Porter, who had returned to the Yazoo on the 16th, now reopened communication hence with Grant and Sherman, sending them much needed provisions, and preparing to attack the batteries on Haines's Bluff, which the enemy had begun" to evacuate, and which, on the appearance of our gunboats, they ran away from, leaving guns, forts, munitions, tents, and equipage of all kinds, to fall into our hands. It would hardly be credited on other testimony than his own," that our Admiral proceeded to destroy this inestimable material of war, with full knowledge that Grant's triumphant army, more especially Sherman's corps, were at hand to defend and utilize it. The fall of Haines's Bluff completely uncovered Yazoo City, in fact, the whole Yazoo Valley; and Porter at once dispatched Lt. Walker, with five gunboats, up the river. Walker reached Yazoo City at 1 P. M.;" finding the Rebel Navy Yard and vessels in flames, and the city ready to surrender. Among the vessels on the stocks was the ram Republic, 310 feet long by 75 wide; the Mobile, ready for plating, &c., &c. In the Navy Yard, were five saw and planing mills, an extensive machine-shop, beside carpenter and blacksmith shops, &c., &c. All of these that the Rebels had not already fired were burned by Walker, who found 1,500 Rebel sick and wounded in hospital and paroled them. He was ambushed" and fired on by 200 sharp-shooters at Liverpool Landing on his return, with a loss of 1 killed, 9 wounded; but encountered no other resistance. An immediate assault on the landward defenses of Vicksburg was determined on by Grant, who apprehended an attack on his rear by Johnston, strongly rëenforced from Bragg's army, and who counted much on the demoralization of Pemberton's forces by their succession of defeats and disasters. Accordingly, after some reciprocal cannonading and sharp-shooting, a general assault was ordered at 2 P. M. ;" which only resulted in an advance of the front of our several corps to a close proximity to the Rebel defenses. Blair's division of Sherman's corps alone planted its colors on their works; the 13th regulars, of Giles Smith's brig ade, doing so at a cost of 77 out of 250 men; its leader, Capt. Washington, being among the mortally wounded. The 83d Indiana, Col. Spooner, and the 127th Illinois, Col. Eldridge, likewise carried the outer slope of the Rebel earthworks, and held their ground till night, firing at any head that appeared above the parapet, but were unable to enter; while the regiments on either side of these, though they gained positions close up to the works, were even less successful. Sherman, seeing that they were here exposed to hourly zine, and destroyed the works generally. I also burned up the encampments, which were permanently and remarkably well constructed, looking as though the Rebels intended to stay some time. Their works and encampments covered many acres of ground; and the fortifications and rifle-pits proper of Haines's Bluff extend about a mile and a quarter. Such a net-work of forts I never saw." 7 May 19. 76 May 20. 77 May 23. 78 THE GRAND ASSAULT ON VICKSBURG. 311 decimation to no purpose, ordered of the column a fire that swept it down in an instant. No troops them, after dark, to fall back a short distance to a point where the irregularities of the ground afforded them comparative shelter and safety. The two following days were devoted to bringing up and distributing provisions-the campaign in Mississippi having thus far been prosecuted on our part with scarcely a day's rations for three days' service: the country traversed being drawn upon for whatever it could afford while roads were made, cannon planted, &c.; the enemy likewise improving the time to the utmost. And now Gen. Grant ordered a second and more determined assault at all points, to be made simultaneously at 10 A. M." At the moment named, our soldiers darted from under cover and rushed upon the Rebel works before them—their men all shielded by their breastworks, while ours were necessarily exposed to a close and deadly fire. Sherman's attack was made by Frank Blair's division, led by the brigade of Gen. Hugh S. Ewing, 30th Ohio, with Giles Smith's and T. Kilby Smith's closely following; sharp-shooters skirmishing in the advance, and a storming party carrying boards and poles wherewith to bridge the ditch-five batteries concentrating their fire on the enemy's bastion constructed to command the approach. could or should persist in braving such utter, useless destruction. The rear of the column attempted to rush on; but it was madness; and soon all had sought cover from that deadly fire. Still, the assault was not abandoned; but, swerving to the left, Ewing's men, in the advance, crossed the ditch on the left face of the bastion, and, climbing up its exterior slope, planted their colors near the top, and burrowed in the earth for shelter from the flanking fire of the enemy; while Giles Smith's brigade, turning down a ravine, found cover, formed line, and threatened the parapet still farther to the left; Kilby Smith deploying his men on the off slope of a spur of hill, and keeping up, with Ewing's, a fire on any head that appeared above the parapet. Our artillery and infantry being still at work, our stormers easily held their ground; and, at length, Giles Smith's and Ransom's brigades attempted to carry the parapet by assault; but were repelled with loss. Meantime, Steele's division, which had advanced half a mile farther to the right, was fighting desperately to little profit; yet, on the receipt of a dispatch from McClernand to Grant, announcing that his corps had carried three Rebel forts, Sherman ordered Tuttle to renew the assault on his left; and Mower's brigade was In vain. The storming party had sent up where Ewing's had been rereached the salient of the bastion pulsed. Mower did his best; and the unassailed, and passed toward the colors of his leading regiment (11th sally-port, when there shot up be- Missouri) were planted beside those hind the parapet, a double rank of of Blair's storming party, and there the enemy, who poured on the head remained till withdrawn after night 79 fall; but no substantial success was achieved to balance the heavy loss. Steele had like ill success in his attack; his men advancing across ravines and gullies to a point between the bastion and the Mississippi; whence they made their way, under a heavy fire, up to the parapet, which they failed to carry, but held possession of the hill-side beneath it till night; when they were withdrawn, like the rest. The assault by McPherson's corps, in the center, was equally spirited and equally fruitless, save in carnage: our losses being probably tenfold those of the strongly fortified and thoroughly sheltered Rebels. Some ground was here gained in the assault; but but it was mainly abandoned after dark. On our left, McClernand's attack seemed for a time more effective, or, at least, was believed by him to be so. Rushing forward to the assault precisely at 10 A. M., Lawler's and Landrum's brigades had, within 15 minutes, carried the ditch, slope, and bastion, of the fort they confronted, which was entered by Sergeant Griffith and 11 privates of the 22d Iowa; all of whom fell in it but the Sergeant, who brought away 13 Rebels as prisoners. The colors of the 48th Ohio and 77th Illinois were planted on the bastion; and, within the next quarter of an hour, Benton's and Burbridge's brigades, fired by this example, had carried the ditch and slope of another strong earthwork, planting their colors on the slope; while Capt. White, of the Chicago Mercantile Battery, carried forward one of his guns by hand to the ditch, double-shotted it, and fired it into an embrasure, disabling a Rebel gun ready to be fired, and doubtless doing execution among its gunners. McClernand supposed his assault successful, and reported to Grant that he had carried two of the Rebel forts; and again: "We have gained the enemy's intrenchments at several points, but are brought to a stand;" at the same time asking for rëenforcements. Grant, when he received the first dispatch, immediately ordered the assault on Sherman's front (where he then was) to be renewed; while he started back to his original position with McPherson in the center; which he had not reached when he received from McClernand the further message above cited; whereupon, though distrusting its accuracy, he ordered Quinby's division of McPherson's corps to report to McClernand; whose dispatches he showed to McPherson as an incitement to press the enemy in his front, so as to prevent a concentration against our left. Nothing came of all this but aggravated losses—mainly on our side. McClernand's taking of the forts was after the well-known similitude of the captured Tartar: his men could get into them at the cost of not coming out again. Two hours later, he wrote again that: "I have lost no ground. My men are in two of the enemy's forts [which was partially true of his dead]; but they are commanded by rifle-pits in the rear. Several prisoners have been taken, who intimate that the rear is strong. At this moment, I am hard pressed." And that was the sum total of our progress in this quarter: the assault of Osterhaus's and Hovey's divisions, farther to our left, having been promptly repulsed by a deadly enfilading fire, which drove them to take shelter FAILURE OF THE GRAND ASSAULT. behind a friendly ridge and remain there; while McArthur's division, which had been ordered by Grant to röenforce McClernand, proved to be some miles distant, so that it did not arrive till next morning; and Quinby's two brigades came up, fully observed by the enemy, who correspondingly shifted their own forces. When these brigades came to hand, it was nearly dark; and Col. Boomer, commanding one of them, was killed as he led his men into action. Finally, at 8 P. M., our men were recalled from the more advanced and imperiled positions they had taken, leaving pickets to hold the ground solidly gained, wherever that was practicable; and our army sank to rest, having lost nearly 3,000 men in this wasteful assault-a third of them, Grant estimates, by reason of McClernand's mistake in supposing and reporting that he had carried two forts by his initial effort." Grant, in his report, gives the following excellent reasons for ordering this assault: "I believed an assault from the position gained by this time could be made successfully. It was known that Johnston was at Canton with the force taken by him from Jackson, reenforced by other troops from the east, and that more were daily reaching him. With the force I had, a short time The diary of a citizen of Vicksburg, who was a resident during the siege, gives the following account of this day's experiences within the city among civilians, who had only to con sult their own safety: as "The morning of this day opened in the same manner as the previous one had closed. There had been no lull in the shelling all night; and, daylight approached, it grew more rapid and furious. Early in the morning, too, the battle began to rage in the rear. A terrible onslaught was made on the center first, and then extended farther to the left, where a terrific struggle took place, resulting in the repulse of the attacking Part Four gunboats also came up to engago the batteries. At this time, the scene presented awfully sublime and terrific spectacle-three points being attacked at once; to wit, the