“General Grant first determined to carry Vicksburg by assault, and ordered a general attack for two o’clock of the 19th of May. General Sherman was, curiously enough, on the ground he had before gallantly but vainly striven to take, in December, having now seized it from the rear without a struggle. Promptly at the hour his men rushed to the work. The interval was a broad reach, rugged and broken with deep ravines, and strewed with abatis or felled timber, and with groves of standing trees. It would have been a rough and impenetrable region even if unswept with artillery. But in truth the enemy’s cannon, carefully disposed, raked and enfiladed almost every step. But the order was Forward! and forward went the gallant brigade of General A. L. Lee, of Osterhaus’s division, and, struggling across the impediments, gained the crest of one of the ridges and planted the colors of the Thirteenth infantry on the enemy’s first line of works. The charge cost this regiment six officers and seventy-seven men killed and wounded out of two hundred and fifty. The column was then called off and covered from fire. General Grant’s report says: ‘The Fifteenth Army Corps, _from having arrived in front of the enemy’s works in time_ on the 18th to get a good position, were enabled to make a vigorous assault. The Thirteenth and Seventeenth Corps succeeded no further than to gain advanced positions covered from the fire of the enemy.’ On the morning of the 22d, a second and more terrific assault was made by all three corps, preceded by a tremendous cannonading from guns and mortars, mingled with the heavy booming from the entire fleet. The orders were to advance without firing a musket. The army dashed forward across ravines and ditches, over ground covered with artful tangles of cane and grapevines, to find only new difficulties. Yet so far did some of the gallant brigades advance as to lie underneath the guns of the fort, while hand-grenades and lighter shells were hurled over the parapet among them. The assault is worthy to be mentioned with the names of Mamelon, Vert, and Malakoff. But, like the Crimean stronghold, this Sebastopol of the Mississippi could only be carried by assault after a protracted siege. With fearful loss, the gallant army was retired from the unequal fight, and regular approaches commenced. The conduct, triumphant issue, and joyful results of the siege, are familiar. On the 4th of July, 1863, after a campaign of extraordinary energy, the unconditional surrender of Vicksburg closed up a series of movements of which General Halleck declares, ‘No more brilliant exploit can be found in military history.’