BATTLEFIELD OF BIG BLACK RIVER IN MISSISSIPPI IN 1863
AS the tide of battle drifted to the West in 1863, the war photographers hurried to the region of the Mississippi. Grant had been pursuing his operations toward Vicksburg. With Sherman and McClernand, he was maneuvering to take the key to the South by storm. A photograph is here shown of Champion Hills near Big Black River territory, on the outskirts of Vicksburg, where the armies first met. The Confederates held a strong line of earthworks on the eastern bank of the river. The Federals, before a heavy fire of musketry, crossed a ditch, delivered a terrific volley, and clambered over the breastworks with empty muskets. The Confederates, in falling back, found that their comrades had set fire to both of the bridges and were compelled to surrender. Two thousand prisoners, eighteen pieces of artillery, six thousand stand of small arms, and many commissary stores were captured. General Lawler's Brigade led the charge. The battle lasted four hours. On the eighteenth of May, 1863, the Federals began crossing the Big Black by felling trees on both banks so that they tumbled into the river and interlaced, using bales of cotton instead of boats. On the morning of the twenty-second, with furious cannonading, the last assault on the defences of Vicksburg was made. This campaign is a remarkable military exploit. In twenty days Grant crossed the Mississippi River with his entire force, moved into the rear of Vicksburg, fought and won four distinct battles, captured the State Capitol, and destroyed the Confederate arsenals and manufactories. His troops marched one hundred eighty miles with only five days' rations from the quartermaster, and captured over six thousand prisoners, twenty-seven cannon and sixty-one field pieces. All this was accomplished by forty thousand brave men against sixty thousand.
BOMB-PROOF CAMP IN UNION LINES IN FRONT OF VICKSBURG
BEHIND THE ENTRENCHMENT AT BATTERY SHERMAN BEFORE VICKSBURG
THE Confederate works held by Pemberton at Vicksburg were seven miles long. Grant's lines about the city extended over fifteen miles. Commander Porter brought down all his mortar boats on the Mississippi and began a fusilade of six thousand mortar shells a day, while the land batteries threw four thousand. In the meantime, famine stalked through Vicksburg on the thirty-sixth day of the siege. Mule and dog meat, with bean flour and corn coffee formed the daily fare. The earth trembled under the concussions from the Army and Navy cannon and the entire forest was set on fire. The Confederate general, on the morning of July third, proposed an armistice, preparatory to recapitulation. Grant met the Confederate commander under an oak tree. At ten o'clock on the morning of July fourth, General Logan began a march into Vicksburg and hoisted the American ensign over the court-house. The fall of Vicksburg and the defeat of Lee at Gettysburg occurred on the same day and lifted the hearts of the Northern people to a sense of thanksgiving, for it was believed that the war was now over. During the siege the Confederate loss was fifty-six thousand men. Grant captured more than sixty thousand muskets, light and heavy artillery, with a vast amount of other property, such as locomotives, cars, steamboats and cotton. The Federal loss during the siege was about 9,000 killed, wounded and missing. The war cameras followed the Union Army into the captured city and the old negatives vividly picture the conditions. A camera was taken to the bomb-proof quarters of Logan's Division and into Battery Sherman. These negatives are here reproduced. About this same time several cameras were taken into the far South and one of the first negatives was taken at Big Black River Station in Mississippi and another at New Orleans when the commissioned officers of the 19th Iowa Infantry were being brought in from Camp Ford, Texas, as exchanged prisoners of war.
