is time preparing to besiege Port Hudson. It
might be well for Grant to go south and join him, and, after reducing
Port Hudson, return with Banks' forces against Vicksburg. This was what
now commended itself to Lincoln. In the letter of congratulation which
some time later he was able to send to Grant, after referring to his
former opinion which had been right, he confessed that he had now been
wrong. Banks was not yet ready to move, and Vicksburg, now seriously
threatened, might soon be reinforced. Orders to join Banks, though they
were probably meant to be discretionary, were actually sent to Grant, but
too late. He had cut himself loose from his base at Grand Gulf and
marched his troops north, to live with great hardship to themselves on
the country and the supplies they could take with them. He had with him
35,000 men. General Pemberton, to whom he had so far been opposed, lay
covering Vicksburg with 20,000 and a further force in the city; Joseph
Johnston, whom he afterwards described as the Southern general who in all
the war gave him most trouble, had been sent by Jefferson Davis to take
supreme command in the West, and had collected 11,000 men at Jackson, the
capital of Mississippi, 45 miles east of Vicksburg. Grant was able to
take his enemy in detail. Having broken up Johnston's force he defeated
Pemberton in a series of battles. His victory at Champion's Hill on May
16, not a fortnight after Chancellorsville, conveyed to his mind the
assurance that the North would win the war. An assault on Vicksburg
failed with heavy loss. Pemberton was at last closely invested in
Vicksburg and Grant could establish safe communications with the North by
way of the lower Yazoo and up the Mississippi above its mouth. There had
been dissension between Pemberton and Johnston, who, seeing that gunboats
proved able to pass Vicksburg in any case, thought that Pemberton, whom
he could not at the moment hope to relieve, should abandon Vicksburg and
try to save his army. Long before Johnston could be sufficiently
reinforced to attack Grant, Grant's force had been raised to 71,000. On
July 4, 1863, the day of the annual commemoration of national
Independence, Vicksburg was surrendered. Its garrison, who had suffered
severely, were well victualled by Grant and allowed to go free on parole.
Pemberton in his vexation treated Grant with peculiar insolence, which
provoked a singular exhibition of the conqueror's good temper to