CHAPTER XIX.-Continued.
Taking advantage of this movement, a large force of Confederates gathered at Vicksburg under General J. C. Pemberton, for the protection of that post. On the day when Grant's  supplies were seized at Holly Springs, about twenty thousand National troops, led by General W. T. Sherman, left Memphis in transports, with siege guns, to beleaguer Vicksburg. At Friar's Point they were joined by troops from Helena, and were met by Commodore Porter, whose fleet of gunboats were at the mouth of the Yazoo River, just above Vicksburg. The two commanders arranged a plan for attacking the city in the rear, and proceeded to execute it. The troops and fleet went up the Yazoo River to capture some batteries which disputed the way to that rear; but Sherman was repulsed after a sharp battle at Chickasaw Bayou (December 28), and the project was abandoned for a time.
General John A. McClernand, the senior of Sherman in rank, arrived at headquarters, near Vicksburg, early in January, 1863, and took the chief command. He and Porter went up the Arkansas  River with their forces, and on the 11th captured the important Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post. In the meantime General Grant had arranged his army into four corps, and with it descended the river from Memphis to prosecute the siege of Vicksburg with vigor. He was soon convinced that it could not be taken by direct assault. He tried to perfect the canal begun by Farragut, but failed; and then he sent a considerable land and naval force up the Yazoo to capture batteries at Haines's Bluff, and so gain a footing in the rear of Vicksburg. These were repulsed at Fort Pemberton, near Greenwood, late in March. Other channels among the brimming bayous and small rivers were diligently sought by the indomitable Porter, to gain the rear of the foredoomed city, but in vain, and again the enterprise was abandoned. The details of these efforts of the army and navy, during the spring of 1863, form one of the most wonderful chapters in the history of the war. The waters were then redundant, and the voyages were sometimes wild and perilous, the gunboats sweeping on strong currents through overflowed swamps under lofty overarching trees draped with the trailing Spanish moss, and having their smoke-stacks leveled at times, and their wheels fearfully bruised.
While these operations against Vicksburg were in progress, there had been lively times on the bosom of the Mississippi. In February (1863), iron-clad vessels of Porter's fleet ran by the batteries at Vicksburg, and made considerable havoc among Confederate transports below that were supplying the troops there and at Port Hudson with stores. These venturesome National vessels were lost, and their crews were made prisoners. Later, when Grant had sent a strong land force down the west side of the river, Porter successfully ran by the batteries at Vicksburg with nearly his whole fleet and the transports, on the night of the 16th of April. Then Grant prepared for vigorous operations on the flank and rear of Vicksburg, on the line of the Big Black River. Porter also attacked and ran by the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, on the 27th of April, when Grant's army crossed the Mississippi a little below, pressed forward, and at Port Gibson gained a decisive victory in a battle fought there on the first of May.
In the meantime, Sherman, who had made another unsuccessful effort to capture the batteries at Haines's Bluff, by order of General Grant, marched down the west side of the Mississippi, crossed it, and joined the main army on the 8th of May. Then the whole force pushed rapidly toward Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, where General Joseph E. Johnston was in command of a Confederate army. After a severe battle at Raymond, on the 12th of May, in which the Confederates were defeated, and another near Jackson, on the 14th, when the insurgents were driven northward, the Nationals seized the State capital, and
Copyright, 1895, by CHARLES F. JOHNSON. Copyright, 1905, by LOSSING HISTORY COMPANY. 1912, by THE WAR MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION, INC.
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