Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/357

 by assault the army now settled down to the siege. Week by week General Grant pushed his lines of intrenchments nearer to the doomed city. The men toiled patiently early and late through the hot days and sultry nights, thoroughly imbued with the indomitable determination of the commanding general. Threatened in the rear by General Johnston’s army, Sherman was sent to hold him in check while the siege was crowded with the greatest energy. More Iowa regiments and batteries were sent to strengthen the army until thirty were with Grant and Sherman before the end of the campaign. Finally, on the 3d of July, the endurance of the Confederate army reached its limit. All hope of assistance of escape was abandoned and General Pemberton showed a white flag and proposed to negotiate for terms of surrender. On the next day his entire army of 27,000 men, together with artillery, arms and munitions of war, for an army of 60,000, steamboats, locomotives, vast amount of cotton and other property and the strongest fortified city on the continent, were surrendered to General Grant. This was by far the most brilliant campaign of the war. From the time Grant’s army landed below Vicksburg he had won five battles, killed and wounded 10,000 of the enemy, taken 37,000 prisoners and opened the Mississippi River. It was the most crushing and ruinous blow ever dealt to the Confederacy until the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox. The great Battle of Gettysburg, which had just been fought to save Washington and Philadelphia, so completely absorbed the attention of the East, that the magnitude of the far greater victory at Vicksburg was not immediately realized by the country. Lee had been defeated at the end of a three days’ battle and turned back from the invasion of the North. The losses on each side were about equal. Lee made an orderly retreat; and Meade, slowly following, was unable to inflict any serious damage upon the retiring army. At Vicksburg the enemy lost everything, the entire army, city,