With a base of supplies which was substantially useless,
in a hostile country, with a powerful army hovering near him, and an
unapproachable citadel as his objective, Grant could save himself from
destruction only by complete and prompt success. Desperate, indeed, was
the occasion, yet all its exorbitant requirements were met fully,
surely, and swiftly by the commander and the gallant troops under him.
In the task of getting a clear space, by driving the Confederates from
the neighborhood for a considerable distance around, the army penetrated
eastward as far as Jackson, fighting constantly and living off the
country. Then, returning westward, they began the siege, which, amid
hardship and peril and infinite difficulty, was pushed with the
relentless vigor of the most relentless and most vigorous leader of the
war. At last, on July 3, General Pemberton, commanding within the city,
opened negotiations for a surrender. He knew that an assault would be
made the next day, and he knew that it must succeed; he did not want to
illustrate the Fourth of July by so terrible a Confederate loss, so
magnificent a Federal gain. Yet he haggled over the terms, and by this
delay brought about a part of that which he had wished to avoid. It was
due to his fretfulness about details, that the day on which the Southern
army marched out and stacked their arms before the fortifications of
Vicksburg, and on which the Northern army, having generously watched the
operation without a cheer, then marched in and took possession of the
place, was that same Fourth of July on which two other defeated generals
were escaping from two other victorious Northern armies.
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