of 1862–1863. The Union's Major General Ulysses S. Grant had put into motion several operations aiming at flanking Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's fixed defenses. Grant wanted to keep his troops busy until he could begin active campaigning later in the spring, so he ordered them to undertake several moves that would give the appearance of activity but would not bring on a major battle. Writing in his memoirs long after the event, he stated that he did not have great confidence that any of them would prove successful, although he was prepared to take advantage of them if they did. Not only had the operations failed to produce any good results, but the last, the joint Army–Navy operation known as the Yazoo Pass expedition, was in danger of being captured or destroyed before it could extricate itself from enemy territory. Grant and Acting Rear Admiral David D. Porter therefore set one more operation in motion. Like the others, it was an effort to get on the enemy flank; it had the additional purpose of relieving some of the pressure on the earlier expedition. To avoid the lethargy in command that had hampered the Yazoo Pass operation, Porter himself went with the gunboats, and the Army was under the personal direction of Major General William T. Sherman. Grant's orders to Sherman lay out the course of the expedition. They also show that he was not completely sure of its success. "You will proceed as early as practicable up Steele's Bayou and through Black Bayou to Deer Creek, and thence with the gunboats now there, by any route they may take, to get into the Yazoo River for the purpose of determining the feasibility of getting an army through that route to the east bank of that river, and at a point at which they can act advantageously against Vicksburg." Geography The expedition was very much limited by the geography of the Mississippi Delta, the flood plain of the river occupying most of northwestern Mississippi. The land is quite low and is in fact lower in many places than the river. The region is characterized by numerous marshes, brakes, sloughs, bayous, lakes, creeks, and rivers that in the geologic past were parts of the river bed. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, overflow from the Mississippi continued to pass into these waters, and they could be used as alternatives