I have never criticised General Grant's strategy on this or any other occasion, but I thought then that he had lost an opportunity, which cost him and us six months' extrahard work, for we might have captured Vicksburg from the direction of Oxford in January, quite as easily as was afterward done in July, 1863. General Grant's orders for the general movement past Vicksburg, by Richmond and Carthage, were dated April 20, 1863.

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