John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[205] what he had heard of these operations, and also of those in the Yazoo country, Dana pushed forward to Memphis, where he arrived March 23, 1863. From this place he sent his first formal despatches to Stanton,¹ but he was still too far from the scene of actual operations to gain correct or important information. Grant had sent but little news to General Hurlbut, who was commanding in west Tennessee with headquarters at Memphis, and the steamboats coming from the army below brought but little except “grape-vine” rumors or exaggerated reports of trivial matters. Withal, for one reason or another now difficult to ascertain, Dana remained at Memphis till early in April, when he became convinced that he could gather no information there of sufficient value to transmit. He sent in all some fourteen despatches from that point, but they referred largely to conditions prevailing in the theatre of operations, the location of Confederate forces, the size and navigability of the bayous and rivers, the movements of our gun-boats, the operations of the enemy's guerillas, the location of encampments and fortifications, and the state of affairs within the Confederate lines. This information was in most cases received at second-hand from steamboat captains, occasional officers, deserters, released prisoners, planters, and refugees, and although frequently interesting it was almost entirely useless for practical purposes. Then, too, the necessity of converting his despatches into cipher messages to insure safe transmission through the disturbed districts in the rear, and to conceal their meaning from thoughtless or disloyal telegraph operators, entailed upon Dana much work and anxiety. The system by which this was done was complex and difficult to understand. It therefore