Tuttle; and his three brigades by Brigadier-General R.P.Buckland, Colonel J.A.Mower, and Brigadier-General John E.Smith.
My own staff then embraced: Dayton, McCoy, and Hill, aides; J.H.
Hammond, assistant adjutant-general; Sanger, inspector-general; McFeeley, commissary; J.Condit Smith, quartermaster; Charles McMillan, medical director; Ezra Taylor, chief of artillery; Jno.

C.Neely, ordnance-officer; Jenney and Pitzman, engineers.
By this time it had become thoroughly demonstrated that we could not divert the main river Mississippi, or get practicable access to the east bank of the Yazoo, in the rear of Vicksburg, by any of the passes; and we were all in the habit of discussing the various chances of the future.

General Grant's headquarters were at Milliken's Bend, in tents, and his army was strung along the river all the way from Young's Point up to Lake Providence, at least sixty miles.

I had always contended that the best way to take Vicksburg was to resume the movement which had been so well begun the previous November, viz., for the main army to march by land down the country inland of the Mississippi River; while the gunboat-fleet and a minor land-force should threaten Vicksburg on its river-front.
I reasoned that, with the large force then subject to General Grant's orders-viz., four army corps--he could easily resume the movement from Memphis, by way of Oxford and Grenada, to Jackson, Mississippi, or down the ridge between the Yazoo and Big Black; but General Grant would not, for reasons other than military, take any course which looked like, a step backward; and he himself concluded on the river movement below Vicksburg, so as to appear like connecting with General Banks, who at the same time was besieging Port Hudson from the direction of New Orleans.
Preliminary orders had already been given, looking to the digging of a canal, to connect the river at Duckport with Willow Bayou, back of Milliken's Bend, so as to form a channel for the conveyance of supplies, by way of Richmond, to New Carthage; and several steam dredge-boats had come from the upper rivers to assist in the work.
One day early in April, I was up at General Grant's headquarters, and we talked over all these things with absolute freedom.

Charles A.Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, was there, and Wilson, Rawlins, Frank Blair, McPherson, etc.