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Meantime, the enemy in our rear were not inactive. We knew we were between two fires, and the besiegers were in a measure themselves besieged. The least possible slip or oversight on our part might be disastrous. Johnston was able and wily foe. He had crossed the Big Black behind us and was only from fourteen to twenty miles away. Consequently, our overworked besieging force had to be weakened by heavy detachments under Blair, Osterhaus, and others, sent to the rear to reintrench outward, while Kimball, with a brigade from the Sixteenth Army Corps, later a full division from the same corps under Sovy Smith, and still later two divisions from the Ninth Army Corps under General Parke, arrived and took the place of our absent rear guard and relieved us from our fears.

During all this time--in fact from before the Battle of Raymond-our army had marched, fought, worked

in silence, save when broken by powder. Not one note of music had been heard, not even the call of a bugle. But the cannonading had often been terrific. After our guns were planted, from two to four and six times every twenty-four hours, it would seem that our artillery strove to realize pandemonium. From our heaviest guns to our smallest brass pieces, how they would break out of comparative stillness, and boom, and shriek and tear together, some of them just at our heads, more with their shells screaming over us, till heaven and earth seemed crashing together and all was ablaze with hurtling death!

So the last week in May and nearly all of June wore away. Not a moment that our sharpshooters were silent, not many when the spiteful answering "zip" from the long, dirt lines of the enemy before us, was not heard. Not a foe was in sight. But somehow from among those sand-bags the smoke would curl and the minié would come, and woe to the exposed head! Our casualties were not great, but they were continuous. With bullets all the time in the air, somebody had to be hit, men off duty as well as on. I saw Captain DeGolyer of a Michigan battery skirmish safely with a section of it, at one time fully exposed at less than half rifle range, to be fatally wounded by a descending spent ball, later, while resting in his tent, far in the rear. Most of the losses of my own regiment during the siege were of those off duty.

The 18th of June, General McClernand was relieved of the command of the Thirteenth Army Corps by General Grant, and General E. O. C. Ord was assigned to it. Then, for the first time in the campaign, was there harmony between the commanding general and his lieutenants. About this and everything else of general interest, it was a great relief for us volunteer soldiers, sweltering in the trenches, to talk. Meanwhile, we could feel that the hold upon the beleagured city was tightening, that the end was approaching. Several points were being undermined. Particularly was this the case in front of McPherson, just to the right of the Jackson road, and on the evening of the 25th of June, 1,200 pounds of powder were exploded in the hope of effecting an entrance through the rebel works. The result was very damaging to us, however; a good many noble lives were sacrificed and no advantage gained.

On the 1st of July, the experiment was repeated at their expense; one of their forts was blown into the air with its occupants, most of whom were buried where they fell, as we subsequently proved, but one of whom, a negro, was blown inside our lines, and was sketched for Harper's Weekly, by Theodore Woods, an artist then with us. This colored man I personally saw, as he came into General Logan's command.

July had come; come with its fearful heat; come with indescrib

able weariness; come with its 4th on its front and all its pulsing patriotism; come demanding a finish somewhere, an end of this terrible thing; and the end came. The 3d of July, Grant says about ten o'clock, my memory would say later, the unusual occurred. What it was, we hardly knew, and so we asked, "What is that?" In our immediate front, at several points on their rear lines, dirty rags that might once have been white were displayed on short sticks. The firing ceased; and while we looked and wondered, first the top of a hat, then a whole hat, such as it was, appeared and moved along as though borne by a head beneath it. We had stopped firing and began to lift up our heads to see. Almost in a moment, the blue and the gray were confronting each other in their long lines almost within reach, locating by their presence every trench and danger point from which the leaden death had just been so fiercely leaping." How are you, John?" and "How are you, Yank?" rang pleasantly along the line as from brothers, and in a few moments the inevitable commerce in coffee, hardtack, and tobacco, had asserted itself, as though that was the only thing remaining to do. Once a shot or two were heard, and every head went down on both sides. Some stentorian voice cried out, "Down heads!" and the command was easily obeyed; but some one commanded still louder, "Cease firing!" and we straightened up to look down no more at Vicksburg.

At 3 o'clock that afternoon, General Grant, accompanied by Generals McPherson, Ord, Logan, and A. J. Smith, passed down a covered way just at the left of my regiment and debouched near the rebel lines, a few rods distant, to be met by three horsemen, who rode slowly over the enemy's works and proved to be Pemberton, Bowen and Montgomery. A conference was had of an hour or more, in plain view, under a willow oak of about a foot in diameter, which, as Pemberton's oak, has probably furnished more timber than any other tree on the continent. The conference ended, the rest of the day was uneventful. The air was thick with rumors, but they were not deadly, like minnies, nor deafening, like shells. Silence for the first time with many of us began to get in its emphasis. The lines seemed to move apart from each other as the night crept on, farther than they had been for weeks, and we actually felt lonely. But few could sleep: a peculiar leaden sensation stole over us all, which forbade slumber. We were mentally alert, keenly so. It was the physical that oppressed us,that feeling as though we each weighed a ton.

