Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1907 — SIEGE OF VICKSBURG. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SIEGE OF VICKSBURG.

THIRTY-SEVENTH REUNION OF ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE. "Gibraltar of the South” Undergoes Siege Commemorating the One Which Was Anton, the Most Remarkable in Military History. The Society of the Army of the Tennessee, composed of officers who served in the great army of the West under Grant and Sherman, recently held its annual reunion at Vicksburg, Miss. There, where frowned during the first two years of the Civil Waj; the impregnable fortifications of the Confederacy, choking the trade of the great river and cutting the southern half of the republic in two, there, where the great siege was fought out Bitterly and bravely on each side, but with victory to Grant, the commander who never led to ultimate defeat, the remnant of the society which, in the field in 1805 and included all of the officers of the Army of the Tennessee, met in its thirty-seventh session^ With it foregathered some of the surviving Confederate officers who were among the besieged In the fated city, with Gen. Pemberton, from” May 10, 1803, when the ring of assault was finally closed around Vicksburg, until the Jth day of July, when the suffering garrison stacked their arms and 27,000 troops surrendered to the forces of the Untofe

The siege of Vicksburg is considered one of the most remarkable in all military history. The difficulties to be overcome were tremendous. Again and again were the naval forces on the river and the army on land repelled from “the Gibraltar of the South,” but the whole nation knew that the struggle must never end until Vicksburg was in the hands of the Union forces. The United States government has, in commemoration of the great siege, purchased the fighting ground around the city, 1,283 acres, and is making a

great military park which is to be at once a beautiful pleasure ground and a lesson in the history of the memorable siege. The grounds are laid out in broad, paved avenues, with tine bridges, and with a wealth of monuments and tablets to show the position of the various commands of both armies. Solemnly impressive is the other government reservation at Vicksburg, the national cemetery, where rest the ashes of 10,822 Union soldiers who lost their lives in and around the city during the war. Something of the conditions under which these lives were lost may be imagined from the fact that the graves of 12,710 are marked “Unknown.” Fourteen States —Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, lowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin — have appropriated large sums of money for the Vicksburg national park, and each of these States has erected suitable monuments and memorials of Its sons who fought upon this ground. Illinois, appropriating ?260,000- for the purpose, has striven to show, adequately, the feeling of a loyal State toward those who fought arnopg the trenches and hills and wild ravines around Vicksburg. Along the line of the Union works, nine miles In extent, the State has erected monuments and markers showing the position of the seventy-nine Illinois organizations which took part In the campaign. The State memorial is a white marble temple lighted from Its open roof, and upon the walls of It appear, In bronze-lettered tablets, the names of the 36,000 officers and soldiers from Illinois who served In the campaign. . ~

A scroll morble runs around the Interior, like a frlere, and upon this Is Inscribed the names of the commanders from Illinois, beginning with Lincoln, the commander-ln-chief of all the armies, continuing with that of Grant the commander Of the Army of the Tennessee, and naming all of the Illinois generate of that army that participated in the Vicksburg campaign. The “lead" of a very cheap pencil is often nothing but coke.

ILLINOIS MONUMENT AT VICKSBURG.