Crossing the Mississippi on gunboats and steamers—Battle of Port Gibson—How General Grant looked to a private soldier—A boy from Mississippi—Fights at Raymond—Battle of Jackson in a thunderstorm—Digging his brothers' grave—Grant in battle—Saving a flag—How men feel in battle—An awful spectacle—The critical moment of General Grant's life—A battlefield letter from him to Sherman.

Now that the boats were below the city, we were to begin the Vicksburg campaign in earnest. All the troops that had been left camped on the river levee above at Milliken's Bend hurried by roundabout roads through cane-brakes and swamps to the point where our little boats had anchored after running past the batteries that night. Here we joined the rest of the army, and the ferrying of thousands of soldiers across the great river day and night at once commenced.

My own regiment was put on to one of the iron gunboats and ferried over the Mississippi at a point close to Grand Gulf. Here our river navy had silenced the Rebel forts. It was the first gunboat I had ever seen. Its sides bore great scars, indentations made by the enemy's batteries on the preceding day. We hurried on and became a part of the reserve at the hot battle of Port Gibson, as we ourselves did no fighting. In a plantation yard, close by my regiment, lay our wounded as they were carried back from the front. It was a terrible sight. Many had been torn by shrapnel and lay there on the grass in great agony. Some seemed with their own hands to be trying to tear their mangled limbs from their bodies. The possession of all Vicksburg did not seem worth the pain and the agony I saw there that afternoon. That was war; and it was "hell," sure enough.

The next day, when the battle was over, I was at a negro cabin getting a loaf of corn bread. I suddenly heard a little cheering down by the river, where some men were putting down pontoons in place of the bridge burned by the enemy. I went down at once, and as I stood by the river bank I noticed an officer on horseback in full general's uniform. Suddenly he dismounted and came over to the very spot where I was standing. I did not know his face, but something told me it was Grant,—Ulysses Grant,—at that moment the hero of the Western army. Solid he stood, erect, about five feet eight in height, with square features, thin, closed lips, brown hair, brown beard, both cut short, and neat. "He must weigh one hundred and forty or fifty pounds. Looks just like the soldier he is. I think he is larger than Napoleon, but not much; he is not so dumpy, his legs are not so short, and his neck is not so short and thick. He looks like a man in earnest, and the Rebels think he is one."

This was the first time I saw Grant. I think I still possess some of the feeling that came over me at that moment as I stood so near to one who held our lives, and possibly his country's life, in his hands. How little I dreamed that some day I would have the great honor of sitting beside him at my own table. Yet this occurred.

Now he spoke, "Men, push right along; close up fast, and hurry over." Two or three men on mules attempted to wedge past the soldiers on the bridge. Grant noticed it, and quietly said, "Lieutenant, arrest those men and send them to the rear." Every soldier passing turned to gaze on him. But there was no further recognition. There was no McClellan begging the boys to allow him to light his cigar by theirs; no inquiring to what regiment that exceedingly fine marching company belonged; there was no Pope bullying the men for not marching faster, reproving officers for neglecting trivial details remembered only by martinets; there was no Bonaparte posturing for effect; no pointing to the pyramids, no calling the centuries to witness. There was no nonsense, no sentiment. Only a plain business man of the republic there for the one single purpose of getting that army across the river in the shortest time possible. In short, it was just plain General Grant, as he appeared on his way to Vicksburg. On a horse near by, and among the still mounted staff, sat the General's son, a bright-looking lad of perhaps eleven years. Fastened to his little waist by a broad yellow belt was his father's sword—that sword on whose clear steel was yet to be engraved "Vicksburg," "Spotsylvania," "The Wilderness," "Appomattox." The boy talked and jested with the bronzed soldiers near him, who laughingly inquired where we should camp that night; to which the young field marshal replied, "Oh, over the river."

"Over the river!" Ah, that night we slept with our guns in our hands, and another night, and another, saw more than one of our division, and of my own regiment, camped over the river—in that last tenting ground—where the rÉveille was heard no more forever.

