At this point they attain the height of three hundred feet, and
are almost perpendicular. The summit is attained by a circuitous road
cut through the cliffs, and this is the summit level of the surrounding
country.
This plateau of land, where once stood the little village of
Bruinsburgh, has long been a cotton plantation, and a most valuable one
it was before the late war. A deep, and, to an army, impassable swamp
borders it below, and the same is the case above the Bayou Pierre. To
land an army at such a place, when its only means of marching upon the
country was through this narrow cut, of about one hundred feet in
width, with high, precipitous sides, forming a complete defile for half
a mile, and where five thousand men could have made its defence good
against fifty thousand, is certainly as little evidence of military
genius as was the permission of them to pass through it without an
effort to prevent it.
To a military eye, the blunders of Grant and Pemberton are apparent in
their every movement--and the history of the siege and capture of
Vicksburg, if ever correctly written, will demonstrate to the world
that folly opposed to folly marked its inception, progress, and
finality.
Pages:
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306