130                                HISTORY OF THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT O.V.V.I.

           To-day a general charge upon the enemy's works was ordered and made, though I cannot yet learn that at any point the works were completely carried. The singularly rough nature of the ground makes it almost impossible to tell what we have to encounter, and rapidly fatigues the men. But we advance in this way steadily, and at each charge our sharpshooters obtain a better position for their operations. Our artillery hastens to get better position, small intrenchments being thrown up to protect it; and thus we have the curious spectacle of hostile redoubts already frowning upon each other, at a distance of but a few hundred yards.

           The guns of the rebels reply to our shelling but seldom. They are evidently husbanding their ammunition, for they can now get no further supply. Their redoubts are constructed for field guns, and within the last three weeks Grant has captured about seventy of these.

           In the meantime we have a new base of supplies from the Yazoo, through which reinforcements, provisions, ammunition and heavy guns can be sent as rapidly as we please.

           The rebel force within Vicksburg cannot now be more than twenty thousand. Before the fight at Jackson, they may have had forty-five thousand, but part of that number we forced up northward toward Canton – say ten thousand. At the battle of Midway Hills, (or Champion Hills,) on the 16th instant, their effective force was perhaps thirty-five thousand men. Of these at least ten thousand were killed, wounded or captured, or driven to escape northward or southward, in such a way as to prevent them from returning to Vicksburg. At the fight on Big Black, on the 17th, we captured nearly three thousand, and scattered many more in such a way that they are more likely to have straggled home through the woods than to have reported for duty.

LATER.

           I have arrived at the Yazoo, near Chickasaw Bayou, after riding from the extreme left of our army. Of course rumors are plenty of the operations of to-day. One is that our mortars and gunboats have silenced two of the upper water batteries, and that vessels now pass Vicksburg without being fired on. Another is that in the attempted charge of to-day the Thirty-First Illinois got up to the enemy's works, and there found a stockade so high that they could not scale it, and so they stopped and lay down under it, unable to go further, yet protected from the enemy's fire. At this moment a rebel redoubt on the left tried to get a raking fire on them, when our artillery, concentrating its shots upon the redoubt, suddenly battered it to silence, knocking one of its guns some thirty feet into the air.

Intro Previous Next ToC Index