laughed (what was
left of her), and recognized a bond of fellowship. The General joked,
and the Colonels and the Commissary and the doctors, down to the sutlers
and teamsters and the salt tars under Porter, who cursed the dishwater
Mississippi, and also a man named Eads, who had built the new-fangled
iron boxes officially known as gunboats. The like of these had
never before been seen in the waters under the earth. The loyal
citizens--loyal to the South--had been given permission to leave the
city. The General told the assistant quartermaster to hire their houses
and slaves for the benefit of the Federal Government. Likewise he laid
down certain laws to the Memphis papers defining treason. He gave
out his mind freely to that other army of occupation, the army of
speculation, that flocked thither with permits to trade in cotton. The
speculators gave the Confederates gold, which they needed most, for the
bales, which they could not use at all.

The forefathers of some of these gentlemen were in old Egypt under
Pharaoh--for whom they could have had no greater respect and fear than
their descendants had in New Egypt for Grant or Sherman. Yankees
were there likewise in abundance. And a certain acquaintance of ours
materially added to his fortune by selling in Boston the cotton which
cost him fourteen cents, at thirty cents.

One day the shouting and the swearing and the running to and fro came
to a climax. Those floating freaks which were all top and drew nothing,
were loaded down to the guards with army stores and animals and wood and
men,--men who came from every walk in life.

Whistles bellowed, horses neighed. The gunboats chased hither and
thither, and at length the vast processions paddled down the stream with
naval precision, under the watchful eyes of a real admiral.

Residents of Memphis from the river's bank watched the pillar of smoke
fade to the southward and ruminated on the fate of Vicksburg. The
General paced the deck in thought. A little later he wrote to the
Commander-in-Chief at Washington, "The valley of the Mississippi is
America."

Vicksburg taken, this vast Confederacy would be chopped in two.

Night fell to the music of the paddles, to the scent of the officers'
cigars, to the blood-red vomit of the tall stacks and the smoky flame of
the torches. Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted
two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in
the morning sun. Vicksbu