e, but
rather to demonstrate that it could not be taken. Then slower and more
toilsome methods were tried. It was obvious that a siege must be
resorted to; yet it was not easy to get near enough even to establish a
siege.

General Grant had early decided that the city would remain impregnable
until by some means he could get below it on the river and approach it
from the landward side. Ingenious schemes of canals were tried, and
failed. Time passed; the month of April was closing, and all that had
been done seemed to amount to nothing better than an accumulation of
evidence that the Confederacy had one spot which the Federals could
never touch. At last ingenuity was laid aside for sheer daring. The
fleet, under Admiral Porter, transported the army down-stream, athwart
the hostile batteries, and set it ashore on the east bank, below the
fortifications. Yet this very success seemed only to add peril to
difficulty. The Confederates, straining every nerve to save the place,
were gathering a great force in the neighborhood to break up the
besieging army. 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
Vicksbu