Title: Vicksburg
Author: Hanly, J. Frank
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Vicksburg" ***


    [Illustration: uncaptioned]



                               VICKSBURG


                                   By
                             J. FRANK HANLY

    [Illustration: decorative glyph]


                    Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham
                       New York: Eaton and Mains

                            Copyright, 1912,
                         By Jennings and Graham



                               DEDICATION
                                 OF THE
                           INDIANA MONUMENTS
                                   AT
                         VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI
                           December 29, 1908
                             J. Frank Hanly



                               Vicksburg


_Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Indiana-Vicksburg Monument
      Commission_:

To you this is no new stage. Its remotest confines were once familiar.
You looked upon it, front and rear. You stood before its footlights. You
knew its comedy—its tragedy. You had honorable and distinguished cast in
the great drama that gave it fame in every land beneath the sun and
place in the country’s every annal—a drama real as human life in tensest
mood—in which every character was a hero, every actor a patriot, and
every word a deed—a drama, the memory of which is enduring, fadeless,
and the scenes of which take form and color even now and rise before you
vivid as a living picture. How clear the outline is:

Time: The Nation’s natal day, forty-five years ago.

Place: This historic field; yon majestic river; that heroic city there—a
beleaguered fortress, girdled with these hills.

Scene: The river’s broad expanse; Admiral Porter’s fleet—grim engines of
war, with giant guns and floating batteries, facing deep-mouthed and
frowning cannon on terraced heights; the intrepid Army of the Tennessee,
with camp and equipage, occupying a line of investment twelve miles in
length, with sap and mine, battery and rifle pit, marking a progress
that would not be stayed, fronting a system of detached works, redans,
lunets, and redoubts on every height or commanding point, with raised
field works connected with rifle pits, numerous gullies and ravines,
nature’s defenses, impassable to troops; all in all more impregnable
than Sevastopol; with here and there ensanguined areas where brave men
met death in wild, mad charge against redoubt and bastion; or fell, in
the delirium of frenzied struggle, on parapets, where torn and ragged
battle flags borne by valorous arms, leaped and fluttered for a moment
amid cannon’s smoke and muskets’ glare, only to fall from nerveless
hands, lost in the chagrin and grief of repulse, crushing and
disastrous.

Denouement: Fortifications sapped and mined! A city wrecked, subdued by
want! An army in capitulation! A mighty host, surrendered! Flags furled!
Arms stacked! One hundred and seventy-two captured cannon! Sixty
thousand rifles taken! Twenty-nine thousand four hundred and ninety-one
men prisoners of war—hungry, emaciated, broken, dejected men, worn by
sleepless vigil, the ordeal of war, the alarm of siege—men who suffered
and endured, but would not yield till dire distress compelled—men whose
gallant valor challenges admiration and respect, and gives them equal
claim to fame with their invincible captors, whose iron grip and
ever-tightening hold they could not break! Victory complete and
splendid! And over all—river, field, and city—where crash of musketry,
roar of cannon, scream of shell, and all the tumultuous din of war had
reigned—the hush and awe of silence, unbroken by cheer or shout or cry
of exultation!

Result: The fall of Port Hudson, an impregnable fortress, two hundred
and fifty miles below; the disenthrallment of the Mississippi—unvexed by
war, its waters free to seek the sea in peace; the bisecting of the
Confederacy—cut in two—severed completely—its doom decreed—its fate
forever sealed—all thereafter dying in its defense going hopeless and in
vain to sacrificial altars; the establishment of the Union’s
indissolubility—its power made manifest East and West—faith in its
ultimate triumph, though the pathway led through toil and blood, became
assured—the Nation saw the end, distant but sure—it found itself and it
found a man, and that man had found himself, and had found others,
too—Sherman, McPherson, Logan, Hovey, Osterhaus, McGinnis—a quiet,
silent man, of grim determination, who “looked upon side movements as a
waste of time”—a man of immovable purpose, who went to his object
unswerving as a bullet—a man of sublime courage, who wanted “on the same
side of the river with the enemy”—a man of calm confidence, who relied
upon himself and the disciplined, hardy men who followed him, who, under
him, knew no defeat and who were unwilling to learn what it was—a man
who knew the trade of war, its science and its rules, but who dared
ignore its long-accepted axioms when occasion required; who, when he
could not protect his communications with his base without delay and the
diminution of his force, could cut loose from all communications and
have no base, though moving in the heart of the enemy’s country—a man of
daring brilliancy, who could fight in detail a force superior in the
aggregate to his own and defeat in turn its scattered fragments before
they could consolidate—who had no rear, whose every side was front—who
knew that “time was worth more than re-enforcements,” and that delay
only gave “the enemy time to re-enforce and fortify”—whose strategy,
celerity, and rapidity of movement threw confusion into the councils of
opposing generals, in a land strange to him and filled with his
enemies—a land with which they were familiar and where every denizen was
an ally—a man who could keep two governments guessing for weeks both as
to his purpose and his whereabouts—who could refuse to obey an order
that had been so long in transmission as to be obsolete when it reached
him, and ride away to victory and to fame—whose blows fell so thick and
hard and fast that his foe had neither time nor rest nor food nor
sleep—a man who was gentle and considerate enough when his foes
surrendered to forbid his men to cheer lest they should wound the
sensibilities of their captives—who, in the hour of supreme and final
triumph, could speak for peace and give back to his captured countrymen
their horses that crops might be put in and cultivated.

