This text is part of:
[400] board trains of cars which were ready for them. They loudly demanded the body of the unfortunate Pemberton, that they might hang him. The officers, who alone had preserved their arms, had to draw their swords in order to compel obedience. When they landed at Demopolis, whence they were to be sent into the interior, exasperated by the insulting remarks of women who crowded around all the stations to reproach them for their capitulation, they attacked the guard who had charge of them, and were only brought to submission with great difficulty. Grant had shown much political sagacity in predicting that the return of this vanquished army, by disseminating discouragement everywhere, would do more serious damage to the cause of the South than even the loss of Vicksburg. The 3d and 4th of July, 1863, mark a decided epoch in the war, and it may be said that they divide the history of it into two parts. In the first the amount of success is rather in favor of the Confederates, despite the loss of Kentucky, Missouri, a portion of Tennessee, and Louisiana. The progress of the Federals is so slow that unless one has a thorough knowledge of their tenacity and resources the impression would be that the slaveholding Confederacy is certain of obtaining recognition at the end of a few years. In the West, Rosecrans has remained inactive near the battlefield of Murfreesborough for the last six months; Arkansas is abandoned and New Orleans menaced; finally, during the last year Vicksburg has been holding the Federal fleets and armies in check. At the East, the Southern soldiers have met with success after success. As will be seen in the latter part of this volume, it is no longer Richmond, but Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia that are menaced in the beginning of the summer of 1863. In the course of five months the Army of the Potomac has sustained two sanguinary defeats, and Lee has transferred the war to the soil of the free States. But Lee's invasion has been brought abruptly to a stop before the heights of Gettysburg on the day preceding the capitulation of Vicksburg, which changed the whole aspect of the war in the West. From this moment, notwithstanding the desperate courage of their opponents, the defeats
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1883.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.