Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/534

502 G-ranfs movements against Vicksburg. [i 862-3 also be remembered that all these difficulties of approach were rendered doubly formidable by the heavy rains prevalent during the winter of 1862-3, which in the ensuing spring months created floods and overflow in all directions, and left but limited spaces of dry land in the river bottoms upon which an army could land or camp or move. It is doubtful whether Grant had in his mind, at first, any distinct plan for the capture of Vicksburg. Early in December, 1862, he organised an expedition under the command of General Sherman, which, starting from Memphis on transports, made a permanent camp at Milliken's Bend on the Mississippi, twenty miles above Vicksburg. Moving thence up the Yazoo river, and across the low swampy lands between its banks and the line of hills, he delivered an assault on the works at Chickasaw Bayou, on December 29, in order by surprise to gain a footing five miles to the north and rear of the city. The effort was however unsuccessful; and the expedition returned to Milliken's Bend. Had this attempt succeeded, Grant's intention was to move southward from Corinth and to endeavour to form a junction with Sherman. Not only Sherman's failure but other causes also induced Grant, in the month of January, 1863, to proceed to Vicksburg and take command of the expedition in person. With the co-operation of Admiral Porter, who now commanded a river squadron of seventy vessels, eleven of which were ironclads, armed with 304 guns, and manned by more than 5000 men, four different experiments were successively tried. Some years before, in a quarrel over a question of boundary, the State of Louisiana had begun the execution of a project to leave the city of Vicksburg inland, by cutting a canal across the tongue of land in its front, and changing the channel of the Mississippi. During the preceding summer, when Farragut was endeavouring to capture Vicksburg, General Williams, who accompanied him with 3000 men, took up the uncompleted project of the State of Louisiana, with the object of creating a channel up which Farragut might move his fleet, out of range of the Vicksburg batteries. Now that Grant had come with considerable reinforcements, 4000 men were for the third time set to work to finish this military " cut-off." It seems to be agreed that the project was doomed to failure, because of the faulty situation of the canal. But the abandonment of the attempt was hastened by a sudden rise of the river, which broke into and overflowed not only the canal but a considerable portion of the tongue of land. The second undertaking was an attempt made by Porter with ironclads and gun-boats to force a passage up the Yazoo river, in search of a landing place and base from which to move against the rear of Vicksburg. This scheme having turned out to be impracticable, Porter's flotilla next went 200 miles up the Mississippi to a point where, through a succession of bayous, named Yazoo Pass and the Cold Water river, he might enter the upper Yazoo and descend that difficult stream