Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[168] the fertility and variety of devices developed during this anomalous campaign. The Lake Providence route was finally rejected, in March, at about the same time that all hope of effecting any thing by the canal was abandoned.

This project excited attention and speculation, especially in the rebellious states, where many imagined that the whole torrent of the Mississippi might be diverted, even into the Atchafalaya, and the old bed of the former stream forever denuded, which would have left New Orleans an inland town, far away from the river that was the sole source and cause of its prosperity. But no expectation of any such stupendous results was entertained by Grant. He believed that Vicksburg was only to be won by hard fighting, and by destroying armies; and although he resorted to these various schemes for placing his troops where a foothold for active operations could be maintained, and a route secured by which the new base might be supplied, he nevertheless looked on them as in reality offering little promise, and simply affording occupation for his men, till the subsidence of the waters should allow him to move in the ordinary way.

At the same time that he began these other undertakings, Grant sent Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, of his staff, to Helena, to organize an expedition for opening and examining the Yazoo pass. This was with a view to destroying the rebel steamboats and embryo gunboats on the Yazoo river, above Haine's bluff. The pass is a narrow and tortuous bayou, sixty or eighty feet wide, and from twenty to thirty feet deep, running nearly east from a point on the Mississippi, six miles below Helena, into Moon lake, the former