between Murfreesboro' and Nashville, 6,273 prisoners, 30 guns he losing 3-6,000 small arms, and vast stores of valuable spoils, besides burning upwards of 800 army waggons, with all their contents. The loss on our part was undeniably far greater than on that of the Confederates. Their retreat, however, leaves the claim of victory to our brave army and its able commander. During the winter following, raids were the order of the day on both sides; the Confederates, on account of their superiority in cavalry, doing us far more injury than they received from us.

Aside from the honour of final mastery of the field, the battle of Murfreesboro' was wholly barren of results on either side. The armies, being nearly equal in number and discipline, slaughtered each other to more than onefourth their number, and then the Confederates went on their way, and the Unionists returned to Nashville. Yet, with no blame whatever to General Rosecrans, no other excuse can be offered for such a battle than the most stupid ignorance on the part of our Commander-in-Chief. We had, as we have seen, at the time when, with an army less than 50,000 strong, Rosecrans moved out from Nashville, we had in the field quite 1,000,000 men, "fully armed ville,—we and equipped;" and next to the sphere of the army of the Potomac, that of the Cumberland was the most important in the war. What excuse was there, then, in compelling, as he was really compelled to move, the commander of this army to fight a great national battle with an army less than 100,000 strong. Had this amount of force been furnished our General, the battle of Murfreesboro' would practically have ended the Rebellion, as far as the Confederate States between the Savannah and Mississippi rivers are concerned. But with the stupid unwisdom which controlled our war counsels, 60,000 men could not be at the time furnished for the army of the Cumberland, or for that of the Potomac.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG AND PORT HUDSON.

ON the 16th October, 1862, the department of General Grant was enlarged, so as to include both West Tennessee and Mississippi. On receiving this command, he at once commenced preparations for the capture of Vicksburg, On the 4th July, eight and a half months from that time, our army entered the city, and took possession of its strongholds. The capture of this post has been regarded by perhaps a majority of the people of this country as a feat of masterly generalship, and did, in connexion with the short command of General Grant at Chattanooga, elevate him to the supreme command of our armies, and finally secured for him two elections to the Presidency of these United States. We have never agreed with the estimate placed upon the military character of this transaction. To us, it wears, for the most part, the same dull aspect which generally characterized the conduct of this war. Leaving, in his advance from Grand Junction to Oxford, his depôt of arms, munitions, and provisions, containing property valued at valued at $4,000,000, at Holly Springs, guarded but by an effective force of about 1,000 men, when it was well known that the enemy was watching every opportunity to fall upon our communications and cut off our supplies, cannot but be justly regarded as a very gross blunder. Then, on account of such a disaster, which was at once repaired, to abandon the important line of advance by Jackson, and make that long detour round to Memphis and down the Mississippi, seems indicative of a palpable want of military wisdom. Then, Sherman's assault upon Vicksburg, an assault in which

column after column of infantry were hurled against impregnable defences, involved not only a useless but imprudent and most excuseless slaughter of brave men. In his criticisms on the siege of Vicksburg, General Sherman remarks that had General Grant continued, as he undeniably might have done, his advance upon the place, in the direction in which he was moving when he retreated back from Oxford, and made the detour round through Corinth, Memphis, and down the Mississippi, he would have captured the place in January instead of the following July. In this statement, General Sherman is undeniable correct. These fundamental errors deprive General Grant of all just renown in this campaign, namely, leaving his immense supplies behind him under guard of but about 1,000 men, where his guard and supplies were certain to be seized by the enemy; making the loss of those supplies the occasion for the abandonment of the only proper line of advance, and taking the wide detour under consideration; and, finally, locating his great army where it could do nothing whatever having the remotest tendency to secure the object of the campaign, and then utterly wasting six months' time in doing, as we shall see, the most senseless and absurd things of which a commander can conceive.

