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 506 Surrender of Port Hudson. [1862-3 strong as those of Vicksburg. General Banks, with a force of 30,000 men and with the help of Farragut's fleet, had invested Port Hudson about a week after Grant closed round Vicksburg, and had since then made two separate assaults without success. But when on July 7, 1863, Banks received news of Grant's success at Vicksburg, and the salutes in the Federal trenches notified the beleaguered Confederate garrison that their central stronghold on the Mississippi had fallen, the Confederate com- mander, having been supplied with an official copy of Grant's letter, deemed further resistance useless. On the morning of July 9 the garrison of Port Hudson laid down its arms, surrendering 6340 men, 51 guns, 5000 small arms, and considerable stores of ammunition, in exchange for which it was glad to receive rations, being already at starvation point. This capture completed the opening of the Mississippi river, which, though its banks were often troubled by guerrilla and cavalry raids, did not thereafter undergo any blockade or any serious interruption of commercial transport. The military result of the campaign was to cut off from the central Confederate States the supply of western recruits to their armies, and the important reserves of provisions upon which they were so dependent. President Lincoln expressed the nation's deep feeling of relief, when in a famous letter dated August 26, 1863, he wrote: "The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." General Grant had exercised independent command about one year, when the Mississippi was opened by the surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Of that period, the last half of 1862 was taken up by his defensive operations in western Tennessee, and the first half of 1863 by his aggressive campaigns on the great river. To understand better what followed, it is necessary to go back and narrate the military events which occurred during the same period in other parts of Tennessee and in Kentucky, and formed the preludes to Grant's victory in the West. On May 30, 1862, within a few weeks after the fall of Corinth, Mississippi, the three armies gathered for its reduction were separated. Halleck was called to Washington to become General-in-Chief, Pope to command the Army of Virginia, Grant remained to take local command, while Buell, with the Army of the Ohio, started on a campaign towards East Tennessee, with directions to follow and repair the railroad from Corinth to Chattanooga. This involved not merely the protection of the road, but also the control of most of the extensive territory of middle Tennessee, in which Secessionist sentiment strongly predominated. The many detachments needed for this were peculiarly exposed to attack and capture by local guerrilla risings, and sudden cavalry raids on the part of the enemy. Meanwhile the Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who succeeded Beauregard after the latter's retreat from Corinth, was also marching his command to Chattanooga, south of the Tennessee river. Having no