The Lure Of The Mississippi Part 29

"We are not going to try it. The gunners on the boats would sink us or shoot us as spies or blockade-runners. I'm all-fired glad that we got in without being sunk or shot. We're not going to try to get out."

"How long is the siege going to last?" Bill asked.

"It can't last much longer, because there is but little food left. The men are all weak and live on half-rations."

"Couldn't they cut their way out!" Tim asked timidly.

"They can't do it. Grant has twice as many men as Pemberton, and Grant's men are all strong and have plenty of food and ammunition."

CHAPTER XXIII-THE LAST DAYS OF VICKSBURG

It had taken Grant a whole year to place his army in position on the hills in the rear of Vicksburg, but he had stuck to the campaign with the tenacity of a bulldog.

At first he had tried to move his army south by rail from Memphis, but Van Dorn had destroyed his supplies and cut the railroad.

He had tried to get his army below Vicksburg through various channels and bayous on the west side of the great river, but had found this plan impossible.

He had tried to come down by way of the Yazoo and other water-courses on the east side of the Mississippi, and had had a narrow escape from disaster. The Confederates had felled trees across the narrow channels and had built Fort Pemberton of mud and cotton-bales, which the Union men found they could not pa.s.s, and in the end they were glad to get out of the maze of water-courses and endless swamps and forests.

Then he had dug a ca.n.a.l across a neck of land below Vicksburg, but the river had risen and had filled the ca.n.a.l with sand and mud.

At last, Admiral Porter's gunboats and transports had rapidly run the batteries of Vicksburg on a dark night. Grant had marched his army past Vicksburg on the west side of the river. He had crossed the river at Bruinsburg and in a most daring manner he had cut loose from any base of supplies. With five days' rations in their knapsacks his men had for nearly three weeks lived on the country, had quickly turned from one hostile army upon the other and defeated them in detail. They had driven Pemberton into Vicksburg. They had built two lines of fortifications, one facing west against Pemberton in Vicksburg, and one facing east against Johnston, and since the nineteenth of May they held Pemberton in the wooded hills two miles east of Vicksburg.

Grant's army, consisting of only about 40,000 men at first, had now been strengthened to more than 70,000 men. Since the middle of June, Vicksburg was so closely besieged that not even a rowboat could get in or out.

On the twenty-second of May, Grant had tried to take the town by a.s.sault, but the Confederates put up such a stubborn defense that the attempt failed. Since that time, the Union army had carried on a regular siege with the intention of starving Vicksburg and the Confederate army into surrender.

The Northern soldiers had destroyed the railroad east of Vicksburg, so that Johnston could not quickly move upon them and soon the Union army was so strong that Grant could have fought Pemberton and Johnston at the same time. The Union army had now plenty of food and ammunition and was strongly entrenched, while the fall of Vicksburg and the surrender of Pemberton's brave army seemed only a matter of time.

By the first of July, it became evident that Johnston would not be able to relieve either the city or the garrison.

Provisions were nearly gone and the men were exhausted by continuous duty and watching and through the incessant bombardments by the Union troops.

On the third of July, Generals Pemberton and Grant met between the lines for a brief conference.

On the Fourth, the white flag floated over Vicksburg. The Gibraltar of the Mississippi had surrendered and 31,000 brave Confederate soldiers had become prisoners of war.

Grant treated the prisoners with every consideration. Rations were issued to them by their captors, and the men who for months had faced each other as enemies became friends. The prisoners were not sent north, but men as well as officers were paroled and turned over to Major Watts, Confederate Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners.

There was no cheer or taunt from the Federal soldiers, who stood at arms as the prisoners marched out of the city; they seemed to feel sorry for the fate of their late enemies. Haggard from the hardships of the siege, the men marched out in silence. Sad and silent the officers rode away on tired and dispirited horses, that had for weeks fed on nothing but mulberry leaves.

In the city also, friendly relations were at once established between the Union soldiers and the inhabitants, nor was there a lack of comic and funny incidents.

A negro servant, overcome by his desire to shine, rode about the city on his master's silver-mounted saddle. After an hour, he returned with a very long face and a very old saddle.

"George, where is my saddle!" asked his master.

"I met a big Yankee soldier and he says to me, 'You get off dat horse.

