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not a debris of that army could have escaped. We know, also, that that army being captured, all the Confederate States between the Mississippi and Savannah rivers, with all their strongholds and rivers, would have been at our mercy. So, at any time, if all our vast forces in this department had been concentrated upon this one army, with the absolute determination not to rest, nor let it rest, until it was swept out of existence, the same results as above indicated, our forces being so overwhelmingly superior to those of the enemy, must have followed in a very short period. Then the Carolinas, with all their ports, would have fallen at once into our power, as our great western army would have turned to the east, where, as it entered Virginia and came up on Lee's rear, the only remaining army of the Confederacy would have been taken, and the Rebellion would have collapsed at once.

MOVEMENTS OF GENERAL GRANT.

It is with pain that we turn from such considerations as these, to notice the course which the campaign did take under the immediate direction of General Grant. From the time when the command of the Western Department, of Tennessee and Mississippi, specially fell into his hands, Vicksburg was the central object of all his aims. After the delay caused by the invasion of Kentucky by General Bragg had been terminated, our commander bent all his energies to the settlement of what he and most of our military authorities regarded as the main issue of the war. All things being ready, General Grant moved his main army from the Grand Junction to Oxford, Mississippi. While he lay here preparing to move upon Vicksburg, the Confederates, under General Van Dorn, did what might have been expected, their armies being left intact-made a damaging movement upon our communications. Holly Springs, on the railroad between Grand Junction and Oxford, had been made our present depôt of provisions, arms, and munitions. Van Dorn captured this place, and with it nearly 2,000 prisoners and some $4,000,000 worth of provisions and other property, which they carried off or destroyed before our forces arrived to retake the place.

By this disaster General Grant was, or supposed himself, necessitated to retrace his steps, move west to Memphis, and take his army down the river to Vicksburg.

The day following our disaster at Holly Springs, General Sherman moved from Memphis down the river, by our fleet, with our right wing, about 30,000 strong, sailed up the Yazoo some twelve miles, and having landed his forces there, moved them up to attack Vicksburg on the land side. Deploying his army into line, he sent his men, as Burnside led his at Fredericksburg, directly upon the fortifications in his front. As was inevitable, about 2,000 brave men were vainly slaughtered in the mad assault, the Confederates losing in all but 207. After obtaining leave to bury our dead and remove our wounded, General Sherman, all hope being abandoned of capturing the city by even a combined attack with the fleet from below, embarked his army, and sailed down to Milliken's Bend. When he had returned to this point, his superior in command, General McClernand, arrived, and while waiting the coming of General Grant with our main army, made an expedition up the Arkansas river, and captured and dismantled Fort Hindman, taking there, as he reports, about 5,000 prisoners. Thus matters stood until General Grant arrived, and commenced the siege in due form. As the conduct of this siege belongs to the order of events in 1863, we turn to consider our naval operations up to the close of the year 1862.

CHAPTER XV.

EXPEDITIONS ON THE SEABOARD AND OCEAN.

Expedition to North Carolina.

We have already noticed General Burnside's expedition into North Carolina. Others of greater or less importance now claim attention. August 26th, 1861, General Butler, with three 50-gun frigates, four smaller vessels, and two steam transports having on board 800 soldiers, sailed from Fortress Monroe on a secret expedition. At the entrance, through Hatteras Inlet, of Pamlico Sound, they captured Forts Hatteras and Clark, with 715 prisoners, 25 cannon, 1,000 stand of arms, and a considerable quantity of provisions and stores. Such expeditions as these, while they affected little for the general cause, acted as irritants upon the surface of the Rebellion, and sent far more volunteers into the field against us than we captured from the enemy.

Expedition to Port Royal, South Carolina.

