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

The Federal army crossed the river on the 18th; McPherson's and McClernand's corps on floating-bridges, constructed by them near the railroad, and Sherman's, which left Jackson on the 16th, on a pontoon-bridge laid at Bridgeport. Its advanced troops skirmished in the afternoon with those in the fieldworks of Vicksburg,¹ and the investment of the place was completed on the 19th.²

On the 17th the two brigades with me marched fifteen or eighteen miles in the direction pointed out in Lieutenant-General Pemberton's note of the day before, and bivouacked on the road leading from Livingston to Edwards's Depot. Supposing that the Army of Mississippi had marched the day before by the route the general had described, I was confident that we should meet it that day, or early in the next. At night, however, Captain Henderson, who was the commander of General Pemberton's scouts, brought me a letter from that officer, written at Bovina in the morning, in which he said: “I notified you, on the morning of the 14th, of the receipt of your instructions to move and attack the enemy toward Clinton. I deemed the movement very hazardous, preferring to remain in position behind the Big Black, and near to Vicksburg. I called a council of war composed of all the general officers who were then with my movable army, and, placing the ”