"Also The Civil War A Narrative by Shelby Foote Vol. II and read about theweekes leading up to Dec 20, 1862 there were lots of things taking place like Grant sending Sherman to Memphis to take command of troops sent to Memphis to be under McClernand to move on Vicksburg. Sherman took command an moved south before McClernand arrived in Memphis and this was part of Grants plan to take Vicksburg for his own pearsonal gain."

This strike me as misdirected. Grant was simply following Halleck's instructions. I don't have my PUSG in front of me, but in mid-December Halleck told Grant to initiate the riverine campaign including specifically where to attack (south of the mouth of the Yazoo), how many men to utilize, and which commander to assign to it (paraphrase "the president may insist on an independent commander, but for now assign one of your men preferably Sherman, under you, to undertake the attack").

Hard to assign any malfeasance to Grant in this regard when he was following such direct orders from Halleck. If you want to talk about malfeasance, what about leaping several layers in the chain of command to lobby the president for an indepedent command for yourself? Talk about doing something for one's own personal gain!

If you start digging into this stuff deeper, I think you'll find Shelby Foote useless as a resource. Great writing with no footnotes makes for very fine historical fiction.

:D