Grant moved northeasterly, toward Jackson, and on the 12th of May found a hostile force near Raymond. It numbered but three thousand, and was soon swept away, though not until it had lost five hundred men and inflicted a loss of four hundred and thirty-two upon the National troops. It was the purpose of the Union commander to move swiftly, and beat the enemy as much as possible in detail before the scattered forces could concentrate against him. Believing there was a considerable force at Jackson, which he would not like to leave in his rear, he marched on that place, and the next conflict occurred there, May 14th. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston (whom we took leave of when he was wounded at Seven Pines, nearly a year before) had just been ordered by the Confederate Government to take command of all the forces in Mississippi, and arrived at Jackson in the evening of the 13th, finding there about twelve thousand men subject to his orders. Pemberton was at Edwards Station, thirty miles westward, and Grant was between them. Johnston telegraphed to Richmond that he was too late, but took what measures he could for defence. It rained heavily that night, and the next morning, when the corps of Sherman and McPherson marched against the city, they travelled roads that were a foot under water. McPherson came up on the west, and Sherman on the southwest and south. The enemy was met two miles out, and driven in with heavy skirmishing. While manoeuvring was going on before the intrenchments, the Union commanders seeking for a suitable point to assault, it was discovered that the enemy was evacuating the place, and Grant and his men went in at once and hoisted the National colors. They had lost two hundred and ninety men in the skirmishing; the enemy, eight hundred and forty-five, mostly captured. Seventeen guns were taken, but the Confederates burned most of their stores.

Leaving Sherman at Jackson to destroy the railroad, and the factories that were turning out goods for the Confederacy, which he did very thoroughly, Grant ordered all his other forces to concentrate at Bolton, twenty miles west. Marching thence westward, keeping the corps well together, and ordering Sherman to send forward an ammunition-train—for he knew that a battle must soon be fought—Grant found Pemberton with twenty-three thousand men waiting to receive him at Champion's Hill, on high ground well selected for defence, which covered the three roads leading westward. The battle, May 15th, lasted four hours, and was the bloodiest of the campaign. The brunt of it, on the National side, was borne by the divisions of Hovey, Logan, and Crocker; and Hovey lost more than one-third of his men. Logan's division pushed forward on the right, passed Pemberton's left flank, and held the only road by which the enemy could retreat. But this was not known to the Union commander at the time, and when Hovey, hard pressed, called for help, Logan was drawn back to his assistance, and the road uncovered. A little later Pemberton was in full retreat toward the crossing of the Big Black River, leaving his dead and wounded and thirty guns on the field. Grant's loss in the action—killed, wounded, and missing—was twenty-four hundred and forty-one. Pemberton's was over three thousand killed and wounded (including General Tilghman killed), besides nearly as many more captured in battle or on the retreat.

The enemy was next found at the Big Black River, where he had placed his main line on the high land west of the stream, and stationed his advance (or, properly speaking, his rear guard) along the edge of a bayou that ran through the low ground on the east. This advanced position was attacked vigorously on the 17th, and when Lawler's brigade flanked it on the right, that general leading a charge in his shirt-sleeves, the whole line gave way, and Pemberton resumed his retreat, burning the bridge behind him and leaving his men in the lowland to their fate. Some swam the river, some were drowned, and seventeen hundred and fifty were made prisoners. Eighteen guns were captured here. The National loss was two hundred and seventy-nine.

Sherman now came up with his corps, and Grant ordered the building of three bridges. One was a floating or raft bridge. One was made by felling trees on both sides of the stream and letting them fall so that their boughs would interlace over the channel, the trunks not being cut entirely through, and so hanging to the stumps. Planks laid crosswise on these trees made a good roadway. The third bridge was made by using cotton bales for pontoons. Sherman's troops made a fourth bridge farther up the stream; and that night he and Grant sat on a log and watched the long procession of blue-coated men with gleaming muskets marching across the swaying structure by the light of pitch-pine torches. All the bridges were finished by morning, and that day, the 18th, the entire army was west of the river.

Pemberton marched straight into Vicksburg, which had a long line of defences on the land side as well as on the water front, and shut himself up there. Grant, following closely, invested the place on the 19th. Sherman, holding the right of the line, was at Haines's Bluff, occupying the very ground beneath which his men had suffered defeat some months before. Here, on the Yazoo, Grant established a new base for supplies. McPherson's corps was next to Sherman's on the left, and McClernand's next, reaching to the river below the city. Sharp skirmishing went on while the armies were getting into position, and an assault in the afternoon of the 19th gained the National troops some advantage in the advancement of the line to better ground. Grant's army had been living for three weeks on five days' rations, with what they could pick up in the country they passed through, which was not a little; and his first care was to construct roads in the rear of his line, so that supplies could be brought up from the Yazoo rapidly and regularly. He had now about thirty thousand men, the line of defences before him was eight miles long, and he expected an attack from Johnston in the rear. At ten o'clock on the 22d, therefore, he ordered a grand assault, hoping to carry the works by storm. But though the men at several points reached the breastworks and planted their battle-flags on them, it was found impossible to take them. McClernand falsely reported that he had carried two forts at his end of the line, and asked for reinforcements, which were sent to him, and a renewal of the assault was made to help him. This caused additional loss of life, to no purpose, and shortly afterward that general was relieved of his command, which was given to Gen. E. O. C. Ord.

After this assault, which had cost him nearly twenty-five hundred men, Grant settled down to a siege of Vicksburg by regular approaches. The work went on day by day, with the usual incidents of a siege. There was mining and counter-mining, and two large mines were exploded under angles of the Confederate works, but without any practical result. The great guns were booming night and day, throwing thousands of shells into the city, and more than one citizen picked up and threw into a heap hundreds of pounds of the iron fragments that fell into his yard. Caves were dug in the banks where the streets had been cut through the clayey hills, and in these the people found refuge from the shells. A newspaper was issued regularly even to the last day of the siege, but it was printed on the back of wallpaper. Provisions of course became scarce, and mule-meat was eaten. Somebody printed a humorous bill of fare, which consisted entirely of mule-meat in the various forms of soup, roast, stew, etc. All the while the besiegers were digging away, bringing their trenches closer to the defences, till the soldiers of the hostile lines bandied jests across the narrow intervening space. At the end of forty-seven days the works arrived at the point where a grand assault must be the next thing, and at the same time famine threatened, and the National holiday was at hand. After some negotiation General Pemberton unconditionally surrendered the city and his army of thirty-one thousand six hundred men, on the 4th of July, 1863, one day after Lee's defeat at Gettysburg.

MAJOR-GENERAL
RICHARD J. OGLESBY.

Port Hudson, which Banks with twelve thousand men and Farragut with his fleet had besieged for weeks, was surrendered with its garrison of six thousand men, five days after the fall of Vicksburg. The entire Confederate loss in Mississippi, from the time Grant entered the State at Bruinsburg to the surrender, was about fifty thousand; Grant's was about nine thousand. But the great triumph was in the opening of the Mississippi River, which cut the Confederacy completely in two.

By Grant's orders there was no cheering, no firing of salutes, no expression of exultation at the surrender; because the triumph was over our own countrymen, and the object of it all was to establish a permanent Union.