e of a confidential order
of the War Department, dated October 21, 1862, which order bore the
indorsement of President Lincoln, General Grant still exercised a
command over him, by reason of his general command of the
Department of the Tennessee. By an order (No. 210) of December 18,
1862, from the War Department, received at Arkansas Post, the
Western armies had been grouped into five corps d'armee, viz.: the
Thirteenth, Major-General McClernand; the Fourteenth, Major-General
George H. Thomas, in Middle Tennessee; the Fifteenth, Major-General
W. T. Sherman; the Sixteenth, Major-General Hurlbut, then at or
near Memphis; and the Seventeenth, Major-General McPherson, also at
and back of Memphis. General Grant when at Napoleon, on the 18th
of January, ordered McClernand with his own and my corps to return
to Vicksburg, to disembark on the west bank, and to resume work on
a canal across the peninsula, which had been begun by General
Thomas Williams the summer before, the object being to turn the
Mississippi River at that point, or at least to make a passage for
our fleet of gunboats and transports across the peninsula, opposite
Vicksburg. General Grant then returned to Memphis, ordered to Lake
Providence, about sixty miles above us, McPherson's corps, the
Seventeenth, and then came down again to give his personal
supervision to the whole movement.

The Mississippi River was very high and rising, and we began that
system of canals on which we expended so much hard work
fruitlessly: first, the canal at Young's plantation, opposite
Vicksburg; second, that at Lake Providence; and third, at the Yazoo
Pass, leading into the head-waters of the Yazoo River. Early in
February the gunboats Indianola and Queen of the West ran the
batteries of Vicksburg. The latter was afterward crippled in Red
River, and was captured by the rebels; and the Indianola was butted
and sunk about forty miles below Vicksburg. We heard the booming
of the guns, but did not know of her loss till some days after.
During the months of January and February, we were digging the
canal and fighting off the water of the Mississippi, which
continued to rise and threatened to drown us. We had no sure place
of refuge except the narrow levee, and such steamboats as remained
abreast of our camps. My two divisions furnished alternately a
detail of five hundred men a day, to work on the canal. So high
was the water in the beginning of March, that McClernand's cor