My own command crossed the bridge that night by torchlight. It was a strange weird scene. Many of the Rebel dead—killed beyond the stream by our cannon before our approach—still lay at the roadside or in fields unburied. At one turn in the road my regiment marched close by a Rebel battery that had been completely destroyed. Men, horses, and all lay there dead in indiscriminate heaps. The face of one boy lying there among the horses I shall never forget. It was daylight now, the bright sun was just rising, when I left the ranks a moment to step aside to see that boy. He was lying on his back. His face was young and fair, his beautiful brown hair curled almost in ringlets, and his eyes, brown and beautiful, were wide open; his hands were across his breast. A cannonball had in an instant cut away the top of his head in as straight a line as if it had been done with a surgeon's saw. There had been no time for agony or pain. The boy's lips were almost in a smile. It was a Mississippi battery that had been torn to pieces there, and it may be that in a home near by a mother stood that morning praying for her boy. The South had such war costs as well as the North.

My regiment now entered on all those rapid marches and battles in the rear of Vicksburg—Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and the assaults on the breastworks about the city. For days we scarcely slept at all; it was hurry here and quickstep there, day or night. None of us soldiers or subordinates could tell the direction we were marching. We had few rations, little water, and almost no rest. We had left our base at the river, and in a large sense we were cut off and surrounded all the time. The capture of a Rebel scout at once changed everything. Through him Grant learned how hurrying divisions of the enemy were about to unite. A quick move could checkmate everything. Indeed, it was nothing but a great game of chess that was being played, only we, the moving pieces, had blood and life. At one time Grant's army was as likely to be captured as to capture. My regiment, like all the others, hurried along the country roads through dust that came to the shoe top. The atmosphere was yellow with it. The moving of a column far away could be traced by it. We followed it in the way that Joshua's army followed the mighty cloud. As we passed farms where there was something to eat the captains would call out to a dozen men of the line to hurry in, carry off all they could, and pass it over to the companies still marching. It was a singular looking army. So whole regiments tramped along with sides of bacon or sheaves of oats on the points of their bayonets. We dared not halt. When we bivouacked, long after dark, often it was the dust of the roadside. We always lay upon our arms. Sometimes there was a little fire, oftener there was none. The fat bacon was eaten raw.

My regiment was in advance at the engagement at Raymond; also at Jackson. At Jackson it rained and thundered fearfully during the battle. A Rebel battery was on a green slope right in front of us, pouring a terrible shelling into us as we approached it from the Raymond road. The shocks of thunder so intermingled with the shocks from the guns that we could not tell the one from the other, and many times a sudden crash of thunder caused us all to drop to the ground, fearing a cannonball would cut its swath through the regiment. We were marching in columns of fours. Shortly, we formed line of battle, and in rushing to the left through a great cane-brake, while we were advancing in battle line under a fire of musketry, the order was given to lie down.

We obeyed quickly. How closely, too, we hugged the ground and the depression made by a little brook! While I lay there it happened that my major (Marshall) was close behind me on horseback. He had no orders to dismount. I could glance back and see his face as the bullets zipped over our heads or past him. He sat on his horse as quiet as a statue, save that with his right hand he constantly twisted his mustache. He looked straight into the cane-brake. He was a brave man. Could the enemy behind the forests of cane have seen where they were firing he would not have lived a minute. Shortly there was roaring of cannon and quick charges at the other side of the town. Jackson was won.

At daylight the next morning we hurried in the direction of Champion Hills. At our left, as we went down the road, the battlefield of the day before was strewn with corpses of our own men. In a few minutes the brave Seventeenth Regiment of Iowa had lost 80 men at this spot, out of 350 engaged in an assault. My friend Captain Walden received honorable mention, among others, for gallantry in this Jackson charge. A few hundred yards off I noticed a man in a field quite alone, digging in the ground. Out of curiosity I went to him and asked what he was doing alone when the regiments were all hurrying away. A brown blanket covered something near by. He pointed to it and said that two of his brothers lay dead under that blanket. He was digging a grave for them. He went on with his work and I hurried to overtake my command. This was the 15th of May, 1863. I did not know it then, but shortly I was to see General Grant in the midst of battle. I was to see several other things, and feel some of them also.