Time, place, scene, denouement, and result, taken together, and all in
all, have no parallel in all the six thousand years of human history.

It was, therefore, inevitable and in accord with man’s nobler self, that
this spot—the place where the great drama was staged and played—should
become hallowed ground to those who struggled here to retain or to
possess it; that it should be held forever sacred by the Blue and the
Gray—the victors and the vanquished—by the Blue because of what was won,
by the Gray because of what was lost—by both because of heroic effort
and devoted sacrifice made and endured; because of the new national life
begun, the new birth of freedom had, through their spilled blood.

Vicksburg was the most important point in the Confederacy and its
retention the most essential thing to the defense of the Confederacy.
After the safety of Washington, its capture was the first necessity of
the Federal Government. It commanded the Mississippi River, and “the
valley of the Mississippi is America.” The control of this great central
artery of the continent was necessary to the perpetuation of the
Confederacy and indispensable to the preservation of the Union. To lose
it was death to the one. To gain it was life to the other. The campaign
for its capture was, therefore, the most important enterprise of the
Civil War. Its importance was understood and appreciated by the
authorities at both capitals, and no one in authority in either capital
understood it more clearly or appreciated it more fully than the
commanders of the two opposing armies—Grant and Pemberton. Both knew the
stake and its value and both were conscious that the fight to possess it
by the one and to retain it by the other would be waged to the last
extremity. And each was resolved that the great issue should be with
him. They commanded armies equally brave and well disciplined,
efficiently officered, and equally devoted to them and to the respective
cause for which they fought.

Strength of position, natural and artificial, was with Pemberton. His
task was defensive—to hold what he had. Grant’s was offensive—to possess
what he did not have. But the initiative was with him, and to genius
that itself is an advantage.

Pemberton knew the ground—the scene of the campaign. Its every natural
adaptation of advantage or defense was to him as a thing ingrained in
his consciousness and every denizen of the country about him was the
friend of his army and his cause.

Grant was in a strange land, without accurate knowledge of its
topography or of its natural difficulties of approach or opportunities
of defense, and concerning which such knowledge could be acquired only
by the exercise of infinite patience, by unremitting toil, and constant
investigation. Its inhabitants looked upon him as an invader come to
despoil their country—to lay waste their homes. Among them all, his army
had no friend, his cause no advocate.

But, while position and natural advantage was with Pemberton, the
ability to command armies, the genius of concentration, to decide
quickly and accurately, to design with daring boldness and to execute
with celerity and rapidity; the tenacity of purpose that, come what
will, can not be bent or turned aside, and the grim determination that
rises in some men—God’s chosen few—supreme above every let or
hindrance—were with Grant. And it was this ability to command, more than
all other things, that finally enabled him to wrest the great prize from
the hands of Pemberton and the Confederacy, and give it into the keeping
of the Union.

The campaign was Grant’s—his alone—in conception and in execution, from
the beginning to the end. Its details his government did not know. For a
time even its immediate object was unknown in Washington. Its design was
without successful military precedent. His most trusted general was
opposed to it. But Grant saw and understood. The day he crossed his army
at Bruinsburg he was “born again.” He caught a vision that inspired him.
He was transformed. There came to him a confidence that thenceforth was
never shaken—a faith in which there was no flaw. Less than two years
before he had doubtfully asked himself whether he could hope ever to
command a division, and if so, whether he could command it successfully.
Now he knew he could command an army; that he could plan campaigns, and
that he could execute them with high skill and matchless vigor. He had
found himself.

