Page:Edinburgh Review Volume 158.djvu/529

516 Vicksburg and Gettysburg, by the Comte de Paris. Oct. mud that threatens the town with absolute destruction. The new channel, however, is at a point which, in 1863, was equally commanded by the batteries, and would not in any way have furthered the siege operations.

When the canal had to be given up, the true military course would undoubtedly have been to return to Memphis and work down on the rear of Vicksburg by the line of the railway as Grant had first proposed. But public opinion in the North was strongly adverse to anything that looked like retrogression. Grant had, as yet, no special claim on public favour. His depôt at Holly Springs had been destroyed ; he had had to draw back from the Yallabusha; the attack on Chickasaw Bluffs had been bloodily repelled ; the canal on which he had spent a couple of months was a failure ; a retreat on Memphis, however sound in strategy, would probably have been the signal for his immediate supersession. He was therefore under the political necessity of getting to the rear of Vicksburg without going to Memphis ; and the attempt by the southern flank having failed, he reverted to his former idea of trying the northern. But to traverse the swamp, cross the various bayous and the Yazoo itself, in order to scale the bluffs in face of a forewarned enemy, was an acknowledged impossibility. Water carriage protected by the gunboats offered the only means ; and it was determined, by opening an old channel from the Mississippi to the upper waters of the Yazoo, to establish a line of operations which would pass through Yazoo City, capture the arsenal there, and end by outflanking the most northern works at Vicksburg.

Some years before, this channel, known as the Yazoo Pass, had been the ordinary route from the north to Yazoo City ; but more recently it had been blocked by a heavy embankment so as to permit a large tract of land, at a lower level, to be brought into cultivation. This embankment was now mined and blown up ; the water rushed through in a torrent, flooding the lowland, and opening a passage by which the gunboats might reach the Cold Water, the most northern tributary of the Yazoo. The channel was deep enough, but narrow ; the forest grew dense along its banks ; and trees adroitly felled by the Confederates in a few minutes, formed an obstacle which it took several days to remove. To pass from the Mississippi to the Cold Water, distant in a straight line only ten miles, took, in the first instance, fourteen days ; and before anything like an efficient force of gunboats and men was collected on the Cold Water and its banks, very nearly a month had passed away. But the route was pronounced prac