Admiral David D. Porter, The Naval History of the Civil War.

[284] where it might be supposed guerillas were lying in wait to fire on the transports.

This was slow work compared to the active warfare the iron-clads had been engaged in under Foote and Davis, but they were merely getting ready for the hard work before them and will be heard from ere long again.

Before Admiral Porter left Washington he was informed by the President that General McClernand had been ordered to raise an Army at Springfield, Ill., to prosecute the siege of Vicksburg. The President expressed the hope that the rear-admiral would co-operate heartily with General McClernand in the operations to be carried on. But as Vicksburg never would have been taken if it had depended on General McClernand's raising an Army sufficient for the purpose, the admiral, immediately on his arrival at Cairo, sent a message to General Grant, at Holly Springs, Miss., informing him of McClernand's intention, that he, Porter, had assumed command of the Mississippi Squadron, and was ready to cooperate with the Army on every occasion where the services of the Navy could be useful.

A few days afterwards General Grant arrived at Cairo and proposed an expedition against Vicksburg, and asking the rearadmiral if he could furnish a sufficient force of gun-boats to accompany it. Grant's plan was to embark Sherman from Memphis, where he then was, with thirty thousand soldiers, to be joined at Helena, Arkansas, by ten thousand more. Grant himself would march from Holly Springs with some sixty thousand men upon Granada. General Pemberton would naturally march from Vicksburg to stop Grant at Granada until reinforcements could be thrown into Vicksburg from the south, and while Pemberton was thus absent with the greater part of his Army Sherman and Porter could get possession of the defences of Vicksburg.

General Grant having been informed that the gun-boats would be ready to move at short notice, and having sent orders to Sherman to put his troops aboard the transports as soon as the gun-boats arrived in Memphis, returned immediately to Holly Springs to carry out his part of the programme.

This interview between Grant and Porter lasted just half an hour, and thus was started the expedition against Vicksburg, which, after a long and arduous siege and a great expenditure of men and money, resulted in the capture of the strongest point of defence occupied by the enemy during the war.

The expedition from Memphis got away early in December, 1862, Commander Walke, in the Carondelet, being sent ahead with the Cairo, Baron DeKalb, and Pittsburg. (iron-clads,) and the Signal and Marmora ( “tin-clads” ) to clear the Yazoo River of torpedoes and cover the landing of Sherman's Army when it should arrive. This arduous and perilous service was well performed. On the 11th of December, Commander Walke dispatched the two “tin-clads” on a reconnoisance up the Yazoo. They ascended some twenty miles, when they were apprized of the presence of torpedoes by a great number of small boats along the channel of the river and an explosion near the Signal. Another torpedo was exploded from the Marmora by firing into it with a musket as it appeared just below the surface. The commanding

Lieut.-Commander T. O. Selfridge, (now Captain U. S. Navy.)

officers of these two vessels reported that with the assistance of two iron-clads to keep down the sharpshooters, they could clear the river of torpedoes, but not otherwise, as there were rifle-pits all along the left bank of the Yazoo, and the enemy were supplied with light artillery. At Lieutenant-Commander Selfridge's request he was sent on this duty in the Cairo, with the Pittsburg, Lieut.-Commanding Hoel, and the ram Queen of the West, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., commanding. These officers were cautioned to be particularly careful and run no risks.

On the 12th of December the vessels proceeded on the duty assigned them under a shower of bullets from the rifle-pits, which was only checked by the gun-boats dropping