supply train (raised by impressing
every horse, mule, ox, and wheeled thing in the neighborhood) looked
more like comic opera than war. Fine private carriages, piled high
with ammunition, and sometimes drawn by mules with straw collars
and rope lines, went side by side with the longest plantation wagons
drawn by many oxen, or with a two-wheeled cart drawn by a thoroughbred
horse.

Before any more actions could be fought news came through that
the Federals in Virginia had been terribly beaten by Lee, who was
now expected to invade the North. The South was triumphant; so
much so, indeed, that its Government thought the war itself had
now been won. But Lincoln, Grant, and Lee knew better.

Swiftly, silently, and with a sure strategic touch, Grant marched
northeast on Jackson, to make his rear secure before he turned on
Vicksburg. On the twelfth he won at Raymond and on the fourteenth
at Jackson itself. Here he turned back west again. On the sixteenth
he won the stubborn fight of Champion's Hill, on the seventeenth
he won again at Big Black River, and on the eighteenth he appeared
before the lines of Vicksburg. With the prestige of five victories
in twenty days, and with the momentum acquired in the process, he
then tried to carry the lines by assault on the spot. But the attack
of the nineteenth failed, as did its renewal on the twenty-second.
Next day both sides settled down to a six weeks' siege.

The failure of the two assaults was recognized by friend and foe
as being a mere check; and Grant's men all believed they had now
found the looked-for leader. So they had. Like Lee and Stonewall
Jackson in Virginia, Grant, with as yet inferior numbers (but with
the immense advantage of sea-power), had seized, held, and acted
on interior lines so ably that his forty-three thousand men had
out-maneuvered and out-fought the sixty thousand of the enemy,
beating them in detail on ground of their own besides inflicting a
threefold loss. Grant lost little over four thousand. The Confederates
lost nearly twelve thousand, half of whom were captured.

The only real trouble, besides the failure to carry the lines by
assault, was with the two bad generals, McClernand and Banks. McClernand
had promulgated an order praising his own corps to the skies and
conveying the idea that he and it had won the battles. Moreover,
he hinted that he had succeeded in the assault while the others had
failed. This was especially offensive because Grant,