William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

No amount of blame distributed among division commanders can conceal the recklessness with which an army was pushed through swamps and bayous against inaccessible bluffs, and the best answers to all Sherman's unjust attacks upon officers who fought with him there, are found in his own report of the action:

headquarters right wing Thirteenth Army Corps, camp, Milliken's Bend, La., January 3, 1863.
Colonel J. H. Rawlins, Assistant Adjutant-General to Major-General Grant, Oxford, Miss., at last reliable accounts.

Sir: * * * * As soon as we reached the point of debarkation DeCourcey's, Stuart's, and Blair's brigades were sent forward in the direction of Vicksburg about three miles, and on the 27th the whole army was disembarked and moved out in four columns: Steele's above the mouth of Chickasaw Bayou; Morgan, with Blair's brigade of Steele's division, below the same bayou; Morgan L. Smith on the main road from Johnson's plantation to Vicksburg, with orders to bear to his left, so as to strike the bayou about a mile south of where Morgan was ordered to cross it; and A. J. Smith's division keeping on the main road. All the heads of columns met the enemy's pickets and drove them toward Vicksburg. During the night of the 27th the ground was reconnoitered as well as possible, and it was found as difficult as it could possibly be from nature and art. Immediately in our front was a bayou, passable only at two points, on a narrow levee, or a sand bar, which was perfectly commanded by the enemy's sharp-shooters that lined the levee, or parapet, on its opposite bank.

Behind this was an irregular strip of bench, or table-land, on which were constructed a series of rifle pits and batteries, and behind that a high, abrupt range of hills, whose scarred sides were marked all the way up with rifle trenches, and the crowns of the principal hills presented heavy batteries.

The county road, leading from Vicksburg to Yazoo City, runs along the foot of these hills, and answered an admirable purpose to the enemy as a covered way, along which he moved his artillery and infantry promptly to meet us at any point at which we attempted to pass this difficult bayou. Nevertheless that bayou, with its levee parapets, backed by the lines of rifle pits, batteries, and frowning hills, had to be passed before we could reach terra firma, and meet our enemy on any thing like fair terms.

Steele, in his progress, followed substantially an old levee back from the Yazoo to the foot of the hills north of Thompson's Lake, but found that, in