day, morning and night. There was not a dress-parade of the regiment during the Mississippi campaign. Not much can be said of the rations, though they were, perhaps, as good as the men had been in the habit of receiving. On the 26th of June Quartermaster Francis B. Rice was discharged, and Lieutenant Cutter, of Company D, was appointed quarter

master.

June 29th the whole First Division, with the exception of the Thirty-sixth Regiment and Durrell's Battery, moved out several miles to the front, and the head-quarters of the brigade were about five miles distant. Company F was at this time on duty at corps head-quarters. Cases of sickness became more numerous every day. Captains Bailey, Sawyer, and Lieutenant Howe, were all sick at this time, the latter with small-pox, which he was supposed to have contracted in visiting a hospital at Memphis. He died July 7th. He was a graduate of Amherst College, where he achieved distinction in the department of mathematics. In character and conduct, during his connection with the regiment, he showed that he was a true man and a faithful soldier. When it became known that this dire disease had broken out among us there was much anxiety and alarm in the regiment, for the possibility of its spreading was great, and there was no way to meet it with usual precaution, the medical department being poorly supplied. A hospital was established at some distance from the regiment, and as soon as any man showed symptoms of the disease he was removed to it. In this way the spread of the disease was checked.

July 2d, burial service, with military honors, was performed over the remains of Private Boswell, of Company C, who died in the regimental hospital, July 1. Each day seemed to have some event of more or less importance to vary the monotony of camp life, which was now about to be disturbed by events of great moment, and from the dull routine of daily life to be changed to the more severe duties of the march and battle-field. Even now, in the distant North,

the two great armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia, under Meade and Lee, were grappling with each other on the soil of Pennsylvania, and the fate of the nation was trembling in the balance on the slopes of Cemetery Ridge, at Gettysburgh. Massachusetts was pouring out her blood freely on that now historic field, while far away, in the south-west, her sons stood ready to uphold her fame and carry her white flag, side by side with the stars and stripes, to victory. The moment pregnant with heroic effort and sacrifice was at hand.

For a week prior to the 4th of July rumors of the impending surrender or storming of Vicksburg prevailed in the camp. The last extremity of famine was nearly reached by the beleaguered rebels, who boasted from their ramparts of the tenderness of mule steaks. No hope remained for them save from without, and Lee was too closely occupied with his movement into Pennsylvania to despatch any of his force to Pemberton's relief. Johnston clung to the east bank of the Big Black river. General McPherson's corps had pushed the lines of investment up under the very forts of the enemy, and there seemed to be nothing left but to carry their works by assault, or wait for famine to do its work. The roar of artillery was incessant. Day and night, with scarcely a moment's interval, the heavy booming of the siege guns was heard, and a thick cloud of smoke hung ever like a pall over the doomed city. If a rebel showed so much as a hand above the fortifications he became the target of our vigilant riflemen, and the enemy found it impossible to man and serve his artillery, so deadly was the fire. If morning revealed some place where the rebels had repaired the ramparts and brought some guns into position, ten minutes sufficed for our artillery utterly to destroy the work of the night. Their works were mined; but, wherever they suspected a mine, resort was had to countermining, and for a time spades were trumps at Vicksburg.

At three o'clock P.M., of July 3d, Generals Grant and

Pemberton met under a flag of truce. Pemberton proposed that his army be allowed to march out with the honors of war, carrying their muskets and field-pieces, but leaving their heavy artillery. Grant smiled at this proposal. The interview terminated in an hour, with the understanding that Grant should send in his ultimatum before ten o'clock that night. This ultimatum was, that Pemberton should surrender Vicksburg with all its property, his officers being allowed to retain their side-arms, and the officers and men should be paroled as prisoners of war. It was accepted, and, on the morning of the 4th of July, General Logan's division of McPherson's corps took possession of the works of Vicksburg, the rebels marching out, stacked their arms, and laid their colors on the stacks. The Forty-fifth Illinois Regiment marched at the head of Logan's column, and placed its flag upon the Court-House. The magnitude of this victory is apparent from the fact that it comprised in its results 31,600 officers and men (2,153 of whom were officers, and 15 of these generals), munitions of war sufficient for an army of 60,000, 172 cannon, many locomotives, cars, and steamboats, and large quantities of cotton and other valuable merchandise.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MOVEMENT ON JACKSON.

HARDLY had the news of the surrender become known to the regiment, however, before orders came to break camp and prepare for field service in light marching order.

This was in accordance with an order which General Sherman had received directing him to take his own corps, the Fifteenth, the Ninth Corps, to which was temporarily assigned General Smith's division of the Sixteenth Corps, and the Thirteenth Corps, now under General Ord, pursue Johnston, and capture or destroy his army. General Grant's order read as follows: "I want you to drive Johnston out in your own way, and inflict upon the enemy all the punishment you can. will support you to the last man that can be spared."

I

Before ten o'clock A. M., July 4th, Sherman's army was in motion, and by various roads moving rapidly toward the Big Black river. Johnston, finding himself suddenly an object of particular interest, commenced a precipitate retreat toward Jackson, feebly disputing our advance in some places where the ground was favorable. Upon the receipt of marching orders the picket of the Thirty-sixth was hastily called in, and the regiment was soon on the march to overtake the brigade, which it did not do, however, until the next day.

A considerable part of the 6th was occupied by the regiment, and men of other regiments in the brigade, in constructing a bridge across the Big Black river at a place called Birdsongs Ferry. This was a good, strong piece of work, and over it a large part of the army passed in safety. General Ord's two divisions crossed at the railroad some

distance below, and the Fifteenth Corps at Messenger's Bridge.

From the 4th to the 10th of July the army pushed steadily on, overcoming many obstacles, skirmishing sharply day and night with Johnston's rear guard, and encountering sufferings from the heat and exposure to sun and tempest and malarial swamps, that are well-nigh indescribable. The rebels, as they retreated, poisoned the wells, or killed animals in the ponds or streams, their putrid carcasses rendering the water unfit for use. Such acts only reacted upon themselves, for it enraged the army from the commanding general down to the private soldier, and they would have saved themselves the pillage and devastation that marked our line of march, had they adopted the rules of honorable warfare. But it seemed,

in their case, as if the old proverb was true, that "whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad."

The rapid advance of the army made it impossible for the supply-trains to keep up, and for days the rations consisted of the unripe corn, roasted in the husks. All fared alike, officers and men. The tents and all the baggage, save blankets, had been left behind, and, during this campaign of three weeks, the regiment slept with the sky for a canopy, exposed to the deadly night-air and frequent tempests. Nights when no humane man would drive a dog out of doors found this entire army in the open field. Late in the afternoon of July 7th, while on the march, a thunder-storm burst upon us that no man of this regiment, then present, will ever forget, and one that the natives call the severest known in that region for years. The storm came apparently from all directions, and lasted over two hours. The lightning struck all around, and the roar of thunder was incessant. The horses became terrified, and officers were forced to dismount and lead them. The mud was ankle-deep, and finally impeded the movement of the artillery, which stuck in the roads up to the hubs and blocked the passage of the infantry. About 10 P.M. the storm lulled, and the regiment went into bivouac in an open