When Grant accompanied Porter up Steele’s Bayou on March 17, he had along with him an unusual visitor, a forty-three-year-old gentleman of the press by the name of Charles Anderson Dana. What made Dana unusual was that, unlike most of his colleagues, he did not consider himself to be an enemy of the generals. Actually, Dana was not acting as a reporter. He bore the title of assistant secretary of war, and was anxious to contribute to the campaign against Vicksburg by utilizing whatever talents he could offer.

Understandably, Dana’s presence caused much by way of conjecture around Grant’s headquarters, partly because of his prominence. He had once been managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Herald, and on this visit he was designated as a “special commissioner.” Supposedly he was there only to evaluate procedures for the payment of troops, but nobody was fooled by that camouflage; Dana had obviously come as a sort of agent, probably to evaluate Grant for the benefit of the secretary and President Lincoln.

With today’s hindsight, it seems strange that Grant, the only Union general who had won significant victories,¹ should have been in danger of losing his command. Lincoln, however, had no way of foreseeing the successful outcome of the Vicksburg campaign. What he saw was Grant’s army struggling in the mud, losing one skirmish after another, his men suffering. Perhaps more important, a whispering campaign was circling around Washington about Grant’s heavy drinking, rumors that were doubtless encouraged and even exaggerated by jealous men such as McClernand. Dana, however, had come with an open mind to learn the true facts, instinctively leaning in Grant’s favor.

If Grant felt threatened by Dana’s presence, he did not cringe. He ordered that Dana be given access to all of his papers and to his staff. Nothing, Grant had ordered, should be hidden. And after a short while Dana had come to the same evaluations as those held by Grant’s associates. The general, he concluded, certainly did have a drinking problem, but the affliction appeared to come in spurts, and did not exist as a chronic condition. Granted, at times of inactivity between battles, the general would go on a drinking bout that appalled the onlooker. But such episodes were short-lived. By the next morning after a spree Grant would arise from sleep refreshed and with normal energy. His weakness had never interfered with the performance of his duties.

Dana actually noted one such incident when he accompanied Grant at Steele’s Bayou. In his memoirs, Grant mentions only that he stayed with Porter one day. Dana, however, recorded something more dire in his notes:

Grant wound up going aboard a steamer . . . and getting so stupidly drunk as the mortal nature of man would allow; but the next day he came out fresh as a rose, without any trace of the spree he had just passed through. So it was on two or three occasions of the sort and when it was all over, no outsider would have suspected such things had been.²

Dana pondered what to say in his report. Realizing that Grant’s enemies would emphasize only the drunkenness and ignore Dana’s glowing praise of Grant’s overall worth, he decided to report nothing of the drinking incidents. Yet, perhaps by coincidence, Grant’s wife, Julia, soon appeared on the scene, accompanied by Fred, one of their sons. Whether any connection existed between the two facts is questionable.

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In the meantime Grant had realized that he could not take Vicksburg from the north, so he decided on a high-risk operation, one of the most dramatic events of the war: the movement of Porter’s seven ironclads below the guns of Vicksburg southward along the Mississippi. This operation would allow Grant to launch a new battle on the dry ground to the south, which he would have preferred from the outset.

It was a necessary move. For more than three months, from December 1862 through March 1863, Grant’s and Porter’s forces had attempted to approach Vicksburg from the east (Corinth) and the north (Memphis) through water and mud. None of the numerous attempts had brought success. Grant had moved some troops down the west bank of the Mississippi, but the abominable weather had prevented his sending very many. The one option remaining, therefore, was to move troops and ironclads southward by water. Porter’s ironclads were the critical element. Grant’s soldiers alone could never attack Vicksburg without their heavy firepower. And those ships could be moved south in no other way.

It was a dangerous undertaking, and given the power of the Vicksburg defenses, Grant had delayed ordering it until he had first exhausted all other options.

Grant and Porter decided early that the operation had to be conducted at night, despite the danger of collisions between ships. The date was set for April 16, 1863. Porter had a total of seven ironclads, which he led from the bridge of his flagship, Benton. Three army transports loaded with supplies and troops would follow. These transports towed ten barges loaded with coal. A final, single barge, loaded with ammunition, was to follow the other ships at a distance great enough that in case of disaster, the exploding ammunition would not damage the rest of the fleet.³

Grant was assuming total responsibility for the risks, and he did not feel obligated to inform Washington of his plans. Washington, however, inevitably got wind of it; no operation of this size could be kept totally secret, even though all newspaper reporters with the army were being incarcerated in Memphis (much to Sherman’s delight). When word of the plan reached the White House, Lincoln was concerned, as was Halleck, but neither official sent any orders forbidding Grant to undertake the movement.

