We have seen already how the River War of '89 ended in a double failure of the Federal advance on Vicksburg: how Grant and Sherman, aided by the flanking force from Helena in Arkansas, failed to catch Pemberton along the Tallahatchie; and then how Sherman alone, moving down the Mississippi, was defeated by Pemberton at Chickasaw Bayou, just outside of Vicksburg.
Leaving Memphis for good, Grant took command in the field again on the thirtieth of January. His army was strung out along seventy miles of the Mississippi just north of Vicksburg, so hard was it to find enough firm ground. The first important move was made when, in Grant's own words, "the entire Army of the Tennessee was transferred to the neighborhood of Vicksburg and landed on the opposite or western bank of the river at Milliken's Bend."Grant, everywhere in touch with Admiral D. D. Porter's fleet and plentifully supplied with water transport of all kinds, thus commanded the peninsula or tongue of low land-round which the mighty river took its course in the form of an elongated U right opposite Vicksburg. His farthest north base was still at Cairo;and the whole line of the Mississippi above him was effectively held by Union forces afloat and ashore. Four hundred miles south lay Farragut and Banks, preparing for an attack on Port Hudson and intent on ****** junction with the Union forces above.
Two bad generals stood very much in Grant's way, one on either side of him in rank--McClernand, his own second-in-command, and Banks, his only senior in the Mississippi area. McClernand presently found rope enough to hang himself. Our old friend Banks, who had not yet learnt the elements of war, though schooled by Stonewall Jackson, never got beyond Port Hudson, and so could not spoil Grant's command in addition to his own.
Fortunately, besides Sherman and other professional soldiers of quite exceptional ability, Grant had three of the best generals who ever came from civil life: Logan, Blair, and Crocker. Logan shed all the vices, while keeping all the virtues, of the lawyer when he took up arms. Blair knew how to be one man as an ambitious politician and another as a general in the field.
Crocker was in consumption, but determined to die in his boots and do his military best for the Union service first. The personnel of the army was mostly excellent all through. The men were both hardy and handy as a rule, being to a large extent farmers, teamsters, railroad and steamboat men, well fitted to meet the emergencies of the severe and intricate Vicksburg campaign.
Throughout this campaign the army and navy of the Union worked together as a single amphibious force. Grant's own words are no mere compliment, but the sober statement of a fact. "The navy, under Porter, was all it could be during the entire campaign.
Without its assistance the campaign could not have been successfully made with twice the number of men engaged. It could not have been made at all, in the way it was, with any number of men, without such assistance. The most perfect harmony reigned between the two arms of the Service. There never was a request made, that I am aware of, either of the Flag-Officer or any of his subordinates, that was not promptly complied with." And what is true of Porter is at least as true of Farragut, who was the greater man and the senior of every one afloat.
Grant could take Vicksburg only by reaching good ground, and the only good ground was below and in rear of the fortress. There was no foothold for his army on the east bank of the Mississippi anywhere between Memphis and Vicksburg. This meant that he must either start afresh from Memphis and try again to push overland by rail or cross the swampy peninsula in front of him and circle round his enemy. A retirement on Memphis, no matter how wise, would look like another great Union defeat and consequently lower a public morale which, depressed enough by Fredericksburg, was being kept down by the constant naval reverses that opened '63.
Circling the front was therefore very much to be preferred from the political point of view. On the other hand, it was beset by many alarming difficulties; for it meant starting from the flooded Mississippi and working through the waterlogged lowlands, across the peninsula, till a foothold could be seized on the eastern bank below Vicksburg. Moreover, this circling attack, though feasible, might depress the morale of the troops by the way. Burnside's disastrous "Mud March" through the January sloughs of Virginia, made in the vain hope of outflanking Lee, had lowered the morale of the army almost as much as Fredericksburg itself had lowered the morale of the people.
Through the depth of winter the army toiled "in ineffectual efforts," says Grant, "to reach high land above Vicksburg from which we could operate against that stronghold, and in ****** artificial waterways through which a fleet might pass, avoiding the batteries to the south of the town, in case the other efforts should fail." A wetter winter had never been known. The whole complicated network of bends and bayous, of creeks, streams, runs, and tributary rivers, was overflowing the few slimy trails through the spongy forest and threatening the neglected levees which still held back the encroaching waters. There was nothing to do, however, but to keep the men busy and the enemy confused by trying first one line and then another for two weary months.