Terri Gordon

The Siege of Vicksburg

Vicksburg, Mississippi was a very beautiful and cultural town. It was called the Queen City of the Bluffs. The city was built high in the bluff above the river, so steep that the streets had to be cobblestoned so that the men and the horses could have a foothold. One third of the white residents were from elsewhere in the world. The city thrived on trade by both steamboat and railroad. As Jefferson Davis once said, “Vicksburg was the nailhead that held the South’s two halves together.”

When the fighting started in Charleston, South Carolina, the “conflict,” as it was called, seemed too far away for Vicksburg to ever be in any danger. “Oh, the Union could never take Vicksburg,” the citizens would say. “We’re too high in the bluffs for them to ever reach us!” But control of Vicksburg was crucial to the control of the Mississippi River. Northerners came down from Cairo, Illinois and other travelers came up from the Gulf of Mexico. The only way for the Deep South (Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas) to get troops, supplies, and reinforcements to the main Southern armies was through Vicksburg, Mississippi, either by train or by riverboat. By 1862, New Orleans had been captured and both ends of the Mississippi River were in Union hands. But the middle of the river was still held by the Confederates. Vicksburg was the central focal point for rail and river traffic to the “Heart of the Confederacy.” (The railroad went from Vicksburg, Mississippi to Monroe, Louisiana.) If Grant could control Vicksburg, he could control the entire Mississippi River, and that meant control over the South. If Vicksburg was in Union hands, then the much-needed troops and supplies could not get to the Southern armies.

Lincoln had said to Grant, “Valuable a New Orleans was to us, Vicksburg will be even more so. We may take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can still defy us from Vicksburg. It means…fresh troops (and supplies) from all the states in the far south…” Grant said, “It is generally regarded as an axiom in war that all great armies moving into an enemy’s country should start at a base of supplies, which should be fortified and guarded, and to which the army is to fall back on in case of disaster…I was now in the enemy’s country, with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg between me and my supplies.”

During the first part of the war, the South was doing quite well. They won many battles and kept most of their territory from being taken over by “those d--- Yankees!” It is true that supplies were scarce for the South, but people were doing everything that they could think of to help their men in uniform with the supplies that they did have. The North was getting hammered by the proud Southerners. But as fate would have it, the South’s luck was about to change. Supplies were getting harder and harder to find. The newspapers were running out of paper and their issues got smaller and smaller. Fabrics for the elaborate dresses and costumes of Southern women were disappearing from the shelves, almost as fast as the food. When New Orleans was captured in June of 1862, both ends of the Mississippi wee in Union hands. Union officers patrolled the river, in some places, and supplies couldn’t get through at all. During the nearly six week long siege in Vicksburg, the only meats to be found in the stores were mule meat and skinned rats! People were starving. That was Grant’s plan.

Grant’s master plan was to find the main base of supplies for the South (which just happened to be Vicksburg), capture it, and hold the territory until the end of the war. After that, it was only a matter of time before he could starve the South into a surrender and win a glorious victory for the North. He put great effort into capturing Vicksburg, and in the end, it all paid off. (But not before several mistakes were made (on both sides).) In May 1862, Union forces tried to take the city by means of a naval expedition. The Rebels built up their defenses and set up “extensive batteries to obstruct passage on the river.” On June 27, a Union fleet under command of General David G. Farragut arrived below the town and on June 28, two frigates and six gunboats tried to run the Rebel river fortifications. The attack failed, as did several other attempts to take Vicksburg by river.

Grant put his own plans into action in autumn of 1862. He launched several attacks into the winter but the Confederate troops held them off and the attacks failed. Then he got an idea. He proposed moving from Holy Springs (a base for artillery) against the town of Grenada. The goal was to cut the Rebel line of communications and to draw the Confederate commander of Vicksburg, General John C. Pemberton, away from his stronghold. Another army, led by General William T. Sherman, was to be moved downriver by a fleet commanded by General David D. Porter. Sherman would then seize the city in the absence of a majority of its defenders. However, this plan was disrupted by a Rebel raid, led by Confederate General Earl Van Dorn, which destroyed the Union supply base at Holly Springs. This stopped Grant’s advance. The news of the successful raid was music to the town’s ears. They thought that this might teach the Yankees to leave them alone. But they were wrong.

Sherman’s advance continued. But a week later, he was driven back with heavy losses at the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. (Memphis, Tennessee was located there. The bluffs overlook a great bend in the Mississippi River. Memphis had been captured by Union forces in June of 1862.) Sherman’s report was short but accurate: “I reached Vicksburg at the time appointed, landed, assaulted, and failed.” Grant now realized that he needed to bear down on Vicksburg from different directions, not just one assault at a time.

