Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/80

806 from the first, and soon after the fall of Corinth he had obtained from President Lincoln a "confidential" order which authorized him to proceed to Illinois and Indiana and raise troops for an expedition down the Mississippi River to capture Vicksburg. Grant hearing of this, determined to give to Sherman the honor of the capture. He ordered Sherman to attack the city while he held Pemberton on the railway. Sherman failed. At the same time Grant's immense depot of supplies at Holly Springs was lost through the cowardice of a subordinate officer. McClernand appeared before Vicksburg, and assumed command over Sherman's troops. The desire to save Sherman from subordination to a man he distrusted, and the destruction of his supplies, decided Grant to take command of the river expedition in person and make of it his main attack. Halleck gave him full and complete command, and extended his department to cover all the territory he needed west of the river. Thus with supreme control at last of all needed territory, troops, and transportation, he began his movement on Vicksburg.

These discussions and harassments, however, had wasted golden moments. From Donelson the army should have marched at once on Corinth, and on down the valley upon Vicksburg before it could be reinforced or fortified. But instead, the enemy had been allowed to fully recuperate his forces and strengthen his position, and now a winter of enormous rains was upon the land. The Northern troops were mainly raw, and the army unorganized, and it was February before Grant was able to put himself personally upon the spot to see what could be done.

Now began one of the most extraordinary beleaguerments in the history of warfare. Grant had long perceived, as every thinking soldier had, that Vicksburg was the gate which shut the Mississippi. It was of enormous importance to the Confederacy. After Columbus and Memphis, it occupied the only point of high land close to the river bank for hundreds of miles. At or near the city of Vicksburg, and extending some miles to the south, a line of low hills of glacial drift jutted upon the river, making the site a natural fortress. Upon these heights heavy batteries were planted.

Another element of great strength was in the river, which in those days made a big, graceful curve, in shape like an oxbow; so that to run the batteries the Northern gunboats must pass twice within range, once on the outer curve and again, at closer gunshot, on the inner bow. A third and final and more formidable condition than all aided to make the siege of the city hopeless. There was a prodigious freshet upon the land, and all the low-lying country, through which the river flows (at high water) as in a mighty aqueduct above the level of the farms, was flooded, and Grant's soldiers had no place to pitch their tents save upon the narrow levees along the river's edge. No greater problem of warfare ever faced an American soldier.

Grant did not underestimate its difficulty. Late in January he arrived at Young's Point on his steamer "Magnolia," and began to look the ground over. There were but two ways to attack: from the north, with the Yazoo River as base of action; or get below the city and attack from the south. Grant sent an expedition at once to explore a passage to the Yazoo through the bayous of the eastern bank, and he set to work personally upon the problem of getting below.

The difficulties in the way of this plan were at the moment insurmountable. Grant could neither march his men down the western bank nor carry them in boats, such was the overflow. If he could find passage for the army and reach a safe point below Vicksburg, he would still be on the western shore, and without means to ferry his troops, and without supplies; and to every suggestion about running the batteries with transports arose the picture of those miles of cannon hurling their shells upon the frail woodwork of the unprotected vessels.

He set about to find a way through the bayous to the west, and prodigious things were done in the way of cutting channels through the swamps and widening streams for the passage of gunboats. While this was going on, he gave attention to a canal which he found partly excavated upon his arrival. It had been planned by General Thomas Williams, and crossed the narrow neck of land just out of range of the cannon. It was expected to start a cut-off which would soon deepen naturally into a broad stream through which the boats might pass. Grant, in a letter of the time, said: "I consider it of little practical use if completed;" but he allowed the work to go on, thinking it better for the soldiers to be occupied. He had almost as little faith in the bayou route to the west. In reality, he had settled upon