NEAR VICKSBURG, MISS., May 22, 1863 –
8.30 p.m.
Rear-Admiral DAVID D. PORTER,
Commanding Mississippi Squadron:
Your note, dated 2 p.m., is just received. I had sent you a
dispatch stating that the assault at 10 a.m. was not successful, although not
an entire failure. Our troops succeeded in gaining positions close up to the
enemy's batteries, which we yet hold, and, in one or two instances, getting
into them. I now find the position of the enemy so strong that I shall be
compelled to regularly besiege the city. I would request, therefore, that you
give me all the assistance you can with the mortars and gunboats. McArthur has
been ordered to join McClernand, but I wish to countermand the order, if it has
not already been executed. I have no means of communicating with General
McArthur, except by way of Young's Point. Will you do me the favor to forward
to him the accompanying?
U.S. GRANT.
P. S. – If the gunboats could come up and silence the upper
water battery and clear the southern slope of the second range of hills from
the Yazoo Bottom, it would enable Sherman to carry that position, and virtually
give us the city. The mortar-boats, I think, could be brought with security to
within 1 mile or less of the bluff, on the Mississippi shore, from which they
could rain shells into the city. Let me beg that every gunboat and every mortar
be brought to bear upon the city.
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
24, Part 3 (Serial No. 38), p. 337-8
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