rmy and the
fleet moved gradually forward, building storehouses and taking strong
positions as they went. To do this, however, it first would have been
necessary to withdraw the army from the positions it then held not far
above Vicksburg, on the western bank of the river. But such a movement,
at that time, would not have been understood by the country, and would
have had a discouraging effect on the public mind, which it was
most essential to avoid. The elections of 1862 had gone against the
government, and there was great discouragement throughout the North.
Voluntary enlistments had fallen off, a draft had been ordered, and the
peace party was apparently gaining rapidly in strength. General Grant,
looking at this grave political situation with the eye of a statesman,
decided, as a soldier, that under no circumstances would he withdraw the
army, but that, whatever happened, he would "press forward to a decisive
victory." In this determination he never faltered, but drove straight
at his object until, five months later, the great Mississippi stronghold
fell before him.

Efforts were made through the winter to reach Vicksburg from the north
by cutting canals, and by attempts to get in through the bayous and
tributary streams of the great river. All these expedients failed,
however, one after another, as Grant, from the beginning, had feared
that they would. He, therefore, took another and widely different line,
and determined to cross the river from the western to the eastern bank
below Vicksburg, to the south. With the aid of the fleet, which ran the
batteries successfully, he moved his army down the west bank until he
reached a point beyond the possibility of attack, while a diversion
by Sherman at Haines' Bluff, above Vicksburg, kept Pemberton in his
fortifications. On April 26, Grant began to move his men over the river
and landed them at Bruinsburg. "When this was effected," he writes, "I
felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since. Vicksburg was not
yet taken, it is true, nor were its defenders demoralized by any of our
previous movements. I was now in the enemy's country, with a vast river
and the stronghold of Vicksburg between me and my base of supplies, but
I was on dry ground, on the same side of the river with the enemy."

The situation was this: The enemy had about sixty thousand men at
Vicksburg, Haines' Bluff, and at Jackson, Mississippi, about fifty
miles east of Vicksburg. Grant, when he starte