Expensive Waiting

During the late spring of 1863 when things were looking particularly gloomy for the North, Lincoln was informed that Grant was, essentially, going to disappear. “You may not hear from me for several days,” the crypticd ispatch read when he left Port Gibson.

For a full two weeks nobody in Washington heard a word from, or about, Grant. Then on May 25 came glorious news: Grant had won five straight battles in Mississippi, captured the state capital of Jackson, split the rebel forces, and driven to the very trenches of the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, Vicksburg itself.

I think it is safe to imagine that Lincoln spent those agonizing two weeks of bottomless silence digesting his stomach lining.