Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[328] troops of the same race as themselves, and in numbers so nearly equal to their own. Neither can the generalship which directed this assault be fairly censured. The only possible chance of breaking through such defences and defenders was in massing the troops, so that the weight of the columns should be absolutely irresistible. But, the broken, tangled ground, where often a company could not advance by flank, made massing impossible; and this could not be known in advance. The rebels, too, had not shown, in the week preceding the assault, any of the determination which they displayed behind their earthen walls at Vicksburg; the works at the Big Black river also were impregnable, if they had been well defended; and Grant could not know, beforehand, that Pemberton's men had recovered their former mettle, any more than he could ascertain, without a trial, how inaccessible were the acclivities, and how prodigious the difficulties which protected these reinvigorated soldiers. But, Badajos was thrice besieged, and oftener assaulted, ere it fell; and the stories of Saguntum and Saragossa prove, that Vicksburg was not the only citadel which long resisted gallant and determined armies.

On the night of the 22d, the troops were withdrawn from the most advanced positions reached during the assault, still retaining, however, ground that was of importance during the siege. They took back many of their wounded with them, but the dead remained unburied. There was not time enough to remove the bodies before daybreak, when the rebel fire commanded all the ground where they lay. For two days, the unburied corpses were left festering between the two armies, when the stench became so intolerable