On the 29th October of the same year, an expedition. of great importance sailed from the same point as that above designated. This expedition consisted of a land force of 10,000 men commanded by General T. W. Sherman, and a naval force under Commodore Dupont, consisting of the steam frigate Wabash, 14 gun boats, 22 first-class and 12 smaller steamers, and 26 sailing vessels. After a stormy passage our fleet approached Port Royal, South Carolina, and after proper soundings and reconnoissances, found the entrance to the harbour barred by a fort on each side, that on Hilton Head Island, called Fort Walker, and that on Philip's Island, named Fort Beauregard. On the 7th November, at 9 a.m., the bombardment commenced, and presented one of the most sublimely awful spectacles

of war. With Commodore Dupont on the Wabash in the lead, the fleet moved in due order, one vessel after another, first by Fort Beauregard on the right, each vessel delivering its fire and receiving that of the enemy in return, and then wheeling round, paid to and received from Fort Walker the same terrible compliments. The smaller gunboats at length found positions where they could deliver an effective fire at the weaker points of the enemy's positions, and where they were subject to very little damage in return. Thus the battle continued for about five hours, with dreadful carnage to the Confederates, and very little loss on our part. Finding all resistance vain, the forts were abandoned by their defenders, and left in our possession. In a short time, all the islands from the Tyler, which with Fort Pulaski commanded the entrance to Savannah river, to the Edisto, some miles west of the entrance to Charlestown Harbour, fell into our hands. Our forces found these islands entirely abandoned by their white inhabitants. Some 7,000 or 8,000 slaves, all the efforts of their masters to induce them to leave proving vain, remained behind, and became independent labourers in the raising of Sea Island cotton, and finally owners, for the most part, of the soil which they cultivated.

Aside from the occupancy of these islands as stated, and the establishment of a naval depôt at Hilton Head, no improvement was made of the advantages we had gained, improvement at the time or during the war. At the time, both Charlestown and Savannah were unfortified on the land side, and either of them lay at the mercy of General Sherman. Had he been reinforced by 10,000 or 20,000 men from our vast army lying idle near Washington, both of these cities might have been permanently captured and held by our forces. Nothing of the kind, however, was attempted, or seems to have been thought of. What is still more singular, and unaccountable but upon the hypothesis of a strange stupidity on the part of our military commanders, not the least use, excepting as a mere naval depôt, was made during the war of this most favourable point a'appui for a most effective movement into the heart and centre of the Confederacy. But a few miles north of our

forts, there ran the great railroad between Savannah and Charlestown, and constituting for a long time after we captured Knoxville the only available avenue of communication between the Confederate States east and west of Savannah river; yet even this road was never touched by our forces from the period when we took possession of Hilton Head until Sherman moved out of Savannah in his advance from Georgia into the Carolinas, a few weeks before the surrender of Lee and Johnston. Such was the kind of foresight which characterised the conduct of this war from its commencement to its close. The communications of the enemy seemed to have been, in the judgment of our commanders, sacred things which were never to be touched. When, in January 1863, we pointed out to President Lincoln the strange fact that this only remaining artery of communication between the eastern and western portions of the Confederacy, when we pointed out the fact that this road, which lay almost in sight of our forces at Hilton Head, and always directly and readily accessible to them, had never been touched, his reply was that we took and held the place merely as a means of naval supply. That is, inasmuch as the post was held for one special purpose, it would be a sin to use it for any other, however important. So our military authorities seemed to have regarded the subject. Suppose now that the 100,000 brave men so stupidly lost in the Peninsula, in the army of Virginia, in the Maryland campaign, and at Fredericksburg, etc., had been sent down to Hilton Head, and while the army of the Potomac was confronting General Lee, this force at Hilton Head had moved out into the Carolinas, and after capturing Charlestown, Willmington, and Columbia, had, as Sherman finally did, moved up upon Lee's rear. Before the midsummer of 1852 the Rebellion would have been utterly wiped out in the Carolinas and Virginia, and all this with the loss of not over 30,000 men. God took wisdom from our military authorities, not to destroy our nation, but to make us the free people we now are.

While our forces at Port Royal were engaged in reducing Fort Pulaski, which fully commanded the entrance to Savannah river, Commodore Dupont sailed with a land orce to the coast of Florida, captured St. Augustine,

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