The army of Northern
Virginia had shattered itself against the defences of the North, and
there was for Lee no reserve line. For a long series of months to come,
Lee, magnificent engineer officer that he was, and with a sturdy
persistency which withstood all disaster, was able to maintain defensive
lines in the Wilderness, at Cold Harbor, and in front of Petersburg, but
as his brigades crumbled away under the persistent and unceasing attacks
of the army of the Potomac, he must have realised long before the day
of Appomattox that his task was impossible. What Gettysburg decided in
the East was confirmed with equal emphasis by the fall of Vicksburg in
the West. On the Fourth of July, 1863, the day on which Lee, defeated
and discouraged, was taking his shattered army out of Pennsylvania,
General Grant was placing the Stars and Stripes over the earthworks of
Vicksburg. The Mississippi was now under the control of the Federalists
from its source to the mouth, and that portion of the Confederacy lying
to the west of the river was cut off so that from this territory no
further co-operation of importance could be rendered to the armies
either of Johnston or of Lee.
Lincoln writes to Grant after the fall of Vicksburg giving, with his
word of congratulation, the admission that he (Lincoln) had doubted the
wisdom or the practicability of Grant's movement to the south of
Vicksburg and inland to Jackson.
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