Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[455] be taken by land so long as Lake Pontchartrain was held by our light-draught gunboats. Therefore, it was agreed between the admiral and myself that with his main fleet he should go up the river as far as he could, and that I should give him the troops needed to occupy the places that he could take with his fleet. Thereupon he left directly, and seized Baton Rouge. Here we left some two thousand men, more because it was a healthy location than for any particular military usefulness. We concluded to make no fortification there.

Farragut passed Port Hudson, where there were at that time no considerable defences. He had determined to look upon Vicksburg as the only place where a fortified stronghold was substantially possible for the protection of the surrounding country. The fleet accordingly went on.

We at once agreed — and General Williams acquiesced upon observation — that the easier way of passing Vicksburg was to make a short canal across the peninsula that faced the city and thus turn a current of water through this channel. It was believed that such a canal would soon shorten the river, leaving Vicksburg and its possible fortifications some three miles inland. The project was undertaken, and it might have been successfully carried out had not a sudden fall of several feet in the height of the river rendered it impossible to dig the canal deep enough.

To capture by assault with Williams' brigade was not practicable, and as Vicksburg was found to be within the territorial lines of the department of General Halleck, the admiral thought it was his duty and his right to at least ask Halleck to furnish men enough to cooperate with the navy, and, in conjunction with Williams, to make the attack.

Now, mark: Vicksburg was the most important point in the country to be captured. Farragut was above it with his fleet, having run by it. If Halleck, when he moved from Corinth, had sent any considerable force from Corinth to the rear of Vicksburg to cut off supplies,--as our fleets were both above and below the town — it might have been starved out in twenty days, as Grant a year afterwards captured it by starvation of its forces, after he had lost many men in assaults, and from the unhealthiness of the region. Ellet with his fleet had captured Fort Pillow;