Before he crossed the river, Grant sent the federal cavalry commander Benjamin H. Grierson on a raid that Grant hoped would create a diversion from his own activities. From January through March of 1863, four attempts were made to bypass Vicksburg by cutting canals or changing the course of nearby creeks, streams, and rivers. All of them failed. In April, Grant made a very bold decision. Against the advice from Sherman and many other Union officers to retreat back to Memphis, Tennessee, Grant decided to attack Vicksburg from the east. Grierson and 1700 Union troops left La Grange, Tennessee, on April 17, 1863, creating the diversion that Grant needed. Sixteen days later, after covering 600 miles of land, he reached Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He destroyed several mile of railroad, took 500 prisoners, and avoided thousands of Confederate troops sent against him. He achieved this great feat with the loss of only 24 men! During the course of this distraction, Grant marched his armies south along the west side of the Mississippi River at a point well below the heavily defended city. On April 30, 1863, he then used the boats to cross the river from Hard Times, Louisiana to Bruinsburg, Mississippi. At the same time, troops under Sherman matched north and exchanged fire with the Confederates to create a diversion for the river crossing. Then, with the help of the Union river fleet, Sherman crossed the river and started a rapid march eastward. According to his plans, Grant and his armies would be attacking Vicksburg from behind. They would either “defeat the Confederates in open battle or drive them into the river stronghold, where they would be forced to surrender sooner or later.” On the evening of April 16, 1863, Porter ran his fleet through the fire from the Confederate batteries on the shore and lost only one of his 12 ships. A few nights later, 6 transports and 13 barges tried the same thing, and 5 transports and 6 barges came through. In spite of the losses, Grant had enough supplies to go through with his plan.

Once on the eastern side of the Mississippi, Grant’s first objective was Jackson, Mississippi, which is the capital of the state and was held by almost 6,000 Confederate troops led by General Joseph E. Johnston and General John Gregg. Johnston heard of the coming troops and evacuated the town. Gregg was assigned to defend the town until the evacuation was complete. The Union troops soon arrived and the battle was on. Then, after hours of fighting, Johnston informed Gregg that the evacuation was complete and that Gregg should disengage and follow. Gregg followed his orders. The Confederate troops were defeated and had to retreat northward. 4,300 of their 6,000 troops lay dead about the city. After the Rebel retreat, the Yankees move in and had a celebration in the Bowman House, hosted by General Ulysses S. Grant himself. The town was then burned and the railroad connections with Vicksburg were cut off. (The battle was on May 14, 1863.) This major blow to the capital of the fair state of Mississippi was devastating news because if the Union troops had waited just a few more days, Johnston and Gregg could have had over 11,000 troops and over 1,000 more reinforcements to defend the city! But having disposed of the only force that could threaten his rear, Grant turned westward towards Vicksburg.

At Champion’s Hill, halfway between Jackson and Vicksburg, two of Grant’s commanders, James B. McPherson and McClernand, attacked Perberton and his troops. The Battle of Champion’s Hill (also called the Battle of Baker’s Creek), which was fought of May16, just a few days after the fall of Jackson, was the most brutal of he campaign. There were 6,757 total casualties, but the Confederates took the hardest hit. The Union troops were triumphant and forced Pemberton to retreat. The very next day, Pemberton took a stand at the Big Black River and was again defeated. He withdrew his army to the prepared positions in Vicksburg. Then, after two more assaults, in which he suffered heavy losses, Grant decided that Vicksburg had to be starved out.

This took an effective role on the town. Citizens, as well as soldiers on both sides, were starved to death during the six week long siege. Finally, Pemberton realized that neither his soldiers his volunteers, nor the people of the city could stand any more. People started seeing white flags, a sign of surrender, around the tops of the fortifications around the city. There was much talk around the town about how Pemberton could not let the starvation of his people go on any longer. Pemberton talked and negotiated with General Grant for nearly two days. On July 4, 1863, the Confederacy lost its most important port to the Union, and the North was ecstatic. They had won two long battles in one day. They had successfully split the Confederacy in two at Vicksburg, and they had kept the Rebels from invading their own territory at Gettysburg. It was a happy day for the North, the turning point of the war. The South was devastated. They realized how horrible war really was and that this particular war wasn’t going to last that much longer, for they were running low on reinforcements and supplies. But they also realized that they had a reason for fighting, that many of the people around them were too proud and too stubborn to give in to the North, and that they would fight till the last man.

After the Union had occupied Vicksburg for a while, things got a little better. Since Union troops were always at Vicksburg, the citizens got their share of the Union supplies that were sent there. They were able to eat at least two meals a day again. They were given decent clothing to wear. They were treated to the best of the doctors’ capabilities so that more Union soldiers could be treated in the hospitals. Somehow, life returned to somewhat normal conditions, and slowly people began to realize that it was probably better this way. Most of their slaves had run away or left with the Union armies, and their crops, land and their homes had been burnt to the ground. Even if their land was still intact, who would work it? No, it was better this way, and once the people in Vicksburg started to realize that, thing got better. Vicksburg stayed in Union hands until the end of the war and, just as General Ulysses S. Grant had hoped, by capturing the city of Vicksburg, he had starved the South into a surrender and won a glorious victory for the Union.