Lincoln and even Stanton may have been reticent to interfere, but the secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles, was not. He was, in fact, infuriated by the zeal that Porter was putting into his support of Grant. His annoyance was heightened by his conviction that taking Vicksburg was unimportant. He freely quoted the president as believing that naval patrolling along the Mississippi between Vicksburg and Port Hudson would be of far greater value.

Porter, however, was not to be cowed by Washington. He was sorry, he informed the secretary, that “the Department is not satisfied with operations here,” but he reminded Welles that he had been specifically sent to Vicksburg to support Grant. Grant, he went on, had decided on this operation, and many “sagacious officers” agreed with him. He must act, Porter declared, in accordance with his own judgment.⁴ Nothing more was said, at least for the moment.

Grant and Porter could contend with Washington, but Grant was troubled by the doubts of his most trusted subordinate, Sherman. Sherman, in a cautiously worded letter to Grant, expressed those doubts. Contrary to the later contentions of critics, however, Sherman did not “protest”—so he claimed—but expressed his reservations with the request that his chief need not send any answer.⁵

Sherman’s worries about moving south of Vicksburg were largely based on logistics; he questioned how Grant could supply his force once he had moved it there. A dismal fact, one that Porter also pointed out to Grant, was that the movement of the ironclads would be a one-way proposition. The current of the Mississippi was so rapid that once his ships were south of Vicksburg, it would be dangerous for them to return upstream. They would suffer from greatly reduced speed. Sherman was also concerned about the presence of Confederate boats located up tributaries of the Yazoo River, which, with Porter’s fleet absent, could come out of hiding into the Mississippi and cut Grant’s supply line to Memphis. Sherman suspected that Grant’s moving south had an aspect other than the merely military. Pulling back to Memphis, as Sherman and Porter preferred, would give the impression of defeat, which Grant would never tolerate.⁶ Nevertheless both men followed Grant’s decision as stoutly as if it had been their own.

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Sherman’s role in this operation, like many others he played, was unconventional. Grant was concerned that if Confederate gunfire was effective, many men might find themselves blown into the water, in danger of drowning. He and Sherman came up with a scheme to minimize that danger. Sherman would leave his headquarters at Milliken’s Bend and set up a line of small craft below the city, on the lookout for anyone struggling in the water. They had watched many of them sailing around beneath Vicksburg’s guns, apparently considered not worth shooting at. Obtaining the small boats for the purpose was difficult, but eventually someone located some sloops at Memphis. Sherman commandeered four of them and positioned them south of Vicksburg, as planned. He also decided to check every arriving ship, whether it had been hit or not.

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On the evening of April 16, 1863, according to plan, Porter’s flotilla cut loose from its moorings north of Vicksburg and drifted silently down the river, hoping not to be noticed. At a little after eleven p.m., however, their presence was discovered, and guns from the Vicksburg batteries began to roar. Porter’s ironclads answered, and for two hours a gun battle raged that could be heard sixty miles away. Miraculously, no Union soldiers or sailors were killed, although Porter’s flagship, the Benton, was hit and one army transport was sunk. Julia Grant and Fred watched aboard a ship out of the line of fire. Grant and Dana went with Porter.

The town where Porter landed Grant’s troops was thirty-three miles south of Vicksburg, and bore the strange name of Hard Times. Grant had chosen it because it was situated in safe territory, on the west bank of the river, thus avoiding the prospect of landing in piecemeal hunks on the Vicksburg side. Having landed without resistance, Grant organized and assembled his men. He soon realized that the territory in the vicinity could not feed his army, so on April 23, a week after landing, he sent an expedition of small craft up the river past Vicksburg for resupply.

Seven days later, Grant and Porter decided that the time had come to cross the Mississippi to the east bank. As a landing place they chose a port named Grand Gulf, directly across from Grant’s assembly area. Though the spot lay beneath formidable banks, the town was thought to be unoccupied. Unfortunately, it turned out to be heavily armed, and Porter’s ships were met by a heavy barrage of Confederate defenses. His guns answered back, but Porter came out second-best, losing one ship in the duel. With the Confederate guns still firing, Grant’s transports were forced to withdraw.

