Two days before, General W. S. Smith was to leave Memphis, Tenn., with eight thousand cavalry, and join him at Meridian. The course of march was in part along the track in which the troops advanced on Vicksburg. The cavalcade of twenty thousand men, followed by miles of supply-wagons, crossed the Big Black River, moved along by Champion Hills and Clinton to Jackson. Here General McPherson, with the Sixteenth Corps, and General Hurlbut, with the Seventeenth Corps, who had taken different routes, met General Sherman, and were united to his army. The rebels did not seem to care about fighting the daring chieftain, but retreated before him. At Line Creek resistance was offered, a short battle followed, and again the host moved forward, taking the towns of Quitman and Enterprise, on every hand spreading alarm. February 13th he reached the Big Chunkey River. Meridian was the next point to be gained, when, with all his forces, he could push on, getting between General Johnston and Mobile, where Commodore Farragut was thundering with his naval ordnance, and perhaps interfere very much with General Polk’s army. Meanwhile, military depots would disappear before the torch, and other havoc with supplies distract and cripple the foe. With such successes, it would not be difficult to hasten over the intervening ground, and hurl his legions against the city from the land side, thus finishing the work Commodore Farragut had so well commenced. At Meridian, February 13th, 150 miles from Vicksburg, he congratulated his troops in these words: “The General Commanding conveys his congratulations and thanks to the officers and men composing this command, for their most successful accomplishment of one of the great problems of the war. Meridian, the great railway centre of the Southwest, is now in our possession, and, by industry and hard work, can be rendered useless to the enemy, and deprive him of the chief source of supply to his armies. Secrecy in plan and rapidity of execution accomplish the best results of war; and the General Commanding assures all that, by following their leaders fearlessly and with confidence, they will in time reap the reward so dear to us all—a peace that will never again be disturbed in our country by a discontented minority.” But as General Grant’s delay at Holly Springs, on account of its cowardly surrender, turned the first attack upon Vicksburg into a defeat, so by the failure of General Smith to start from Memphis till the 13th of February, the further success of the expedition was made impossible. Still, the affair was a magnificent raid into the heart of “rebeldom,” which spread terror along its way, and left the ruins of railroads, bridges, and storehouses behind, while securing animals and various material for the use of the Union army.