previous next
[463]

There was no rise in the river, but on the contrary a great fall, so that it was reported to be impossible without three months labor to make a canal deep enough for the naval vessels. Therefore I left General Williams to co-operate with the fleet in the proposed capture of Vicksburg, although I had learned that it was in the department of Major-General Halleck. That Halleck might have no delicacy in calling for the co-operation of General Williams I addressed to him the following letter:--

headquarters Department of the Gulf New Orleans, La., July 26, 1862.
Major-General Halleck, Commanding Department of the West:
General:--I avail myself of the voyage of the Tennessee to communicate with you upon the subject of General Williams' brigade at Vicksburg.

General Williams was sent up at a time when we should have had only local troops to meet at Vicksburg. It was not properly within my department, but the exigencies of the public service, as it seemed to me, justified the movement. It is now quite different, as I am informed that a division at least of your army is moving upon Vicksburg.

I have great need of General Williams' command to aid me in clearing out the guerrillas from this State, who are doing infinite mischief. I have therefore ordered his recall, as his force since the reinforcement by Van Dorn and Breckinridge of the enemy, is too small for operations alone, and a junction of Generals Grant and Curtis must give ample force for the reduction of the place. The disposal of the guerrilla bands is easy of accomplishment, but it requires many men to hold the various points, which if not held only bring destruction upon our friends there.

If in anything I can aid your operations command me. I have sent a duplicate of this under cover to General Grant for information as well as to General Williams.

I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

Benj. F. Butler, Major-General Commanding.1

Before writing this letter I surmised what the trouble with Halleck was: inconsistency, vanity, cowardice,--one or all. I had determined that he should find no refuge in the fact that he supposed I would not give him aid. But knowing of the retreat of Beauregard's

1 War Records, Vol. XV., p. 530.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Vicksburg (Mississippi, United States) (4)
New Orleans (Louisiana, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Thomas Williams (6)
H. W. Halleck (4)
U. S. Grant (2)
Dorn (1)
Benjamin R. Curtis (1)
Benjamin F. Butler (1)
John C. Breckinridge (1)
G. T. Beauregard (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
July 26th, 1862 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: