Still a fourth
project was to cut a canal into Lake Providence west of the Mississippi,
seventy miles above, find a practicable waterway through two hundred
miles of bayous and rivers, and establish communication with Banks and
Farragut, who were engaged in an effort to capture Port Hudson.
The time, the patience, the infinite labor, and enormous expense of
these several projects were utterly wasted. Early in April, Grant began
an entirely new plan, which was opposed by all his ablest generals, and,
tested by the accepted rules of military science, looked like a headlong
venture of rash desperation. During the month of April he caused Admiral
Porter to prepare fifteen or twenty vessels--ironclads, steam
transports, and provision barges--and run them boldly by night past the
Vicksburg and, later, past the Grand Gulf batteries, which the admiral
happily accomplished with very little loss. Meanwhile, the general, by a
very circuitous route of seventy miles, marched an army of thirty-five
thousand down the west bank of the Mississippi and, with Porter's
vessels and transports, crossed them to the east side of the river at
Bruinsburg. From this point, with an improvised train of country
vehicles to carry his ammunition, and living meanwhile entirely upon the
country, as he had learned to do in his baffled Grenada expedition, he
made one of the most rapid and brilliant campaigns in military history.
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