able official of the War Department, who deserved and obtained the confidence of Grant and his officers, to accompany the Western army and report to him.  Apart, however, from the reports he thus received, he had always treated the attacks on Grant with contempt.  “I cannot spare this general; he fights,” he said.  In reply to complaints that Grant drank, he enquired (adapting, as he knew, George II.’s famous saying about Wolfe) what whisky he drank, explaining that he wished to send barrels of it to some of his other generals.  His attitude is remarkable, because in his own mind he had not thought well of any of Grant’s plans after his first failure in December; he had himself wished from an early day that Grant would take the very course by which he ultimately succeeded.  He let him go his own way, as he afterwards told him, from “a general hope that you know better than I.”

At the end of March Grant took a memorable determination to transfer his whole force to the south of Vicksburg and approach it from that direction.  He was urged by Sherman to give up any further attempt to use the river, and, instead, to bring his whole army back to Memphis and begin a necessarily slow approach on Vicksburg by the railway.  He declared himself that on ordinary grounds of military prudence this would have been the proper course, but he decided for himself that the depressing effect of the retreat to Memphis would be politically disastrous.  At Grand Gulf, 30 miles south of Vicksburg, the South possessed another fortified post on the river; to reach this Grant required the help of the Navy, not only in crossing from the western bank of the river, but in transporting the supplies for which the roads west of the river were inadequate.  Admiral Porter, with his gunboats and laden barges, successfully ran the gauntlet of the Vicksburg batteries by night without serious damage.  Grand Gulf was taken on May 3, and Grant’s army established at this new base.  A further doubt now arose.  General Banks in Louisiana was at this time preparing to besiege Port Hudson.  It might be well for Grant to go south and join him, and, after reducing Port Hudson, return with Banks’ forces against Vicksburg.  This was what now commended itself to Lincoln.  In the letter of congratulation which some time later he was able to send to Grant, after referring to his former opinion which had been right, he confessed that he had now been wrong.  Banks was not yet ready to move, and Vicksburg, now seriously threatened, might soon be reinforced.  Orders to join Banks, though they were probably meant to be discretionary, were actually sent to Grant, but too late.  He had cut himself loose from his base at Grand Gulf and marched his troops north, to live with great hardship to themselves on the country and the supplies they could take with them.  He had with him 35,000 men.  General Pemberton, to whom he had so far been opposed, lay covering Vicksburg with 20,000 and