This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [131]
The real importance of the raids, however, was that they brought Grant’s army to an abrupt standstill. All hands were put on half rations, and to keep his army from starvation Grant sent his wagons out into the country to seize supplies. They got so much stuff, incidentally, that Grant’s eyes popped out, and in the months to come he reflected long and hard on the likelihood that an army in Mississippi could abandon its supply line entirely and live off the country.9 This conclusion came to him later, however; at the time he could only call off his advance and wait while communications were restored. He could not get word to Sherman, and that officer sailed down-river for Vicksburg, confident that everything was going according to schedule.
Late in December, Sherman’s flotilla entered the mouth of the Yazoo, and the soldiers went ashore and made ready to assault Chickasaw Bluffs. As far as Sherman knew, Grant was approaching Vicksburg from the northeast, and the Rebels must be too busy fending him off to make a good defense at the bluffs.
Disillusionment came quickly. Pemberton did not have to worry about Grant, and he had plenty of men waiting for Sherman’s attack. The position on Chickasaw Bluffs was so strong that when it was properly manned it could not possibly be stormed, and when the Federals made their attack on December 29 they were quickly defeated, with over seventeen hundred casualties. Sherman got his men back on the boats, moved out of range, and glumly wondered what to do next. The expedition was a flat failure, and it seemed advisable to do something to put a good face on matters. He and Admiral Porter talked things over and agreed that something might be salvaged from defeat by making a quick stab at Confederate Fort Hindman, otherwise known as Arkansas Post — a stronghold forty miles up the Arkansas River, which entered the Mississippi seventy miles above Vicksburg. No real attack on Vicksburg, Sherman argued, could be made until this post was reduced; besides, a victory there would help the North forget about what had happened at Chickasaw Bluffs.10
No sooner had they agreed on this than the steamer Tigress came in bearing McClernand — angry and eager. McClernand issued a proclamation assuming command of everything — between the men who had come down with him and the ones Sherman had led, there were now thirty-two thousand Federal soldiers in the vicinity — and he announced that this would hereafter be known as the Army of the Mississippi. Sherman would command one corps in this army and the other would be under General G. W. Morgan.11 This rubbed Sherman where he was raw; he felt that Morgan had let him down badly in the fight at the bluffs by failing to attack as ordered, but McClernand was boss and there was no help for it.
McClernand did respect Sherman as a soldier, and when the Arkansas Post idea was explained to him he immediately approved it. He had reached the scene on January 3, and by January 10 his army and Porter’s flotilla had gone up the Arkansas River and were hammering away at the fort.
The fort caved in quickly, the Federals took nearly five thousand prisoners, and here was a neat little success to counterbalance Chickasaw Bluffs. McClernand, Sherman, and Porter dropped down the river again to a point near the mouth of the Yazoo; and Grant, who had returned to Memphis, got the news.
Grant was not in a mood to give McClernand