whole of the
matter is set forth, for three weeks earlier, on the 19th of April,
five days after the promise to send an army corps to Bayou Sara by
the 25th, Grant had reported to Halleck: "This will now be
impossible." Moreover, until the moment when he crossed the river
with his advance on the 30th of April he not only held firmly to
his intention to send the twenty thousand men to join Banks at
Bayou Sara as soon as the landing should have been secured, but
the corps for this service had been designated; it was to be made
up of the main body of McClernand's corps and McPherson's, and
Grant himself meant to go with it. It was indeed the 2d of May
when Grant received at Port Gibson Banks's despatch sent from
Brashear on the 10th of April indicating his purpose of returning
to Baton Rouge by the 10th of May, and although Grant also attributes
to this despatch the change of his plans, the 10th of May had
already come before he made known the change to Banks.

All this time Banks bore with him Halleck's instructions of the
9th of November, and more than once studied with care and solicitude
these significant words: "As the ranking general in the Southwest
you are authorized to assume the control of any military force from
the upper Mississippi which may come within your command. The line
of division between your department and that of Major-General Grant
is, therefore, left undecided for the present, and you will exercise
superior authority as far north as you may ascend the river." By
the articles of war, without these words, Banks would have been
entitled to the command they gave him, but the words showed him
plainly what was expected of him by his government. To the incentives
of patriotism and duty were thus superadded one of the most powerful
motives that can affect the mind of the commander of an army,--the
hope and assurance of power and promotion. If, then, he held back
from joining Grant in Mississippi, it was because he hesitated to
take the extraordinary risks involved in the movement. In this he
was more than justified.

Since the miscarriage of Sherman's attempt at the beginning of the
year, Grant had been engaged in a series of tentative efforts,
steadily prosecuted in various directions, yet all having a common
object, the finding of a foothold of dry ground for a decisive
movement against Vicksburg. Four of these experimental operations
had failed completely, and Grant was now entering upon a