the remainder of his fleet, arrived at
Vicksburg on May 20. This city, by reason of the high bluffs on which it
stands, was the most defensible point on the whole length of the great
river within the Southern States; but so confidently had the
Confederates trusted to the strength of their works at Columbus, Island
No. 10, Fort Pillow, and other points, that the fortifications of
Vicksburg had thus far received comparatively little attention. The
recent Union victories, however, both to the north and south, had
awakened them to their danger; and when Lovell evacuated New Orleans, he
shipped heavy guns and sent five Confederate regiments to Vicksburg; and
during the eight days between their arrival on May 12 and the twentieth,
on which day Farragut reached the city, six rebel batteries were put in
readiness to fire on his ships.

General Halleck, while pushing his siege works toward Corinth, was
notified as early as April 27 that Farragut was coming, and the logic of
the situation ought to have induced him to send a cooeperating force to
Farragut's assistance, or, at the very least, to have matured plans for
such cooeperation. All the events would have favored an expedition of
this kind. When Corinth, at the end of May, fell into Halleck's hands,
Forts Pillow and Randolph on the Mississippi River were hastily
evacuated by the enemy, and on June 6 the Union flotilla of river
gunboats which had rendered such signal service at Henry, Donelson, and
Island No. 10, reinforced by a hastily constructed flotilla of heavy
river tugs converted into rams, gained another brilliant victory in a
most dramatic naval battle at Memphis, during which an opposing
Confederate flotilla of similar rams and gunboats was almost completely
destroyed, and the immediate evacuation of Memphis by the Confederates
thereby forced.

This left Vicksburg as the single barrier to the complete opening of the
Mississippi, and that barrier was defended by only six batteries and a
garrison of six Confederate regiments at the date of Farragut's arrival
before it. But Farragut had with his expedition only two regiments of
troops, and the rebel batteries were situated at such an elevation that
the guns of the Union fleet could not be raised sufficiently to silence
them. Neither help nor promise of help came from Halleck's army, and
Farragut could therefore do nothing but turn his vessels down stream and
return to New Orleans. There, about June 1, he received news