The full of Vicksburg — additional particulars.
Vicksburg did not surrender on the 4th of July. The garrison espitulated on the 3d instant, between 4 and 6 o'clock P. M. It is stated that
Grant had made preparations for a grand assault on the next day. From the
Jackson (
Miss) correspondent of the Mobile papers, we have the following accounts:
‘
I have conversed with some of the officers who have come out, and they say that when the men rose from the trenches, where they had been for
thirty-eight days, without ever being relieved, and marched out to stack their arms, one third of them reeled and staggered like drunken men from famine and exhaustion, and many of them fall to the ground unable to rise against, but when the guns were stacked, and the color-bearers marched up to lay their tattered and worn banners upon the slack, then, and not till then, did they seem to know and feel that all that they had struggled and suffered for for many long and dreary days and weeks was lost.
All had been in vain, and men with famine written upon their faces, to which was now added despair, turned away and wept like children at the sight of the banners they had followed so long and so well, doomed never again to flutter above them, the ensign of freedom and hatred tyranny.
’
Gen. Johnston had reached the
Big. Black, and would have crossed at daylight on Monday morning, but at 10 o'clock Sunday night he received information that
Vicksburg had fallen, and
Giat Grant was on the opposite bank to dispute the passage of the river.
He immediately fell back to--,closely pursued by
Sherman's corps, who were constantly skirmishing with our cavalry.
I was not until late on Monday night that the news of the capitulation reached
General Johnston, then in bivouac on the Big Black.--Had
Grant been the enterprising General he has the credit for, it was in his power, easily, to have flanked
Johnston, and thrown himself between him and
Jackson.
Had he done so,
Johnston is army would have been cut off and lost.
It was to prevent this that the latter made a forced march to
Jackson.
Grant's slow movement enabled him to reach the position and rest two days before the enemy arrived.
Can
Gen. Johnston hold the position?
It is the opinion of some officers who know the ground that he can. On the other hand, it is a matter almost of life and death to the enemy to take it. As at the battle of
Parryville, he is fighting for water, and if he is repulsed, and is forced to retire over the road which he came, it is difficult to perceive how he can escape perishing.
Let us hope for the best, and pray God to vouchsafe us a victory at so important a point.
It does not yet appear whether
Grant is in person before
Jackson, nor in what force the enemy are. Perhaps before these lines are in print, all these points will be cleared up.
An officer down the
Mobile and Ohio Road reports that twenty transports, with a portion of
Grant's troops, west up the
Mississippi after the
fall of Vicksburg.
Last Friday evening, while a Texas regiment at
Jackson was on its way to take the place of a regiment doing out post duty, one of
Grant's masked batteries of four pieces was opened on it. Within a few minutes about a hundred and forty were killed and wounded.
The
Texans were so incensed that they rushed pell toward the enemy and captured the battery and fifteen of the gunners, and having no fit for the duty, they harnessed themselves to the cannon and brought them safely into our lines.
This is the sort of man beat
Johnston has under his command.
They may be starved, but not whipped.
The wildest excitement exists among the citizens, who are flying from the enemy.
Numbers of them are leaving everything behind at the mercy of the enemy.
The streets of
Jackson are filled with stock and negroes, being sent off from danger, whilst the planters families are many of them, buddled together in oxcarts and every species of conveyance.
The
Mississippi, in office has boxed up and gone to the interior.
The speculators are frantic at the loss of hundreds of bales of cotton and hogsheads of sugar, left to the enemy instead of being dealt out at four hundred prices to the families of the soldiers.
