Famous American Statesmen

On October 25, the battle of Corinth having been fought October 3, General Grant was placed in command of the Department of the Tennessee, and began the Vicksburg campaign. The capture of this place would afford free navigation of the Mississippi. For three months plan after plan was tried for the reduction of this almost impregnable position. Sherman made a direct attack at the only point where a landing was practicable, and failed. Grant's army was stationed on the west bank of the river, on marshy ground, full of malaria, from recent rains. The troops were ill of fever, measles, and small-pox, and many died. There could be found scarcely enough dry land on which to pitch their tents.

It was finally decided to cut a canal across the peninsula in front of Vicksburg, that the gun-boats might safely pass through to a point below the city. Four thousand men began work on the canal, but a sudden rise in the river broke the dam and stopped the work. A second method was tried, by breaking levees and widening and connecting streams between Lake Providence, seventy miles above Vicksburg, through the Red River, into the Mississippi again four hundred miles below, but this project was soon abandoned. Meantime, the North had become restless, and many clamored for Grant's removal, declaring him incompetent, but, amid all the reproaches, he kept silent. When Lincoln was urged to make a change, he said simply, "I rather like the man; I think we'll try him a little longer!"

At length it was decided to attempt to run the gun-boats past the batteries, march the troops down the west bank of the river, cross over to the east side, and attack the rear of Vicksburg. The steamers were protected as far as possible with bales of hay, cotton, and grain, for the boilers could not bear the enemy's fire. On the 16th of April, 1863, on a dark night, the fleet was ready for the dangerous passage. As soon as the boats were discovered, the batteries opened fire, piles of combustibles being lighted along the shore that proper aim might be taken against the fleet. Every transport was struck. As fast as the shots made holes, the men put cotton bags in the openings. For nearly three hours the eight gun-boats and three steamers were under a merciless fire. The Henry Clay was disabled, and soon set on fire by the bursting of a shell in the cotton packed about her boilers. Grant watched the passage of the fleet from a steamer in the river, and felt relieved as though the victory were close at hand.

Soon after, the whole force of thirty-three thousand men were crossed below Vicksburg. Fifty miles to the east, the Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston had a large army, which must be crippled before Vicksburg could be besieged. Port Gibson, near the river, was first taken by our troops; then Raymond, May 12; Jackson, May 18; Champion Hill, May 16; and then Black River Bridge. Grant had beaten Johnston in the rear; now he must beat Pemberton with his nearly fifty thousand men shut up in Vicksburg.

On May 19, the city of Vicksburg was completely invested by our troops. Says General Grant, "Five distinct battles had been fought and won by the Union forces; the capital of the State had fallen, and its arsenals, military manufactories, and everything useful for military purposes had been destroyed; an average of about one hundred and eighty miles had been marched by the troops engaged; but five days' rations had been issued, and no forage; over six thousand prisoners had been captured, and as many more of the enemy had been killed or wounded; twenty-seven heavy cannon, and sixty-one field-pieces had fallen into our hands; and four hundred miles of the river, from Vicksburg to Port Hudson, had become ours."

And now the siege began. By June 30, there were two hundred and twenty guns in position, besides a battery of heavy guns, manned and commanded by the navy. The besiegers had no mortars, save those of the navy in front of the city, but they took tough logs, bored them out for six or twelve-pound shells, bound them with strong iron bands, and used them effectively in the trenches of the enemy.

The eyes of the whole country were centred on Vicksburg. Mines were dug by both armies, and exploded. Among the few men who reached the ground alive after having been thrown up by the explosions was a colored man, badly frightened. Some one asked how high he had gone up. "Dunno, massa; but tink 'bout t'ree mile," was the reply.

Meantime, the people in Vicksburg were living in caves and cellars to escape the shot and shell. Starvation began to stare them in the face. Flour was sold at five dollars a pound; molasses at ten and twelve dollars a gallon. Yet the brave people held out against surrender. A Confederate woman, says General Badeau, in his graphic "Military History of U. S. Grant," asked Grant, tauntingly, as he stopped at her house for water, if he ever expected to get into Vicksburg.

"Certainly," he replied.

"But when?"

"I cannot tell exactly when I shall take the town; but I mean to stay here till I do, if it takes me thirty years."