My situation as to the Fifth Regiment was a peculiar one; being the quartermaster sergeant, I belonged to no company in particular. The good colonel, however, knowing my love for adventure, and that I was never lacking in duty, allowed me to attach myself to any company I liked, provided only, that there was a reliable substitute performing my duties with the train at the rear. I had no trouble in securing such a substitute, usually found among the slightly wounded soldiers.

Since we crossed the Mississippi I had marched and carried my rifle all the way,—had been in every skirmish and engagement. Sometimes I tramped along with my old Company B of Newton, sometimes I went with the extreme left of the regiment. I was no more heroic than all the others in the command, but I was fond of the risk and the excitement of battle. I would have resigned my warrant as quartermaster sergeant in a moment rather than miss a hard march or an engagement, let the chance be what it might. I think my love of adventure, and my seeking it so often away from my proper post of duty at the rear, was often the occasion of amused comment. Once when marching at the left I heard our surgeon, Carpenter, cry out to another officer riding beside him: "There's a fight to-day. Look out. The sign's sure. The quartermaster sergeant has got his gun."

None of us private soldiers now really knew in what direction we were marching. We heard only that the enemy was concentrating at Edwards Ferry Station, between us and Big Black River. General Crocker of my State was now leading our division, and the magnificent General McPherson commanded the army corps. The night of May 15 the division bivouacked in the woods by the side of a road that leads from Bolton toward Vicksburg. We marched hard and late that day. The morning of the 16th my regiment was up and getting breakfast long before daylight. The breakfast consisted of some wet dough cooked on the ends of ramrods; nothing more.

Troops were hurrying past our bivouac by daylight. Once I went out to the roadside to look about a bit. It was scarcely more than early daylight, yet cannon could occasionally be heard in the far distance, something like low thunder. As I stood there watching some batteries hurrying along I noticed a general and his staff gallop through the woods, parallel with the road. They were leaping logs, brush, or whatever came in their way. It was General Grant, hurrying to the front. Shortly came the orders, "Fall in!" and we too were hurrying along that road toward Champion Hills. By ten o'clock the sound of the cannon fell thundering on our ears, and we hurried all we could, as riders came back saying the battle had already begun. As we approached the field the sound of great salvos of musketry told us the hour had surely come. The sound was indeed terrible.

At the left of the road we passed a pond of dirty water. All who could broke ranks and filled canteens, knowing that in the heat of the fight we would need the water terribly. I not only filled my canteen, I filled my stomach with the yellow fluid, in order to save that in the canteen for a critical moment. Just then there was in front of us a terrific crashing, not like musketry, but more like the falling down of a thousand trees at once. Our brigade, a small one, was hurried into line of battle at the edge of an open field that sloped down a little in front of us and then up to a wood-covered ridge. That wood was full of the Rebel army. Fighting was going on to the right and left of us, and bullets flew into our own line, wounding some of us as we stood there waiting. There was an old well and curb at the immediate right of my regiment, and many of our boys were climbing over each other to get a drop of water. Soon the bullets came faster, zipping, zipping among us, thicker and thicker. We must have been in full view of the enemy as we stood there, not firing a shot. Our line stood still in terrible suspense, not knowing why we were put under fire without directions to shoot. Zip! zip! zip! came the Rebel bullets, and now and then a boy in blue would groan, strike his hand to a wounded limb or arm, drop his gun and fall to the rear; or perhaps he fell in his tracks dead, without uttering a word. We too, who saw it, uttered no word, but watched steadily, anxiously at the front.

Then General Grant himself rode up behind us, and so close to the spot where I stood, that I could have heard his voice. He leaned against his little bay horse, had the inevitable cigar in his mouth, and was calm as a statue. Possibly smoking so much tranquillized his nerves a little and aided in producing calmness. Still, Grant was calm everywhere; but he also smoked everywhere. Be that as it may, it required very solid courage to stand there quietly behind that line at that moment. For my own part, I was in no agreeable state of mind. In short, I might be killed there at any moment, I thought, and I confess to having been nervous and alarmed. Every man in the line near me was looking serious, though determined. We had no reckless fools near us, whooping for blood. Once a badly wounded man was carried by the litter-bearers—the drummers of my regiment—close to the spot where the General stood. He gave a pitying glance at the man, I thought,—I was not twenty feet away,—but he neither spoke nor stirred. Then I heard an officer say, "We are going to charge." It seems that our troops in front of us in the woods had been sadly repulsed, and now our division was to rush in and fight in their stead, and the commander-in-chief was there to witness our assault. Two or three of us, near each other, expressed dissatisfaction that the commander of an army in battle should expose himself, as General Grant was doing at that moment. When staff officers came up to him, he gave orders in low tones, and they would ride away. One of them, listening to him, glanced over our heads toward the Rebels awhile, looked very grave, and gave some mysterious nods. The colonel who was about to lead us also came to the General's side a moment. He, too, listened, looked, and gave some mysterious nods. Something was about to happen.

