Downing’s Civil War Diary.–Alexander G. Downing.

Tuesday, 10th–I was on a detail of two hundred men with one hundred teams to haul the commissary supplies and ammunition from the transports to the storehouses and magazines constructed near the new forts. It is heavy work, and as to handling the ammunition, quite dangerous. General Grant has given orders that Vicksburg must be well fortified and supplied with munitions and provisions, and that it must be held against all possible attack, for it cost too much to obtain it, besides its being a point of the greatest strategic importance.