“At daylight next morning all was ready, and the fleet started for its destined port, which it reached on the banks of the Yazoo about noon the same day. Many years ago, about eight miles below the mouth of the Yazoo, the Mississippi cut a new channel for itself across a bend, coming into the main channel again just above Vicksburg. The Yazoo followed the old channel, and the mouth of the river is, therefore, really from twelve to fifteen miles below where it was originally; but from the old mouth to the new the river is known to pilots as ‘Old River.’ Where the fleet landed was about three miles above Old River, where the right rested, and the left extended to within three miles of Haynes’ Bluff, the intervening space being about six miles.
“On entering the Yazoo, the first object that attracted the attention was the ruins of a large brick house and several other buildings, which were still smoking. On inquiry, I learned that this was the celebrated plantation of the rebel General Albert Sidney Johnston, who was killed at Shiloh. It was an extensive establishment, working over three hundred negroes. It contained a large steam sugar refinery, an extensive steam saw-mill, cotton-gins, machine-shop, and a long line of negro quarters.
“The dwelling was palatial in its proportions and architecture, and the grounds around it were magnificently laid out in alcoves, with arbors, trellises, groves of evergreens, and extensive flower-beds. All was now a mass of smouldering ruins. Our gunboats had gone up there the day before, and a small battery planted near the mansion announced itself by plugging away at one of the iron-clads, and the marines went ashore after the gunboats had silenced the battery, and burned and destroyed every thing on the place. If any thing were wanting to complete the desolate aspect of the place, it was to be found in the sombre-hued pendant moss, peculiar to Southern forests, and which gives the trees a funereal aspect, as if they were all draped in mourning. As on almost every Southern plantation, there were many deadened trees standing about in the fields, from the limbs of all of which long festoons of moss hung, swaying with a melancholy motion in every breeze.
“The weather, since the starting out of the fleet, had, up to this time, been very fine; but as evening now approached, a heavy rain commenced, which, from the appearance of things, bid fair to continue for an indefinite period. The Yazoo River was low, and the banks steep and about thirty feet high. Along the edge of the water, and reaching to the foot of the bank, is a dense undergrowth of willows, briers, thorns, vines, and live oaks, twined together in a most disagreeably promiscuous manner. To effect a landing of the troops and trains, a way had to be cut through this entanglement, from every boat, and this caused such a delay that it was quite dark before all the troops were got on shore. Tents were pitched for the night, pickets sent out, and the army encamped, anxiously awaiting the dawn of the next day.”
That General Grant would fail to communicate with him, General Sherman could not know. He carried out his part of the great programme, and steadily advanced in accordance with its provisions for united action. In this profound ignorance of the occasion of the failure, he prepared to move upon Vicksburg.
CHAPTER XIII.
The March—The City—Preparations for an Assault—The Attack—The Abatis and Rifle-pits—The Charge upon the Hill—Sherman succeeded by McClernand—General Sherman’s Farewell Order—Result of the Expedition.
N Saturday morning, December 27th, the advance of the “right wing of the Army of the Tennessee” reached Vicksburg. The approach to the city from Johnston’s Landing was very difficult, the town “being on a hill, with a line of hills surrounding it at a distance of several miles, and extending from Haines’ Bluff, on the Yazoo River, to Warrenton, ten miles below, the city, on the Mississippi River. The low country in the vicinity is swampy, filled with sloughs, bayous, and lagoons; to approach Vicksburg with a large force by this route, even in times of peace, would be a matter of great difficulty, and with an enemy in front, it was almost an impossibility.”
The line of battle was soon formed by the army, and, from different points, the onset made upon the enemy’s works. Oh! how gallantly those Western legions beat against the ramparts! And when the twilight shadows stole over the bristling walls and hill-sides, they had driven the rebel forces a mile from their original position. Sunday dawned upon the night’s repose of the combatants, and on the sacred air rang out the summons to carnage again. But the affair at Holly Springs had broken up the grand plan of attack, while the flying troops from General Grant’s front reënforced the garrison. Over the battlements of rebellion poured the iron tempest upon Sherman’s unyielding lines. Securely the foe remained behind those defences, rising for two miles along the bluff, presenting a barrier no army small as the “right wing” could scale or remove. Meanwhile the sharpshooters from the forest dropped the officers on every hand.