All through the siege, the men of both armies talked to each other; the Confederates and Unionists calling each other respectively "Yanks" and "Johnnies." "Well, Yank, when are you coming into town?"

"We propose to celebrate the Fourth of July there, Johnnie."

The Vicksburg paper said, prior to the Fourth, in speaking of the Yankee boast that they would take dinner in Vicksburg that day, "The best receipt for cooking a rabbit is, 'First ketch your rabbit!'" The last number of the paper was issued on July 4, and said, "The Yankees have caught the rabbit."

On July 3, at ten o'clock, white flags began to appear on the enemy's works, and two men were seen coming towards the Union lines, bearing a white flag. They bore a message from General Pemberton, asking that an armistice be granted, and three commissioners appointed to confer with a like number named by Grant. "I make this proposition to save the further effusion of blood," said General Pemberton, "which must otherwise be shed to a frightful extent, feeling myself fully able to maintain my position for a yet indefinite period."

To this Grant replied: "The useless effusion of blood you propose stopping by this course can be ended at any time you choose, by the unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and, I can assure you, will be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war."

In the afternoon of July 3, Grant and Pemberton met under a stunted oak-tree, a few hundred yards from the Confederate lines. They had known each other in the Mexican War. A kindly conference was held, and honorable terms of surrender agreed upon, the officers taking their side-arms and clothing, and staff and cavalry officers one horse each. When the men passed out of the works they had so gallantly defended, not a cheer went up from our men nor was a remark made that could cause pain. The garrison surrendered at Vicksburg numbered over thirty-one thousand men, with sixty thousand muskets, and over one hundred and seventy cannon. Five days later, Port Hudson, lower on the river, surrendered, with six thousand prisoners and fifty-one guns.

There was great rejoicing at the North. Lincoln wrote to Grant: "My dear general, I do not remember that you and I have ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I write to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did, march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and then go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks, and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I wish now to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong."

Rare is that soul which is able to see itself in the wrong, and rarer still one which has the generosity to acknowledge it.

In October, Grant, who had now been made a major-general in the regular army, as he had before been appointed to the same rank in the volunteers, was placed in command of the military division of the Mississippi. Later he defeated Bragg at Chattanooga, November 24 and 25, 1863, in the memorable battles of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. General Halleck said in his annual report, "Considering the strength of the rebel position and the difficulty of storming his intrenchments, the battle of Chattanooga must be considered the most remarkable in history. Not only did the officers and men exhibit great skill and daring in their operations on the field, but the highest praise is due to the commanding general for his admirable dispositions for dislodging the enemy from a position apparently impregnable."

How our brave men fought at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain has never been more graphically and touchingly told than by the late lamented Benjamin F. Taylor: "They dash out a little way and then slacken; they creep up hand over hand, loading and firing, and wavering and halting, from the first line of works to the second; they burst into a charge, with a cheer, and go over it. Sheets of flame baptize them; plunging shots tear away comrades on left and right; it is no longer shoulder to shoulder; it is God for us all! Under tree-trunks, among rocks, stumbling over the dead, struggling with the living, facing the steady fire of eight thousand infantry poured down upon their heads as if it were the old historic curse from heaven, they wrestle with the Ridge. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes go by, like a reluctant century. The batteries roll like a drum. Between the second and last lines of rebel works is the torrid zone of the battle. The hill sways up like a wall before them at an angle of forty-five degrees, but our brave mountaineers are clambering steadily on – up – upward still!.. They seem to be spurning the dull earth under their feet, and going up to do Homeric battle with the greater gods."

When this costly victory had been gained, President Lincoln appointed a day of national thanksgiving. Congress passed a unanimous vote of thanks to Grant and his officers and men, and ordered a medal to be struck in his honor: his face on one side, surrounded by a laurel wreath; on the other side, Fame seated on the American eagle, holding in her right hand a scroll with the words, Corinth, Vicksburg, Mississippi River, and Chattanooga.

Early in 1864, a distinguished honor was paid him. Since the death of Washington, only one man had been appointed a lieutenant-general in the army of the United States, – Winfield Scott. Congress now revived this grade, and on March 1, 1864, Lincoln appointed Grant to this position. On March 9, before the President and his cabinet, his commission was formally presented to him, Lincoln saying, "As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you." Grant now had all the Union armies under his control – over seven hundred thousand men. When he was in the Galena leather store, men said his life was a failure! Was it a failure now? And yet he was the same modest, unostentatious man as when he tried farming to support his beloved family.

