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

In like manner, when the defense of the Big Black River was decided upon, all available troops, including those in Vicksburg, should have been concentrated for the object. The opposite principle that had been controlling Confederate operations since the 1st, governed, however, on the 17th. And, instead of strengthening and encouraging the defeated remnant of his army by bringing two fresh divisions into it, General Pemberton further discouraged that disheartened remnant, by leaving one-half in front of the river to fight, and sending the other behind it, to bivouac some two miles in rear.

General Pemberton received four orders from me during this campaign.

The first,¹ dated May 1st, and repeated on the 2d, directed him to attack the Federal army with all his forces united for the purpose.

The second,² dated May 13th, is that by which he professes to have been instigated to the movement which entangled him with Federal skirmishers in the morning of the 16th, and involved him in the battle which he lost. He was ordered to march seventeen miles to the east, for the expressed object of attacking a large detachment, in conjunction with the troops in Jackson, to reopen his communications and enable coming reinforcements to join him. His intended movement was to a point nine and a half miles almost south, for the avowed object of compelling the Federal army to attack him in a position