Ulysses S. Grant - Michael Korda [34]
It was now January 1863. A month had been wasted in maneuvering to the north of Vicksburg, with nothing to show for it but casualties and McClernand’s hurt feelings. Clearly Grant would have to think his way around Vicksburg.
He looked at the map again and discovered that the Yazoo River had at one time been connected to the Mississippi, and that a levee had been built to separate them and prevent flooding. Cutting the levee might enable Porter to bring his gunboats and transports to the undefended rear of Vicksburg by water. The Confederates, it should be explained, had made the same mistake at Vicksburg that the British did in Singapore eighty years later. Just as the big guns at Singapore had been sited to fire out to sea, thus leaving the city undefended against an attack from the land, the guns at Vicksburg had been placed to defend it from attack from the river or from the north. The “back door” to Vicksburg was lightly defended, and cutting the road or the railway line from Jackson would eventually starve its defenders and inhabitants of supplies.
In the event, the levee was cut, with enormous effort, but the Confederates had had time (and ample warning) to place a fort on high ground and block the gunboats, which had to back their way, under heavy fire, to the Mississippi.
Grant next attempted to descend to the rear of Vicksburg via the bayous, only to find that the Confederates chopped down trees in front of the boats, blocking the way, and then chopped trees down behind them, blocking their retreat, while Confederate sharpshooters picked off anybody who showed his head.
Grant then turned his attention to the west bank of the Mississippi, where the army busied itself building miles of roads and bridges through the marshy ground. It was clear enough that given time and effort they could make their way south of Vicksburg, but what then? The Mississippi was more than half a mile wide, and the troops would need to be transported across it. Grant thought he had a solution to that: He would cut a canal, allowing the fleet to get south of Vicksburg without running the gauntlet of the Confederate batteries on the other side of the river, so the army fell to work to dig a full-scale ship canal, only to have the Mississippi rise and flood it out just as they completed it.
It was now the end of February, and Grant was no nearer Vicksburg than before. In the North the newspapers hurled criticism and ridicule at him, in the South they made fun of him, and McClernand reported back to Washington that Grant was drinking again, which appears to have been untrue. It was, perhaps, his lowest moment as a general, matters not being improved when a steward on his steamer threw Grant’s false teeth overboard by mistake. On shore smallpox and cholera were striking the army, due to unsanitary conditions, and in Washington there was talk of replacing Grant. Perplexed and troubled, Lincoln sent Charles A. Dana back again, and once again Dana’s reports saved Grant’s career and, in some mysterious way, raised Grant’s spirits. His dentist, S. L. Hamlin, arrived with a new set of teeth, and Grant sat down at the map again with Porter and Sherman and came up with a new plan.
This one required daring from the navy, but fortunately for Grant, Porter was a kind of seaborne Sherman. Porter would take his fleet down the Mississippi at night past Vicksburg, first his gunboats, then his transports, running the gauntlet of the Confederate guns. Sherman and McClernand, meanwhile, would bring their