off. Others did not know the simplest evolutions.
In one instance, afterwards handsomely redeemed, the colonel, having
to disembark his men, could think of no way save by the novel
command, "Break ranks, boys, and get ashore the best way you can."
The cavalry, except the six old companies, was poor and quite
insufficient in numbers. Of land and water transportation, both
indispensable to any possible operation, there was barely enough
for the movement of a single division. In Washington, Banks had
been led to expect that he might count on the depots or the country
for all the material required for moving his army; yet Butler found
New Orleans on the brink of starvation; the people had now to be
fed, as well as the army, and the provisions that formerly came
from the West by the great river had now to find their way from
the North by the Atlantic and the Gulf. The depots were calculated,
and barely sufficed, for the old force of the department, while
the country could furnish very little at best, and nothing at all
until it should be occupied.

Again, until he reached his post, Banks was not informed that the
Confederates were in force anywhere on the river save Vicksburg,
yet, in fact, Port Hudson, 250 miles below Vicksburg and 135 miles
above New Orleans, was found strongly intrenched with twenty-nine
heavy guns in position and garrisoned by 12,000 men. Long before
Banks could have assembled and set in motion a force sufficient to
cope with this enemy behind earthworks, the 12,000 became 16,000.
Moreover, Banks was not in communication either with Grant or with
McClernand; he knew next to nothing of the operations, the movements,
or the plans of either; he had not the least idea when the expedition
would be ready to move from Memphis; he was even uncertain who the
commander of the Northern column was to be. On their part, not
only were Grant, the department commander; McClernand, the designated
commander of the Vicksburg expedition; and Sherman, its actual
commander, alike ignorant of every thing pertaining to the movements
of the column from the Gulf, but, at the most critical period of
the campaign, not one of the three was in communication with either
of the others. Under these conditions, all concert between the
co-operating forces was rendered impossible from the start, and the
expectations of the government that Banks would go against Vicksburg
immediately on landing in Louisiana were doomed to sharp and