May 25, 1863, The New York Herald
By the news which we published during the last two or three days, and particularly yesterday, our readers were prepared for the glorious intelligence which we are enabled to announce this morning, that Stars and Stripes float over Vicksburg, and the victory is complete.
This brilliant success of Grant redeems from reproach the generalship which has hitherto conducted our armies, and it opens a new era in the war. The rapidity, skill and energy of his movements, together with his indomitable pluck and the fighting qualities of his troops, evidently took the rebel generals by surprise, and neither gave them time to concentrate their forces nor to escape from being defeated and dispersed or captured in detail. The probability is that the whole garrison, numbering from 15,000 to 20,000, remaining to the rebels after their losses in killed and captured in the previous fights, have been made prisoners of war, as were the garrison at Fort Donelson by the same energetic commander.
This is undoubtedly the greatest victory of the war. Its results, not only in a military, but in a moral and political point of view, are of the highest interest. The rebel Congress and rebel journals have recently held out to the Northwest the free navigation of the Mississippi as a bribe to induce that section of the republic to swerve from its allegiance to the Union. But they misunderstood the Northwest, which has resolved to stand by the Union to the last, and at the same time to recover the freedom of the Mississippi as an indefeasible right, and not as a boon at the hands of rebels in arms. By the noble achievements of its heroic troops the conquest has been wrought; by its best blood its rights won – never again to be questioned. The fall of Vicksburg, therefore, cannot fail to be attended with vast moral and political effects.
Nor are the military consequences less important. The capture of New Orleans is not to be compared with it in real value. The possession of Charleston would be of small moment when weighed in the balance against such a prize as Vicksburg. Richmond itself, as a strategic point, is of inferior worth. By the acquisition of Vicksburg Port Hudson necessarily falls in a brief time, if it does not surrender immediately to the thunder of Farragut. The safety of the army of Banks and of New Orleans in secured. The Mississippi is opened from Cairo to New Orleans, and the navigation of the whole river is free from its head waters to its mouths. The confederacy is cut in two. Missouri, Arkansas, Western Louisiana and Texas, which, with the territory lying west of them, are equal in area to the rest of the rebellious States, are severed from the eastern side of the Mississippi and lost forever to the insurgents. The theater of the rebellion is thus reduced to one-half its dimensions by a single blow, and the subjection of the remainder becomes an easier task. The fate of Vicksburg involves that of Mobile; for, holding Jackson, as he does, all General Grant has to do is to send a small force against Meridian, which is incapable of resistance, and Mobile must succumb even without a fight. By this operation the confederacy would be again subdivided from the Gulf to the Mississippi half way between Cairo and New Orleans, and Alabama and the State of Mississippi would be again numbered among the stars of the Union.
The complete control of the Father of Waters will give immense facilities for the conveyance of troops and supplies and for operations by movable columns on the flank and rear of the enemy, while he is pressed in front by our other armies. Lastly the enormous supplies of beef and other provisions derived from Texas, and the contraband trade in arms, ammunition, clothing and medicines by way of Matamoros, will be effectually cut off from the armies of Bragg, Johnston, Beauregard and Lee. To permanently secure these advantages Vicksburg and Port Hudson must either be held by garrisons of Union troops, or the fortifications must be destroyed and the rebels prevented, by the activity of our gunboats, from erecting others either at these points or elsewhere on the river.
In a strategic view the effect of this disastrous defeat of a portion of the rebel army will be to compel it to contract and draw in its lines, which for a time will give it strength. Henceforward Chattanooga and Richmond will be the two great points to be defended. All the rebel troops who escaped from Grant will hasten to reinforce Bragg, so as to crush Rosecrans before reinforcements can reach him. But if the War Department will only do its duty, that general can be reinforced more rapidly and to a greater extent than Bragg. If the military authorities and the War Department at Washington, instead of quarrelling over the campaigns in Kentucky and Tennessee, will promptly direct General Burnside to march upon Knoxville, the communication between Lee and Bragg will be cut off by way of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, and the latter will be compelled to fall back from his present line to Chattanooga, to prevent his flank being turned. The two rebel generals, being thus deprived of the means of easily reinforcing each other, can be attacked separately and in turn with overwhelming numbers, and a speedy end put to the war, if the same energy and ability are displayed by other Union generals that have been exhibited by Grant in his immortal campaign of three weeks.