The bravery of the blacks in the battle at Milliken's Bend completely revolutionized the sentiment of the army with regard to the employment of negro troops. I heard prominent officers who formerly in private had sneered at the idea of the negroes fighting express themselves after that as heartily in favor of it. Among the Confederates, however, the feeling was very different. All the reports which came to us showed that both citizens and soldiers on the Confederate side manifested great dismay at the idea of our arming negroes. They said that such a policy was certain to be followed by insurrection with all its horrors.
Although the presence of Joe Johnston on the east, and the rumors of invasion by Kirby Smith from the west, compelled constant attention, the real work behind Vicksburg was always that of the siege. No amount of outside alarm loosened Grant's hold on the rebel stronghold. The siege went on steadily and effectively. By June 10th the expected reinforcements began to report. Grant soon had eighty-five thousand men around Vicksburg, and Pemberton's last hope was gone. The first troops to arrive were eight regiments under General Herron. They came from Missouri, down the Mississippi to Young's Point, where they were debarked and marched across the peninsula, care being taken, of course, that the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg should see the whole march. The troops were then ferried across the Mississippi, and took a position south of Vicksburg between Lauman's troops and the Mississippi River, completely closing the lines, and thus finally rendering egress and ingress absolutely impossible. Herron took this position on June 13th. He went to work with so much energy that on the night of the 15th he was able to throw forward his lines on his left, making an advance of five hundred yards, and bringing his artillery and rifle-pits within two or three hundred yards of the enemy's lines.
Herron was a first-rate officer, and the only consummate dandy I ever saw in the army. He was always handsomely dressed; I believe he never went out without patent-leather boots on, and you would see him in the middle of a battle—well, I can not say exactly that he went into battle with a lace pocket-handkerchief, but at all events he always displayed a clean white one. But these little vanities appeared not to detract from his usefulness. Herron had already proved his ability and fighting qualities at the battle of Prairie Grove, December 7, 1862.
Just as our reinforcements arrived we began to receive encouraging reports from within Vicksburg. Deserters said that the garrison was worn out and hungry; besides, the defense had for several days been conducted with extraordinary feebleness, which Grant thought was due to the deficiency of ammunition or to exhaustion and depression in the garrison, or to their retirement to an inner line of defense. The first and third of these causes no doubt operated to some extent, but the second we supposed to be the most influential. The deserters also said that fully one third of the garrison were in hospital, and that officers, as well as men, had begun to despair of relief from Johnston.
These reports from within the town, as well as the progress of the siege and the arrival of reinforcements, pointed so strongly to the speedy surrender of the place that I asked Mr. Stanton in my dispatch of June 14th to please inform me by telegram whether he wished me to go to General Rosecrans after the fall of Vicksburg or whether he had other orders for me.
The next day after this letter, however, the enemy laid aside his long-standing inactivity and opened violently with both artillery and musketry. Two mortars which the Confederates got into operation that day in front of General A. J. Smith particularly interested our generals. I remember going with a party of some twenty officers, including Sherman, Ord, McPherson, and Wilson, to the brow of a hill on McPherson's front to watch this battery with our field glasses. From where we were we could study the whole operation. We saw the shell start from the mortar, sail slowly through the air toward us, fall to the ground and explode, digging out a hole which looked like a crater. I remember one of these craters which must have been nine feet in diameter. As you watched a shell coming you could not tell whether it would fall a thousand feet away or by your side. Yet nobody budged. The men sat there on their horses, their reins loose, studying and discussing the work of the batteries, apparently indifferent to the danger. It was very interesting as a study of human steadiness.
By the middle of June our lines were so near the enemy's on Sherman's and McPherson's front that General Grant began to consider the project of another general assault as soon as McClernand's, Lauman's, and Herron's lines were brought up close. Accordingly, Sherman and McPherson were directed to hold their work until the others were up to them. Herron, of course, had not had time to advance, though since his arrival he had worked with great energy. Lauman had done little in the way of regular approaches. But the chief difficulty in the way was the backwardness of McClernand. His trenches were mere rifle-pits, three or four feet wide, and would allow neither the passage of artillery nor the assemblage of any considerable number of troops. His batteries were, with scarcely an exception, in the position they apparently had held when the siege was opened.
This obstacle to success was soon removed. On the 18th of June McClernand was relieved and General Ord was put into his place. The immediate occasion of McClernand's removal was a congratulatory address to the Thirteenth Corps which he had fulminated in May, and which first reached the besieging army in a copy of the Missouri Democrat. In this extraordinary address McClernand claimed for himself most of the glory of the campaign, reaffirmed that on May 22d he had held two rebel forts for several hours, and imputed to other officers and troops failure to support him in their possession, which must have resulted in the capture of the town, etc. Though this congratulatory address was the occasion of McClernand's removal, the real causes of it dated farther back. These causes, as I understood at the time, were his repeated disobedience of important orders, his general unfortunate mental disposition, and his palpable incompetence for the duties of his position. I learned in private conversation that in General Grant's judgment it was necessary that McClernand should be removed for the reason, above all, that his bad relations with other corps commanders, especially Sherman and McPherson, rendered it impossible that the chief command of the army should devolve upon him, as it would have done were General Grant disabled, without some pernicious consequence to the Union cause.