I told them Grant was sick and asleep, and that I did not want to waken him. They insisted that it was unsafe to go on, and that I would better call the general. Finally I did so, but he was too sick to decide.
"I will leave it with you," he said. I immediately said we would go back to Haynes's Bluff, which we did.
The next morning Grant came out to breakfast fresh as a rose, clean shirt and all, quite himself. "Well, Mr. Dana," he said, "I suppose we are at Satartia now."
"No, general," I said, "we are at Haynes's Bluff." And I told him what had happened.
He did not complain, but as he was short of officers at that point he asked me to go with a party of cavalry toward Mechanicsburg to find if it were true, as reported, that Joe Johnston was advancing from Canton to the Big Black. We had a hard ride, not getting back to Vicksburg until the morning of the eighth. The country was like all the rest around Vicksburg, broken, wooded, unpopulous, with bad roads and few streams. It still had many cattle, but the corn was pretty thoroughly cleared out. We found that Johnston had not moved his main force as rumored, and that he could not move it without bringing all his supplies with him.
Throughout the siege an attack from Johnston continued to threaten Grant and to keep a part of our army busy. Almost every one of my dispatches to Mr. Stanton contained rumors of the movements of the Confederates, and the information was so uncertain that often what I reported one day had to be contradicted the next. About the 15th of June the movements of the enemy were so threatening that Grant issued an order extending Sherman's command so as to include Haynes's Bluff, and to send there the two divisions of the Ninth Corps under General Parke. These troops had just arrived from Kentucky, and Grant had intended to place them on the extreme left of our besieging line.
Although our spies brought in daily reports of forces of the enemy at different points between Yazoo City and Jackson, Johnston's plan did not develop opportunity until the 22d, when he was said to be crossing the Big Black north of Bridgeport. Sherman immediately started to meet him with about thirty thousand troops, including cavalry. Five brigades more were held in readiness to reinforce him if necessary. The country was scoured by Sherman in efforts to beat Johnston, but no trace of an enemy was found. It was, however, ascertained that he had not advanced, but was still near Canton. As there was no design to attack Johnston until Vicksburg was laid low, Sherman made his way to Bear Creek, northwest of Canton, where he could watch the Confederates, and there went into camp.
I went up there several times to visit him, and always came away enthusiastic over his qualities as a soldier. His amazing activity and vigilance pervaded his entire force. The country where he had encamped was exceedingly favorable for defense. He had occupied the commanding points, opened rifle-pits wherever they would add to his advantage, obstructed the cross-roads and most of the direct roads also, and ascertained every point where the Big Black could be forded between the line of Benton on the north and the line of railroads on the south. By his rapid movements, also, and by widely deploying on all the ridges and open headlands, Sherman produced the impression that his forces were ten times as numerous as they really were. Sherman remained in his camp on Bear Creek through the rest of the siege, in order to prevent any possible attack by Joe Johnston, the reports about whose movements continued to be contradictory and uncertain.
Another variation in my Vicksburg life was visiting Admiral Porter, who commanded the fleet which hemmed in the city on the river-side. Porter was a very active, courageous, fresh-minded man, and an experienced naval officer, and I enjoyed the visits I made to his fleet. His boats were pretty well scattered, for the Confederates west of the Mississippi were pressing in, and unless watched might manage to cross somewhere. Seven of the gunboats were south of Vicksburg, one at Haynes's Bluff, one was at Chickasaw Bayou, one at Young's Point, one at Milliken's Bend, one at Lake Providence, one at Greenell, one at Island Sixty-five, two were at White River, and so on, and several were always in motion. They guarded the river so completely that no hostile movement from the west ever succeeded, or was likely to do so.
The most serious attack from the west during the siege was that on June 7th, when a force of some two thousand Confederates engaged about a thousand negro troops defending Milliken's Bend. This engagement at Milliken's Bend became famous from the conduct of the colored troops. General E. S. Dennis, who saw the battle, told me that it was the hardest fought engagement he had ever seen. It was fought mainly hand to hand. After it was over many men were found dead with bayonet stabs, and others with their skulls broken open by butts of muskets. "It is impossible," said General Dennis, "for men to show greater gallantry than the negro troops in that fight."