usiness was to give the
public "the news." Able and more honest journalists urged that Grant had
proved his incompetence. Secretary Chase took up their complaints and
pressed that Grant should be removed. Lincoln, before the outcry against
Grant had risen to its height, had felt the need of closer information
than he possessed about the situation on the Mississippi; and had hit
upon the happy expedient of sending an able official of the War
Department, who deserved and obtained the confidence of Grant and his
officers, to accompany the Western army and report to him. Apart,
however, from the reports he thus received, he had always treated the
attacks on Grant with contempt. "I cannot spare this general; he
fights," he said. In reply to complaints that Grant drank, he enquired
(adapting, as he knew, George II.'s famous saying about Wolfe) what
whisky he drank, explaining that he wished to send barrels of it to some
of his other generals. His attitude is remarkable, because in his own
mind he had not thought well of any of Grant's plans after his first
failure in December; he had himself wished from an early day that Grant
would take the very course by which he ultimately succeeded. He let him
go his own way, as he afterwards told him, from "a general hope that you
know better than I."

At the end of March Grant took a memorable determination to transfer his
whole force to the south of Vicksburg and approach it from that
direction. He was urged by Sherman to give up any further attempt to use
the river, and, instead, to bring his whole army back to Memphis and
begin a necessarily slow approach on Vicksburg by the railway. He
declared himself that on ordinary grounds of military prudence this would
have been the proper course, but he decided for himself that the
depressing effect of the retreat to Memphis would be politically
disastrous. At Grand Gulf, 30 miles south of Vicksburg, the South
possessed another fortified post on the river; to reach this Grant
required the help of the Navy, not only in crossing from the western bank
of the river, but in transporting the supplies for which the roads west
of the river were inadequate. Admiral Porter, with his gunboats and
laden barges, successfully ran the gauntlet of the Vicksburg batteries by
night without serious damage. Grand Gulf was taken on May 3, and Grant's
army established at this new base. A further doubt now arose. General
Banks in Louisiana was at th