rifle an 313 must have enabled him to attack me in the rear, and possibly to succeed in raising the Possession of Vicksburg at that time would have enabled me to have turned upon Johnston and driven him from the State, and possess myself of all the railroads and practical military highways: thus effectually securing to ourselves all territory west of the Tombigbee; and this before the season was too far advanced for campaign. ing in this latitude. It would have saved Government sending large reenforcements, much needed elsewhere; and, finally, the troops themselves were impatient to possess Vicksburg, and would not have worked in the trenches with the same zeal, believing it unnecessary, that they did after their failure to carry the enemy's works." He afterward adds: "The assault of this day proved the quality of the soldiers of this army. Without entire success, and with a heavy loss, there was no murmuring or complaining, no falling back, nor other evidence of demoralization. mined upon a regular siege. The troops now, being fully awake to the necessity of this, worked diligently and cheerfully. The until the 3d of July, when all was about work progressed rapidly and satisfactorily ready for a final assault." "After the failure of the 22d, I deter Vicksburg was now completely invested; for Porter's gunboats watched the river above and below to prevent any escape to or succor from the Louisiana side; with 13inch mortars and 100-pounder rifled Parrotts mounted on rafts, anchored under the high bank, whence, entirely out of harm's way, they could pits by the enemy in the rear; the city by the mortars opposite; and the batteries by the gunboats. Such cannonading and shelling has perhaps scarcely ever been equaled; and the city was entirely untenable, though women and children were on the streets. It was not safe from behind or before; and every part of the city was alike within range of the Federal guns. The gunboats withdrew, after a short engagement: but the mortars kept up the shelling, and the armies continued fighting all day. Several desperate charges were made in force against the lines without accomplishing their object. It would require the pen of a poet to depict the awful sublimity of this day's work-the incessant booming of cannon and the banging of small arms, intermingled with th howling of shells, and the whistling of Minie-balls, made the day truly most hideous.” throw shell into the city-some of deep ravines gave birth to many them having a range of 3 miles. We still held military possession of the peninsula opposite, which we had vainly tried to coax the Mississippi to cross; and a 3-gun battery on the levee annoyed the Rebel garrison, finally burning up their foundery, wherein they were casting shot and shell. The Cincinnati had been sunk" by the Rebel batteries; but there were five large gunboats left two above and three below the town. And so, keeping a sharp lookout for an attack by Jo. Johnston on his rear, Grant sat down to digging his way into Vicksburg from the east, with a force not very much superior in numbers to that which he had so badly beaten at Champion Hills and the Big Black, and whose capture was now but a question of time. For Pemberton was notoriously short of both provisions" and ammunition -42,000 percussion caps having been smuggled in to him after the investment; yet he was ultimately reduced to ten per man. Of his 30,000 men, 6,000 were in hospital, sick or wounded, leaving probably not more than 15,000 thoroughly fit for duty. His hopes of relief were slender; for the Big Black in our rear, with the sharp, wooded ridges among which our besiegers were encamped, afforded strong defensive positions, which were carefully improved. The sheltering woods rendered our camps much cooler than the naked, dusty city; while the 1 May 27. The diary of John W. Sattenwhite, 6th Missouri (Rebel), who fought throughout the siege, notes, unler date of May 26: "We have been on half rations of coarse corn-bread and poor beef for ten days." June 1: "We are now eating bean-bread, and half-rations at that." welcome springs of cool, sparkling water. Thus our soldiers actually improved in health as they dug their way into Vicksburg; so that, while Grant could hardly have put 20,000 men into line of battle the day after the unlucky assault, he had many more effectives a month later; beside which, he had been röenforced by Lauman's division, and by two others from Memphis, under Gen. C. C. Washburne, one drawn from Missouri, under Gen. F. J. Herron, and two divisions of the 9th corps, under Maj.-Gen. J. G. Parke. Our first mine was sprung under a principal fort opposite our center, on the 25th, throwing down a part of its face: a bloody struggle following for its possession, in which we but partially succeeded. Three days later, another face of the same fort was blown off; and now the enemy were obliged to recede a little, constructing or strengthening other defenses behind it; and thus the siege went on-the rugged ground rendering tedious approaches unnecessary and fort after fort being mined, while counter-mines were run by the enemy-the diggers of either army often hearing the sound of each other's picks, which gave token that only a thin screen of earth divided them. Had it been essential to dig down those serried heights, which constituted the Gibraltar of the Rebellion, the work would doubtless have been done; but Famine mines more surely June 3: "We are now eating half rations: bread, rice, and corn-meal mixed." June 10: "Our beef gave out to-day. We are now drawing one-quarter of a pound of bacon to the man." June 18: "Our rations changed: pound of flour, quite light." pound of bacon to the man: |