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1863] Siege and capture of Vicksburg. 505 men, with whom he enclosed Vicksburg by a line fifteen miles long and a second series of entrenchments facing eastward to guard against possible attack by Johnston's army, while Porter with his river squadron prevented Pemberton from escaping by the Mississippi. Then followed the usual incidents of a six weeks' siege ; slowly approaching trenches, parallels and mines, with increasing bombardment from the outside; slowly gathering famine and the burrowing in caves for safety inside the doomed city. The busy and anxious correspondence of the Confederate government with its commanders could not long delay the crisis; its desperate appeals to the generalship of Johnston were answered by his sombre reply that he considered it impossible to save Vicksburg. On July 4, 1863, the day following Lee's crushing defeat at Gettysburg, Pemberton surrendered his army of 31,600 men, with 172 cannon and 60,000 muskets, while Grant's army marched into the captured citadel and supplied rations to the famished Confederate soldiers and citizens. Simultaneously with the fall of Vicksburg, another minor but striking success crowned the Unionist arms on the banks of the Mississippi. Helena, Arkansas, on the western side of the stream, between two and three hundred miles north, was the only point on that side capable of being strongly fortified, and it was held by a Unionist garrison of about 4000 under command of General B. M. Prentiss. A Confederate column of about 10,000 men under General Holmes had been collected to recapture it, and, at the very hour when Pemberton's troops began stacking their arms, was making a desperate assault against the Helena fortifications. The assailants were however driven back in a hopeless repulse, and abandoned the perilous undertaking. Grant, in anticipation of Pemberton's surrender, had already made preparations to send an expedition against General Johnston at Jackson ; and General Sherman, with three army corps, started eastward on this duty, even while Grant's remaining troops were entering the earthworks they had captured. By the morning of July 9 Sherman's column was before the field works in front of Jackson. General Johnston held out only long enough to ascertain that Sherman's intention was not a reckless assault, but a siege, which the Confederate army had not sufficient supplies to withstand. Johnston therefore abandoned Jackson on the 12th, and retreated eastward, giving Sherman for the second time possession of the capital of Mississippi. (5) CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA. The surrender of Vicksburg had opened 200 additional miles of Mississippi river navigation to the patrol of the Union gun-boats ; but the Confederates were still in possession of Port Hudson, an almost equally effective barrier, with a garrison of 7000, and works nearly as