And so the Fourth drew on. With the morning, came a change; an utter reaction; not heavy, but light we were. We scarcely involved gravitation. We needed to anchor ourselves lest we should go up. We knew nothing more, but it was the Fourth of July and we felt that we were victors. The long battle

could be seen over the top of the works as of marching men, and a moment later, over those same works, keeping time to our music, came the vanquished host in arms, and formed their lines at the subdued word of command; we heard the low order, "Stack arms," and the rattling click of obedience, and for miles, as we could see them from our post of vantage, the disarmed foe returned over their so long and stoutly-defended line of works into the fallen city.

Soon we were ordered to "fall in," as the First brigade of Logan's

division of McPherson's corps took possession, and were on our march past their gun stacks, over their sand-bags and trenches, and through their own wan and dirty ranks into the city. The day was excessively hot, the way was long and dusty, but it was the Fourth of July, and victory, and when the flag of the Forty-fifth Illinois was thrown out from the cupola of the City Hall, we shouted and shouted again as it is given to but few mortals for cause to shout.

So ended the siege of Vicksburg, with 31,600 prisoners, 172 cannon, and about 60,000 muskets, besides a large amount of ammunition. It was mine to have charge that afternoon and night, for I was then in command of my company, of about

three fourths of a mile of the line before which we had been so long fighting, and look in the faces of the half-famished prisoners. Their wasted frames and pallor, as well as their lips, bore testimony to the straitness of the siege, while the many graves by twos and threes, put in everywhere in places sheltered from our fire, where the men in the trenches had buried their slain comrades, attested at once to their valor, and the terrible punishment we had inflicted upon them. When we learned later, as we did

from casual statements and not from their records, that whole organizations had been wiped out in the siege, and put that with the 31,600 prisoners and their previous losses, the whole campaign on our part looked like exceeding temerity, if not rashness, and the issue as from God and not of man.

But it was accomplished, the Confederacy was hopelessly divided, the river once more-as four days later Port Hudson fell

flowed unvexed to the sea;" the inspiriting effect upon our people, and the moral effect upon Europe were immense; Grant's fame was raised high enough above criticism. to enable him to finish the war, and Sherman educated to march to the

sea.

I am the youngest son of George Stillman Smith, formerly of Calais, Maine, who married Elizabeth Page Bradley, youngest daughter of the Rev. Caleb Bradley of Westbrook, Maine, popularly known as " Parson Bradley." I was born in Calais, December 31, 1847, and named Frank. I enlisted October 15, 1862, at Sandusky, Ohio, as private in the Tenth Ohio Cavalry, Company D, Captain J. D. Platt, Colonel Smith commanding, measuring five feet, five inches in height, and weighing 115 pounds. The regiment was stationed in barracks at Cleveland, Ohio, when I joined it, and remained there till February, 1863. The barracks were barn-like structures, and some of the time were very cold with heavy winds, making guard duty very trying. While here, I caught a bad cold and the consequences were serious. The weather was so cold that the guards were relieved once an hour. Here we received horses and equipments, consisting of Sharp's carbines, single breech-loader, Colt's volver, and sabre, were taught company drill, and occasionally had a regimental drill. Although I suffered from the effects of my cold and from diarrhoea, I kept on my duty until we left Cleveland, excepting one occasion, when excused by the captain. In February, the regiment was transferred

re

by rail to Cincinnati, thence by boat. down the Ohio river and up the Cumberland river to Nashville, Tenn. Here we camped a few days, when we marched to Laverne, beyond Murfreesboro, to the front, and performed our first outpost and picket duty. We then went on an expedition called the "Snow Hill scout." I was very ill, barely able to mount my horse. We rode all day, and at night I was detailed as a vidette. The next day, the pursuit was resumed after " Morgan." I rode with my company, although very sick, there being no place for a sick man except in the saddle. I rode in great distress till afternoon, when I partially lost consciousness, but remember being taken from my horse, wrapped in my blanket and laid beside the road under a tree, one of the men volunteering to remain with me. The troop passed on and went into camp at dusk, when Sergeant Waldron came back, put me on my horse, brought me to camp and placed me in an ambulance wagon. That night my blankets were stolen off me. The troops being on the march, I followed in the ambulance, and was delirious considerable of the time. In a few days, the scout was over, and we returned to camp and I was sent to the general hospital at Murfreesboro, sick now with typhoid pneumonia; here I remained sev