre and of the very best make, and seventy-one thousand stand of small arms, of which fifty thousand were Enfield rifles in the original English packages), besides a large amount of other public property, consisting of railroads, locomotives, cars, steamboats, cotton, etc., and much was destroyed to prevent our capturing it." General Grant says nothing in his report of the greatest result of this campaign, and the surrender of Port Hudson, which followed a few days later; the opening of the Mississippi, and the division of the Rebel Confederacy into two sec tions, without the means of communicating with each other, except by stealth; and the terrible blow thus inflicted upon the Rebel Government, which thenceforth began to be distrusted at home and abroad, and though making desperate efforts to retrieve its failing fortunes, found this disaster constantly brought forward against it, as evidence of its inability to maintain its position.

The surrender was made partly from the consciousness of the inability of the garrison to resist the assault which was soon expected, and partly from the exhaustion of their supplies, as they had only a sufficiency for three days longer, and had, for two or three weeks, subsisted mainly on mule meat. The Union losses in this series of battles were as follows:

or a grand total of eight thousand eight hundred and seventy-five casualties. Of the wounded many were but slightly injured and continued on duty; many more required but a few days or weeks for their recovery. Not more than one half of the wounded were permanently disabled.

The general-in-chief of the army of the United States, General Halleck, whose praise is ever bestowed sparingly, well says of this campaign: "No more brilliant exploit can be found in military history. When we consider the character of the country in which the army operated, the

EVENTS SUBSEQUENT TO THE FALL OF VICKSBURG.

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formidable obstacles to be overcome, the number of the forces, and the strength of the enemy's works, we cannot fail to admire the courage and endurance of the troops, and the skill and daring of their commander."

But the grand catalogue of victories and triumphs of the Union arms, in connection with the army of Tennessee, did not close with the fall of Vicksburg. On the 5th of July, General Sherman, by direction of General Grant, started with three army corps in pursuit of Johnston, who retreated from the Black river, where he had intrenched himself, toward Jackson, which place Sherman invested on the 14th and captured on the 18th, with a loss in this and a previous attack on the 13th on the part of the Union forces of about one thousand in killed, wounded, and missing. He captured seven hundred and sixty-four prisoners, two rifled guns, and a large amount of ammunition, and destroyed over forty locomotives, and a large number of cars, being almost the entire equipments of the New Orleans and Northern, and the Jackson, Meridian, and Vicksburg railroads. This loss was a very severe one for the Rebels, and was wholly irreparable. General Ransom, with a force of one thousand two hundred men, was sent to Natchez, on the 6th of July, to stop the crossing of cattle from Texas for Johnston's army. He took a considerable number of pris oners, among whom were five Rebel officers, crossed the river, captured a battery of nine guns, four of them ten pounder Parrotts, marched nine miles back into the country, and seized two hundred and forty-seven boxes of ammunition and a number of teams for its transportation, and nine more guns, the Rebels in charge of the battery flying in consternation. Returning to Natchez he captured five thousand head of Texas cattle (two thousand of which were sent to General Banks, and the remainder brought to Vicksburg), and four thousand hogsheads of sugar.

Having learned that Johnston was fortifying Yazoo city, which, with the steamers and gunboats on the Yazoo river, had been captured and destroyed by the gunboats early in May, General Grant sent General F. J. Herron with his division to co-operate with gunboats from Admiral Porter's squadron to destroy the Rebel works. After a short but severe ' action the Rebels fled, leaving a large amount of stores and ammunition, six heavy guns, and one vessel, formerly a gunboat, in the hands of the Union troops, and destroying four of their finest steamers. General Herron pursued them and took about three hundred prisoners. The Baron De Kalb, one of Admiral Porter's gunboats, ran foul of a torpedo, which exploded and sunk her. No lives were lost.

