Here was another of those strange pauses in the war which history finds it difficult to explain. The first battle of Manassas was fought on the twenty-first of July, 1861. There was no further battling of consequence during that summer or autumn. The battle at Sharpsburg was fought at the middle of September, 1862; there was no further fighting until the middle of December following. The Gettysburg battle was fought during the first three days of July, 1863, and throughout the long summer and autumn that followed there was no activity on either side. Not until May of the following year did the armies that confronted each other in Virginia meet again in conflict.
The wherefore of this inactivity has never been explained.
But meanwhile events of the utmost importance were occurring at the South and West, which claim attention in another chapter.
[CHAPTER XXXIX]
The Campaign of Vicksburg
After Shiloh, Grant was left, as he himself has told us, in a state of grave uncertainty as to the limits of his command, and even as to the question whether or not he had any command. After Halleck was transferred to Washington and placed in the position of General in Chief, things at the West did not much mend. We have seen how Grant at Corinth was slowly stripped of his forces and compelled to stand mainly upon the defensive in a field where offense, instant and vigorous, was obviously called for.
After the fall of Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge, the Confederates were left in possession only of that part of the Mississippi river which lies between Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Their possession of that stretch of river was doubly important to them. Defensively, it enabled them to blockade the river and render it a no-thoroughfare to Federal troops and supplies. Still more importantly, it enabled them to maintain their communications with the country lying to the west of the Mississippi in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. From that region they drew a very important part of their food supplies. These came to Vicksburg by water or over the Shreveport railroad on the west of the river, and were carried from Vicksburg eastward by other lines of railroad. A still more important line of communication was that by way of the Red river, which empties into the Mississippi from the westward between Vicksburg and Port Hudson.
To hold these routes seemed almost an absolute necessity to the Confederates. To cut them and open the Mississippi river from Cairo to the Gulf was equally a necessity to the Federals.
Here were the conditions that rendered a campaign inevitable, and in a degree marked out its course and character. The Confederates energetically fortified Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and planted posts at various other points on both sides of the Mississippi and on the Arkansas and Red rivers. The Federals had made several attempts—one of them made by Farragut himself—to open the Mississippi, but had completely failed, largely because the Confederate fortifications at Vicksburg were perched so high upon the bluff that Farragut's guns could not be sufficiently elevated to reach them.