Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

[41] however, prevented the co-operation of Banks, and after Canby took command at the South-West, he also was for a long time unable to act offensively. Still, the original idea was kept steadily in mind by both Grant and Sherman. On the 29th of May, Sherman telegraphed from Dallas: ‘Johnston has in my front every man he can scrape, and Mobile must now be at our mercy, if General Canby and General Banks could send to Pascagoula ten thousand men;’ and on the 30th, he proposed that A. J. Smith's division should be reinforced and sent ‘to act against Mobile, in concert with Admiral Farragut, according to the original plan.’ To this Grant replied, on the 3rd of June: ‘If there are any surplus troops West, they could be advantageously used against Mobile, as suggested in Sherman's despatch;’ and on the 5th, he added, from Cold Harbor: ‘The object of sending troops to Mobile now would be, not so much to assist Sherman against Johnston, as to secure for him a base of supplies, after his work is done.’

But it was found necessary to transfer A. J. Smith to West Tennessee and the Nineteenth corps to Virginia. Canby was therefore unable to send any force whatever to act against Mobile until late in July, and then only two thousand men under Gordon Granger, to co-operate with the fleet. Farragut, however, with splendid daring, steamed his vessels past the forts at the entrance to Mobile bay, and during the month of August all the defences of the harbor were either evacuated or surrendered. By the 23rd, the fleet had complete possession of the bay, but the city itself remained in the hands of the rebels. On the 13th of August, rumors of these