ON BOARD Forest
Queen,
MILLIKEN'S BEND, January
4, 1863.
Well, we have been to Vicksburg and it was too much for us,
and we have backed out. I suppose the attack on Holly Springs and the railroad
compelled Grant to fall behind the Tallahatchie, and consequently the
Confederates were enabled to reinforce Vicksburg. Besides, its natural strength
had been improved by a vast amount of labor, so that it was impossible for me
to capture or even to penetrate to the road from which alone I could expect to
take it. For five days we were thundering away, and when my main assault
failed, and Admiral Porter deemed another requiring the cooperation of the
gunboats “too hazardous,” I saw no alternative but to regain my steamboats and
the main river, which I did unopposed and unmolested. To re-embark a large
command in the face of an enterprising and successful enemy is no easy task,
but I accomplished it. McClernand has arrived to supersede me by order of the
President himself.1 Of course I submit gracefully. The President is
charged with maintaining the government and has a perfect right to choose his
agents. My command is to be an army corps composed of Morgan L. Smith's old
command (poor Morgan now lies wounded badly in the hip on board the Chancellor,
and his division is commanded by Stuart), and the troops I got at Helena
commanded by Fred Steele whom I know well. These are all new and strange to me
but such is life and luck. Before I withdrew from the Yazoo I saw McClernand
and told him that we had failed to carry the enemy's line of works before
Vicksburg, but I could hold my ground at Yazoo — but it would be useless. He
promptly confirmed my judgment that it was best to come out into the main river
at Milliken's Bend. We did so day before yesterday, and it has rained hard two
days and I am satisfied that we got out of the Swamp at Chickasaw Bayou in
time, for now water and mud must be forty feet deep there. . . . Regulars did well, of course, but they or no
human beings could have crossed the bayou and live. People at a distance will
ridicule our being unable to pass a narrow bayou, but nobody who was there
will. Instead of lying idle I proposed we should come to the Arkansas and
attack the Post of Arkansas, fifty miles up that river, from which the enemy
has attacked the river capturing one of our boats, towing two barges of navy
coal and capturing a mail, so I have no doubt some curious lieutenant has read
your letters to me. We must make the river safe behind us before we push too
far down. We are now on our way to the Post of Arkansas. McClernand assumed
command to-day, so I will not be care-worn again by the duty of looking to
supplies, plans, etc. . . . It will in
the end cost us at least ten thousand lives to take Vicksburg. I would have
pushed the attack to the bitter end, but even had we reached the city
unassisted we could not have held it if they are at liberty to reinforce from
the interior. . . .
__________
1 On January 2, Sherman had learned that
McClernand had “orders from the War Department to command the expeditionary
force on the Mississippi River” (Memoirs, I, 322). On January 24,
Sherman wrote to his wife: “It was simply absurd to supersede me by McClernand,
but Mr. Lincoln knows I am not anxious to command, and he knows McClernand is,
and must gratify him. He will get his fill before he is done.”
SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of
General Sherman, p. 235-7. A full copy of this letter can
be found in the William
T Sherman Family papers (SHR), University of Notre Dame Archives
(UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556, Folder CSHR 1/150.
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