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thought you should go down the river and join Banks; and when you turned northward east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make a personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong."

Halleck bestowed similar praise, and concluded his letter thus: "Your narration of the campaign, like the operations themselves, is brief, soldierly, and in every respect creditable and satisfactory. In boldness of plan, rapidity of execution and brilliancy of routes, these operations will compare favorably with those of Napoleon about Ulm. You and your army have well deserved the gratitude of the country, and it will be the boast of your children that their fathers were of the heroic army which reopened the Mississippi River.”

It must not be forgotten that the fall of Vicksburg was coincident with the defeat of Lee at Gettysburg by the Union forces under General Meade. The country experienced a double thrill on the 4th of July, 1863. We could hardly state more fully the result of the offensive operations on the Mississippi. Those which Meade had in hand and which resulted in the victory of Gettysburg, were quite of another nature. They were purely defensive, and were forced on the Union army in the East by the determination of Lee to try the very policy of invasion which Grant was so successfully carrying out in the West. While Vicksburg sealed the wisdom of Grant's policy, Gettysburg proved the failure of Lee's. As to the central field in which Bragg and Rosecrans were struggling, Murfreesboro would have ended the policy of invading the North by way of the Ohio, as effectually as Gettysburg did that of invading it by way of the Potomac, if it had not been for the Chickamauga back-set.

No sooner had Sherman and McPherson entered the cap

ital of Mississippi the second time, than Grant sent in their names as worthy the honors of brigadiers in the regular army. These honors he epitomizes thus:

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1st. Their great fitness for any command that it may ever become necessary to intrust to them."

2d. "Their great purity of character and disinterestedness in anything except the faithful performance of their duty and the success of every one engaged in the great battle for the preservation of the Union."

3d. "They have honorably won this distinction upon many well fought battle fields. The promotion of such men as Sherman and McPherson always adds strength to an army."

As already stated, their merited promotion quickly came, and it is no discrimination to say that as to Sherman, no honor had ever been more richly or hardly won, and none ever fell on worthier shoulders. From Shiloh to Corinth; from Corinth to Memphis; from Memphis to the Yazoo; from the Yazoo to Arkansas Post; from Arkansas Post to Milliken's Bend; from Milliken's Bend to Perkins's; from Perkins's to Jackson; from Jackson to Bridgeport and Haine's Bluff and thence to Vicksburg; from Vicksburg back to Jackson; he had ever been prompt, daring and self-sacrificial. His constancy was unfaltering, his genius unfailing. Ever at Grant's right, he was trusted beyond all others. When Sherman tried an expedient, Grant was satisfied no generalship could do more. He proved to be as ready in independent command, as in his own, handling combined corps with the ease and safety of proficient generalship. The lustre of Vicksburg never paled on the head of Sherman.

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CHAPTER IX.

CHATTANOOGA.

The Mississippi River fell under control of the Union forces after the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The armies west of the stream became unimportant. Grant went to New Orleans to confer with Banks, and while gone his respective corps de armee were distributed as follows:Parke's Ninth Corps returned to Kentucky to afterwards join Burnside's Army of the Ohio. Ord's Thirteenth Corps drifted to Natchez and thence to New Orleans and Texas McPherson's Seventeenth remained in and about Vicksburg. Hurlbut's Sixteenth was at Memphis; Sherman's Fifteenth was east of Vicksburg on the line of the Big Black River. It was now composed of Steel's First division; Blair's Second division; Tuttle's Third division, and Ewing's Fourth division.

The camp was well chosen for health and comfort, and supplies were easily obtained by a short railroad from Vicksburg. From all appearances there was to be a month or two of rest during the hot weather. Sherman's family came to his headquarters on a lengthy visit. Grant's family visited him at Vicksburg, and many of the officers enjoyed the pleasure of family reunions.

But while times were thus restful on the Big Black, campaigns were in progress elsewhere. Bragg had centered his army at Chattanooga, after being driven southward by the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans. Burnside was centering his Army of the Ohio in East Tennessee, mostly

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