June 1, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
Our telegrams inform us that GRANT, after making seven bloody but fruitless assaults upon our entrenched positions at Vicksburg, has gone to […..] in the rear of the Hilled City. This says the Mobile Advertiser, means regular siege operations and an attempt to starve a garrison that he cannot whip. Meantime he leaves his dead Yankees unburied under our works, without any proffer under flag of truce to give them the decent interment which they are entitled to, at least, at his hands. GRANT evidently thinks that the carcasses of the poor wretches he has sent to slaughter will be no more serviceable to the […..] Government the world ever saw,’ on top of the ground, than under it. Can he starve out Vicksburg? Not in a hurry, certainly. It is well provisioned for some months, and half provisions for double the number. GRANT’S possession of Snyder’s Bluff gives him large advantages in his proposed siege. It enables him to shorten his line of communication with his base of supplies, and avoids the danger of running the batteries on the river front, or the expense and delay of a long transportation around Vicksburg on the Louisiana shore. Meantime the interest of the situation deepens, and the eyes and energies of both the belligerents will, in all probability, be turned and concentrated upon this point. It is not unlikely that the great battle of the war – perhaps, the decisive battle – will be fought within cannon hearing of the Hill City. From the death-like quietude on ROSECRANS’ lines, it is premised that GRANT has been reinforced from the Tennessee army. The Yankees will need great numbers for the work before them, and they will send them. We shall want them, and they are gone and going.
General JOHNSTON is quietly massing a powerful army in GRANT’S rear. Information just received, leads the Advertiser to believe that his numbers are already greater than we have supposed. Confederate will be ready to dispute the sovereignty of the lower Mississippi, and, if victorious, re-establish the freedom of Louisiana.