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The first intimation which I got of this disaster was on the 22d of September, by an order from General Grant to dispatch one of my divisions immediately into Vicksburg, to go toward Chattanooga, and I designated the First, General Osterhaus Steele meantime having been appointed to the command of the Department of Arkansas, and had gone to Little Rock.
Is there one heart that does not thrill in answer to the drum-beat that rings all over the world as the army of the west, on the morning of the nation's birth, swarms over the silent, sullen earthworks of captured Vicksburg, to the reveille that calls up our Northern regiments this morning inside the fatal abatis of Port Hudson?
"General, could you hold Colonel Colfax until I see you again?" It was a bold thing to say, and I quaked. And he looked at me in his keen way, through and through "You saved his life once before, didn't you?" "You allowed me to have him sent home from Vicksburg, sir." He answered with one of his jokes apropos of something he said on the Court House steps at Vicksburg.
By this time it had become thoroughly demonstrated that we could not divert the main river Mississippi, or get practicable access to the east bank of the Yazoo, in the rear of Vicksburg, by any of the passes; and we were all in the habit of discussing the various chances of the future.
General Grant when at Napoleon, on the 18th of January, ordered McClernand with his own and my corps to return to Vicksburg, to disembark on the west bank, and to resume work on a canal across the peninsula, which had been begun by General Thomas Williams the summer before, the object being to turn the Mississippi River at that point, or at least to make a passage for our fleet of gunboats and transports across the peninsula, opposite Vicksburg.
GENERAL: I had the honor to receive your letter of the 2d instant yesterday at New Orleans, but was unable to answer, except verbally, and I now reduce it to writing. I will arrive at Vicksburg the 6th instant, and I expect to meet there my command from Canton, out of which I will select two divisions of about ten thousand men, embark them under a good commander, and order him: 1st. 2d.
At Vicksburg they bought a steamboat and went down the river, stopping at every important landing to exhibit. At Natchez their cook deserted them, and Barnum set out to find another. He found a white woman who was willing to go, only she expected to marry a painter in that town, and did not want to leave him.
There Porter's return caught them as in a trap. Toward the end of January Grant landed on the long neck opposite Vicksburg, and once more set to work on the canal. Porter now determined to let a detachment of his fleet run the gauntlet of the batteries of Vicksburg for the purpose of destroying every thing the Confederates had afloat below the town.
Why, our old Colonel ain't only twenty-four years old now, and he has been in command ever since we went into Vicksburg. I have heard it said by our boys that since we veteranized the whole Regiment, officers, and men, average less than twenty-four years old. But they are gray-hounds to march and stayers in a fight, you bet.
I stayed right in Natchez but my father didn't. My father's first stop was in Bullocks Bar right above Vidalia. That was where his company was stationed first. Lemme see, he went from there to Davis Bend. I wasn't with them. He was in a colored regiment. I was with a white regiment. He left Davis Bend and want to Vicksburg. His next trip was up the Sunflower River.
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