The situation of Vicksburg.
A letter to the Mobile Advertiser, dated Jackson, May 24th, says that Gen. Johnston arrived there the day before. Of his movements little is known, as he was seldom in the city. The letter says:‘ Slowly we receive scattering particulars of affairs at Vicksburg, and I rejoice to say that they are not so bad as first represented. On Monday the Federals commenced feeling the weakest and most vulnerable point of the Vicksburg works — the approach by the Jackson road — and on Tuesday morning, at 10 o'clock, advanced to the assualt in a rather cute and ridiculous manner. They advanced their flags close to the works, their negro troops in front, and lay down. Bowen's gallant Missourians never fired a shot. The other regiments then marched up, and the whole assaulting column, forlorn hope and all, marched within easy musket range.
At the word "Forward — Charge," they received our fire, shattering and decimating their ranks frightfully. They rallied, closed up, and stood to it for thirty minutes, when they broke and fled. They were rallied to the charge four successive times, and met with the same storm of iron hail and leaden rain. The whole field was literally covered for one mile with their dead and wounded, where they were still lying on Thursday night unburied, and without any attention. What a field of slaughter, suffering, and anguish! What cruelty in Grant. His dead and wounded soldiers were left alone where they fell — the dead to rot, the wounded to suffer and die under the very nose of the enemy. How cruel and beastly to put the negroes whom he had seduced from their happy homes, and under the delusion of freedom and liberty, or by force, induced to become soldiers, and then put them in front of the battle to be mercilessly shot down by their former masters and protectors, and then leave them in the first hour of trial to die, to rot, as so many beasts.
Since Tuesday, from all I can learn, the enemy has contented himself with shelling, cannonading and sharpshooting, and they occasionally succeed in picking off some of our men. As the firing is at long range Pemberton does not reply.
On Tuesday morning Lieut. Col. Broun, of the 20th Mississippi mounted infantry, dashed into Raymond and captured the place, taking four hundred Federals, and about 50 or 60 runaway negroes. Not a gun was fired and nobody hurt. The sick and wounded were paroled; the well were brought here and sent east. Among them were some half dozen Captains and Lieutenante. The negroes have been brought here and put to work on the fortifications.
The enemy is reported landing the forces of Gen. Curtis at Snyder's Bluff. Grant has moved his army well up north of the railroad, but few troops being below or in the vicinity of Grand Gulf, which is no longer his base of operations.
’ We have received the Jackson Mississippian, as late as the 27th, which contains no later information from the besieged city. It says:
‘ It is confidently asserted that in the series of battles which have occurred since the Yankee army crossed to this side of the Mississippi it has lost not less than thirty thousand men. Prisoners and deserters confirm this estimate. In fact, we are inclined to believe the number largely underestimated. On Friday last (as per private dispatch from an officer in Canton this morning) the enemy's loss in their attack on the entrenchments (their line being ten deep) is put down at twenty thousand killed and wounded, besides the loss of two gunboats out of the Yankee fleet which was bombarding the city in front.
On Saturday, as we published yesterday, the attack proved equally disastrous to the Yankees. It is said by a negro, who has escaped from the enemy's lines, that their men are plentifully supplied with whiskey preceding their attacks on our entrenchments, and that they show a strong antipathy to approaching the "slaughter pen" until rendered reckless by intoxication.
The men also fully believe that Stoneman has taken Richmond, and that the taking of Vicksburg will terminate the war. In Grant's general orders, read to the troops previous to their first attack, this lying statement was embraced among others of a similar nature.
The Memphis Bulletin, more than a week ago, published the same lie under a terrible array of staring capitals and sensation headlines, surmounted by a cut of a formidable looking rooster. Every contrivance which Yankee ingennity and cuteness can invent is brought to bear in order to uphold the sinking courage of their men and induce them to face the music of our batteries and the death dealing volleys of rifle and musket in the hands of our determined and gallant men in the trenches around Vicksburg.
In the absence of anything like a detailed account of the occurrence in and around Vicksburg, we can only say that at the latest advices all was going on well.
It is generally conceded that Banks landed eight or ten thousand troops at Bayon Sara last Tuesday, and that he proceeded in the direction of Port Hudson, and it is feared that place, like Vicksburg, is now surrounded, and perhaps more thoroughly cut off.
Gen. Gardner will not permit himself to remain hemmed in at that place unless he is overpowered by troops from the north and south of his position.
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