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The nights were cold and damp, and General Sherman uncomfortably active in his preparations, so that the assistant adjutant-general had no very luxurious post just then. We were surrounded with sloughs. The ground was wet, and the water, although in winter, was very unwholesome. Many of our men, to this day, have reminders of the Yazoo in ague, fevers, and diseases of the bowels.
One was Philip Fithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to teach the children of Colonel Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probably the most aristocratic community of the whole South: the other was A. de Puy Van Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek health and employment in Mississippi and found them both, and happiness too, amid the freshly settled folk on the banks of the Yazoo River.
We possess what is below the Yazoo, and can probably acquire a certain breadth from the Illinois and Wabash to the Ohio; but between the Ohio and Yazoo the country all belongs to the Chickasaws, the most friendly tribe within our limits, but the most decided against the alienation of lands. The portion of their country most important for us is exactly that which they do not inhabit.
We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower an interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this time, because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in force but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New Orleans boat on our return; so we were obliged to give up the project.
The information was found correct, and our landing was effected without opposition. Sherman had not left his position above Vicksburg yet. On the morning of the 27th I ordered him to create a diversion by moving his corps up the Yazoo and threatening an attack on Haines' Bluff.
Move troops by the most direct road from wherever they may be on the receipt of this order." And to Blair I wrote: "Their design is evidently to cross the Big Black and pass down the peninsula between the Big Black and Yazoo rivers. We must beat them. Turn your troops immediately to Bolton; take all the trains with you.
My headquarters will probably be in Coffeeville one week hence.... In the mean time I will order transportation, etc.... It would be well if you could have two or three small boats suitable for navigating the Yazoo. It may become necessary for me to look to that base for supplies before we get through.... U. S. GRANT, Major-General.
Pressing this into his service, and disposing himself and his burden safely within, he paddled down the stream, hoping to reach the Mississippi and drift down to the city front before break of day. Success was not to come so easily. A sound of puffing steam came from down the river, and soon a trio of gunboats loomed through the gloom, heading towards Yazoo City.
GENERAL: You will proceed as early as practicable up Steele's Bayou, and through Black Bayou to Deer Creek, and thence with the gunboats now there by any route they may take to get into the Yazoo River, for the purpose of determining the feasibility of getting an army through that route to the east bank of that river, and at a point from which they can act advantageously against 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.
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