Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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“ [395] both of the modes suggested of merely extricating the garrison. Negotiations with Grant for the relief of the garrison, should they become necessary, must be made by you. It would be a confession of weakness on my part, which I ought not to make, to propose them. When it becomes necessary to make terms, they may be considered as made under my authority.”

On the 29th June, field transportation and other supplies having been obtained, Johnston's army marched toward the Big Black, and on the evening of July 1st encamped between Brownsville and the river.

Reconnoissances, which occupied the second and third, convinced Gen. Johnston that the attack north of the railroad was impracticable. He determined, therefore, to make the examinations necessary for the attempt south of the railroad-thinking, from what was already known, that the chance for success was much better there, although the consequences of defeat might be more disastrous.

On the night of the 3d July a messenger was sent to Gen. Pemberton with information that an attempt to create a diversion would be made to enable him to cut his way out, and that Johnston hoped to attack the enemy about the 7th.

On the Fourth of July Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg. The explanation has been made in his behalf that he never received Johnston's despatches, encouraging the hope that both Vicksburg and the garrison might be saved; and Gen. Pemberton has declared that had he received these despatches: “I would have lived upon an ounce a day, and have continued to meet the assaults of all Grant's army, rather than have surrendered the city until Gen. Johnston had realized or relinquished that hope.”

As it was, he determined to surrender Vicksburg on the anniversary of the Fourth of July for the very singular reason that it would gratify the enemy's “vanity” to enter the stronghold of the great river on that particular day, and that such a concession might procure better terms than at any other time. The preliminary note for terms was despatched on the 3d July. Correspondence on the subject continued during the day, and was not concluded until nine o'clock the next morning. Gen. Pemberton afterwards came out, and had a personal interview with Grant, in front of the Federal line, the two sitting for an hour and a half in close communion. A spectator says: “Grant was silent and smoking, while Pemberton, equally cool and careless in manner, was plucking straws and biting them as if in merest chit-chat.”

It was a terrible day's work for such a display of sangfroid. It was the loss of one of the largest armies which the Confederates had in the field; the decisive event of the Mississippi Valley; the virtual surrender of the great river; and the severance of the Southern Confederacy. The numbers which surrendered at the capitulation of Vicksburg were twentythree