Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 2.

[618] they burrowed in the bank for the purpose. Meanwhile Giles Smith's brigade had taken a position where it seriously menaced the parapet at another point, and that of T. Kilby Smith, deployed on an off slope of the spur of a hill, assisted Ewing in keeping the Confederates quiet within the works by firing at every head seen above the parapet. The storming party held their ground under cover of the artillery, but when, finally, the brigades of Giles Smith, in connection with that of Ransom, of McPherson's corps, attempted to carry the parapet by assault, they were repulsed with heavy loss.

While this struggle was occurring, Steele's division had been fighting at the Grave-Yard Bastion, half a mile farther to the right of Fort Hill, as desperately, and without gaining any visible advantage. It had pushed across deep chasms and ravines, and made its way up to the parapet in the face of a heavy fire. It failed to carry it, but held the hillside until dark, when it too was withdrawn. But while these struggles were going on, between twelve and one o'clock, Grant was encouraged by a dispatch from McClernand on the left, “stating positively and unequivocally that he was in possession of, and still held, two of the enemy's forts; that the American flag waved over them,” and asking him “to have Sherman and McPherson make a diversion in his favor.” ¹ On the strength of this assurance, Sherman renewed the assault on his left front, by sending Tuttle forward. Mower's brigade charged up to the position from which Ewing had been repulsed, and the colors of his leading regiment (Eleventh Missouri) were soon planted by the side of those of Blair's storming party, which remained there. After heavy loss and no substantial advantage gained, this second storming party was withdrawn under cover of darkness.

Turning farther toward the left, we find McPherson's corps in the center,. vying with Sherman's in the spirit of its attacks, and sharing with it the calamities of heavy losses and the mortifications of defeat. It is believed that McPherson lost ten men to one of the assailed party, in his endeavors to carry the main fort, near the Vicksburg and Jackson railway. He gained some ground, but most of it was abandoned in the evening.

On the left McClernand assailed the works most gallantly, but with less positive success than he seems to have supposed. Precisely at the appointed hour his storming party, composed of the brigades of Lawler and Landrum, rushed impetuously upon the works southeast of the city, and within the space of fifteen minutes carried the ditch, slope, and bastion of the redoubt immediately on their front. Sergeant Griffith and eleven privates of the Twenty-second Iowa entered it as conquerors, but all were prostrated within it but Griffith, who escaped, and took with him thirteen prisoners. Meanwhile the colors of the Forty-eighth Ohio and Seventy-seventh Illinois had been raised on the bastion, and the brigades of Benton and Burbridge, inspirited by the success of Lawler and Landrum, had carried the ditch and slope of another strong earthwork, and planted their colors there. At the same time a gun of the fort had been disabled by shot from a piece of the Chicago Mercantile battery, which Captain White had dragged by hand to the ditch, and fired into an embrasure.