General Banks, with a substantial force, was at Port Hudson, two hundred
and fifty miles down the river. The two armies were expected by the
authorities at Washington to co-operate with each other in an attack
upon Pittsburg or Port Hudson. Grant had heard from Banks that he could
not come to him at Grand Gulf for weeks. Instantly his purpose
crystallized. His resolve was made. He would not go to Banks at Port
Hudson nor would he wait for him at Grand Gulf. Waiting meant delay.
Delay meant strengthened fortifications and a re-enforced enemy. He
would move independently of Banks. His army was inferior in numbers to
the aggregate forces of the enemy, but he would invade Mississippi,
fight and defeat whatever force he found east of Vicksburg, and invest
that city from the rear. And he would not wait a day. He would move at
once. He would go now—go swiftly to Jackson, destroy or drive away any
force in that direction, and then turn upon Pemberton and drive him into
Vicksburg. He would keep his own army a compact force—“round as a cannon
ball,” and he would fight and defeat the enemy in detail before his
forces could be concentrated. The concept was worthy of Napoleon in
his best moments. It was remarkably brilliant, audaciously daring. It
was the turning point in Grant’s career—a momentous hour, big with
destiny for him, his army, and his country. In its chalice was
Vicksburg—Chattanooga—Spotsylvania—Appomattox—national solidarity—and
deathless personal fame. The decision was made without excitement,
without a tremor of the pulse, in the calmness of conscious power. John
Hay fancifully compares his action at this time “to that of the wild bee
in the Western woods, who, rising to the clear air, flies for a moment
in a circle, and then darts with the speed of a rifle bullet to its
destination.”

A long-established and universally accepted axiom of war—one that ought
in no case to be violated—required any great body of troops moving
against an enemy to go forward only from an established base of
supplies, which, together with the communications thereto, should be
carefully covered and guarded as the one thing upon which the life of
the movement depended. The idea of supporting a moving column in the
enemy’s country from the country itself was regarded as impractical and
perilous, if not actually impossible. The movement he had determined
upon would uncover his base and imperil his communications. Defeat meant
irremediable failure and disgrace. The hazard seemed so great, and the
proposal so contrary to all the accepted maxims of war and military
precedents, that Sherman, seeing the danger, urged Grant “to stop all
troops till the army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as
quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life.”

Grant knew the difficulty and the peril, but he was not afraid. He knew
the military and the political need of the country. He knew his
officers. He knew the army he commanded. And, knowing all, he assumed
the responsibility and took the hazard; cut loose from his base, severed
his communications, went where there was no way, and left a path that
will shine while history lasts.

Having decided his course, he telegraphed the government at Washington:
“I shall not bring my troops into this place (Grand Gulf), but
immediately follow the enemy, and if all promises as favorably as it
does now, not stop until Vicksburg is in our possession.” Here was the
first and the only intimation of his purpose given the government. The
execution of his purpose was immediately begun and pressed with personal
energy, attention, and vigor without parallel in the life of a
commanding general of an army. Sherman, who of all men had the best
opportunity to know and was best qualified to weigh the extent and
character of his work, declares: “No commanding general of an army ever
gave more of his personal attention to detail, or wrote so many of his
own orders, reports, or letters. I still retain many of his letters and
notes in his own handwriting, prescribing the route of march of
divisions and detachments, specifying the amount of food and tools to be
carried along.”

Washburn wrote: “On this whole march of five days he has had neither a
horse nor an orderly or servant, a blanket or overcoat, or clean shirt
or even a sword. His entire baggage consists of a tooth brush.”

John Hay says of him: “All his faculties seemed sharpened by the
emergency. There was nothing too large for him to grasp; nothing
small enough for him to overlook.” He gave “direction to generals,
sea-captains, quartermasters, commissaries, for every incident
of the opening of the campaign, then mounted his horse and rode
to his troops.” And then, for three weeks, in quick and dazzling
succession, came staggering, stunning blows, one after the
other—Raymond—Jackson—Champion’s Hill—The Big Black—until he
stood with his army at the very gates of Vicksburg!

The government, hearing that he had left Grand Gulf for the interior of
Mississippi without supplies or provision for communication with his
base, telegraphed him in concern and alarm to turn back and join Banks
at Port Hudson. The despatch reached him days after at the Big Black
Bridge, while the battle there was in progress. The message was handed
him. He read it; said it came too late, that Halleck would not give it
now if he knew his position. As he spoke the cheering of his soldiers
could be heard. Looking up he saw Lawler, in his shirt sleeves, leading
a charge upon the enemy, in sight of the messenger who bore the
despatch. Wheeling his horse, he rode away to victory and to Vicksburg,
leaving the officer to ruminate as long as he liked upon the obsolete
message he had brought.

I have spoken much of Grant. There is reason that I should. No campaign
of the war is so insolubly linked with the personality of the commanding
general as the Vicksburg campaign.

