the draft would be resisted, that men would begin to desert, and that the power to capture and punish deserters would be lost. In a word, it seemed that a great success was absolutely necessary to prevent the Union army and the Union cause from going to pieces. It was Grant's conviction that the army must at all hazards "go forward to a decisive victory."

THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN.

On a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi river, which pursues a winding course through its fertile valley, stood the town of Vicksburg. From this point a railroad ran to the eastward, and from the opposite shore another ran westward through the rich, level country of Louisiana. The town was strongly fortified, and from its elevation it commanded the river in both directions. So long as it was held by the Confederate armies, the Mississippi could not be opened to navigation; and the line of railroad running east and west kept communication open between the western and eastern parts of the Confederacy. How to capture Vicksburg was a great problem; but it was one which General Grant determined should be solved.

For eight months Grant worked at this problem. He formed plan after plan, only to be forced to give them up. Sherman made a direct attack at the only place where it was practicable to make a landing, and failed. Weeks were spent in cutting a canal across the neck of a peninsula formed by a great bend in the river opposite Vicksburg, so as to bring the gunboats through without undergoing the fire of the batteries; but a flood destroyed the work. Meanwhile great numbers of the troops were ill with malaria or other diseases, and many died. There was much clamor at Washington to have Grant removed, but the President refused. He had faith in Grant, and determined to give him time to work out the great problem,-how to get below and in the rear of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi river.

This was at last accomplished. On a dark night the gunboats were successfully run past the batteries, although every one of them was more or less damaged by the guns. The troops were marched across the peninsula, and then taken over the river; and on April 30th his whole force was landed on the Mississippi side, on high ground, and at a point where he could reach the enemy.

The railroad running east from Vicksburg connected it with Jackson, the State capital, which was an important railway centre, and from which Vicksburg was supplied. Grant made his movements with great rapidity. He fought in quick succession a series of battles by which Jackson and several other towns were captured; then, turning westward, he attacked the forces of Pemberton, drove him back into Vicksburg, cut off his supplies, and laid siege to the place. The eyes of the whole nation were now centred on Vicksburg. Over two hundred guns were brought to bear upon the place, besides the batteries of the

SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG.

283

gunboats. In default of mortars, guns were improvised by boring out tough logs, strongly bound with iron bands, which did good service. The people of Vicksburg lived in cellars and caves to escape the shot and shell. Food of all kinds became very scarce; flour was sold at five dollars a pound, molasses at twelve dollars a gallon. The endurance and devotion of the inhabitants were wonderful. But the siege was so rigidly and relentlessly maintained that there could be but one end. On July 3d, at ten o'clock, flags of truce were displayed on the works, and General Pemberton sent a message to Grant asking for an armistice, and proposing that commissioners be appointed to arrange terms of capitulation.

On the afternoon of the same day, Grant and Pemberton met under an oak between the lines of the two armies and arranged the terms of surrender. It took three hours for the Confederate army to march out and stack their arms. There were surrendered 31,000 men, 250 cannon, and a great quantity of arms and munitions of war. But the moral advantage to the Union cause was far beyond any material gain. The fall of Vicksburg carried with it Port Hudson, a few miles below, which surrendered to Banks a few days later, and at last the great river was open from St. Louis to the sea.

The news of this great victory came to the North on the same day with that of Gettysburg, July 4, 1863. The rejoicing over the great triumph is indescribable. A heavy load was lifted from the minds of the President and cabinet. The North took heart, and resolved again to prosecute the war with energy. The name of Grant was on every tongue. It was everywhere felt that he was the foremost man of the campaign. He was at once made a major-general in the regular army, and a gold medal was awarded him by Congress.

Early in September, 1863, General Grant paid a visit to General Banks, in New Orleans, and while there had a narrow escape from death. Riding one day in the suburbs, his horse took fright at a locomotive, and came in collision with a carriage, throwing himself down and falling on his rider. From this severe fall Grant was confined to his bed for several weeks. On his return to Vicksburg, he was allowed but a brief period to rest and recover from his accident. He was invested with the command of the consolidated Departments of the South and West, as the Military Division of the Mississippi, and at once moved to Eastern Tennessee.

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN AND MISSIONARY RIDGE.

The town of Chattanooga, an important railway centre, lies in the beautiful valley of the Tennessee river, near where it crosses the line into Alabama. Directly south the front of Lookout Mountain rises abruptly to a height of two thousand feet above the sea level, affording a magnificent view which extends into six different States, and of the Tennessee river for thirty miles of its winding course. Two miles to the east, running from north to south, is the crest of

Missionary Ridge, five hundred feet high,-the site of schools and churches. established long ago by Catholic missionaries among the Cherokee Indians. Both Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge were occupied by the army of General Bragg, and his commanding position, strengthened by fortifications, was considered impregnable.

