enemies—a land with which they were familiar and where every denizen was an ally—a man who could keep two governments guessing for weeks both as to his purpose and his whereabouts—who could refuse to obey an order that had been so long in transmission as to be obsolete when it reached him, and ride away to victory and to fame—whose blows fell so thick and hard and fast that his foe had neither time nor rest nor food nor sleep—a man who was gentle and considerate enough when his foes surrendered to forbid his men to cheer lest they should wound the sensibilities of their captives—who, in the hour of supreme and final triumph, could speak for peace and give back to his captured countrymen their horses that crops might be put in and cultivated. Time, place, scene, denouement, and result, taken together, and all in all, have no parallel in all the six thousand years of human history. It was, therefore, inevitable and in accord with man’s nobler self, that this spot—the place where the great drama was staged and played—should become hallowed ground to those who struggled here to retain or to possess it; that it should be held forever sacred by the Blue and the Gray—the victors and the vanquished—by the Blue because of what was won, by the Gray because of what was lost—by both because of heroic effort and devoted sacrifice made and endured; because of the new national life begun, the new birth of freedom had, through their spilled blood. Vicksburg was the most important point in the Confederacy and its retention the most essential thing to the defense of the Confederacy. After the safety of Washington, its capture was the first necessity of the Federal Government. It commanded the Mississippi River, and “the valley of the Mississippi is America.” The control of this great central artery of the continent was necessary to the perpetuation of the Confederacy and indispensable to the preservation of the Union. To lose it was death to the one. To gain it was life to the other. The campaign for its capture was, therefore, the most important enterprise of the Civil War. Its importance was understood and appreciated by the authorities at both capitals, and no one in authority in either capital understood it more clearly or appreciated it more fully than the commanders of the two opposing armies—Grant and Pemberton. Both knew the stake and its value and both were conscious that the fight to possess it by the one and to retain it by the other would be waged to the last extremity. And each was resolved that the great issue should be with him. They commanded armies equally brave and well disciplined, efficiently officered, and equally devoted to them and to the respective cause for which they fought. Strength of position, natural and artificial, was with Pemberton. His task was defensive—to hold what he had. Grant’s was offensive—to possess what he did not have. But the initiative was with him, and to genius that itself is an advantage.