The costly lesson proved a valuable experience to
him, which he soon put to use. Sherman's expedition also met disaster.
Landing at Milliken's Bend, on the west bank of the Mississippi, he
ventured a daring storming assault from the east bank of the Yazoo at
Haines's Bluff, ten miles north of Vicksburg, but met a bloody repulse.
Having abandoned his railroad advance, Grant next joined Sherman at
Milliken's Bend in January, 1863, where also Admiral Porter, with a
river squadron of seventy vessels, eleven of them ironclads, was added
to his force. For the next three months Grant kept his large army and
flotilla busy with four different experiments to gain a practicable
advance toward Vicksburg, until his fifth highly novel and, to other
minds, seemingly reckless and impossible plan secured him a brilliant
success and results of immense military advantage. One experiment was to
cut a canal across the tongue of land opposite Vicksburg, through which
the flotilla might pass out of range of the Vicksburg guns. A second was
to force the gunboats and transports up the tortuous and swampy Yazoo to
find a landing far north of Haines's Bluff. A third was for the flotilla
to enter through Yazoo Pass and Cold Water River, two hundred miles
above, and descend the Yazoo to a hoped-for landing.
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