nd passing by
Steele's right flank, invaded Missouri.

After arriving at Morganza, Emory, by Canby's orders, put his command
in good condition for defence or for a movement in any direction
by sending to other stations all the troops except the Nineteenth
Corps and the First division, Lawler's, of the Thirteenth Corps,
as well as all the extra animals, wagons, and baggage of the army.
For the sedentary defensive, the position at Morganza had many
advantages, but except that good water for all purposes was to be
had in plenty for the trouble of crossing the levee, the situation
was perhaps the most unfortunate in which the corps was ever
encamped. The heat was oppressive and daily growing more unbearable.
The rude shelters of bushes and leaves, cut fresh from the neighboring
thicket and often renewed, gave little protection; the levee and
the dense undergrowth kept off the breeze; and such was the state
of the soil that when it was not a cloud of light and suffocating
dust, it was a sea of fat black mud. The sickly season was close
at hand, the field and general hospitals were filled, and the deaths
were many. The mosquitoes were at their worst; but worse than all
were the six weeks of absolute idleness, broken only by an occasional
alarm or two, such as led to the brief expedition of Grover's
division to Tunica and Natchez.

At first Canby intended to use the Nineteenth Corps as a sort of
marine patrol or coast-guard, with its trains and artillery and
cavalry reduced to the lowest point, and the main body of the
infantry kept always ready to embark on a fleet of transports
specially assigned for the service and to go quickly to any point
up or down the Mississippi or the adjacent waters that might be
menaced or attacked by the enemy. The orders for the organization
and equipment of the corps in this manner form a model of forethought
and of minute attention to detail, yet as events turned out, they
were never put in practice.

Toward the end of June the corps underwent at the hands of Canby
the last of its many reorganizations.(1) The First and Second
divisions were left substantially as they had been during the
campaign just ended, but the Thirteenth Corps being broken up,(2)
seventeen of its best regiments were taken to form for the Nineteenth
Corps a new Third division, under Lawler. Emory, who was suffering
from the effects of the climate and the hardships of the campaign,
had just applied for leave of ab