In addition to these substantial results of the enterprise of the Union commander in following up his victories, was the surrender of Port Hudson, which took place on the 9th, and of which a full account will be given elsewhere. The Mississippi squadron penetrated into the interior, on both sides of the Mississippi, by way of its numerous affluents, and destroyed the transports and gunboats which the Rebels were preparing on the smaller rivers. The Louisville and the Elmira, the former the finest

steamer on the Western waters, were among the captures, and two other large steamers were burned, and a large amount of Rebel stores seized.

While the siege of Vicksburg was progressing, General Johnston, thwarted in all his efforts to open communication with General Pemberton through General Grant's lines, attempted to effect it from the west side of the Mississippi, and sent a force of three brigades, under the command of General Walker, to attack Milliken's Bend, on the 6th of June. The greater part of the Union force stationed there was composed of negro troops, portions of four regiments which were forming for the service, but had never been under fire. The whole force, including three hundred or four hundred white troops, did not exceed fourteen hundred men. The Rebel force numbered not far from four thousand five hundred. The Rebels were discovered by a reconnoitering force on the afternoon of the 6th of July, and making an attack, were repulsed by the colored troops, and on being reinforced, and assailing the intrenchments to which the Union troops had fallen back, were met with such determined resistance, that they in turn fell back. On the morning of the 7th the Rebels again made an attack upon the Union intrenchments at five A. M. The battle lasted till late in the afternoon; and though, by the use of his cavalry, the enemy succeeded, after a desperate resistance, in turning the flank of the Union troops, and, by an enfilading fire, driving them to the river's brink, the gunboat Choctaw, coming up opportunely, and obtaining the range of the Rebels, compelled them to fly from the field. The loss on both sides was large for the number engaged. The Rebels left sixty dead on the field, but carried away all their wounded and some of the killed. The Union loss was one hundred and one killed, two hundred and eighty. five wounded, and two hundred and sixty-six missing, nearly forty-seven per cent. of the whole number engaged. Of these nearly six hundred were from the colored regiments. The two hundred and sixty-six missing, who were mostly prisoners, were nearly all colored, and there was too much reason to believe that they were all murdered after their capture by the Rebel forces. None of them have since been heard from, and the avowal in a semi-official way, of the intention of the Rebel Government to deal in this manner with any freedmen who became soldiers in the Union armies, coupled with the persistent refusal of the Rebel authorities to give any account of them, justifies the painful presumption that they were thus slaughtered. Their bravery in this, their first battle-field, completely refuted the insinuations which had been so often made, of their want of the courage necessary for the profession of arms.

On the 10th of June a Rebel force attacked the Union garrison at Lake Providence; but there, as at Milliken's Bend, they were repulsed and fled. The attack on Helena, Arkansas, on the 4th of July, of which we shall give some account in another chapter, does not seem to have been made by any portion of Johnston's troops, but by a detachment from the TransMississippi army.

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CHAPTER XLIX.

THE INVESTMENT OF PORT HUDSON-BATTLE FOUGHT BY GENERAL AUGUR-THE ARRIVAL OF ADDITIONAL FORCES-THE ASSAULT OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF MAY-THE BRILLIANT ATTACK OF GENERAL WEITZEL'S DIVISION--PARTIAL SUCCESS OF THE ASSAULT-THE ASSAULT OF THE FOURTEENTH OF JUNE-ITS FAILURE-THE CLOSENESS OF THE SIEGESUFFERINGS OF THE GARRISON THEIR SURRENDER-THE REBEL ATTACKS ON BRASHEAR CITY AND TERREBONNE-INHUMAN MASSACRE OF INFIRM CONTRABANDS AND WOMEN AND CHILDREN—THE MURDder of negROES AT ST. MARTINSVILLE-THE ATTACK OF THE REBELS ON HELENA, ARKANSAS-THEIR SIGNAL DEFEAT-REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF THE WAR DURING THE LAST ELEVEN MONTHS-THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

