to rest, and then, sitting in the rain, with his
back against the foot of a tree, he slept a few hours before the renewal
of battle on Monday morning. With reinforcements he was able on the second
day to drive the enemy off the field and win a signal victory.

By this battle Grant broke the Confederates' second line of defense.
Although they fought bravely and well to prevent the Union troops from
getting control of the Mississippi River, by the close of 1862 the South
had lost every stronghold on the river except Port Hudson and Vicksburg.

[Illustration: General and Mrs. Grant with Their Son at City Point,
Virginia.]

Vicksburg was so strongly defended that the Confederates believed that it
could not be taken. A resolute effort to capture it was made by General
Grant in 1863. After a brilliant campaign of strategy, by which he got
around the defenses, he laid siege to the city itself. For seven weeks the
Confederate army held out. During that time the people of Vicksburg sought
refuge from the enemy's shells in caves and cellars, their only food at
times consisting of rats and mule flesh. But on July 4, 1863, the day
after General Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, Vicksburg surrendered to General
Grant. Four days later Port Hudson, some distance below, was captured, and
thus the last stronghold of the Mississippi came under control of the
North.

General Grant had become the hero of the Northern army. His success was in
no small measure due to his dogged perseverance. While his army was laying
siege to Vicksburg, a Confederate woman, at whose door he stopped to ask
for a drink of water, inquired whether he expected ever to capture
Vicksburg. "Certainly," he replied. "But when?" was the next question.
Quickly came the answer: "I cannot tell exactly when I shall take the
town, but _I mean to stay here till I do, if it takes me thirty years_."

General Grant having by his capture of Vicksburg won the confidence of the
people, President Lincoln, in 1864, put him in command of all the Union
armies of the East and the West. In presenting the new commission, Lincoln
addressed him in these words: "As the country herein trusts you, so, under
God, it will sustain you."

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

In the spring of that year the Confederates had two large armies in the
field. One of them, under General Lee, was defending Richmond. The other,
under General Joseph E. Johnston, was in Tennessee, defending the
Confederate cause in