an as brilliant in conception as in execution.Abandoning the overland approach, Grant moved his army to the position Sherman had occupied across the Mississippi from Vicksburg and ostensibly busied his troops during the rainy winter months in constructing a canal bypassing Vicksburg, while beginning to gather supplies for a daring experiment. By April 1863 he was ready. He ran his provisions down the river under the guns of Vicksburg, marched his men through the backcountry, reached a position on the west bank of the Mississippi below Vicksburg, crossed over to high ground on the eastern side, and commenced operations behind the Confederate lines. Grant had cut himself off from communications and supplies from the North; his troops had to subsist on the country until victory. He drove inland to Jackson, Miss., held off a threatened attack from Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army to the north, and pushed Lieut. Gen. John C. Pemberton's troops on the west into the defenses of Vicksburg. After a regular siege, on July 4, 1863, Pemberton was obliged to surrender his 30,000 men.The victory was one of the most decisive in the war. It eliminated a major Confederate army from the conflict; it cut off the trans-Mississippi states from the rest of the Confederacy (the capture of Port Hudson, La., by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks promptly followed); and it brought to the attention of the Northern government and people the ablest Union general of the war. President Lincoln wrote Grant a personal letter of congratulations and nominated him major general in the Regular Army.Grant's new victory made him the man of the hour, and he was brought to Washington to receive the personal thanks of the President, a gold medal voted by congress, and the newly created rank of lieutenant general commanding all the armies of the United States. Grant looked anything but a hero. He was, as Richard Henry Dana observed, "a short, round-shouldered man, in a very tarnished .....
