Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[442] had reached this town on the 26th, after having crossed Pearl River on the 25th on temporary bridges. He found there Winslow's cavalry brigade, which he had sent north as far as Louisville in hopes that it would meet Sooy Smith. Winslow was returning without having heard anything of the latter. Sherman, going ahead, entered Vicksburg on the 28th, and started at once for New Orleans. His troops reached the banks of the Mississippi a few days after. Hurlbut brought one of his divisions back to Memphis. The other, under General Mower, remained in Vicksburg to form, with one of McPherson's, commanded by A. J. Smith, the expeditionary corps intended to embark shortly for Red River.

Thanks to the clear and dry weather which had been prevailing during the whole month of February, the march of the Federals had been easy. Neither the soldiers nor the horses had suffered; the sanitary condition of the column on its return was excellent. The losses in men had been insignificant on either side. The Federals had picked up about four hundred prisoners. They were bringing also a long column of refugees—about a thousand whites who had compromised themselves by manifesting Union sentiments, and more than four thousand negroes of all ages who were fleeing from bondage. This exodus was a sure sign of the downfall threatening the Confederacy.

We must now follow Sooy Smith's cavalry in the campaign which it has so uselessly undertaken to rejoin Sherman at Meridian. The latter expected that his lieutenant should leave Memphis on the 1st of February. He has asserted that he gave him the formal order to do so. He had, as we have said, directed the latter to form a corps of seven thousand well-equipped cavalry by adding for the campaign the most able men of Grierson's division to the twenty-five hundred men which Waring was bringing from Union City. He does not appear to have doubted that this brigade would arrive in the vicinity of Memphis before the 1st of February, and had not foreseen that it might be delayed. But whether the length of the march was erroneously calculated or the order for departure had not been duly sent to him, Waring did not leave Union City until the 23d of January. The cold weather still continued. The roads were covered with snow; the