BANKS AND GRANT.
The first effect of the despatches from Grant and Farragut, referred
to in the preceding chapter, was to cause Banks to reconsider his
plan of campaign, and to put the direction of his next movement in
suspense. While waiting for fresh advices in answer to his own
communications and proposals Banks halted, and while he halted
Taylor got time to breathe and Kirby Smith to gather new strength.
This correspondence has been so much discussed, yet so little
understood, that, chronology being an essential part of history,
the narrative of the events now at hand may be rendered clearer,
if we turn aside for a moment to consider not only the substance
of what was said upon both sides, but, what was even more important,
the time at which it was heard.
Farragut's letter, written from the _Hartford_ above Port Hudson
on the 6th of April, was the first communication Banks had received
from Farragut, save a brief verbal message brought to him by the
Admiral's secretary, Mr. E. C. Gabaudan, on the 10th of April, just
before the army set out from Brashear. Mr. Gabaudan had come
straight from the Admiral, but without any thing in writing, having
floated past Port Hudson by night in a skiff covered with twigs so
as to look like a drift log. Farragut's letter gave assurance of
the complete control of the Red River and the Atchafalaya by the
navy of the Union.
Grant's despatch bore date the 23d of March. It was the first
writing received from him. It conveyed the answer to the letter
addressed to him by Banks on the 13th of March, and placed in the
hands of Farragut just before the _Hartford_ ran the batteries of
Port Hudson. Thus on either side began a correspondence clearly
intended by both commanders to bring about an effective co-operation
between the two armies, aided by the combined fleets of Farragut
and Porter. Yet in the end, while the consequences remained unfelt
in the Army by the Tennessee, upon the Army of the Gulf the practical
effect, after the first period of delay and doubt, was to cause
its commander to give up the thought of moving toward Grant and to
conform all his movements to the expectation that Grant would send
an army corps to Bayou Sara to join in reducing Port Hudson. Thus,
quite apart from the confusion and the eventual disappointment,
much valuable time was lost while the matter was in suspense; and
so was demonstrated once more the impossibility, well established
by the history of war, of co-ordinating the operations of two armies
widely separated, having different objectives, while an enemy
strongly holds the country between them.
When Banks wrote his despatch of the 13th of March, he was at Baton
Rouge, about to demonstrate against Port Hudson. When Grant received
this despatch he was on the low land opposite Vicksburg, with the
rising river between him and his enemy, laboriously seeking a
practical pathway to the rear of Vicksburg, and in the meantime
greatly troubled to find dry ground for his seventy thousand men
to stand on. Grant's first idea, derived from Halleck's despatches,
was that Banks should join him before Vicksburg, with the whole
available force of the Army of the Gulf. When he learned from
Banks that this would be out of the question so long as Port Hudson
should continue to be held by the Confederates, Grant took up the
same line of thought that had already attracted Banks, and began
to meditate a junction by the Atchafalaya, the Red, the Tensas,
and the Black rivers. What Grant then needed was not more troops,
but standing-room for those he had. Accordingly, he began by
preparing to send twenty thousand men to Banks, when the Ohio River
steamers he had asked for should come.(1) They never came, yet even
after he had embarked upon the campaign, alike sound in conception
and splendid in execution, that was to become the corner-stone of
his great and solid fame, Grant kept to his purpose.
On the 14th of April he penned this brief telegram to Banks:
"I am concentrating my forces at Grand Gulf; will send an army
corps Bayou Sara by the 25th, to co-operate with you on Port Hudson.
Can you aid me and send troops after the reduction of Port Hudson
to assist me at Vicksburg?"
This message, although Banks and Grant were then only about two
hundred miles apart, had to travel three thousand miles to reach
its destination. Banks received it just before marching from
Opelousas on the 5th of May, twenty-one days after it left Grant's
hands. As received, the message was in cipher and without a date.
As the prevailing practice was, in conformity with the orders of
the Secretary of War, the only persons in the Department of the
Gulf who held the key to the cipher were the Superintendent of
Military Telegraphs and such of his assistants as he chose to trust,
and Mr. Bulkley was at New Iberia, where the wires ended. The code
employed was the route cipher in common use in the service, and
with the help of the words "Bayou" and "Sara" as guides the meaning
was not hard to make out. Banks did not trust to this, however,
and waited until, late at night, he received from the Superintendent
an official translation, still without date, as indeed was the
original document received at headquarters from New Orleans. The
25th Banks naturally took to mean the 25th of May. Grasping eagerly
at the first real chance of effective co-operation, he at once
replied: "By the 25th probably, by the 1st, certainly, I will be
there." This despatch was not in cipher, because he had no code.
