In the first three months of 1863, while the army of the Potomac, shattered at Fredericksburg, was being prepared for the fresh attack upon Lee which ended at Chancellorsville, and while Bragg and Rosecrans lay confronting each other in Middle Tennessee, each content that the other was afraid to weaken himself by sending troops to the Mississippi, Grant was occupied in a series of enterprises apparently more cautious than that in which he eventually succeeded, but each in its turn futile.  An attempt was made to render Vicksburg useless by a canal cutting across the bend of the Mississippi to the west of that fortress.  Then Grant endeavoured with the able co-operation of Admiral Porter and his flotilla to secure a safe landing on the Yazoo, which enters the Mississippi a little above Vicksburg, so that he could move his army to the rear of Vicksburg by this route.  Next Grant and Porter tried to establish a sure line of water communication from a point far up the Mississippi through an old canal, then somehow obstructed, into the upper waters of the Yazoo and so to a point on that river 30 or 40 miles to the north-east of Vicksburg, by which they would have turned the right of the main Confederate force; but this was frustrated by the Confederates, who succeeded in establishing a strong fort further up the Yazoo.  Yet a further effort was made to establish a waterway by a canal quitting the Mississippi about 40 miles north of Vicksburg and communicating, through lakes, bayous, and smaller rivers, with its great tributary the Red River far to the south.  This, like the first canal attempted, would have rendered Vicksburg useless.

Each of these projects failed in turn.  The tedious engineering work which two of them involved was rendered more depressing by adverse conditions of weather and by ill-health among Grant’s men.  Natural grumbling among the troops was repeated and exaggerated in the North.  McClernand employed the gift for intrigue, which perhaps had helped him to secure his command, in an effort to get Grant removed.  It is melancholy to add that a good many newspapers at this time began to print statements that Grant had again taken to drink.  It is certain that he was at this time a total abstainer.  It is said that he had offended the authors of this villainy by the restrictions which he had long before found necessary to put upon information to the Press.  Some of the men freely confessed afterwards that they had been convinced of his sobriety, and added the marvellous apology that their business was to give the public “the news.”  Able and more honest journalists urged that Grant had proved his incompetence.  Secretary Chase took up their complaints and pressed that Grant should be removed.  Lincoln, before the outcry against Grant had risen to its height, had felt the need of closer information than he possessed about the situation on the Mississippi; and had hit upon the happy expedient of sending an