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Page 23
The American army, as compared with the hosts of Mexico, had been but
a handful. The small force which had left Vera Cruz on the march to
the capital had lost considerably by battle and disease. Many
detachments had been posted _en route_ to hold the line of
communications, and for garrison duty in places taken from the enemy.
The army had thus dwindled until, after the battles of Churubusco and
Chapultepec, _fewer than six thousand men_ were left to enter and hold
the capital.
The invasion had been remarkable in all its particulars. The obstacles
which had to be overcome seemed insurmountable. There were walled
cities to be taken, fortified mountain passes to be carried by storm,
and frowning castles with cannon on the battlements to be assaulted by
regiments whose valor and impetuosity were their only protection and
warrant of victory. Yet the campaign was never seriously impeded. No
foot of ground once taken from the Mexicans was yielded by false
tactics or lost by battle.
The army which accomplished this marvel, penetrating a far-distant and
densely peopled country, held by a proud race, claiming to be the
descendants of Cortes and the Spanish heroes of the sixteenth
century, and denouncing at the outset the American soldiers as
"barbarians of the North," was, in large part, an army of
volunteers--a citizen soldiery--which had risen from the States of the
Union and marched to the Mexican border under the Union flag.
VICKSBURG.
The story goes that on a certain occasion some friends of General
Grant, anxious to make him talk about himself--something he would
hardly ever do--said: "General, at what time in your military career
did you perceive that you were the coming man--that you were to have
the responsibility and fame of the command-in-chief and end the war?"
For little while the General smoked on, and then said, "_After
Vicksburg!_"
Certain it is that the star of Grant, long obscured and struggling
through storm and darkness, never emerged into clear light, rising in
the ascendant, until after the capture of the stronghold of the
Confederates on the Mississippi. After that it rose, and rose to the
zenith.
The position of Vicksburg is hard to understand. The river at this
place makes a bend to the north and then turns south again, leaving a
delta, or peninsula, on the Louisiana side. Vicksburg occupies a kind
of shoulder on the Mississippi side. The site is commanding. The river
flows by the bluffs, as if to acknowledge its subjection to them. From
the beginning of the war the Confederate authorities recognized the
vast importance of holding this key to the great inland artery, and
the Federal Government saw the necessity of clutching it from the
enemy.
The mouth of the Mississippi was soon regained by the Government, so
that there was no serious obstruction as far north as where the
northern border of Louisiana crosses the river. From the north the
Federal fleets and land forces made their way along the Tennessee
border, and then the Arkansas border; but in the middle, between the
twenty-second and thirty-third parallels, the Confederates got a
strong grip on the Father of Waters, and would not relinquish their
hold. Jackson, the capital of the State, was in their power also, and
from Jackson eastward the great thoroughfare extended into Alabama,
and thence expanded in its connections into all the Confederacy. From
Jackson to Vicksburg reached the same line of communications, so that
here, at Vicksburg, the Confederate power, having its seat in Richmond
and its energy in the field, reached directly to the Mississippi
river, and laid upon that stream a band of iron which the Union must
break in order to pass.
Such was the situation at the beginning of 1863. General Grant, who
had been under a cloud since Shiloh, had gradually regained his
command, and to him fell the task of breaking the Confederate hold on
the great river. He has himself in his _Memoirs_ told the story of the
Vicksburg campaign. He managed, by herculean exertions, to get his
forces below Vicksburg, and then began his campaign from Grand Gulf
inland toward the line of communication between Jackson and Vicksburg.
It was some time before the Confederates took the alarm. When they did
become alarmed about Grant's movements, General J.E. Johnston, who
commanded at Jackson, and General J.C. Pemberton, who was in command
at Vicksburg; made the most unwearied efforts to keep open the line of
communications upon which the safety of Jackson and the success of
Pemberton depended.
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