IN LATE APRIL OF 1863, POISED FOR A TWO-corps crossing of the Mississippi forty roundabout miles below Vicksburg, Grant suggested to Sherman, whose corps had remained north of the objective to mislead its defenders as to where the blow would land, that the deception would be far more effective if he would stage a “heavy demonstration” against the Chickasaw Bluffs—a threat that, if successful, would give the attackers a clear shot at the city just beyond. “But I am loth to order it,” Grant added, explaining that the newspapers would be likely to “characterize it as a repulse,” much as they had done when Sherman first tried it, back in December, and was raked over the journalistic coals for the fruitless loss of 1,776 men in the attempt. “I therefore leave it to you whether to make such a demonstration,” the message ended.

Sherman was vehement in his rejection of the option. “Does General Grant think I care what the newspapers say?” he fumed, and replied at once that he would “make as strong a demonstration as possible.” As for the reporters, “We must scorn them, else they will ruin us and our country. They are as much enemies to good government as the secesh, and between the two I like the secesh best, because they are a brave, open enemy and not a set of sneaking, croaking scoundrels.”

Accordingly, with instructions for “every man [to] look as numerous as possible,” he staged a two-day panoplied show of force with one of his three divisions in the wooded Yazoo bottoms, in full view of the high-sited Rebel batteries, then withdrew under cover of darkness to join the rest of his corps on its west-bank march, southward for its share in the eastbank fighting that within three weeks would put Vicksburg under siege and bring on its Independence Day surrender. He reached Hard Times, where he would recross the river, to learn that the third, least, and last of the three naval “runs” past the city’s gun-studded, ninety-foot red-clay bluff had been more or less a disaster. Two towboats, each with barges lashed alongside loaded with hardtack, coffee, and ammunition—those three bedrock necessities for an army cut loose on its own—had set out near midnight. One boat made it, severely damaged by plunging fire, but the other was sunk, along with all the barges. The bad news was alleviated, for Sherman at any rate, by word that the lost towboat had had four journalists aboard, who now were listed as missing. “They were so deeply laden with weighty matter that they must have sunk,” he remarked happily, and added, straight-faced: “In our affliction we can console ourselves with the pious reflection that there are plenty more of the same sort.”

The two dozen letters—excerpts from which are published here—that were brought to light after nearly five full generations in the family keeping do little to sharpen the portrait of William Tecumseh Sherman that historians have drawn