Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[436] maintained its armies—regions which the Richmond Government no longer protected efficiently, but which were by their very extent defended against a permanent occupation—could be reached only by such a mode of warfare, and Sherman, the indefatigable soldier, was not a man to flinch before such measures when he believed them necessary to hasten the end of the war. The expedition he was undertaking was therefore, in every respect, the first trial of this new system, which he was afterward to apply on a much larger scale in his march to the sea.

It required an extensive train to carry, besides the ammunition, the provisions which prudence demanded should be furnished, and to go afar in search of those the country might supply. A thousand wagons followed the army: they carried twenty days provisions. The baggage and tents had been omitted. Sherman himself had nothing more than a blanket to wrap himself in near the bivouac-fires when he did not find, to shelter himself, some abandoned house spared by his soldiers.

The army marched out of Vicksburg in two columns. Sherman had taken to the left with the Sixteenth corps, which had reached Vicksburg about the 27th of January: he crossed the Big Black River on a boat-bridge at Messinger's Ferry. McPherson, to the right, was leading the Seventeenth corps, and crossed the river on a temporary bridge near that of the railroad, the scene of a bloody combat the year before. The weather was beautiful and dry, the roads good, and the soldiers were marching with animation. Informed of their approach, General S. D. Lee, whose cavalry was en échelon all around Vicksburg, forming a large segment of a circle, collected his forces to contend with them for the roads to Jackson. He had detached, it is true, General Ross with one of Jackson's divisions to observe the Federal expedition now ascending the course of the Yazoo and to protect the important depots established at Grenada; but the arrival of Ferguson, who was bringing him a brigade from Okolona, compensated for this detachment. He hoped by retarding the march of the Federals to give Loring's and French's divisions time to reunite in the city of Jackson, so as to dispute with them the passage of Pearl River. Not having been able to forestall the Federals on the banks of the Big Black, he was waiting for them a little in the