Then came a stroke of luck. While Grant was looking for an alternative place to land, an escaped slave advised him of a small port named Bruinsburg a few miles down the river. Grant took the man at his word and ferried his men to that point, where they landed unopposed. He then moved inland and the next day fought a skirmish at a place called Port Gibson. The enemy retreated, and Grant was soon able to take the Grand Gulf position from the rear. He was now on advantageous ground from which he could mount an attack or lay a siege on Vicksburg.

Grant had a decision to make. Lincoln and Halleck, who were perhaps more interested in General Nathaniel Banks’s campaign against Port Hudson to the south than they were in Vicksburg, had given orders for Grant to join up with Banks. Once they had consolidated Port Hudson they could move together against Vicksburg. Such a prospect would have been impossible while Grant’s force was north of Vicksburg, but now that he was south of that obstacle the issue became feasible. Grant contacted Banks and learned, probably to his relief, that the Red River campaign was going slowly. Banks advised that he could not join forces with Grant for another month. Grant decided not to wait. He resolved to continue operations on his own and take Vicksburg from the south.

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Once Grant’s force had made a successful landing at Hard Times, Sherman returned to his XV Corps, which was still up north at Milliken’s Bend. Grant had instructed him to remain there until about May 1, 1863, and then, leaving one division to guard Union supplies, to make the long and tedious march down the west bank of the Mississippi and join the rest of the army.⁷ At that time, Grant was making his plans to land at Grand Gulf, and he made a “request” of Sherman—an unusually sheepish request—that Sherman make a diversionary attack on Haynes Bluff, near Chickasaw Bluffs on the Yazoo River. He did not issue an order; he merely “hoped” that Sherman would do so. Both men were aware that the demonstration against Haynes Bluff would be rebuffed, and that the defeat would reawaken the criticism of Sherman in the Northern press. But Grant knew his man. Sherman, aware of the consequences, did not hesitate in notifying his chief that the attack would be executed.

On April 30, Sherman made his attack, using only ten regiments in order to hold down casualties. The results were more than hoped for. In his memoirs, Sherman could not restrain himself from just a touch of self-congratulation:

. . . I did make [the feint] most effectually. . . . We afterward learned that General Pemberton in Vicksburg had previously dispatched a large force to the assistance of General Bowen, at Grand Gulf and Port Gibson, . . . When he discovered our ostentatious movement up the Yazoo, he recalled his men, and sent them up to Haines’s Bluff to meet us. This detachment of rebel troops must have marched nearly sixty miles without rest, for afterward, on reaching Vicksburg, I heard that the men were perfectly exhausted, and lay along the road in groups, completely fagged out. This diversion, made with so much pomp and display, therefore completely fulfilled its purpose, by leaving General Grant to contend with a minor force, on landing at Bruinsburg, and afterward at Port Gibson and Grand Gulf.⁸

The feint at Haynes Bluff was Sherman’s last action at Milliken’s Bend. By May 1 he had the XV Corps, less a division, on the way to Hard Times.

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Sherman’s two divisions, those of Fred Steele and J. M. Tuttle, found the march down to Hard Times difficult, but the heavy equipment had gone by water, so the infantry and horses were able to make it. On reaching his destination on May 6, Sherman established his headquarters. As a curious man, he decided to take a look around the area.

To his surprise he ran across a plantation called Bowie’s Plantation, owned by Thomas Fielder Bowie. Sherman had a remote connection with Mr. Bowie, as the latter was a brother-in-law of Reverdy Johnson, the attorney general in Zachary Taylor’s cabinet. Sherman remembered Johnson from the days when Thomas Ewing had also been in Taylor’s cabinet. The plantation house was a magnificent building, with wide lawns, a grand piano, and two handsome paintings of Reverdy Johnson and his wife, a woman acclaimed for her beauty. The house had been ransacked, with dresses and books strewn around, and seated in front of the piano, his feet on the keys, lounged a soldier who Sherman concluded was a member of Major General James B. McPherson’s division. Sherman ordered the malingerer back to his post and continued his search. A short way from the house he found the slave quarters, occupied by only an old Negro and a few women. Sherman rousted them and sent them to clean up the mess in the plantation house and to prevent any further depredations. He then returned to his headquarters.

That evening Sherman reviewed the episode in his mind and became concerned. He sent a couple of soldiers with a wagon to rescue the two paintings and return them to his safekeeping. A while later the soldiers returned. The house and the paintings had all been burned to the ground. Nobody knew who had committed the act, a Union soldier or one of the former slaves.

Sherman had no time to worry about such things. Almost immediately upon his arrival he began moving his troops across the river to Bruinsburg. Despite shortages in ships, he accomplished the task in one day, May 7, and went into reserve, pending action. He reported to Grant on May 9.