"I can appreciate the intense satisfaction you must feel at lying before the very monster that has defied us with such deep and malignant hate, and seeing your once disunited fleet again a unit; and better still, the chain that made an inclosed sea of a line in the great river broken forever. In so magnificent a result I stop not to count who did it. It is done, and the day of our nation's birth is consecrated and baptized anew in a victory won by the united Navy and Army of our country. God grant that the harmony and mutual respect that exists between our respective commanders, and shared by all the true men of the joint service, may continue forever and serve to elevate our national character, threatened with shipwreck. Thus I muse as I sit in my solitary camp out in the wood far from the point for which we have justly striven so long and so well, and though personal curiosity would tempt me to go and see the frowning batteries and sunken pits that have defied us so long, and sent to their silent graves so many of our early comrades in the enterprise, I feel that other tasks lie before me, and time must not be lost. Without casting anchor, and despite the heat and the dust and drought, I must go again into the bowels of the land to make the conquest of Vicksburg fulfil all the conditions it should in the progress of this war. Whether success attend my efforts or not, I know that Admiral Porter will ever accord to me the exhibition of a pure and unselfish zeal in the service of our country.
"Though further apart, the navy and army will still act in concert, and I assure you I shall never reach the banks of the river or see a gunboat, but I will think of Admiral Porter, Captain Breese, and the many elegant and accomplished gentlemen it has been my good fortune to meet on armed or unarmed decks of the Mississippi Squadron."
In 1863 new levies were raised for the armies, by conscription. The Conscription Act was resisted by Rebel sympathizers and the criminal classes generally in several places, notably in New York City, where the atrocious "Draft riots" occurred. Elsewhere the call was responded to with patriotic cheerfulness. Sherman had some decided views as to the manner in which the new troops should be employed. He thought it would be a waste of material to organize new regiments, while in the field there were skeleton regiments enough to make, if filled up, a magnificent army. To the Governor of Ohio he wrote on this subject: