e banks high land is encountered. On the right,
or western, bank there is but one such, at Helena, in the State of
Arkansas, between three and four hundred miles below Cairo. On the
left bank such points are more numerous. The first is at Columbus,
twenty-one miles down the stream; then follow the bluffs at Hickman,
in Kentucky; a low ridge (which also extends to the right bank) below
New Madrid, rising from one to fifteen feet above overflow; the four
Chickasaw bluffs in Tennessee, on the southernmost of which is the
city of Memphis; and finally a rapid succession of similar bluffs
extending for two hundred and fifty miles, at short intervals, from
Vicksburg, in Mississippi, about six hundred miles below Cairo, to
Baton Rouge, in Louisiana. Of these last Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, and
Port Hudson became the scenes of important events of the war.

It is easy to see that each of these rare and isolated points afforded
a position by the fortification of which the passage of an enemy could
be disputed, and the control of the stream maintained, as long as it
remained in the hands of the defenders. They were all, except Columbus
and Hickman, in territory which, by the act of secession, had become
hostile to the Government of the United States; and they all, not
excepting even the two last-named, were seized and fortified by the
Confederates. It was against this chain of defences that the Union
forces were sent forth from either end of the line; and fighting their
way, step by step, and post by post, those from the north and those
from the south met at length around the defences of Vicksburg. From
the time of that meeting the narratives blend until the fall of the
fortress; but, prior to that time, it is necessary to tell the story
of each separately. The northern expeditions were the first in the
field, and to them this chapter is devoted.

The importance of controlling the Mississippi was felt from the first
by the United States Government. This importance was not only
strategic; it was impossible that the already powerful and
fast-growing Northwestern States should see without grave
dissatisfaction the outlet of their great highway pass into the hands
of a foreign power. Even before the war the necessity to those States
of controlling the river was an argument against the possibility of
disunion, at least on a line crossing it. From the military point of
view, however, not only did the Mississippi divide the Confederacy,
but