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

[176] and made a tortuous path in advance of the lighter transports, which had still more difficulty than he in forcing a passage.¹ Trees had to be pulled up by the roots, and stumps sawn off below the surface of the water; chimneys, and guards, and pilot-houses were swept away by the wilderness of boughs that reached down from above, and stretched out on either side.

There was no dry land along the route as far as Deer creek, and all the troops had finally to be removed from the transports and conveyed on tugs and coal-barges, the way having become impassable to the steamers. The movement of the land forces was therefore extremely slow, and the naval vessels got some thirty miles in advance, near the Rolling Fork. Here, on the 20th of March, Porter was attacked by sharpshooters, to whom his heavy ordnance could render only ineffectual replies. The rebels had not only impeded his progress, by hewing heavy trees in his front, but begun doing the same in his rear. The labor of removing these artificial obstructions was prodigious; it was prosecuted by night as well as by day, and under artillery and musketry fire; and Porter finally sent back for Sherman to hurry up to his assistance.

Sherman was then at the junction of the Big Black bayou and Deer creek. He at once sent forward all the troops which had arrived at that point; and, when, in a few hours, reenforcements came up, although it was night, he marched at their head, along the narrow and only track of hard land that