MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT, U. S. A.,
AND
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PEMBERTON,
JULY 4,
1863.
Nothing certainly could be more simple and modest. Not a syllable is there to wound the sensibilities of a fallen foe. Yet, since the close of the war, when the returning Confederates first obtained access to this monument, it had been shamefully mutilated. The fact that it was never injured before, and the circumstance that the eagle and shield of the escutcheon surmounting the inscription had been nearly obliterated by persistent battering and grinding, showed that no mere relic-hunters had been hammering here, but that the mischief had been done by some enemy’s hand. The shaft was enclosed by a handsome iron fence, which we found broken and partly thrown down.
From the monument we rode northward over ridges crowned with zigzag fortifications, around steep crests and slopes, and past deep ravines green with tangled cane-brakes,—a broken and wild region; crossing over through woods and hilly cotton-fields to the western brow of the bluffs, where Sherman made his unsuccessful assault in the gloomy last days of 1862.
We reined up our horses on a commanding point, and looked down upon the scene of the battle. Away on our left was the Mississippi, its bold curve sweeping in from the west, and doubling southward toward the city. Before us, under the bluff, was the bottom across which our forces charged, through the bristling abatis and their terrible entanglements, and in the face of a murderous fire captured the Rebel rifle-pits,—a most heroic, bloody, but worse than useless work.
Finding a road that wound down the steep hill-sides, we galloped through the cotton-fields of the bottom to Chickasaw Bayou, which bounded them on the west,—a small stream flowing down through swamps and lagoons, from the Yazoo, and emptying into the Mississippi below the battle-field. We rode along its bank, and found one of the bridges by which our forces had crossed. Beyond were ancient woods, sombre and brown, bearded with long pendant moss.
Returning across the bottom, the Lieutenant guided us to three prominent elevations in the midst of the plain, which proved to be Indian mounds of an interesting character. The largest was thirty feet in height, and one hundred and fifty feet across the base. Leaving the ladies in the saddle, the Lieutenant and myself hitched our horses to a bush on one of the smaller mounds, and entered an excavation which he had assisted in making on a former visit.