We must bear in mind also that the investment of Vicksburg was effected on the morning of the 19th May, and that prior to this time the city had in no sense or form been besieged, the siege proper continuing but fortyfive days. What had our great army been doing during the previous six months? Without making any approaches towards the city, or erecting batteries which could reach any of its defences, our immense forces during this entire period were lying in idleness, dreaming of some "good time coming," or were most senselessly employed in canal and ditch digging, for the purposes of cutting the city off from the mainland by flanking the fortifications at Haines's Bluff on the Yazoo, or conveying our fleet round through dead lagoons into the Mississippi below the city. The number of these ditches and canals thus built is too numerous to be described. A notice of one, and that the most important, must suffice. Some

160 miles in direct line above the city, quite 200 by the river, Moon Lake approaches within a few miles of the Mississippi on the east side. Out of this lake the Yazoo Pass enters a small river named Cold Water. This, a few miles below the Pass, uniting with another stream, forms the Tallahatchee, and this some sixty or seventy miles below unites with the Yallabusha, and forms the Yazoo river. All these are narrow and slow streams, sufficiently deep, however, to float ironclads. At the expense of months of time and immense labour, a ditch was dug from the Mississippi into the lake designated, and a passage was opened for our vessels into the Cold Water. The object of opening this new line of communication was to flank the Confederate fortifications at Yazoo City and Haines's Bluff, fortifications too strong to be captured by assaults from our fleets and land forces by a movement from near Vicksburg up the Yazoo. At length, after untold labour and the loss of months of time, the expedition sailed, or rather steamed off; three toilsome days being spent in getting through Moon Lake and Yazoo Pass. The armament consisted of a division of land forces 5,000 strong under General Ross, of two large gunboats, five smaller ones, and eighteen transports; two mortarboats being afterwards sent down. This expedition, whose preparation had been long before announced to the nation and world through the press, and was fully understood throughout the Confederacy, was expected, after "finding out its uncouth way" for more than 150 miles down these narrow and tortuous rivers, to capture, right in the presence of General Johnston's army, first Fort Pemberton, at the junction of the Tallahatchee and Yallabusha rivers, then the strong fortifications at Yazoo City, and finally to move down, and in connexion with the fleet from below, to assault and capture the still stronger fortifications at Haines's Bluff. The Confederates of course looked on and laughed at the folly, and our grand flotilla, with its 5,000 land forces, at the point where it encountered the first battery erected to resist its progress, was driven back, with two of its ironclads not a little crippled, and slowly returned from its "Tom Fool's errand" to its point of departure. This was the third and most de

termined effort made to flank the defences of Vicksburg. We may claim the merit of having put a stop to these stupid proceedings. A letter written to Mr. Sumner contains these statements: "This whole ditch-digging business is a disgrace to us, in the just judgment of the Confederacy and the world, and is an insult to the intelligence of this century; and President Lincoln is bound, from respect to the honour of the country which he represents, to put a stop at once to such senseless proceedings." Immediately after that letter reached Washington, an absolute order, so the papers announced, was sent on to stop all works of the kind.

What now remained, after six months had been thus worse than wasted, was to do what might have been done in less than four weeks after our fleet and forces reached Milliken's Bend-the running of a sufficient number of ironclads and other vessels by the Confederate fortifications, and crossing our army over the Mississippi below Vicksburg. Why this movement, as the only one proper to be made, had not before occurred to Commodore Perter and General Grant and other officers in the army and navy, appears singular; especially when we consider the facts that ironclads had safely run by the formidable fortifications at Island No. 10, above Memphis, and a fleet of ordinary war steamers had safely run the gauntlet of Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans. The experiment was made on the night of April 16th, and accomplished with great stillness and success; and eight ironclads and a sufficient number of transports safely passed the forts and batteries on the hostile shore, and our army, at a distance of 60 or 70 miles below Vicksburg, was safely landed on the eastern side of the great river. Too much can hardly be said of the conduct of our army and its commanders in the advance now made. in the direction of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and from thence directly west to Vicksburg. In the successive battles of Port Gibson, Fourteen Mile Creek, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills (the most important and bloody of all), and Big Black river, where Pemberton made a final stand before his retreat into Vicksburg, our total loss in killed, wounded, and missing was upwards of 4,000 men.