Immediately Grant planned two great campaigns: one against Richmond, which was defended by Lee; the other against Atlanta, under Sherman, defended by Joseph E. Johnston. Sherman's march to the sea immortalized him; Grant's march to Richmond was the crowning success in the greatest of modern wars. President Lincoln reposed the utmost confidence in Grant. He wrote him: "The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant, and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or the capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you."

The end was coming. On May 4, 1864, Grant crossed the Rapidan with the Army of the Potomac, about one hundred and twenty thousand men, intending to put his forces between Lee and Richmond. Lee, perceiving this design, met the army at the Wilderness, a portion of country covered by a dense forest. The undergrowth was so heavy that it was scarcely possible to see more than one hundred paces in any direction. All day long, May 5, a bloody battle was waged in the woods.

Says Private Frank Wilkeson, "I heard the hum of bullets as they passed over the low trees. Then I noticed that small limbs of trees were falling in a feeble shower in advance of me. It was as though an army of squirrels were at work cutting off nut and pine-cone laden branches preparatory to laying in their winter's store of food. Then, partially obscured by a cloud of powder smoke, I saw a straggling line of men clad in blue. They were not standing as if on parade, but they were taking advantage of the cover afforded by trees, and they were firing rapidly. Their line officers were standing behind them or in line with them. The smoke drifted to and fro, and there were many rifts in it… We had charged, and charged, and charged again, and had gone wild with battle fever. We had gained about two miles of ground. We were doing splendidly. I cast my eyes upward to see the sun, so as to judge of the time, as I was hungry, and wanted to eat, and I saw that it was still low above the trees. The Confederates seemed to be fighting more stubbornly, fighting as though their battle-line was being fed with more troops. They hung on to the ground they occupied tenaciously, and resolutely refused to fall back further. Then came a swish of bullets and a fierce exultant yell, as of thousands of infuriated tigers. Our men fell by scores. Great gaps were struck in our lines. There was a lull for an instant, and then Longstreet's men sprang to the charge. It was swiftly and bravely made, and was within an ace of being successful. There was great confusion in our line. The men wavered badly. They fired wildly. They hesitated… The regimental officers held their men as well as they could. We could hear them close behind us, or in line with us, saying, 'Steady, men, steady, steady, steady!' as one speaks to frightened and excited horses."

Grant says, "More desperate fighting has not been witnessed on this continent than that of May 5 and 6… The ground fought over had varied in width, but averaged three-quarters of a mile. The killed and many of the severely wounded of both armies lay within this belt where it was impossible to reach them. The woods were set on fire by the bursting shells, and the conflagration raged. The wounded who had not strength to move themselves were either suffocated or burned to death. Finally the fire communicated with our breastworks in places. Being constructed of wood, they burned with great fury. But the battle still raged, our men firing through the flames until it became too hot to remain longer."

After a loss of from fourteen to fifteen thousand men on each side, Lee remained in his intrenchments and Grant still moved on toward Richmond. The armies met at Spottsylvania Court-House, and here was fought one of the bloodiest battles of the war, with about the same loss as in the Wilderness. Sometimes the conflict was hand to hand, men using their guns as clubs, being too close to fire. In one place a tree, eighteen inches in diameter, was cut entirely down by musket balls. Grant wrote to Washington, May 11: "We have now ended the sixth day of very hard fighting. The result up to this time is much in our favor. But our losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. We have lost to this time eleven general officers killed, wounded, and missing, and probably twenty thousand men. I think the loss of the enemy must be greater. We have taken over four thousand prisoners in battle, whilst he has taken from us but few except a few stragglers. I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and purpose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

After this came the battles of Drury's Bluff, North Anna, Totopotomoy, and Cold Harbor, with its brilliant assault and deadly repulse, with a loss of from ten to fourteen thousand men on the latter field.

Lee had now been driven so near to Richmond, and the swamps of the Chickahominy were so impassable, that Grant determined to move his army, one hundred and fifteen thousand men, south of the James River and attack Richmond in the rear. The move was hazardous, but he reached City Point safely. General Butler here joined him, and the siege of Petersburg, twenty miles below Richmond, began, and was continued through the winter and spring.

