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of recent reverses, the task would be comparatively easy,
Grant resolved to attempt it. His troops were impatient to possess the object of their toils for months, and he was satisfied that, if an immediate assault should end in failure, they would work better in the trenches while prosecuting a regular siege, than they would do if denied an opportunity to capture the post by direct assault.
Grant therefore prepared to storm the
Confederate works on the day after the arrival of his troops before them, which had occurred on the anniversary of
Farragut's advent there the year before.
He made his Headquarters in his tent, pitched in a canebrake near an immense tree, in the edge of a wood on the farm of
E. B. Willis, about three miles northeast from
Vicksburg, and there he issued his orders for assault.
Grant ordered the attack to be commenced at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 19th.
It was begun by
Sherman's corps, which was nearest the works on the northeastern side of the city, which lay on both sides of the old Jackson road, the one on the right, in approaching the town, known as
Fort Hill, and the one on the left as
Fort Beauregard.
The attack was directed upon the former.
Blair's division took the lead, followed by
Tuttle's as a support.
As it moved, it occupied both side of the road.
The ground was very rough, and was cleft by deep chasms, in which were trees standing and trees felled; and along the entire front of the
Confederate works was such a tangle of hills and obstacles that the approach was excessively difficult and perilous.
There had been artillery skirmishing and sharp-shooting all the morning: now there was to be close work.
Both parties were nerved for the task.
Steadily
Blair's regiments moved on, and their first blow was given to
General Schoup's Louisiana brigade, which struck back powerfully and manfully.
After a slight recoil,
Blair's troops moved on across the ditch to the exterior slope of the works, where the Thirteenth Regulars, of
General Giles Smith's brigade, planted the flag of the
Republic, but at the cost of seventy-seven of its two hundred and fifty men, its leader,
Captain Washington, being among the fatally wounded.
The Eighty-third Indiana and One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Illinois also gallantly gained the slope, but all were unable