Recollections of the Civil War. Charles A. Dana
was full of snags, which must be got out before the Tensas would be accessible.
The third and fourth routes proposed for getting behind Vicksburg—namely, by Yazoo Pass and Steele's Bayou—were attracting the chief attention when I reached Memphis. Yazoo Pass opened from the eastern bank of the Mississippi at a point about one hundred and fifty miles above Vicksburg into Moon Lake, and thence into the Coldwater River. Through the Coldwater and the Tallahatchie the Yazoo River was reached. If troops could follow this route and capture Haynes's Bluff, fourteen miles from the mouth of the Yazoo, Vicksburg at once became untenable. The Yazoo Pass operation had begun in February, but the detachment had had bad luck, and on my arrival at Memphis was lying up the Yallabusha waiting for re-enforcements and supplies.
An attempt was being made also to reach the Yazoo by a roundabout route through Steele's Bayou, Deer Creek, the Rolling Fork, and the Big Sunflower. Grant had learned of this route only a short time before my arrival, and had at once sent Sherman with troops and Admiral Porter with gunboats to attempt to reach the Yazoo. On March 27th reports came to Memphis that Sherman had landed twenty regiments on the east bank of the Yazoo above Haynes's Bluff, and that the gunboats were there to support him. Reports from other points also were so encouraging that the greatest enthusiasm prevailed throughout the army, and General Grant was said to be dead sure he would have Vicksburg within a fortnight.
Five days later, however, we heard at Memphis that there had been a series of disasters in these different operations, that the Yazoo Pass expedition was definitely abandoned, and that General Grant had an entirely new plan of campaign.
I had not been long at Memphis before I decided that it was impossible to gather trustworthy news there. I had to rely for most of my information on the reports brought up the river by occasional officers, not all of whom were sure of what they told, and on the stories of persons coming from the vicinity of the different operations. Occasionally an intelligent planter arrived whom I was inclined to believe, but on the whole I found that my sources of information were few and uncertain. I accordingly suggested to Mr. Stanton, three days after my arrival, that I would be more useful farther down the river. In reply he telegraphed:
War Department,
Washington City, March 30, 1863.
C. A. Dana, Esq., Memphis, Tenn., via Cairo:
Your telegrams have been received, and although the information has been meager and unsatisfactory, I am conscious that arises from no fault of yours. You will proceed to General Grant's headquarters, or wherever you may be best able to accomplish the purposes designated by this department. You will consider your movements to be governed by your own discretion, without any restriction.
Edwin M. Stanton,
Secretary of War.
As soon after receiving his telegram as I could get a boat I left Memphis for Milliken's Bend, where General Grant had his headquarters. I reached there at noon on April 6th.
The Mississippi at Milliken's Bend was a mile wide, and the sight as we came down the river by boat was most imposing. Grant's big army was stretched up and down the river bank over the plantations, its white tents affording a new decoration to the natural magnificence of the broad plains. These plains, which stretch far back from the river, were divided into rich and old plantations by blooming hedges of rose and Osage orange, the mansions of the owners being inclosed in roses, myrtles, magnolias, oaks, and every other sort of beautiful and noble trees. The negroes whose work made all this wealth and magnificence were gone, and there was nothing growing in the fields.
For some days after my arrival I lived in a steamboat tied up to the shore, for though my tent was pitched and ready, I was not able to get a mattress and pillow. From the deck of the steamer I saw in those days many a wonderful and to me novel sight. One I remember still. I was standing out on the upper deck with a group of officers, when we saw far away, close to the other shore of the river, a long line of something white floating in the water. We thought it was foam, but it was too long and white, and that it was cotton which had been thrown into the river, but it was too straight and regular. Presently we heard a gun fired, then another, and then we saw it was an enormous flock of swans. They arose from the water one after the other, and sailed away up the river in long, curving, silver lines, bending and floating almost like clouds, and finally disappearing high up in the air above the green woods on the Mississippi shore. I suppose there were a thousand of them.
I had not been long at Milliken's Bend before I was on friendly terms with all the generals, big and little, and one or two of them I found were very rare men. Sherman especially impressed me as a man of genius and of the widest intellectual acquisitions. Every day I rode in one direction or another with an officer, inspecting the operations going on. From what I saw on my rides over the country I got a new insight into slavery, which made me no more a friend to that institution than I was before. I had seen slavery in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, and Missouri, but it was not till I saw these great Louisiana plantations with all their apparatus for living and working that I really felt the aristocratic nature of the institution, and the infernal baseness of that aristocracy. Every day my conviction was intensified that the territorial and political integrity of the nation must be preserved at all costs, no matter how long it took; that it was better to keep up the existing war as long as was necessary, rather than to make arrangement for indefinite wars hereafter and for other disruptions; that we must have it out then, and settle forever the question, so that our children would be able to attend to other matters. For my own part, I preferred one nation and one country, with a military government afterward, if such should follow, rather than two or three nations and countries with the semblance of the old Constitution in each of them, ending in wars and despotisms everywhere.
As soon as I arrived at Milliken's Bend, on April 6th, I had hunted up Grant and explained my mission. He received me cordially. Indeed, I think Grant was always glad to have me with his army. He did not like letter writing, and my daily dispatches to Mr. Stanton relieved him from the necessity of describing every day what was going on in the army. From the first neither he nor any of his staff or corps commanders evinced any unwillingness to show me the inside of things. In this first interview at Milliken's Bend, for instance, Grant explained to me so fully his new plan of campaign—for there was now but one—that by three o'clock I was able to send an outline of it to Mr. Stanton. From that time I saw and knew all the interior operations of that toughest of tough jobs, the reopening of the Mississippi.
The new project, so Grant told me, was to transfer his army to New Carthage, and from there carry it over the Mississippi, landing it at or about Grand Gulf; to capture this point, and then to operate rapidly on the southern and eastern shore of the Big Black River, threatening at the same time both Vicksburg and Jackson, and confusing the Confederates as to his real objective. If this could be done he believed the enemy would come out of Vicksburg and fight.
The first element in this plan was to open a passage from the Mississippi near Milliken's Bend, above Vicksburg, to the bayou on the west side, which led around to New Carthage below. The length of navigation in this cut-off was about thirty-seven miles, and the plan was to take through with small tugs perhaps fifty barges, enough, at least, to transfer the whole army, with artillery and baggage, to the other side of the Mississippi in twenty-four hours. If necessary, troops were to be transported by the canal, though Grant hoped to march them by the road along its bank. Part of McClernand's corps had already reached New Carthage overland, and Grant was hurrying other troops forward. The canal to the bayou was already half completed, thirty-five hundred men being at work on it when I arrived.
The second part of the plan was to float down the river, past the Vicksburg batteries, half a dozen steamboats protected by defenses of bales of cotton and wet hay; these steamboats were to serve as transports of supplies after the army had crossed the Mississippi.
Perhaps the best evidence of the feasibility of the project was found in the fact that the river men pronounced its success certain. General Sherman, who commanded one of the three corps in Grant's army, and with whom I conversed at length upon the subject, thought there was no difficulty in opening the passage, but that the line would be a precarious one for supplies after the army was thrown across the Mississippi. Sherman's preference