Many weeks were spent on other canals, but all proved useless. Finally it was decided to move all the troops down the west bank of the river, cross over below Vicksburg, and attack it on the land side.
A series of battles followed at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and Big Black. Grant had inflicted a loss upon the enemy during a few days of eight thousand in killed, wounded, and missing; had captured eighty-eight pieces of their artillery, and driven them into their defences at Vicksburg. "We must go back to the campaigns of Napoleon," says Francis Vinton Greene, lieutenant of engineers, "to find equally brilliant results accompanied in the same space of time with such small loss."
In these days of carnage, incidents even amusing happened. While Sherman and his troops were at Jackson, a fat man came to him and hoped that his hotel would not be burned, as he was a law-abiding Union man. Sherman said that this fact was manifest from the sign on his hotel, where the words "United States" had been faintly painted out and "Confederate Hotel" painted over it!
On May 22 the last assault was made on Vicksburg; and, though severe and bloody, it was unsuccessful, on account of the strength of the position, and the earnest fighting of the garrison.
"I have since seen the position at Sevastopol," writes Sherman, "and without hesitation I declare that at Vicksburg to have been the more difficult of the two."
It was during this dreadful assault that the drummer boy, Orion P. Howe, came to Sherman, calling out in a childish voice that one of the regiments was out of ammunition, and must abandon its position unless relief was sent. The general looked down from his horse upon the lad, and saw the blood running from a wound in the leg.
"All right, my boy," said Sherman, "I'll send them all they need; but as you seem to be badly hurt, you had better go to the rear and find a surgeon and let him fix you up."
The boy saluted and started for the rear; but again he came running back, shouting, "General, calibre fifty-eight, calibre fifty-eight!" fearing that the wrong size might be sent, and prove useless. He was afterwards, through Sherman, appointed a cadet at the Naval Academy, Annapolis.
The siege of Vicksburg was begun at once. Mines were dug by both sides and exploded. Chief Engineer S. H. Lockett, of the Confederates, tells how a private suggested the firing of a wicker case filled with cotton, which protected the Federals in their sapping. He took a piece of port-fire, put it into cotton soaked with turpentine and fired it from an old-fashioned bore musket. The wicker case took fire and burned up. Barrels of powder, lighted by a time-fuse, were thrown into the ranks of the besiegers.
As the weeks went by, the provisions for the soldiers and citizens of Vicksburg were well-nigh consumed. They ate rats and mules. Flour was five dollars a pound. Some of the people built rooms in the yellow clay banks, and thus escaped the shells.