General Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations During the Civil War

[153] to require a force almost as great to defend it. I therefore proposed to the President that General Holmes should be instructed to send twenty thousand of his troops to Mississippi, instead of the ten thousand supposed to be on the way, because such an additional force would have enabled us to put adequate garrisons into Vicksburg and Port Hudson, by which we held the part of the Mississippi between them, and to oppose General Grant with an active force of forty thousand men. In writing to the President on this subject, however, I expressed again the opinion that Holmes's and Pemberton's troops should be concentrated in Mississippi. The President suggested to General Holmes, but did not order him, to send the twenty thousand men asked for. General Holmes, very properly, waited for orders.

From Vicksburg the President visited Lieutenant-General Pemberton's army, near Grenada, where it was constructing intrenchments to contest the passage of the Yallabusha River by the Federal army. The front was so extensive, however, that it is probably fortunate that the practicability of defending it was never tested. In conversing before the President in relation to the defense of his department, Lieutenant-General Pemberton and myself differed widely as to the mode of warfare best adapted to our circumstances.

On the 25th the President returned to Jackson, accompanied b1y Lieutenant-General Pemberton as well as myself.

On the 27th Major-General Loring, who was commanding at Grenada, reported that General Grant's