The disastrous battle of Chickamauga, in September, 1863, had left the Union armies in East Tennessee in a perilous situation. General Thomas, in Chattanooga, was hemmed in by the Confederate forces, and his men and horses were almost starving. The army was on quarter rations. Ammunition was almost exhausted, and the troops were short of clothing. Thousands of army mules, worn out and starved, lay dead along the miry roads. Chattanooga,

occupied by the Union army, was too strongly fortified for Bragg to take it by storm, but every day shells from his batteries upon the heights were thrown into the town. This was the situation when Grant, stiff and sore from his accident, arrived at Nashville, on his way to direct the campaign in East Ten

nessee.

"Hold Chattanooga at all hazards. I will be there as soon as possible," he telegraphed from Nashville to General Thomas. "We will hold the town until we starve," was the brave reply.

Grant's movements were rapid and decisive. He ordered the troops concentrated at Chattanooga; he fought a battle at Wauhatchie, in Lookout Valley,

COMMANDER OF ALL THE ARMIES.

285

which broke Bragg's hold on the river below Chattanooga and shortened the Union line of supplies; and by his prompt and vigorous preparation for effective action he soon had his troops lifted out of the demoralized condition in which they had sunk after the defeat of Chickamauga. One month after his arrival were fought the memorable battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, by which the Confederate troops were driven out of Tennessee, their hold on the country broken up, and a large number of prisoners and guns captured. Nothing in the history of war is more inspiring than the impetuous bravery with which the Union troops fought their way up the steep mountain sides, bristling with cannon, and drove the Confederate troops out of their works at the point of the bayonet. An officer of General Bragg's staff afterward declared that they considered their position perfectly impregnable, and that when they saw the Union troops, after capturing their rifle-pits at the base, coming up the craggy mountain toward their headquarters, they could scarcely credit their eyes, and thought that every man of them must be drunk. History has no parallel for sublimity and picturesqueness of effect, while the consequences, which were the division of the Confederacy in the East, were inestimable.

After Grant's success in Tennessee, the popular demand that he should be put at the head of all the armies became irresistible. In Virginia the magnificent Army of the Potomac, after two years of fighting, had been barely able to turn back from the North the tide of Confederate invasion, and was apparently as far as ever from capturing Richmond. In the West, on the other hand, Grant's campaigns had won victory after victory, had driven the opposing forces out of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, had taken Vicksburg, opened up the Mississippi, and divided the Confederacy in both the West and the East. In response to the call for Grant, Congress revived the grade of lieutenant-general, which had been held by only one commander, Scott, since the time of Washington; and the hero of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga was nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and placed in command of all the armies of the nation.

"You

The relief of President Lincoln at having such a man in command was very great. "Grant is the first general I've had," he remarked to a friend. 'know how it has been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army, he would come to me with a plan, and about as much as say, 'Now, I don't believe I can do it, but if you say so I'll try it on,' and so put the responsibility of success or failure upon me. They all wanted me to be the general. Now, it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. I don't know, and I don't want to know. I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me.

"When any of the rest set out on a campaign," added the President, “they

would look over matters and pick out some one thing they were short of, and which they knew I couldn't give them, and tell me they couldn't hope to win unless they had it; and it was most generally cavalry. Now, when Grant took hold, I was waiting to see what his pet impossibility would be, and I reckoned it would be cavalry, of course, for we hadn't enough horses to mount what men we had. There

were fifteen thousand

men up near Harper's Ferry, and no horses to put them on. Well, the other day Grant sends to me about those very men, just as I ex

pected; but what he

wanted to know was whether he could

make infantry of

them or disband them. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me, and he's the first general I've had that didn't."

With the army thoroughly reorganized, Grant crossed the Rapidan on the 4th of May; on the 5th and 6th crippled the prin cipal Confederate army, com manded by Lee, in the terrible battles of the Wilderness; flanked him on the left; fought at Spott

sylvania Court House on the 7th, again on the 10th, and still again on the 12th, on which last occasion he captured a whole division of the Confederate army. Thus during the summer of 1864 he kept up an unceasing warfare, ever pursuing the offensive, and daily drawing nearer to the rebel capital, until at last he drove the enemy within the defenses of Richmond.