Captain Crosby carried it to the _Hartford_ at the mouth of Red
River. Captain Palmer, who was found in command, the Admiral having
crossed Fausse Point and joined his fleet below, at once forwarded
the despatch. Near Natchez Crosby met Captain Uffers of Grant's
staff and turned back with him bringing Grant's despatch of the
10th of May, written at Rocky Springs. This Banks received at
Alexandria on the 12th of May. From it he learned that Grant was
not coming. Having met the Confederates after landing at Grand
Gulf and followed on their heels to the Big Black, he could not
afford to retrace his steps; but he urged Banks to join him or to
send all the force he could spare "to co-operate in the great
struggle for opening the Mississippi River." The reasons thus
assigned by Grant for his change of mind were certainly valid; yet
it must be doubted whether in these hurried lines the whole of the
matter is set forth, for three weeks earlier, on the 19th of April,
five days after the promise to send an army corps to Bayou Sara by
the 25th, Grant had reported to Halleck: "This will now be
impossible." Moreover, until the moment when he crossed the river
with his advance on the 30th of April he not only held firmly to
his intention to send the twenty thousand men to join Banks at
Bayou Sara as soon as the landing should have been secured, but
the corps for this service had been designated; it was to be made
up of the main body of McClernand's corps and McPherson's, and
Grant himself meant to go with it. It was indeed the 2d of May
when Grant received at Port Gibson Banks's despatch sent from
Brashear on the 10th of April indicating his purpose of returning
to Baton Rouge by the 10th of May, and although Grant also attributes
to this despatch the change of his plans, the 10th of May had
already come before he made known the change to Banks.
All this time Banks bore with him Halleck's instructions of the
9th of November, and more than once studied with care and solicitude
these significant words: "As the ranking general in the Southwest
you are authorized to assume the control of any military force from
the upper Mississippi which may come within your command. The line
of division between your department and that of Major-General Grant
is, therefore, left undecided for the present, and you will exercise
superior authority as far north as you may ascend the river." By
the articles of war, without these words, Banks would have been
entitled to the command they gave him, but the words showed him
plainly what was expected of him by his government. To the incentives
of patriotism and duty were thus superadded one of the most powerful
motives that can affect the mind of the commander of an army,--the
hope and assurance of power and promotion. If, then, he held back
from joining Grant in Mississippi, it was because he hesitated to
take the extraordinary risks involved in the movement. In this he
was more than justified.
Since the miscarriage of Sherman's attempt at the beginning of the
year, Grant had been engaged in a series of tentative efforts,
steadily prosecuted in various directions, yet all having a common
object, the finding of a foothold of dry ground for a decisive
movement against Vicksburg. Four of these experimental operations
had failed completely, and Grant was now entering upon a fifth,
destined indeed to lead to a great and glorious result, yet in
itself conveying hardly more assurance of success than the most
promising of its predecessors, while involving perils greater than
any that had been so far encountered. Of these, the greatest danger
was that the enemy, after allowing him to land on the east bank of
the river and to penetrate, with a portion of his army, into the
heart of Mississippi, might then concentrate all the available
forces of the Confederacy in that region and fall upon him with
vigor at the moment when his supplies should be exhausted and his
communications interrupted. In such an event the fortune of war
might have rendered it imperative for him to retire down the river;
but what would have happened then if Banks, disregarding Port Hudson
in his eagerness to join Grant before Vicksburg, should in his turn
have abandoned his communications? Both armies would have been
caught in a trap of their own making, whence not merit but some
rare stroke of luck could alone have rescued either.
In the strong light of the great and decisive victory of Vicksburg,
it is scarcely possible to reproduce, even in the mind of the most
attentive reader, the exact state of affairs as they existed at
the moment of Grant's landing below Grand Gulf. This phenomenal
success was not foreshadowed by any thing that had gone before it,
and it would have been the height of imprudence to stake upon it
the fate of two armies, the issue of an entire campaign, and the
mastery of the Mississippi River, if not the final result of the
war. Nor should it be forgotten that Grant himself regarded this
movement as experimental, like its forerunners, and that up to the
moment he set foot upon the soil of Mississippi, he had formed no
conception of the brilliant campaign on which he was about presently
to embark. But instead of concentrating and acting with instant
determination upon a single plan with a single idea, at the critical
moment the Confederates became divided in council, distracted in
purpose, and involved in a maze of divergent plans, cross purposes,
and conflicting orders. While events caused the Confederate leaders
to shift from one plan to the other, with the chances of the day,
Grant was prompt to see and quick to profit by his advantage, and
thus the campaign was given into his hands.
But on the 4th of May these great events were as yet hidden in the
unknown future, and when, after waiting thirteen days at Opelousas,
Banks began his march on Alexandria, it was with the earnest hope
of a speedy meeting of the two Union armies on the Mississippi;
then came the cipher telegram to exalt this hope into a firm and
just expectation of finding three weeks later an entire corps from
Grant's army at Bayou Sara, and as Banks mounted his horse to ride
toward the head of his column, it was with the fixed purpose of
being with his whole force at the appointed place at the appointed
time.
(1) "I sent several weeks ago for this class of steamers, and
expected them before this. Should they arrive and Admiral Porter
get his boats out of the Yazoo, so as to accompany the expedition,
I can send a force of say 20,000 effective men to co-operate with
General Banks on Port Hudson."--Grant to Farragut, March 23d;
received by Banks, April 21st. The cipher message that followed
seemed to Banks a confirmation of this.