For more than a year the possession of Vicksburg had been the ultimate object of the military and naval operations of the principal forces of the United States in the west, before that object was attained. After the unsuccessful naval and military operations in July, 1862, repeated expeditions had been set on foot, at immense expense to the Government, accompanied with great labor and privation on the part of the patriots engaged in the enterprises, only to be met in turn with disaster and reverse. These operations were under the direction of Major-General Grant, commander-in-chief of the army of West Tennessee, and may take their date about December 1, 1862, at which time the principal forces of General Grant were at La Grange, three miles east of Grand Junction, on the Cairo and New Orleans railroad. General Grant was placed in command of the Department of Tennessee, embracing all the country west of the Tennessee river, and on both shores of the Mississippi river, from Corinth to Louisiana. He was in command of the Thirteenth Army Corps, and his troops fought the famous battles of Iuka and Corinth, although General Grant did not command in person, being at Jackson, Tennessee, his headquarters. In December, 1862, he removed his headquarters to Holly Springs; and on the 22d of that month, his forces having greatly increased, he divided them into four corps, viz.: the Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Corps of the United States Army. The first expedition, under General Grant, was started in December, 1862. The plan of General Grant was—that General Sherman should take command of the forces in Memphis in Tennessee, and Helena in Arkansas, and descend the river on transports with the gunboat fleet, and make an attack on Vicksburg by the 29th of December; and that General McClernand should take the forces at Cairo and move down to Vicksburg, thus reinforcing General Sherman soon after his attack on the town. Meanwhile, General Grant was to advance rapidly upon the Confederate troops in Mississippi north and east of Vicksburg, which formed the main body of their army, and keep them fully employed, and, if they retreated to Vicksburg, arrive there with them, ready to cooperate with General Sherman. The Confederate force, now under the command of General Pemberton, retired to the river, and finally fell back beyond Granada. Meanwhile General Grant advanced to Oxford, and on the 20th of December an attack was suddenly made in his rear, by a Confederate force under General Van Dorn, on the garrison under Colonel Murphy at Holly Springs, which surrendered. The prisoners were paroled and the supplies collected there for General Grant’s army were destroyed; also a large quantity of cotton which had been purchased of the people in the vicinity.