CHAPTER XXIV.

FALL OF VICKSBURG AND PORT HUDSON.

(May 30th to July 18th, 1863.)

PREDICTIONS OF THE REBEL PRESS.-INTERCEPTED DISPATCHES.--MILLIKEN'S BEND.-HERCIO FIGHT OF COLORED TROOPS.--THE GUNBOAT CHOCTAW.-Í ́EMBERTON'S 'TREASON. HIS DESPERATION.-SUFFERINGS OF THE BESIEGED. THE CAPITULATION.-FALL OF PORT HUDSON.--TESTIMONY TO GENERAL GRANT.

THE impossibility of carrying the rebel works by storm being thus demonstrated, General Grant prepared to take the city by regular approaches. His army, reënforced by troops from Memphis, Missouri, and the North, completely invested the city, so as to render it impossible for the army within to escape or to gain supplies. Gunboats were constantly patrolling the river. Daily the Union lines were contracted, and the rebel fortifications more closely approached. To such operations there can be but one final issue. Unless the imprisoned garrison are sufficiently strong to cut their way through the beleaguering lines, or a force advancing from without can raise the siege, sooner or later the garrison must capitulate. Both of these attempts were made: neither were successful.

General Joe Johnston, with his army reënforced to twenty-five thousand men, occupied Jackson, which our troops had evacuated on their march to Vicksburg. Though they threatened General Grant's rear, he feared them but little, as they were nearly all citizens, dragged into the ranks by a relentless conscription. The Southern press was continually announcing that Grant would soon be crushed between the garrison and the army marching to its aid. Their confident assertions created anxiety at the North. Still, General Johnston very wisely declined venturing upon an attack.

The last of May, General Pemberton sent a courier to creep through our lines with dispatches to Joe Johnston, calling urgently for assistance. The courier, a man by the name of Douglas, from Illinois, tired of the rebel service, and glad of this opportunity to escape, delivered himself and his dispatches to General Grant. This revelation of the weakness of the garrison only animated to a more vigorous prosecution of the work of sapping and mining. An expedition was sent out under General Blair to look for Johnston; but, strange as it may seem, he could not be found.

About the middle of June, however, it was reported that Johnston was advancing. At the same time another courier was captured with official dispatches from Pemberton, calling, in tones still more earnest, for succor. General Grant dispatched General Sherman with some choice troops, directing him not to allow Johnston to approach within fifteen miles of

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Vicksburg, but to meet his army at least at that distance and disperse it. When Johnston heard of the approach of the impetuous Sherman with his veterans, he discreetly turned and fled.

It was at that time that the attack upon the Union camp at Milliken's Bend took place. The event was unimportant, save as it developed the bravery of the African race. A number of negro regiments had been organized in the Western Department, by orders of the General Government, and under the direct supervision of Adjutant-General Thomas. These were left by General Grant to act as reserves, and to guard posts in the rear upon the river. A force of about one thousand negroes, together with two hundred white men of the Twenty-third Iowa, were holding the camp at Milliken's Bend.

On the 6th of June, the rebel Colonel McCulloch, brother of the notorious Ben McCulloch, who was killed at Pea Ridge, attacked the post with six regiments. Counting upon the imagined timidity of the negro, the rebels anticipated an easy victory. Truly they reckoned without their host. At this place the levée ran along about one hundred and fifty yards back from the ordinary bank of the river, thus leaving, when the water was low, a smooth green lawn, beautifully adapted for an encampment, with the levée or dike, eight feet high and fifteen feet wide, protecting from attack on the land side. Breastworks were thrown up from the levée to the river, above and below the encampment. Back of the levée there was a fine plantation. The mansion of the master and the huts of the slaves presented a beautiful aspect with the hedge-rows and flowering shrubbery, and an abundance of fruit and ornamental trees. The colored troops had been but partially organized, and had received their muskets but a week before. Early Saturday morning, information was received that a band of rebels, infantry, artillery, and cavalry, from three to five thousand strong, were marching upon the Bend. " I will take," said the rebel commander, with an oath, "the nigger camp, or wade in blood to my knees." A negro brought the first information of the approach of the rebels, and hurried preparations were made to receive them. A detachment of white troops were sent out in advance, supported by a negro regiment in reserve. The rebels in their strength came exultingly on, when they were suddenly brought to a stand by a volley from the Iowa troops. The conflict could not long be maintained by the patriots against numbers so overwhelming; yet the Iowa men, who, in every battle during the war, were signalized by their bravery, fought with desperation. After laying one hundred of the rebels, low in the dust, these patriots retired in good order to the support of their colored reserves.

The negroes came up with a will, and poured in volley after volley upon their former taskmasters with a rapidity which astonished both friend and foe. The fire was so deadly and so utterly unexpected by the rebels, that they broke and fell back in confusion, to reform and advance with more powerful lines. The Union force was too small to pursue. It was night; both parties prepared for the renewal of the strife the next morning.

