Battle at Mumfordsville and Perryville
The most formidable of these Anglo-Confederate plunderers of the sea was the Alabama, which was built, armed, manned and victualled in England. She sailed under the British flag, and was received with favor in every British port that she entered. In the last three months of the year 1862, she destroyed by fire twenty-eight helpless American merchant-vessels. While these incendiary fires, kindled by Englishmen in a ship fitted out as a sea-rover by Englishmen commanded by a Confederate leader, were illuminating the bosom of the Atlantic Ocean, a merchant-ship (the George Griswold), laden with provisions as a gift for starving English operatives in Lancashire, who had been deprived of work and food by the Civil War in America, and whose necessities their own government failed to relieve, was sent from the city of New York, convoyed by a national war-vessel to save her from the fury of the British sea-rover! The sequel of the Alabama story will be told hereafter.
At the beginning of 1863, the National Government had more than seven hundred thousand soldiers in its service; and up to that time the loyal people had furnished twelve hundred thousand troops, mostly volunteers, for the salvation of the life of the Republic. The theatre of war had become co-extensive with the slave-labor States; and at that time the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, on the Mississippi River, was a chief object of the Government. Only between these places was that river free from the patrol of National gun-boats; and it was desirable to break this connection between the insurgents on each side of the stream. To this end General Grant concentrated his forces near the Tallahatchee River, in northern Mississippi, where Generals Hovey and Washburne had been operating with troops whom they had led from Helena, in Arkansas. Grant had a large quantity of supplies at Holly Springs. These, through carelessness or treachery, fell into the hands of Van Dorn on the 20th of December (1862), and Grant was compelled to fall back to Grand Junction to save his army. Taking advantage of this movement, a large force of Confederates gathered at Vicksburg under General J.C. Pemberton, for the protection of that post.
On the day when Grant's supplies were seized at Holly Springs, about twenty thousand National troops, led by General W.T. Sherman, left Memphis in transports, with siege guns, to beleaguer Vicksburg. At Friar's Point they were joined by troops from Helena, and were met by Commodore Porter, whose fleet of gun-boats were at the mouth of the Yazoo River, just above Vicksburg. The two commanders arranged a plan for attacking the city in the rear, and proceeded to execute it. The troops and fleet went up the Yazoo River to capture some batteries which disputed the way to that rear; but Sherman was repulsed after a sharp battle at Chickasaw Bayou (December 28), and the project was abandoned for a time.
General John A. McClernand, the senior of Sherman in rank, arrived at headquarters, near Vicksburg, early in January, 1863, and took the chief command. He and Porter went up the Arkansas River with their forces, and on the 11th captured the important Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post. In the meantime General Grant had arranged his army into four corps, and with it descended the river from Memphis to prosecute the siege of Vicksburg with vigor. He was soon convinced that it could not be taken by direct assault. He tried to perfect the canal begun by Farragut, but failed; and then he sent a considerable land and naval force up the Yazoo to capture batteries at Haines's Bluff, and so gain a footing in the rear of Vickburg. These were repulsed at Fort Pemberton, near Greenwood, late in March. Other channels among the brimming bayous and small rivers were diligently sought by the indomitable Porter, to gain the rear of the foredoomed city, but in vain, and again the enterprise was abandoned. The details of these efforts of the army and navy, during the spring of 1863, form one of the most wonderful chapters in the history of the war. The waters were then redundant, and the voyages were sometimes wild and perilous, the gun-boats sweeping on strong currents through overflowed swamps under lofty overarching trees draped with the trailing Spanish moss, and having their smoke-stacks leveled at times, and their wheels fearfully bruised.
While these operations against Vicksburg were in progress, there had been lively times on the bosom of the Mississippi. In February (1863), iron-clad vessels of Porter's fleet ran by the batteries at Vicksburg, and made considerable havoc among Confederate transports below, that were supplying the troops there and at Port Hudson with stores. These venture-some National vessels were lost, and their crews were made prisoners. Later, when Grant had sent a strong land force down the west side of the river, Porter successfully ran by the batteries at Vicksburg with nearly his whole fleet and the transports, on the night of the 16th of April. Then Grant prepared for vigorous operations on the flank and rear of Vicksburg, on the line of the Big Black River. Porter also attacked and ran by the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, on the 27th of April, when Grant's army crossed the Mississippi a little below, pressed forward, and at Port Gibson gained a decisive victory in a battle fought there on the first of May.