For three weeks he was the Army of the Tennessee. He dominated it
absolutely. His personality, with its vigor and its action, was in all,
through all, over all. His corps and divisions were commanded by great
men, but, with a single exception, they were loyal and devoted and
reflected his will, and sought the achievement of his purpose in every
act and movement. During these days Sherman was his right arm, McPherson
his left, and neither ever failed him. The whole army, officers and men,
caught his spirit and shared his indomitable purpose. Nothing could
daunt it or turn it aside. There was no service it did not perform, no
need it did not meet. It had capacity for everything. Grant justly said:
“There is nothing which men are called upon to do, mechanical or
professional, that accomplished adepts can not be found for the duty
required in almost every regiment. Volunteers can be found in the ranks
and among the commanding officers to meet any call.” Every obstacle was
overcome; every difficulty surmounted. When bridges were burned, new
ones were built in a night, or the streams forded. In every event the
light of the morning found his soldiers on the same side of the river
with the enemy. If rains descended and floods came, they marched on
though the roads were afloat with water. They fought and marched,
endured and toiled, but they did not complain or even murmur. They, as
well as their officers, understood the value of the stake for which they
struggled. They knew they were marching and fighting and toiling under
the eye of a great commander, one who knew where he was going and how to
go; that there was no hardship which he did not share, no task from
which he shrunk. Weary from much marching, they marched on; worn from
frequent fighting, they fought on; all but exhausted from incessant
toil, they toiled on, in a hot climate, exposed to all sorts of weather,
through trying and terrible ordeals, watching by night and by day, until
they stood in front of the rifle pits and of the batteries of the city,
and even here they would not be content until they were led in assault
upon the enemy’s works and had stood upon their parapets in a vain but
glorious struggle for their possession.

What a story it is! How it stirs the blood! How it inspires to love of
country! How it impels to high endeavor! And what a valorous foe they
met! They were, and are, thank God, our countrymen—besiegers and
besieged. In their veins flowed kindred blood—blood that leaps and burns
in ours to-day. They differed. Differed until at last the parliament of
debate was closed, and then, like men, they fought their differences
out, in open war—on the field of battle—sealing the settlement with
their blood and giving the world a new concept of human valor.

There were wounds. There was suffering. There was heartache. There were
asperities. There was death. There was bereavement. These were
inevitable. But there was a nobility about it all, that, seen through
the intervening years, silences discord, softens hate, and makes
forgiveness easy. To-day we laugh and weep together. Wounds are healed;
asperities are forgotten; the past is remembered without bitterness;
glory hovers like a benediction over this immortal field and guards with
solemn round the bivouac of all the dead, giving no heed to the garb
they wore. Their greatness is the legacy of all—the heritage of the
Nation. Reconciliation has come with influences soft and holy. The birds
build nests in yonder cannon. The songs of school children fill the air.

Indiana has come to Mississippi to dedicate monuments erected by her to
the memory of her soldiers, living and dead, who struggled here; but she
comes with malice toward none, with love for all. With you, sir, the
Governor of this Commonwealth, and with your people she would pour her
tribute of tears upon these mounds where sleep sixteen thousand of our
uncommon common dead. Her troops were here with Grant. One of her
regiments, the 6th, sought out the way for the army beyond the river
yonder. They were the “entering wedge.” They were in every battle. At
Champion’s Hill, Hovey’s division bore for hours the battle’s brunt.
Fighting under the eye of the great general himself, they captured a
battery, lost it, and recaptured it, and at night slept upon the field
wet with their blood.

This gray-haired general here (General McGinnis) was with them. He is a
member of the commission that erected these granite tributes, and has in
charge these ceremonies. He has come to lend the benediction of his
presence to this occasion, and to look again upon the ground where so
many dramatic and tragic scenes were enacted—scenes in which he had
honorable share—scenes that were burned into the very fiber of his young
manhood’s memory, and which he would not forget if he could. His days
have been long lengthened. We are glad and grateful that he is here. His
associates on the commission were here; and so were these battle-scarred
veterans standing here round about you. They give character and purpose
to this occasion and a benediction to this service. Through them and
their comrades, and the great Army in Gray with whom they contended,
both we and you are beginning to understand the message and the meaning
of the war. They have taught us charity and forgiveness. We are coming
“to know one another better, to love one another more.” Here upon these
hills and heights was lighted the torch of a national life, that to-day
is blessing, enlightening, and enriching the peoples of the earth. Our
prayer—a prayer in which we are sure your hearts are joined with
ours—is, that this mighty Nation, grown great and powerful, may know war
no more, forever; that it may walk uprightly, deal justly with its own
people and with all nations; that its purpose may be hallowed, its deeds
ennobled, its glory sanctified, by the memories of the crucible through
which it came, and that in the future if war must come, its sword may be
drawn only in Freedom’s cause, and that its soldiery in such case may
acquit themselves as nobly as did those who struggled here.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Commission, in the name of the State
of Indiana and on her behalf, I accept these splendid monuments and
these markers you have erected and which you have so eloquently tendered
me, and in the name of the State and on behalf of her people, Captain
Rigby, I now present them to you, as the representative of the National
Government, and give them through you into its keeping, to be held and
kept forever as a sacred trust—a reminder to the countless thousands
that in the gathering years may look upon them, of the share Indiana had
in the great campaign that ended here July 4, 1863.



                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Vicksburg" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.