Produced by David Widger
By Winston Churchill
We are at Memphis,—for a while,—and the Christmas season is approachingonce more. And yet we must remember that war recognizes no Christmas, norSunday, nor holiday. The brown river, excited by rains, whirled seawardbetween his banks of yellow clay. Now the weather was crisp and cold, nowhazy and depressing, and again a downpour. Memphis had never seen suchactivity. A spirit possessed the place, a restless spirit called WilliamT. Sherman. He prodded Memphis and laid violent hold of her. She groaned,protested, turned over, and woke up, peopled by a new people. When thesewalked, they ran, and they wore a blue uniform. They spoke rapidly andwere impatient. Rain nor heat nor tempest kept them in. And yet theyjoked, and Memphis laughed (what was left of her), and recognized a bondof fellowship. The General joked, and the Colonels and the Commissary andthe doctors, down to the sutlers and teamsters and the salt tars underPorter, who cursed the dishwater Mississippi, and also a man named Eads,who had built the new-fangled iron boxes officially known as gunboats.The like of these had never before been seen in the waters under theearth. The loyal citizens—loyal to the South—had been given permissionto leave the city. The General told the assistant quartermaster to hiretheir houses and slaves for the benefit of the Federal Government.Likewise he laid down certain laws to the Memphis papers definingtreason. He gave out his mind freely to that other army of occupation,the army of speculation, that flocked thither with permits to trade incotton. The speculators gave the Confederates gold, which they neededmost, for the bales, which they could not use at all.
The forefathers of some of these gentlemen were in old Egypt underPharaoh—for whom they could have had no greater respect and fear thantheir descendants had in New Egypt for Grant or Sherman. Yankees werethere likewise in abundance. And a certain acquaintance of oursmaterially added to his fortune by selling in Boston the cotton whichcost him fourteen cents, at thirty cents.
One day the shouting and the swearing and the running to and fro came toa climax. Those floating freaks which were all top and drew nothing, wereloaded down to the guards with army stores and animals and wood and men,—men who came from every walk in life.
Whistles bellowed, horses neighed. The gunboats chased hither andthither, and at length the vast processions paddled down the stream withnaval precision, under the watchful eyes of a real admiral.
Residents of Memphis from the river's bank watched the pillar of smokefade to the southward and ruminated on the fate of Vicksburg. The Generalpaced the deck in thought. A little later he wrote to theCommander-in-Chief at Washington, "The valley of the Mississippi isAmerica."
Vicksburg taken, this vast Confederacy would be chopped in two.
Night fell to the music of the paddles, to the scent of the officers'cigars, to the blood-red vomit of the tall stacks and the smoky flame ofthe torches. Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg liftedtwo hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in themorning sun. Vicksburg, the well-nigh impregnable key to America'shighway. When old Vick made his plantation on the Walnut Hills, he chosea site for a fortress of the future Confederacy that Vauban would havedelighted in.
Yes, there were the Walnut Hills, high bluffs separated from