At this time the North had become very much discouraged.  Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure.  The elections of 1862 had gone against the party which was for the prosecution of the war to save the Union if it took the last man and the last dollar.  Voluntary enlistments had ceased throughout the greater part of the North, and the draft had been resorted to to fill up our ranks.  It was my judgment at the time that to make a backward movement as long as that from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for the preservation of the Union, as a defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions ensue and the power to capture and punish deserters lost.  There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to A decisive victory.  This was in my mind from the moment I took command in person at Young’s Point.

The winter of 1862-3 was a noted one for continuous high water in the Mississippi and for heavy rains along the lower river.  To get dry land, or rather land above the water, to encamp the troops upon, took many miles of river front.  We had to occupy the levees and the ground immediately behind.  This was so limited that one corps, the 17th, under General McPherson, was at Lake Providence, seventy miles above Vicksburg.

It was in January the troops took their position opposite Vicksburg.  The water was very high and the rains were incessant.  There seemed no possibility of a land movement before the end of March or later, and it would not do to lie idle all this time.  The effect would be demoralizing to the troops and injurious to their health.  Friends in the North would have grown more and more discouraged, and enemies in the same section more and more insolent in their gibes and denunciation of the cause and those engaged in it.

I always admired the South, as bad as I thought their cause, for the boldness with which they silenced all opposition and all croaking, by press or by individuals, within their control.  War at all times, whether a civil war between sections of a common country or between nations, ought to be avoided, if possible with honor.  But, once entered into, it is too much for human nature to tolerate an enemy within their ranks to give aid and comfort to the armies of the opposing section or nation.

Vicksburg, as stated before, is on the first high land coming to the river’s edge, below that on which Memphis stands.  The bluff, or high land, follows the left bank of the Yazoo for some distance and continues in a southerly direction to the Mississippi River, thence it runs along the Mississippi to Warrenton, six miles below.  The Yazoo River leaves the high land a short distance below Haines’ Bluff and empties into the Mississippi nine miles above Vicksburg.  Vicksburg is built on this high land where the Mississippi washes the base of the hill.  Haines’ Bluff, eleven miles from Vicksburg, on the Yazoo River, was strongly fortified.  The whole distance from there to Vicksburg and thence to Warrenton was also intrenched, with batteries at suitable distances and rifle-pits connecting them.