I's gwine to hab dat fine saddle.'

"I wa'n't gwine to git off, but he pointed his pistol at me, and he says, 'You black n.i.g.g.e.r, you git off,' and I got off, and he gives me dis old saddle."

The fall of Vicksburg was an important event in the Civil War. A few days later, on the ninth of July, Port Hudson, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, also surrendered, giving the Federals complete control of the great river and cutting the Confederacy in two by detaching Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana.

The Civil War settled a great question which had grown so vexing that no man or party was great enough to settle it, without appeal to arms. It brought untold sadness and suffering to thousands of homes, both North and South, but the South suffered much more than the North.

It taught a great moral lesson and set a great example to the world, not merely of bravery and self-denial-that other nations have shown and are showing now-it showed to the world the greatest example of speedy reconciliation after the war. Had Lincoln lived through the painful days of reconstruction, the bitterness and hatred caused by the war would have vanished even sooner. But even with the Great Captain pa.s.sed away, the best men North and South set earnestly to work, as soon as the war was over, to bind up and heal the nation's wounds.

A few years ago the Veterans in Blue and the Veterans in Grey met in a friendly reunion on the once blood-drenched field of Gettysburg. It was the greatest example of reconciliation the world has ever seen, an example, a living sermon, which a war-torn world will sadly need in the near future.

Barker and his boys did not remain long in Vicksburg. As Jacob of old was persuaded by his sons to travel to distant Egypt, so old Seth Ferguson was led by his sons to the balmy fertile prairies of the Sky-tinted River.

In peace and happy reunion the Ferguson family with Barker and Tatanka as guides, traveled up the Mississippi River by steamboat, and the boys never tired of pointing out to their parents the spots where they had camped and the cliffs and bluffs they had climbed.

In the bottoms of the upper river, great ma.s.ses of asters fringed the brown sandbars. When the party reached Fort Ridgely, the Minnesota prairie was ablaze with goldenrod, sunflowers, and purple stars, and the blackbirds were gathering in great flocks on the marshes in antic.i.p.ation of feasting on the crops of wild rice, for which they have a great liking.

After having spent almost a year on the Great River, the lads found their weather-beaten shanty spared by the furors of war, but the wild prairie had already begun to reclaim its own, as if impatient of human intrusion.

In the boys' garden patch, concealed by great rag-weeds and rich-scented milkweeds, a woodchuck had dug his den. A jungle of velvet-leaved false sunflowers almost barred the way to the cabin door. In a corner under the boys' bunk, a family of chipmunks had established themselves and with mumpsy-looking cheeks were racing back and forth laying in a store of wild hazelnuts and long rice-like grains of speargra.s.s.

"You are lucky," Tatanka remarked, "that Manka, the skunk, has not made his tunnels under your house. He would be hard to move."

Seth Ferguson filed on the claim on which the boys had lived.

The woodchuck was allowed possession of the garden-patch until next spring, but Bill and Tim harvested an abundant crop of the wild fruit of the land-b.u.t.ternuts, hazelnuts, wild grapes, chokeberries and rich sweet plums.

Barker did not return to following the trail of minks and foxes, but like the Fergusons broke up the virgin prairie to raise wheat and corn.

When he grew too old to walk behind the plow, he gave his farm to his boys, Bill and Tim, who, a few years later, carried him to his last resting-place on the bluff overlooking the winding Minnesota River.

Tatanka, with some other friendly Sioux, was a.s.signed land on the Redwood River, where his descendants live to this day.

The great war in the South, and the b.l.o.o.d.y tragedy of Minnesota are seen to-day through the mellow light of history. There is no longer bitterness and hatred between white men and red men, between North and South.

On the Fourth of July, the bright Stars and Stripes float over North and South, over the Indian settlement on the Redwood, and over the white men's towns around them. The tomahawk has been buried forever, but the Indian youths meet the white lads from farms and towns, all armed with bats and mitts, in the great American national game, the game that is destined to conquer the world with the gospel of vigor and good will.

The Minnesota, Sky-tinted Water, and the Mississippi, the Everywhere River, wind their way to the Gulf as of yore, in beauty and grandeur.

And here ends our tale of two wars and of the Lure of the Great River.

THE END.