Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/73

Rh ball, Third Division, Sixteenth Army Corps] has retreated from there, and is sending all his supplies to Haynes's Bluff, The enemy is probably in the town now."

I told them Grant was sick and asleep and that I did not want to waken him. They insisted that it was unsafe to go on and that I would better call the General, and finally I did so, but he was too sick to decide.

"I will leave it with you, Mr. Dana," he said. I immediately said we would go back to Haynes's Bluff, which we did.

The next morning Grant came out to breakfast fresh as a rose, clean shirt and all, quite himself. "Well, Mr. Dana," he said, "I suppose we are at Satartia now."

"No, General," I said, "we are at Haynes's Bluff." And I told him what had happened.

He did not complain, but as he was short of officers at that point, he asked me to go with a party of cavalry towards Mechanicsburg to find if it was true, as reported, that Joe Johnston was advancing from Canton to the Big Black. We had a long hard ride, not getting back to Vicksburg until the morning of the 8th. The country was like all the rest around Vicksburg—broken, wooded, unpopulous, with bad roads and few streams. It still had many cattle, but the corn was pretty thoroughly cleared out. We found that Johnston had not moved his main force as rumored, and that he could not move it without bringing all his supplies with him.

Soon after this Sherman was ordered to the northeast to watch Johnston. He went into camp on Bear Creek, about fifteen miles from Vicksburg. I went up there several times to visit him, and always came away enthusiastic over his qualities as a soldier. His amazing activity and vigilance pervaded his entire force. The country where he had encamped was exceedingly favorable for defense; and he had occupied the commanding points, opened rifle-pits wherever they would add to his advantage, obstructed the cross roads and most of the direct roads also, and ascertained every point where the Big Black could be forded between the line of Benton on the north and the line of railroads on the south. By his rapid movements, also, and by thus widely deploying on all the ridges and