ricksburg, was being prepared for the fresh attack upon
Lee which ended at Chancellorsville, and while Bragg and Rosecrans lay
confronting each other in Middle Tennessee, each content that the other
was afraid to weaken himself by sending troops to the Mississippi, Grant
was occupied in a series of enterprises apparently more cautious than
that in which he eventually succeeded, but each in its turn futile. An
attempt was made to render Vicksburg useless by a canal cutting across
the bend of the Mississippi to the west of that fortress. Then Grant
endeavoured with the able co-operation of Admiral Porter and his flotilla
to secure a safe landing on the Yazoo, which enters the Mississippi a
little above Vicksburg, so that he could move his army to the rear of
Vicksburg by this route. Next Grant and Porter tried to establish a sure
line of water communication from a point far up the Mississippi through
an old canal, then somehow obstructed, into the upper waters of the Yazoo
and so to a point on that river 30 or 40 miles to the north-east of
Vicksburg, by which they would have turned the right of the main
Confederate force; but this was frustrated by the Confederates, who
succeeded in establishing a strong fort further up the Yazoo. Yet a
further effort was made to establish a waterway by a canal quitting the
Mississippi about 40 miles north of Vicksburg and communicating, through
lakes, bayous, and smaller rivers, with its great tributary the Red River
far to the south. This, like the first canal attempted, would have
rendered Vicksburg useless.

Each of these projects failed in turn. The tedious engineering work
which two of them involved was rendered more depressing by adverse
conditions of weather and by ill-health among Grant's men. Natural
grumbling among the troops was repeated and exaggerated in the North.
McClernand employed the gift for intrigue, which perhaps had helped him
to secure his command, in an effort to get Grant removed. It is
melancholy to add that a good many newspapers at this time began to print
statements that Grant had again taken to drink. It is certain that he
was at this time a total abstainer. It is said that he had offended the
authors of this villainy by the restrictions which he had long before
found necessary to put upon information to the Press. Some of the men
freely confessed afterwards that they had been convinced of his sobriety,
and added the marvellous apology that their b