Vicksburg, Mississippi

“ South of Vicksburg the prospect for the Union Army was equally dismal. After meeting the river at Vicksburg, the bluffs follow the river course closely to the south and were accessible, therefore, to troops from the Mississippi River. But the river batteries of the city prevented passage of transports to the river below; for troops to get below the city it was necessary to move through the Louisiana lowlands west of the river. This region was like the Delta north of Vicksburg—flooded bottom lands interspersed with bayous, rivers, and lakes. It would prove equally obstinate to land movements. ”

“ Not until she entered the great bend of Vicksburg did she once come into contrast with anything that could in any degree diminish her regal supremacy. There, as day was breaking, she entered the deep shadow of the southernmost "Walnut Hill." The town on its crest was two hundred feet above her lower deck, and the stiff Yazoo squire, his kindly brother-in-law and sister and the Vicksburg merchant and his wife, waiting down there while she slowed up to the wharf-boat at its foot to let them and others off, were proud of the bluff and of the two miles of sister hills hid by it and the night. ”

“ The fall of Vicksburg was an important event in the Civil War. A few days later, on the ninth of July, Port Hudson, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, also surrendered, giving the Federals complete control of the great river and cutting the Confederacy in two by detaching Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana.
The Civil War settled a great question which had grown so vexing that no man or party was great enough to settle it, without appeal to arms. It brought untold sadness and suffering to thousands of homes, both North and South, but the South suffered much more than the North. ”

“ The objective of this activity was the turning of Vicksburg’s left flank by passing southward through the Louisiana waterways to reach the bluffs below the city. A canal was cut to provide entrance from the Mississippi into Lake Providence, 75 miles above Vicksburg. From Lake Providence a route was surveyed through the labyrinth of bayous, lakes, and rivers by which a fleet might emerge again on the Mississippi 200 miles below the city and move on Vicksburg from the south. While presenting great difficulties to navigation, the entire 400 miles would be safe from enemy action. ”

“ Seagoing men-of-war and ironclad gunboats engaged shore defenses and escorted troops along river and bayou; cavalry raids struck far behind enemy lines as the armies of the West marched and countermarched in a gigantic operation which culminated in the campaign and siege of Vicksburg. Protected by heavy artillery batteries on the riverfront and with land approaches to the north and south guarded by densely wooded swamplands, Vicksburg defied large-scale land and river expeditions for over a year. ”

“ Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets and pleasant residences; it commands the commerce of the Yazoo and Sunflower Rivers; is pushing railways in several directions, through rich agricultural regions, and has a promising future of prosperity and importance. ”

“ Life in Vicksburg, during the six weeks was perhaps—but wait; here are some materials out of which to reproduce it:—
Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three thousand non-combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world—walled solidly in, the frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; hence, no buying and selling with the outside; no passing to and fro; no God-speeding a parting guest, no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of world-wide news to be read at breakfast, mornings—a tedious dull absence of such matter, instead ”

“ Although the Confederates fought bravely and well to prevent the Northern troops from getting control of the Mississippi River, by the close of 1862 they had lost every stronghold except Port Hudson and Vicksburg. In 1863, General Grant put forth a resolute effort to capture Vicksburg, and after a brilliant campaign laid siege to the city. For seven weeks the Confederate army held out. Meanwhile the people of Vicksburg found shelter in caves and cellars, their food at times consisting of rats and mule flesh. ”

“ A unique feature of the American Civil War was the inclination of the private soldier—Union and Confederate—to fight with unrelenting ferocity during the engagements of the war and yet to engage in friendly intercourse with each other once the battle had ended, or even during lulls in the fighting. Swapping of Northern coffee for Southern tobacco was a commonplace picket activity in all 46 theaters of the war. In the long, weary siege of Vicksburg, the monotony was often lightened by jeers and pleasantries exchanged between lines. ”

“ Vicksburg, the city of hills, everywhere bears marks of war. The Mississippi valley is desolate. You have been deprived of your property in the negro, your houses burned and destroyed.
We can meet the President and the conservative element of the north by a simple act of legislation, and it becomes us as a country-loving people to look well to the candidates for the legislature. If they fail to take the necessary step, the result will be that the Freedmen's Bureau and bayonets will remain with us until they do. ”

“ Jefferson Davis, while on a visit to Mississippi to inspect the defences of Vicksburg, spoke as follows in a speech at Jackson before the Mississippi Legislature: “Vicksburg and Port Hudson are the real points of attack. Every effort will be made to capture these places with the object of forcing the navigation of the Mississippi and severing the eastern from the western portion of the Confederacy. Let all then who have at heart the welfare and safety of the country go without delay to Vicksburg and Port Hudson. ”

“ Mobile being then in our possession, with 100,000 men at Meridian we would redeem the entire country from Memphis to the Tombigbee river. Of course I would have the gunboats with a small force at Vicksburg as auxiliary to this movement. With regard to the canal, Vicksburg can be rendered useless to the Confederate army upon the first rise of the river; but I do not advise this, because Vicksburg belongs to the United States and we desire to hold and fortify it, for the Mississippi river at Vicksburg and the Vicksburg-Jackson railroad will become necessary as a base of our future operations. ”

“ A position must be gained in the rear. This seemed, and indeed proved, an almost impossible task. The Mississippi was unusually high, and the surrounding country a vast network of bayous and swamps. The winter passed away in fruitless labors to make some sort of a water passage to the rear of Vicksburg, either above, via the Yazoo, or around through Louisiana to some point below the city, whence the army could cross again to the Vicksburg side of the Mississippi and strike Pemberton’s stronghold from the southeast. ”

“ THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST VICKSBURG—EMPLOYING THE FREEDMEN—OCCUPATION OF HOLLY SPRINGS—SHERMAN ORDERED TO MEMPHIS—SHERMAN'S MOVEMENTS DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI—VAN DORN CAPTURES HOLLY SPRINGS—COLLECTING FORAGE AND FOOD.
Vicksburg was important to the enemy because it occupied the first high ground coming close to the river below Memphis. ”

“ The siege of Vicksburg and last capture of Jackson and dispersion of Johnston's army entitle General Sherman to more credit than usually falls to the lot of one man to earn. His demonstration at Haines's Bluff, in April, to hold the enemy about Vicksburg, while the army was securing a foothold east of the Mississippi ”

“ Up to the time when the Rebellion began, it was rendered certain that no hand of man could legally turn the Mississippi across that peninsula.
The first siege of Vicksburg lasted but twenty days. Our fleet was unable to silence the batteries, and our land force was not sufficient for the work. During the progress of the siege, Colonel Ellet, with his ram fleet, ascended the Yazoo River, and compelled the Rebels to destroy three of their gun-boats, the Livingston, Polk, and Van Dorn, to prevent their falling into our hands. ”

“ The western armies having advanced to the line of the Memphis and Charleston railroad, the next step was to capture Vicksburg and thereby open to navigation the Mississippi river. Vicksburg was strongly fortified and garrisoned and was covered by an army commanded by Gen. Pemberton posted behind the Tallahatchie. Grant moved direct from Grand Junction via Holly Springs, McPherson his left from Corinth, and Sherman his right from Memphis to Wyatt, turning Pemberton's left, who retreated to Grenada behind the Yalabusha. ”

“ By the 1910 census Mississippi had not one city of 25,000 inhabitants. Meridian, with 23,000, was (and probably still is) her metropolis, with Jackson and Vicksburg, cities of about 20,000 each, following. The entire State has but fifteen cities having a population of 5000 or more, so that, of a total of about a million and three-quarters of people in the State (more than half of them colored) , only about one-tenth live in towns with a population of 5000 or over. ”

“ If a Vicksburg merchant who received a car load of grain over the Shreveport road was permitted by the railway company to ship over the Vicksburg road to Meridian any other car load 3 1/2 cents per 100 pounds, every other merchant in Vicksburg should be permitted to ship at the same rate, although he had had no dealings with the Shreveport company. ”

“ The Louisiana, the Arkansas, the Manassas, the Tennessee, the Albemarle—great things were expected of them all, and they did nothing.
But we were as far from the capture of Vicksburg as ever. Fever attacked our men in those [46] fatal swamps, and they became thoroughly discouraged. The sick-list was fearful. Of a battery of eighty men, twenty only were fit for duty. The Western troops, and they were our best, were homesick. Lying upon the banks of the Mississippi, with transports above Vicksburg convenient for embarkation, they longed for home. ”

“ By noon of May 18, with Grant’s advance expected momentarily, Pemberton believed the defenses of Vicksburg strong enough to stand off the Union Army until Johnston received sufficient reinforcements to raise the expected siege and prevent loss of the Mississippi River. There, while inspecting his defenses, Pemberton received a dispatch from Johnston advising the evacuation of Vicksburg which, Johnston felt, was already doomed. Military necessity demanded that “instead of losing both troops and place, we must, if possible, save the troops. ”

“ The country back of Vicksburg was filled with deserters from Pemberton's army and, it was reported, many from Johnston's also. The men determined not to fight again while the war lasted. Those who lived beyond the reach of the Confederate army wanted to get to their homes. Those who did not, wanted to get North where they could work for their support till the war was over. Besides all this there was quite a peace feeling, for the time being, among the citizens of that part of Mississippi, but this feeling soon subsided. ”

“ Shortly after the capture of Memphis the Union flotilla descended the river to Vicksburg, finding no obstructions other than occasional light batteries which fired upon the gun-boats from the banks. While the army and flotilla had been making its way southward a national fleet, commanded by the intrepid Farragut, had passed the forts near the mouth of the Mississippi, emerged victorious from one of the greatest naval battles of the war, and compelled the surrender of New Orleans. ”

“ He even went so far as to argue that on the whole the South had gained rather than lost; that the control of the river was of no real value to the North; that the loss of Vicksburg "has on our side liberated for general operations in the field a large army, while it requires the enemy to maintain 113 cooped up, inactive, in positions insalubrious to their soldiers, considerable detachments of their forces."
Seddon attempted to reverse the facts, to show that the importance of the Mississippi in commerce was a Northern not a Southern concern. ”

“ In the end, fewer men might be lost, and a growing threat to the Union rear—General Johnston raising troops near Jackson for the relief of Vicksburg—could be eliminated by quickly capturing Vicksburg and throwing the entire Union strength against Johnston. In addition, the Federal troops, spirited by recent victories and impatient to seize the prize for which they had campaigned so long, would not work so zealously in the trenches with pick and shovel unless 36 assault had failed. ”

“ The Union Army, now within a few miles of its long-sought objective, had, in the 18 days since it crossed the Mississippi, completed one of the most noteworthy campaigns of the war. Marching deep into enemy territory, the Army of the Tennessee had successfully lived off the country while fighting and winning five engagements and inflicting critical losses in men and equipment, had prevented Johnston and Pemberton from joining forces, and had driven the Army of Vicksburg into the defenses of the city. ”

“ But they did not "hold out" so long; for, on the next day, the fourth of July, the victorious army entered the city, and raised the Stars and Stripes over the "Sebastopol of the Rebels."
Here we leave our hero, reposing before Vicksburg on his well-earned reputation as a gallant young officer, waiting to be ordered to new scenes of excitement and danger further down the Mississippi and up her tributary streams. Through these scenes we shall conduct our readers in a concluding volume, which will close Frank's career on our Western waters. ”