Smith's command.

The cavalry you have sent to Canby will be debarked at Vicksburg.

It, with the available cavalry already in that section, will move from there eastward, in co-operation.
Hood's army has been terribly reduced by the severe punishment you gave it in Tennessee, by desertion consequent upon their defeat, and now by the withdrawal of many of them to oppose Sherman.

(I take it a large portion of the infantry has been so withdrawn.

It is so asserted in the Richmond papers, and a member of the rebel Congress said a few days since in a speech, that one-half of it had been brought to South Carolina to oppose Sherman.) This being true, or even if it is not true, Canby's movement will attract all the attention of the enemy, and leave the advance from your standpoint easy.