"My time has probably come now," I said to myself, and with a little bit of disgust I thought of the utter uselessness of being killed there without even firing a shot in self-defense. The suspense, the anxiety, was indeed becoming fearfully intense. Soon General Grant quietly climbed upon his horse, looked at us once, and as quietly rode away. Then the colonel came along the line with a word to each officer. As he came near me he called me from the ranks and said: "I want you to act as sergeant-major of the regiment in this battle." I was surprised, but indeed very proud of this mark of confidence in me. "Hurry to the left," he continued. "Order the men to fix bayonets—quick!" I ran as told, shouting at the top of my voice, "Fix bayonets! fix bayonets!" I was not quite to the left, when I heard other voices yelling, "Forward! quick! double quick! forward!" and the line was already on the run toward the Rebels. I kept up my shouting, "Fix bayonets!" for by some blunder the order had not been given in time, and now the men were trying to get their bayonets in place while running. We were met in a minute by a storm of bullets from the wood, but the lines in blue kept steadily on, as would a storm of wind and cloud moving among the tree-tops. Now we met almost whole companies of wounded, defeated men from the other division, hurrying by us, and they held up their bleeding and mangled hands to show us they had not been cowards. They had lost twelve hundred men on the spot we were about to occupy. Some of them were laughing even, and yelling at us: "Wade in and give them hell." We were wading in faster than I am telling the story.

On the edge of a low ridge we saw a solid wall of men in gray, their muskets at their shoulders blazing into our faces and their batteries of artillery roaring as if it were the end of the world. Bravely they stood there. They seemed little over a hundred yards away. There was no charging further by our line. We halted, the two lines stood still, and for over an hour we loaded our guns and killed each other as fast as we could. The firing and the noise were simply appalling. Now, I was not scared. The first shot I fired seemed to take all my fear away and gave me courage enough to calmly load my musket at the muzzle and fire it forty times. Others, with more cartridges, fired possibly oftener still. Some of the regiments in that bloody line were resupplied with cartridges from the boxes of the dead. In a moment I saw Captain Lindsey throw up his arms, spring upward and fall dead in his tracks. Corporal McCully was struck in the face by a shell. The blood covered him all over, but he kept on firing. Lieutenant Darling dropped dead, and other officers near me fell wounded.

I could not see far to left or right, the smoke of battle was covering everything. I saw bodies of our men lying near me without knowing who they were, though some of them were my messmates in the morning. The Rebels in front we could not see at all. We simply fired at their lines by guess, and occasionally the blaze of their guns showed exactly where they stood. They kept their line like a wall of fire. When I fired my first shot I had resolved to aim at somebody or something as long as I could see, and a dozen times I tried to bring down an officer I dimly saw on a gray horse before me. Pretty soon a musket ball struck me fair in the breast. "I am dead, now," I said, almost aloud. It felt as if someone had struck me with a club. I stepped back a few paces and sat down on a log to finish up with the world. Other wounded men were there, covered with blood, and some were lying by me dead. I spoke to no one. It would have been useless; thunder could scarcely have been heard at that moment. My emotions I have almost forgotten. I remember only that something said to me, "It is honorable to die so." I had not a thought of friends, or of home, or of religion. The stupendous things going on around me filled my mind. On getting my breath a little I found I was not hurt at all,—simply stunned; the obliquely-fired bullet had struck the heavy leather of my cartridge belt and glanced away. I picked up my gun, stepped back into the line of battle, and in a moment was shot through the hand. The wound did not hurt; I was too excited for that.

