by a sharp elbow in the Mississippi, opposite the town. If successful in forming a new channel for the Mississippi, it would isolate Vicksburg, and enable transports to pass safely to the new base of operations below. The work was prosecuted for many weeks with great energy and under many difficulties, the chief of which resulted from a rapid rise in the river, that threatened to inundate the camp and the canal. It seemed likely, however, that success would crown the effort, when finally, on the 8th of March, the rise of the river brought so great a pressure upon the dam across the canal near the upper end, at the main Mississippi levee, that it gave way, and let through the low lands back of where the Union camps were a torrent of water that separated the north and south shores of the peninsula as effectually as if the Mississippi flowed between them. The canal project was aban doned. The second expedient was the opening a practicable route through the bayous which run from near Milliken's Bend, and through Roundabout Bayou and Tensas River into the Mississippi, near New Carthage, below Vicksburg. This also was tried: dredge boats were put to work clearing a passage, and a few small craft were finally able to pass through. But as the river began to fall in April, and the roads between Milliken's Bend and New Carthage grew passable, it became unnecessary to continue work on this route. The third project was the Lake Providence route. This lake, situated seventy-five miles north of Vicksburg, on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi, is but a mile west of that river, and this opening a canal between the two would afford a navigable route through the lake, Bayou Boele, Bayou Macone, and the Tensas, Wachita, and Red Rivers, into the Mississippi. This project was not greatly esteemed, and after some time it was abandoned. The fourth expedient and the one that promised best, had for its object to open a route to the rear of the Haynes's Bluff batteries, on the Yazoo. The method in which it was proposed to reach this position, will illustrate the extraordinary hydrographic characteristics of the region in which the army was operating. Far north of Vicksburg, Yazoo Pass, a narrow tortuous channel, runs eastward from the Mississippi into Moon Lake, whence again issuing eastward, it flows into Coldwater River which empties into the Tallahatchie, which debouches into the Yazoo. This was the course the expeditionary force was to take.. It consisted of one division of McClernand's corps, with two Missouri regiments of Sherman's corps or sharpshooters the right kind of transportation could not be obtained for more force-and it started at the end of February, the transports being preceded by a number of Porter's gun-boats. With immense labor the fleet succeeded in reaching the Coldwater, the 2d of March, and after this it was expected the course to the Yazoo would be much easier. "But," says General Grant, "while my forces were opening one end of the Pass the enemy was diligently closing the other." The Confederates some time previously had skillfully chosen and fortified an excellent position to obstruct such a movement. Near where the Tallahatchie empties into the Yazoo, they had constructed Fort Pemberton, a powerful work of earth and cotton bales, that perfectly commanded the angle of junction of both rivers; and they obstructed the former stream by a raft and sunken vessel. The Union expeditionary force arrived before the work on the 11th of March; but from the first, difficulties beset it. It was found that the low ground around the fort was entirely overflowed; so that no movement could be made by the army to reduce the work until the gun-boats should silence the enemy's guns. But this, after protracted trial, they were unable to effect, and after remaining until March 21st, and being joined by Quimby's division of McPherson's corps, the expedition returned. There was now remaining the fifth and final preliminary expedition. While this force was still before Fort Pemberton, Admiral Porter had reconnoitred another route by which it was hoped a descent might be made above the Haynes's Bluff batteries. This route was still more intricate than the other. Seven miles above the mouth of the Yazoo, Steele's bayou empties into that river; thirty miles up Steele's bayou, Black bayou enters it from Deer Creek, six miles distant; and descending the Big Sunflower forty-one miles, one finds himself again in the Yazoo, sixty miles from its mouth. So many difficulties, however, were encountered from overhanging trees and other causes, that the project also was given up after prodigious labors spent in the endeavor to carry it out. "The expedition," says General Grant, "failed probably more from want of knowledge as to what would be required to open this route than from any impractibility in the navigation of the streams and bayous through which it was proposed to pass. Want of this knowledge led the expedidition on and difficulties were encountered, and then it would become necessary to send back to Young's Point for the means of removing them. This gave the enemy time to move forces to effectually checkmate further progress, and the expedition was withdrawn when within a few hundred yards of free and open navigation to the Yazoo." Thus five-fold failure rested on the operations against Vicksburg. But through these very failures the mind of the commander had wrought its way out to clearness of vision, and· at that very stage when an intellect of less determined fibre would have been resigning itself to a seemingly implacable fortune, Grant, overleaping fate and failure, rose to the height of that audacious conception on which at length, he vaulted into Vicksburg. II. THE SIEGE AND FALL OF VICKSBURG. It was apparent to General Grant from the moment he went in person to Young's Point that the true line of operations against Vicksburg was from the south; but if he was prompted first to exhaust every other expedient, it was because the difficulties seen to beset that mode of action were in reality appalling. It would be necessary first of all to march the army for thirty or forty miles down the west bank of the Mississippi, so as to gain a point where the passage might be made below the enemy's works. It would be requisite that the gun-boats and transports should run the gauntlet of the batteries, in order to cross the army to the east bank and cover the passage. It would then remain to make the crossing of that great and difficult river in face of all the opposition the enemy could bring against the operation. And when these three conditions should be fulfilled, the perils that in the very nature of things attended the execution of the plan, would only have begun. For it would then be necessary for Grant to cut himself entirely off from his base, and launch into the interior of the land, without a new base secured in advance with the promise of any base at all contingent upon his beating the enemy in the open field, swinging round in rear of Vicksburg, and so operating with his right as to force open the line of the Yazoo. These considerations serve to fix the character of the plan of operations. It cannot be called a brilliant strategic inspiration, for the move was an obvious one, and had suggested itself even to the rank and file of the army. But if the conception was easy, the execution involved difficulties that might well affright the stoutest heart. Of this there could be no more striking proof than is presented in the fact that the high-vaulting and audacious mind of Sherman shrank |