Today in History:

588 Series I Volume XXIV-III Serial 38 - Vicksburg Part III

Page 588 Chapter XXXVI. Mississippi, WEST TENNESSEE, ETC.

The artillery is very much of it entirely worn out, many of the pieces having been fired over three thousand times. Some I have been able to replace here from captured guns, and others requisitions have gone in to replace. The total at this place proves to have been one hundred and seventy-four, and since leaving Milliken's Bend, I believe, two hundred and sixty-eight.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

U. S. GRANT.


HDQRS. SIXTEENTH A. C., Memphis, Tenn., August 11, 1863.

His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President of the United States, Washington, D. C.:

SIR; In reply to your communication of the 31 set of July, I desire to submit the following remarks as the result of my observations:

1. The rank and file of the Southern army have begun to awaken to the knowledge that they are not fighting their own battle, but the battle of the officers, the politicians, and the plantation class. You may remember I predicted this result more than a year since. One evidence of this state of things is that arrests are being made in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi of soldiers and citizens on suspicion of membership in secret Union societies.

2. Davis' last proclamation is a cry of despair, not courage.

3. The iron vigor of their military discipline is relaxed. Doubt, fear, and indecision mark the councils of the Southwestern armies.

4. Heavy bodies of deserters, with their arms, hold the mountains of Northern Alabama, and defy conscription.

Thus treason to their treasonable government is being inaugurated, and the justice of Heaven presses to the lips of the struggling Confederacy the poisoned chalice of their own brewing.

5. As to Tennessee, I am satisfied that this State is ready by overwhelming majorities to repeal the act of secession, establish a fair system of gradual emancipation, and tender herself back to the Union. I have discouraged any action on this subject here until East Tennessee is delivered. When that is done, so that her powerful voice may be heard, let Governor Johnson call an election for members of the Legislature, and that Legislature call a convention, and in sixty days the work will be done. Then we can use upon the Tennessee troops in Southern service the same tremendous lever of State pride and State authority which forced them into hostile ranks.

Moral causes, in my judgment, will haveith the down-fall of the Confederacy as physical ones.

Battles are valuable by breaking up the solid array of force-more valuable as they break the hedge of steel, and allow men to think and act.

The days of chivalry are gone in the South as elsewhere.

6. The emancipation proclamation and the arming of negroes is the bugbear in Mississippi.

I have now an application from some FIFTY men of mark and position in Mississippi, asking if they may hold a meeting to consider the probabilities of recognition by the United States. I shall answer them unofficially, and will send the answer. Substantially, it will be this: Both as a State and as individuals you have committed treason. Your property in slaves by State law is forfeited by the act of treason. As aliens by your own act, you cannot appeal to the Constitution. The


Page 588 Chapter XXXVI. Mississippi, WEST TENNESSEE, ETC.