Just after dark, a Union steamer chanced to touch at the Bend. She

was immediately dispatched down the river a few miles to summon the gunboat Choctaw to the aid of the beleaguered post. The morning of the Sabbath was just beginning to dawn, when the dark massive sides and yawning ports of the gunboat were discerned near at hand. The advent of this ally filled all hearts with rejoicing. The Choctaw took her position, and in ominous silence awaited the expected advance. The commandant of the post, encouraged by the presence of his iron-clad supporter, drew in all his pickets, leaving not a man outside of the levée.

The sun was half an hour high when the advance movement of the rebels was perceived. They came on, formed for bayonet charge, three lines deep, with a reserve. At the battle of Lexington the rebels ingeniously rolled before them a breastwork of bales of hay, from behind which in rapid advance they kept up a deadly fire upon Colonel Mulligan and his gallant Irish Brigade. Taking hint from this, perhaps, Henry McCul loch endeavored to cover his soldiers from the bullets of the patriots behind the levée, by a line of mules which were driven before his front ranks. It was, however, not a very effectual protection. The stubborn mules could not be persuaded to move sidewise, and they presented but a slight obstacle to the sharp eyes of experienced riflemen. As the rebels approached the levée, discharging volley after volley, for a time they could not see a man. But when they had arrived within a few feet of the breastwork, as by magic a long line of black faces seemed to emerge from the earth. Not a man flinched, every musket took deliberate aim, every bullet fulfilled its mission. The ground was soon covered with the slain, and the rebel lines wavered and writhed in agony. Just then the gunboat, which had been concealed by the banks and the smoke of the battle, opened fire from her heavy guns. Her agile cannoniers poured a continuous fire of ten-inch shells into the bewildered, bleeding ranks of the foe.

The negroes could no longer be restrained. With a war-cry which from their resonant throats rose above the clangor of the battle, they simultaneously leaped the levée, and sweeping on like heaven's black tornado, plunged headlong with fixed bayonets into the thickest of the rebel ranks. Such desperation of valor had not been seen before. The pricked mules were dispersed in an instant in terror over the field, often crushing through and trampling down the rebel lines. With frenzied energy the rebels fought. To be whipped by negroes was to drink the last dregs of the cup of humiliation. But the chalice which a God of retribution presents to the lips, whatever its contents, must be drained.

Here the slaves and their masters were brought face to face in the death-gripe, and the masters bit the dust. When the pride of the oppres sor and the despair of the oppressed meet, then human energies develop their utmost powers. Such a desperate, prolonged hand-to-hand fight had not been witnessed during the war. Men were knocked down on both sides by the butts of muskets. Two men were found dead side by side, one white, the other black, each with the other's bayonet through his body. Broken limbs, and heads, and mangled bodies, attested to the desperation of the fight. One heroic freedman took his former master prisoner. At eleven o'clock the battle terminated in the utter rout and flight of the

MESSISSIPPI RIVER FROM VICKSBURG TO NEW beyond his lines, and soon after sent

out the civilians and negroes. The negroes General Grant retained, at their own request, but the civilians were sent back into the beleaguered camp. All the meat and flour rapidly disappeared, and the soldiers were fed on bread made of ground peas; and even of this they could have but quarter rations. Famine stared the resolute garrison in the face. Ammunition grew short; so much so that the unexploded shells thrown from the Union guns were gathered from the streets, and the powder picked out of them, for use.

In the mean time the Union army were daily making the most heroic assaults, carrying point after point, and steadily contracting their lines around the doomed city. The works on either side became equal in extent and magnitude. Sharpshooters, with their unerring long range telescopie rifles, were stationed at every available point, and not a palm of a hand could be exposed, but through it went a bullet. Shot and shell began to fall into the very heart of the city itself. The people lived in cellars overarched to be bomb-proof, and in caves which were burrowed out in the sides of the hill.

Not until the Union lines were face to face with the intrenchments of the rebels; not until, by the explosion of mines, huge gaps had been made in the rebel defences; not until starvation threatened the city within, and preparation had been made by General Grant for a grand assault which could scarcely by any possibility be resisted, did General Pemberton make any proposition for surrender. The assault was to have been made on the 4th of July. Though no specific orders had been given, it was universally understood, in both armies, that the dawn of the anniversary of our National Independence was to usher in the grand struggle, which could hardly fail to be decisive.

On the 3d of July, General Pemberton dispatched, by the hands of General Bowen and Colonel Montgomery, a communication, proposing the appointment of commissioners to arrange terms for the capitulation. This he did, he said, although fully able to maintain his position for an indefinite period of time, in order to avoid the further effusion of blood.

General Grant, in his prompt reply, said, "The effusion of blood you propose stopping by this course can be ended, at any time you may choose, by an unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg, will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and, I can assure you, will be treated with all the respect due them as prisoners of war. I do not favor the proposition of appointing commissioners to arrange terms of capitula tion, because I have no other terms than those indicated above,"

General Bowen then requested that General Grant would meet personally with General Pemberton. To this he assented. At three o'clock that afternoon, July 3d, General Grant, accompanied by Generals McPher son and A. J. Smith, stepped out from the Union lines, while at the same moment General Pemberton, accompanied by General Bowen and Colonel Montgomery, advanced from the rebel ramparts to meet them. The conference was held in an open space between the two lines, under the shade of a gigantic oak. Here Generals Grant and Pemberton were introduced by Colonel Montgomery. They had never met before.