WE left General Banks, the commander of the Department of the Gulf, (Chapter XLIII., p.501,) at Alexandria, Louisiana, which place he had entered with his troops on the 8th of May. He remained at this point for about ten days, having sent General Augur, meantime, to commence operations against Port Hudson from Baton Rouge, and despatched two expeditions of cavalry to break up the enemy's camps and destroy their communications at Camp Moore, Ponchatoula, and on the Clinton and Port Hudson railroad. Admiral Farragut had also bombarded the batteries on the night of the 8th of May for several hours. General Augur encountered a considerable Rebel force on Port Hudson plains, about four miles east of the town, on the 22d of May, and fought them for nearly nine hours, and finally compelled them to retreat with heavy loss toward Clinton. The Union loss was nineteen killed and eighty wounded. General Banks moved forward from Alexandria with his troops as rapidly as possible, and crossing his army over the Mississippi at Bayou Sara, which he reached on the 21st of May, effected a junction with General Augur on the 23d. The town was closely invested the next day.

Port Hudson is about twenty-five miles above Baton Rouge, on the east side of the Mississippi. Like Vicksburg, it is situated on a bend of the river, but unlike that city it is at the angle of the bend, which in this case is nearly a right angle. On the north, for a distance of eight miles it is protected by an impassable swamp, which is bounded on the side nearest Port Hudson by Thompson's creek, the hither bank of which is a precipitous bluff, crowned by an intrenched abatis. This abatis extends from the Mississippi river eastward, till it joins a series of intrenchments, nine or ten miles in extent, sweeping to the south in a semicircle till they rest upon the river on the crest of a range of high hills. The country in the rear is rolling, and much of it heavily timbered. Between Baton Rouge and Port Hudson is a long stretch of territory, difficult of access at all times, being covered by dense woods and undergrowth, and abound. ing in bayous and marshes. The Port Hudson plains, lying about four

miles east of the town, on which General Augur's battle was fought, were two open tracts of level country, one about a mile square, the other half a mile in length by a fourth of a mile in breadth. Both are surrounded by dense forests.

The defences of Port Hudson were nearly as formidable and extensive as those of Vicksburg. On the water front were eight batteries, one of them stationed on a bluff eighty feet high. These batteries mounted about twenty-five guns, two of them one hundred and twenty pounders, and the remainder twenty-four, thirty-two, and forty-two pounders. On the land side, the defences occupied four distinct lines of fortifications, each commanded by the one in its rear. In front of all a formidable abatis extended for many rods. There were two large and strong forts, four redoubts, and three extended bastions, connected with each other by earthworks, and strengthened by lines of rifle-pits in front and rear. On these fortifications were mounted between thirty and forty guns, some of them of heavy calibre, and besides these there were four movable field-batteries. The garrison consisted of about seven thousand men, under the command of General Franklin Gardner, an able and skilful officer.

On the 25th of May, General Banks had compelled the enemy to aban don his first line of works. The Union forces, having been joined on the 26th by General Weitzel's brigade, which had distinguished itself so greatly in the campaign on the Teche, General Banks ordered an assault on the Rebel defences for the next day. The artillery commenced firing between five and six o'clock A. M., and the squadron of Admiral Farragut opened fire upon the water batteries above and below, about the same time, and continued their bombardment most of the day.

At ten o'clock, General Weitzel, with his own brigade and portions of Grover's and Emory's divisions, and two regiments of colored troops, under the command of Colonel Paine-the whole being about five brigades -attacked the right of the enemy's works, and after a desperate and protracted contest, lasting till after four P. M., succeeded in forcing the enemy's lines, crossing Big Sandy creek, and taking possession of a redoubt, mounting six guns of large calibre, near Foster's creek. In this achievement every foot of ground had been contested with the most determined resolution, and the slaughter on both sides had been fearful. The colored troops, especially, fought with such courage and daring as to call forth the highest encomiums from the commanding general. Nearly one half of the casualties of the day were from their ranks. The captured battery, which had been the one which inflicted its death wounds on the frigate Mississippi, was speedily turned upon the enemy, and with great effect The positions gained in this terrible struggle were firmly held.

On the left and centre, the assault led by Generals T. W. Sherman and Augur, was equally resolute and determined, though commenced later, and not crowned with the same measure of success. General Sherman