The awful roar of battle now grew more terrific, if possible. I wonder that a man on either side was left alive. Biting the ends off my cartridges, my mouth was filled with gunpowder; the thirst was intolerable. Every soldier's face was black as a negro's, and, with some, blood from wounds trickled down over the blackness, giving them a horrible look. Once a boy from another part of the line to our left ran up to me crying out: "My regiment is gone! what shall I do?"

There was now a little moment's lull in the howling noise; something was going on. "Blaze away right here," I said to the boy, and he commenced firing like a veteran. Then I heard one of our own line cry, "My God, they're flanking us!" I looked to where the boy had come from. His regiment had indeed given way. The Rebels had poured through the gap and were already firing into our rear and yelling to us to surrender. In a moment we would be surrounded. It was surrender or try to get back past them. I ran like a racehorse,—so did the left of the regiment, amid a storm of bullets and yells and curses. I saved my musket, anyway. I think all did that,—but that half-mile race through a hot Mississippi sun, with bullets and cannonballs plowing the fields behind us, will never be forgotten. My lungs seemed to be burning up. Once I saw our regimental flag lying by a log, the color-bearer wounded or dead. I cried to a comrade flying near me, "Duncan Teter, it is a shame—the Fifth Iowa running."

Only the day before Teter had been reduced to the ranks for some offense or another. He picked up the flag and with a great oath dared me to stop and defend it. For a moment we two tried to rally to the flag the men who were running by. We might as well have yelled to a Kansas cyclone. Then Captain John Tait, rushing by, saw us, stopped, and, recognizing the brave deed of Corporal Teter, promoted him on the spot. But the oncoming storm was irresistible, and, carrying the flag, we all again hurried rearward. We had scarcely passed the spot where I had seen Grant mount his horse before the charge when a whole line of Union cannon, loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot and canister, opened on the howling mob that was pursuing us. The Rebels instantly halted, and now again it seemed our turn. A few minutes rest for breath and our re-formed lines once more dashed into the woods. In half an hour the battle of Champion Hills was won, and the victorious Union army was shortly in a position to compel the surrender of the key to the Mississippi River. Grant's crown of immortality was won, and the jewel that shone most brightly in it was set there by the blood of the men of Champion Hills. Had that important battle failed, Grant's army, not Pemberton's, would have become prisoners of war. Where then would have been Vicksburg, Spotsylvania, Richmond, Appomattox?

Six thousand blue- and gray-coated men were lying there in the woods, dead or wounded, when the last gun of Champion Hills was fired. Some of the trees on the battlefield were tall magnolias, and many of their limbs were shot away. The trees were in full bloom, their beautiful blossoms contrasting with the horrible scene of battle. Besides killing and wounding three thousand of the enemy, we had also captured thirty cannon and three thousand prisoners.

When the troops went off into the road to start in pursuit of the flying enemy, I searched over the battlefield for my best friend, poor Captain Poag, with whom I had talked of our Northern homes only the night before. He lay dead among the leaves, a bullet hole in his forehead. Somebody buried him, but I never saw his grave. Another friend I found dying. He begged me only to place him against a tree, and with leaves to shut the burning sun away from his face. While I was doing this I heard the groaning of a Rebel officer, who lay helpless in a little ditch. He called to me to lift him out, as he was shot through both thighs, and suffering terribly. "Yes," I said, "as soon as I get my friend here arranged a little comfortably." His reply was pathetic. "Yes, that's right; help your own first." I had not meant it so. I instantly got to him and, with the aid of a comrade, pulled him out of the ditch. He thanked me and told me he was a lieutenant colonel, and had been shot while riding in front of the spot where he lay. I eased his position as best I could, but all that night, with many another wounded soldier, blue and gray, he was left on the desolate battlefield.

Now I realized how terrible the fire had been about us,—for some comrades counted two hundred bullet marks on a single oak tree within a few feet of where the left of the regiment had stood loading and firing that awful hour and a half. Most of the bullets had been fired too high, else we had all been killed. Near by lay the remains of a Rebel battery. Every horse and most of the cannoneers lay dead in a heap, the caissons and the gun carriages torn to pieces by our artillery. Never in any battle had I seen such a picture of complete annihilation of men, animals, and material as was the wreck of this battery, once the pride of some Southern town—its young men, the loved ones of Southern homes, lying there dead among their horses. That was war!

