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When we ascend the Mississippi from Natchez to Vicksburg, and then enter the Ohio, we are accompanied everywhere by a continuous fringe of terraces of sand and gravel at a certain height above the alluvial plain, first of the great river, and then of its tributary.
He boldly changed his entire plan of operations, abandoned his line of communication, removed his army to a point below Vicksburg and attacked the city in the rear.
The planters in the vicinity were as bitterly opposed to the movement as to any other effort that lifts the negro above his old position. At the present time, several parties in Vicksburg have leased three plantations, in as many localities, and are managing them on different plans. On the first they furnish the negroes with food and clothing, and divide the year's income with them.
When the shock of battle has been tried at Corinth, where lion-like Rosecrans conquers, when the glow of the onset fades away, his heart sinks. He knows that the iron-jointed men of the West are the peers of any race in the field. Ay! In the West it is fighting from the first. Donelson, Shiloh, and Corinth lead up to the awful death shambles of Stone River, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga.
In April, 1862, just after the receipt by Lincoln of the disappointing news of the first repulse at Vicksburg, he finds time to write a little autograph note to a boy, "Master Crocker," with thanks for a present of a white rabbit that the youngster had sent to the President with the suggestion that perhaps the President had a boy who would be pleased with it.
Had Banks marched against Vicksburg at the same time that McClernand was moving on Little Rock, with Grant cut off somewhere in northern Mississippi, the Confederate commanders must have been dull and slow indeed had they failed to seize with promptitude so rare an opportunity for resuming, at a sweep, the complete mastery of the river, ruining their adversary's campaign, and eliminating 100,000 of his soldiers.
Points on the river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson were held as dependencies; but their fall was sure to follow the capture of the former place. The campaign against Vicksburg commenced on the 2d of November as indicated in a dispatch to the general-in-chief in the following words: "I have commenced a movement on Grand Junction, with three divisions from Corinth and two from Bolivar.
All these failures would have been very discouraging if I had expected much from the efforts; but I had not. From the first the most I hoped to accomplish was the passage of transports, to be used below Vicksburg, without exposure to the long line of batteries defending that city.
Under these conditions, all concert between the co-operating forces was rendered impossible from the start, and the expectations of the government that Banks would go against Vicksburg immediately on landing in Louisiana were doomed to sharp and sudden, yet inevitable, disappointment.
I was firmly of the same opinion at the time on the ground; and, an entrance effected, we could have brought the whole force on dry ground, and had a base of operations against Vicksburg though probably, in view of later events, we would have had to stand a siege from Pemberton's army.
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