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Indiana University 
the Confederates had their turn at cutting communications for 
they could so easily strike the Memphis and Charleston Rail- 
road that the Federals had to employ railroads from Colum- 
bus, Ky., via Jackson, Tenn., to Corinth and Grand Junction.^® 
A little later when Grant started on his Vicksburg campaign 
he was forced to leave Dodge at Corinth with 10,000 men for 
fear Bragg might cut his communications with the North. 
In spite of these precautions, while Sherman was advancing 
on Vicksburg and Grant was threatening Pemberton’s army 
to the east. Van Dorn destroyed Grant’s secondary base of 
supplies at Holly Springs, and Forrest cut the railroad be- 
tween Jackson, Tenn., and Columbus, Ky. This demonstrated 
the impossibility of drawing supplies over such a long railroad 
line in an active enemy’s country, consequently the Miss- 
issippi was used for this purpose."^’ 
On July 4, 1863, the Vicksburg campaign was brought to a 
close with the capture of that place. This was a serious blow 
to the South, for it closed the richest grain and cattle country 
in the Confederacy.'^^ Prior to this a strip of land 250 miles 
long between Vicksburg and Port Hudson protected the mouth 
of the Red River and allowed its products to go to the Con- 
federacy. Louisiana had furnished it with sugar, while Texas 
had supplied grain and beef besides affording an avenue for 
munitions of war coming from Europe by way of Mexico.'^^ 
Not only was the Confederacy deprived of an abundant food 
supply but its man-power from Texas became a very negligible 
quantity tho it must be admitted that the transportation facili- 
ties of the region west of the Mississippi were so poor that no 
very effective aid was ever rendered by this section.®'^ Accord- 
ing to the census of 1860 Texas alone had 300 miles of rail- 
way, but when Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur James Freemantle, 
a British soldier, passed thru the state on an observation trip 
in April, 1863, he found it very difficult to cross Texas and 
reach the Mississippi.'^^ It is also true that Texas had 100,000 
Sherman, Memoirs, 260. 
Major-General Grenville M. Dodge, The Battle of Atlanta and other Campaigns, 
111 . 
50 Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, I, 432, 433. 
51 Pollard, The Lost Cause, 252. 
52 Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, 123, and James Ford Rhodes, History of the United 
States from the Compromise of 1850 (8 vols.. New York, 1893-1914), IV, 299. 
55 Richard Taylor, DesUmction and ReconsU'uotion (New York, 1879), 103. 
51 Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur James Freemantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 
April-June, 1863 (New York, 1864). 