Some weeks after this battle, and after Vicksburg had been won, my regiment was marched in pursuit of Joe Johnston, and we recrossed this same battlefield. We reached it in the night and bivouacked on the very spot where we had fought. It was a strange happening. Our sensations were very unusual, for we realized that all about us there in the woods were the graves of our buried comrades and the still unburied bones of many of our foes. Save an occasional hooting owl the woods were sad and silent. Before we lay down in the leaves to sleep the glee club of Company B sang that plaintive song, "We're Tenting To-night on the Old Camp Ground." Never was a song sung under sadder circumstances. All the night a terrible odor filled the bivouac. When daylight came one of the boys came to our company and said, "Go over to that hollow, and you will see hell." Some of us went. We looked but once. Dante himself never conjured anything so horrible as the reality before us. After the battle the Rebels in their haste had tossed hundreds of their dead into this little ravine and slightly covered them over with earth, but the rains had come, and the earth was washed away, and there stood or lay hundreds of half-decayed corpses. Some were grinning skeletons, some were headless, some armless, some had their clothes torn away, and some were mangled by dogs and wolves. The horror of that spectacle followed us for weeks. That, too, was war!

I have written this random but true sketch of personal recollections of a severe battle because it may help young men who are anxious for adventure and war, as I was, to first realize what war really is. My experiences probably were the same as hundreds of others in that same battle. I only tell of what was nearest me. A third of my comrades who entered this fight were lost. Other Iowa and other Western regiments suffered equally or more. General Hovey's division had a third of its number slain. I have been in what history pronounces greater battles than Champion Hills, but only once did I ever see two lines of blue and gray stand close together and fire into each other's faces for an hour and a half. I think the courage of the private soldiers, standing in that line of fire for that awful hour and a half, gave us Vicksburg, made Grant immortal as a soldier, and helped to save this country.

But I must return to that afternoon of the battle. All that could be assembled of our men gathered in line in a road near the field. It was nearly dark. Sergeant Campbell walked about, making a list of the dead and wounded of Company B. As I was not now on the company rolls, being quartermaster sergeant, my name was not put down as one of the wounded. Nor, seeing how many were sadly torn to pieces, did I think my wound worth reporting. Shortly General Grant passed us in the road. Knowing well how the regiment had fought in the battle, he rode to where our colors hung over a stack of muskets and saluted them. We all jumped to our feet and cheered. He spoke a few words to the colonel and rode on into the darkness. That night we marched ahead, and in the morning bivouacked in the woods as a reserve for troops fighting at the Black River bridge. There it was that Grant reached the crisis of his career. While sitting on his horse waiting to witness a charge by Lawler's brigade, a staff officer overtook him, bringing a peremptory order from Washington to abandon the campaign and take his army to Port Hudson to help General Banks. That moment Grant glanced to the right of his lines and saw a dashing officer in his shirt sleeves suddenly come out of a cluster of woods, leading his brigade to the assault. It was General Lawler, and in five minutes the Rebel breastworks were carried, the enemy in flight or drowning in the rapid river. Then Grant turned to the staff officer and simply said, "See that charge! I think it is too late to abandon this campaign." The movements that were to make him immortal went on. Had that order of Halleck's, written of course without knowledge of the recent victories, been followed, Banks, and not Grant, would have been first commander in the West. Had Lawler's charge failed just then and the battle been lost, Grant could have had no excuse for not obeying the order that staff officer held in his hand, directing him to abandon what turned out to be one of the great campaigns of history. While sitting there in his saddle at the close of that charge, General Grant wrote a little note in pencil, the original of which is among my treasured souvenirs of the war:

"Dear General: Lawler's brigade stormed the enemy's works a few minutes since; carried them, capturing from two thousand to three thousand prisoners, ten guns, so far as heard from, and probably more will be found. The enemy have fired both bridges. A. J. Smith captured ten guns this morning, with teams, men, and ammunition. I send you a note from Colonel Wright.

"Yours,

"U. S. Grant, M. G.

"To Major General Sherman."