Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/83

Rh in motion, sweeping resistlessly into the interior. This moment when he turned his army towards Jackson is one of the greatest in his career. It showed the decision, boldness, and intrepidity of the man beyond dispute.

Jackson was carried on the 14th, the Union flag was raised on the State House, and Grant slept in the same room that General Johnston had occupied the night before. General Johnston sent a despatch to Pemberton which fell into Grant's hands, though he did not need it to tell him what to do. He hastened the movement of McClernand and McPherson toward Vicksburg, to head off Johnston's attempt to join Pemberton and to meet the Confederate troops. The armies met in a savage battle at Champion's Hill, and Pemberton was forced to retire, after four hours' hard fighting. He rapidly retreated to the Big Black River, where he made another feeble stand, and then withdrew into Vicksburg, leaving the victorious army of Grant directly between himself and Johnston. The game was in the bag, and Grant smiled in his slow, grim fashion, and closed round the city. This was on the 19th day of May. He had been on the road one month.

On this day Sherman, with Grant by his side, stood on Haines's Bluff and looked down on the very spot whence his baffled army had fallen back months before. He turned to Grant, saying: "General, up to this minute I had no positive assurance of success. This is the end of one of the greatest campaigns in history." Grant was deeply gratified, but he was not one to anticipate victory.

On the 19th of May, immediately after crossing the Big Black, Grant ordered a preliminary assault, which set the two armies face to face. On the 22d he ordered a grand assault. This order was a result of news of Johnston's advance. He was but fifty miles away, with a large army. To assault and win would set free a large were force sufficient to defeat and possibly capture Johnston. Moreover, the officers and men were eager for a chance to "walk into Vicksburg." They believed they could storm and carry the works in an hour, and so Grant gave the word, and the 22d of May will forever remain memorable as a day of terrible slaughter. But it had this virtue: it convinced the soldiers that Vicksburg was to be taken only by determined siege, and made them patient of what followed.

Grant now called upon his engineers to do their best. Suddenly the army disappeared. It sank beneath the earth, and like some subterranean monster ate its way inexorably towards the enemy's lines as Worth's little band approached the Central plaza of Monterey through the adobe walls of its gardens. "The soil lent itself to the most elaborate trenching," says Major John W. Powell, who had charge of a division of the entrenchments. "It was a huge deposit of glacial drift, and could be cut like cheese. Grant personally supervised this work every day, and his questions were always shrewd and pat. He knew more of the actual approaches than McPherson, who was my immediate commander. He came alone, quietly and keenly studying every detail of the work."

Foot by foot, the army closed round the doomed city, like the fabled room of the Inquisition whose walls contracted with every tick of the clock. The exploding of mines, as great as they were, is now seen to have been only an incident in the besieging process under Grant's persistent command. On foot, dusty, in plainclothes, with head drooping in thought, but with quick eyes seeing all that went on, "the old man" walked the ditches or stood upon the hills studying the situation, careless—criminally careless—of his person. The soldiers hardly discovered who he was before he was gone.

In this period, when success seemed sure, claimants for the honor of originating the plan of the campaign arose, and the discussion raged endlessly. Men who had been glad to shift responsibility when the issue was in doubt, now hastened to let the world know that it was their own plan. Grant never changed; as he had attempted no shift of responsibility, so now he troubled himself very little about the claims of others. He had done a better thing than originate the plan of campaign, he had executed it.

By the first of July the two armies within pitch-and-toss distance of each other. A mighty host had turned moles. By day all was solitary. The heaps of red earth alone gave indication of activity. No living thing moved over the battle-ground, yet fifty thousand men were there ready to rise and fly at each other at a word from "the old commander." At night, low words, ghostly whispers, and subdued noises ran up and down the advanced lines, as the blue-coated sappers and miners pushed forward some trench, or some weary, thirsty "file" in