Meridian was made the objective point of this movement, though Grant intimated to Halleck that if Sherman found it would not too greatly prolong the subordinate campaign, he might march on Mobile. [Footnote: _Id._, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 100.] When the march began, Sherman allowed it to be given out that he would attack Mobile, but this was to deceive the enemy. In his correspondence with General Banks he limited his task to that which has been stated, though he asked Banks to help him keep up the notion that Mobile was aimed at, as it would deter the enemy from heavily reinforcing General Polk by the garrison there and by troops sent from Atlanta. "I must return to the army in the field in Alabama in February," said he, "but propose to avail myself of the short time allowed me here in the department, to strike a blow at Meridian and Demopolis." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 114.] In this view the movement was a success, notwithstanding the failure of the cavalry column to co-operate. [Footnote: _Id._, p. 498.] The biographer of General Polk disputes the importance and the permanence of the interruption of railway communication in Mississippi; [Footnote: Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General, vol. ii. p. 309.] but it is certain that no important hostile movement from that region was made again till Hood's campaign against Thomas a year later, and that was seriously if not fatally delayed by the want of railway communication between Florence or Tuscumbia and the interior of the Gulf States.