On July 30, 1864, a mine was exploded under one of the enemy's forts. The gallery to the mine was over five hundred feet long from where it entered the ground to the point where it was under the enemy's works. Eight chambers had been left, requiring a ton of powder each to charge them. It exploded at five o'clock in the morning, making a crater twenty feet deep and about one hundred feet in length. Instantly one hundred and ten cannon and fifty mortars commenced work to cover our troops as they entered the enemy's lines. "The effort," says Grant, "was a stupendous failure. It cost us about four thousand men, mostly, however, captured, and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander and the incompetency of the division commander who was sent to lead the assault."

Meanwhile Sheridan had destroyed the power of the South in the Shenandoah valley. Again the army began its march toward Richmond. On April 1, 1865, the battle of Five Forks was fought, nearly six thousand Confederates being taken prisoners; then Petersburg was captured, and on April 3 General Weitzel took possession of Richmond, the enemy having evacuated it, the city having been set on fire before their departure.

For five days Lee's army was pursued with more or less fighting. On April 7, Grant wrote a letter to Lee, saying: "The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia."

Lee replied, "I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender."

The answer came: "Peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon, namely: that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms again against the government of the United States, until properly exchanged."

A place of meeting was designated, and on April 9 Grant and Lee met at the house of a Mr. McLean, at Appomattox Court-House. Grant says, "When I had left camp that morning, I had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb, and I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. When I went into the house I found General Lee. We greeted each other, and, after shaking hands, took our seats. I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during the whole of the interview.

"What General Lee's feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us.

"General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia; at all events, it was an entirely different sword from the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough travelling suit, the uniform of a private, with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high, and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards."

When the terms of surrender were completed, Lee remarked that his men had been living for some days on parched corn exclusively, and asked for rations and forage, which were cordially granted. "When news of the surrender first reached our lines," says Grant, "our men commenced firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped. The Confederates were now our prisoners, and we did not want to exult over their downfall." True and noble spirit! Twenty-seven thousand five hundred and sixteen officers and men were paroled at Appomattox. At the North, crowds came together to pray and give thanks, in the churches, that the war was over. Mourning garb seemed to be in every house, and the joy was sanctified by tears. The Army of the Potomac marched to Washington, and was disbanded June 30.

The great war was ended. In July, 1866, Congress created the rank of general for the heroic, true-hearted, grand man, of quiet manner but indomitable will, who had saved the Union. He was now but forty-four years of age, and what a record!

Two years later, in 1868, at the Chicago Republican national convention. Grant was unanimously nominated to the presidency. After the assassination of Lincoln, and the disagreement between Congress and Andrew Johnson in the matter of reconstruction, it was believed that Grant would "settle things." To the committee from the convention who announced his nomination to him, he said, "I shall have no policy of my own to enforce against the will of the people."

During the eight years of Grant's presidency, from 1869 to 1877, the country was prosperous, save the financial depression of 1873. The Alabama claims were settled, whereby our country received from Great Britain fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars damages. Grant favored the annexation of the island of Santo Domingo, but the measure was defeated by Congress. The International Exposition was held in Philadelphia in 1876, with an average daily attendance, for five months, of over sixty-one thousand persons. While a large number of the people advocated a third term for General Grant, a nation loving freedom hesitated to establish such a precedent, and Rutherford B. Hayes was chosen President. It was well, in the exciting times preceding this election, when the number of votes for Hayes and Tilden was decided by an electoral commission, that a strong hand was on the helm of State, to keep the peace.

After all these years of labor, General Grant determined to make the tour of the world, and, with his family and a few others, sailed for Europe, May 17, 1877. From the moment they arrived on the other side of the ocean to their return, no American ever received such an ovation as Grant. Thousands crowded the docks at Liverpool, and the mayor gave an address of welcome. At Manchester, ten thousand people listened to his brief address. "As I have been aware," he said, "for years of the great amount of your manufactures, many of which find their ultimate destination in my own country, so I am aware that the sentiments of the great mass of the people of Manchester went out in sympathy to that country during the mighty struggle in which it fell to my lot to take some humble part."