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Grant's arm was at length raised to strike.
His first blow glanced at Grand Gulf, the southernmost defence of Vicksburg; but the next day he stood on the east shore, the tall, defended, baffling shore which Secession had called its Gibraltar.
To do this, he had had to come down the river to cross at Bruinsburg, some thirty-one miles below Vicksburg.
“When this was effected, I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equalled since,” he says.
“I was on dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy.”
He now manoeuvred to deceive Pemberton, and easily did so. On May 1 he won the battle of Port Gibson.
He next made his great decision to cut loose from his base of supplies, and not inform Halleck until it was too late to stop him. When Sherman with several others strongly protested against this cutting loose from the base of supplies — the triumphant flash of daring and right
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