CHAPTER XXXI. HEADQUARTERS MOVED TO HOLLY SPRINGS--GENERAL MCCLERNAND IN COMMAND--ASSUMING COMMAND AT YOUNG'S POINT--OPERATIONS ABOVE VICKSBURG
--FORTIFICATIONS ABOUT VICKSBURG--THE CANAL--LAKE PROVIDENCE--OPERATIONS
AT YAZOO PASS.
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CHAPTER XXXII. THE BAYOUS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI--CRITICISMS OF THE NORTHERN PRESS--RUNNING THE BATTERIES--LOSS OF THE INDIANOLA
--DISPOSITION OF THE TROOPS.
CHAPTER XXXIII. ATTACK ON GRAND GULF--OPERATIONS BELOW VICKSBURG.
CHAPTER XXXIV. CAPTURE OF PORT GIBSON--GRIERSON'S RAID--OCCUPATION OF GRAND GULF--MOVEMENT UP THE BIG BLACK--BATTLE OF RAYMOND.
CHAPTER XXXV. MOVEMENT AGAINST JACKSON--FALL OF JACKSON--INTERCEPTING THE ENEMY--BATTLE OF CHAMPION'S HILL.
CHAPTER XXXVI. BATTLE OF BLACK RIVER BRIDGE--CROSSING THE BIG BLACK
--INVESTMENT OF VICKSBURG--ASSAULTING THE WORKS.
CHAPTER XXXVII. SIEGE OF VICKSBURG.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. JOHNSTON'S MOVEMENTS--FORTIFICATIONS AT HAINES'S BLUFF
--EXPLOSION OF THE MINE--EXPLOSION OF THE SECOND MINE--PREPARING FOR THE ASSAULT--THE FLAG OF TRUCE--MEETING WITH PEMBERTON--NEGOTIATIONS FOR SURRENDER--ACCEPTING THE TERMS--SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG.
CHAPTER XXXIX. RETROSPECT OF THE CAMPAIGN--SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS--PROPOSED MOVEMENT UPON MOBILE--A PAINFUL ACCIDENT--ORDERED TO REPORT AT CAIRO.
Volume one begins:
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CHAPTER I.
ANCESTRY--BIRTH--BOYHOOD.
My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.
Mathew Grant, the founder of the branch in America, of which I am a descendant, reached Dorchester, Massachusetts, in May, 1630. In 1635 he moved to what is now Windsor, Connecticut, and was the surveyor for that colony for more than forty years. He was also, for many years of the
time, town clerk. He was a married man when he arrived at Dorchester, but his children were all born in this country. His eldest son, Samuel, took lands on the east side of the Connecticut River, opposite Windsor, which have been held and occupied by descendants of his to this day.
I am of the eighth generation from Mathew Grant, and seventh from Samuel. Mathew Grant's first wife died a few years after their settlement in Windsor, and he soon after married the widow Rockwell,
who, with her first husband, had been fellow-passengers with him and his first wife, on the ship Mary and John, from Dorchester, England, in
1630. Mrs. Rockwell had several children by her first marriage, and others by her second. By intermarriage, two or three generations later, I am descended from both the wives of Mathew Grant.
In the fifth descending generation my great grandfather, Noah Grant, and
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his younger brother, Solomon, held commissions in the English army, in
1756, in the war against the French and Indians. Both were killed that year.
My grandfather, also named Noah, was then but nine years old. At the breaking out of the war of the Revolution, after the battles of Concord and Lexington, he went with a Connecticut company to join the Continental army, and was present at the battle of Bunker Hill. He served until the fall of Yorktown, or through the entire Revolutionary war. He must, however, have been on furlough part of the time--as I believe most of the soldiers of that period were--for he married in Connecticut during the war, had two children, and was a widower at the close. Soon after this he emigrated to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and settled near the town of Greensburg in that county. He took with him the younger of his two children, Peter Grant. The elder, Solomon, remained with his relatives in Connecticut until old enough to do for himself, when he emigrated to the British West Indies.
Not long after his settlement in Pennsylvania, my grandfather, Captain Noah Grant, married a Miss Kelly, and in 1799 he emigrated again, this time to Ohio, and settled where the town of Deerfield now stands. He had now five children, including Peter, a son by his first marriage. My father, Jesse R. Grant, was the second child--oldest son, by the second marriage.
Peter Grant went early to Maysville, Kentucky, where he was very prosperous, married, had a family of nine children, and was drowned at the mouth of the Kanawha River, Virginia, in 1825, being at the time one
of the wealthy men of the West.
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My grandmother Grant died in 1805, leaving seven children. This broke up the family. Captain Noah Grant was not thrifty in the way of "laying up stores on earth," and, after the death of his second wife, he went, with the two youngest children, to live with his son Peter, in
Maysville. The rest of the family found homes in the neighborhood of Deerfield, my father in the family of judge Tod, the father of the late Governor Tod, of Ohio. His industry and independence of character were such, that I imagine his labor compensated fully for the expense of his maintenance.
There must have been a cordiality in his welcome into the Tod family, for to the day of his death he looked upon judge Tod and his wife, with all the reverence he could have felt if they had been parents instead of benefactors. I have often heard him speak of Mrs. Tod as the most
admirable woman he had ever known. He remained with the Tod family only
a few years, until old enough to learn a trade. He went first, I
believe, with his half-brother, Peter Grant, who, though not a tanner himself, owned a tannery in Maysville, Kentucky. Here he learned his trade, and in a few years returned to Deerfield and worked for, and lived in the family of a Mr. Brown, the father of John Brown--"whose body lies mouldering in the grave, while his soul goes marching on." I have often heard my father speak of John Brown, particularly since the events at Harper's Ferry. Brown was a boy when they lived in the same
house, but he knew him afterwards, and regarded him as a man of great purity of character, of high moral and physical courage, but a fanatic and extremist in whatever he advocated. It was certainly the act of an
insane man to attempt the invasion of the South, and the overthrow of
slavery, with less than twenty men.
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My father set up for himself in business, establishing a tannery at Ravenna, the county seat of Portage County. In a few years he removed from Ravenna, and set up the same business at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio.
During the minority of my father, the West afforded but poor facilities for the most opulent of the youth to acquire an education, and the majority were dependent, almost exclusively, upon their own exertions for whatever learning they obtained. I have often heard him say that
his time at school was limited to six months, when he was very young, too young, indeed, to learn much, or to appreciate the advantages of an education, and to a "quarter's schooling" afterwards, probably while living with judge Tod. But his thirst for education was intense. He learned rapidly, and was a constant reader up to the day of his death in his eightieth year. Books were scarce in the Western Reserve during his
youth, but he read every book he could borrow in the neighborhood where he lived. This scarcity gave him the early habit of studying everything
he read, so that when he got through with a book, he knew everything in it. The habit continued through life. Even after reading the daily
papers--which he never neglected--he could give all the important information they contained. He made himself an excellent English scholar, and before he was twenty years of age was a constant
contributor to Western newspapers, and was also, from that time until he
was fifty years old, an able debater in the societies for this purpose, which were common in the West at that time. He always took an active part in politics, but was never a candidate for office, except, I