It was highly insubordinate, but I overlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the service.

General McClernand was a politician of very considerable prominence in his State; he was a member of Congress when the secession war broke out; he belonged to that political party which furnished all the opposition there was to a vigorous prosecution of the war for saving the Union; there was no delay in his declaring himself for the Union at all hazards, and there was no uncertain sound in his declaration of where he stood in the contest before the country.

He also gave up his seat in Congress to take the field in defence of the principles he had proclaimed.
The real work of the campaign and siege of Vicksburg now began.

The problem was to secure a footing upon dry ground on the east side of the river from which the troops could operate against Vicksburg.

The Mississippi River, from Cairo south, runs through a rich alluvial valley of many miles in width, bound on the east by land running from eighty up to two or more hundred feet above the river.