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Recreates the 1863 siege of Vicksburg ,Mississippi, that changed the direction of the Civil War and severely damaged the Confederacy.

Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi takes a well-known story, the struggle for control of the Mississippi River in the American Civil War, and recasts it as a contest for control of African-American populations. The Emancipation Proclamation may have freed the slaves, but the task of actually moving these liberated people into the Union lines and directing their labor to the benefit of the Union fell to the Federal army and navy. Control of the Mississippi has often been cast in economic terms. This book, by examining the campaigns from west of the river, shows how the campaign to reduce these Rebel forts also involved the creation of a black army of occupation and a remaking of the social and political landscape of Louisiana and the nation. This book is new scholarship and, most importantly, fresh research that challenges many commonly held notions of the Vicksburg and Port Hudson campaigns. In the past, the movement of large armies and the grand assaults garnered the most attention. As Blood on the Bayou reveals, small unit actions and big government policies in the Trans-Mississippi did as much to shape the outcome of the war as did the great armies and famous captains of legend and lore. No student of the Civil War should ignore this book. Scholars of Vicksburg and Port Hudson will find their studies incomplete without a thorough examination of this work. As with the other books in the Louisiana Quadrille series, the military campaigns remain front and center. I trace the movements of obscure regiments and battles fought on unfamiliar trans-Mississippi landscapes in June and July, 1863, and tell a little-known aspect of the sieges of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. I examine the evolution of Federal and Confederate strategy and sketch the leaders tasked with carrying these plans forward. There is enough combat to satisfy even the most ardent student of campaigns and commanders. The sources, however, revealed an almost obsessive concern over slavery by both sides. Actually, these soldiers, civilians, and politicians did not fret over the institution of slavery as much as control over the slaves themselves. Both Federal and Confederate authorities seemed preoccupied with who physically controlled the enslaved population. This led me to review Republican views on this subject, and especially those held by Abraham Lincoln. The tug-of-war over people-whom some considered persons held in bondage and others considered human property-also caused me to reexamine the peculiar institution as a salient feature of Confederate national identity. A greater appreciation for the causes of the war emerged. While states' rights certainly provided a framework and context for the argument, slavery caused the war, not vice versa. Physical control of the slave population impacted how the Federal Government conducted the war. When war broke out, slaves emerged first as \"contraband,\" then morphed into \"self-emancipated\" persons, before becoming the raison d'être of the Mississippi Valley campaigns in 1863. The African-Americans became plunder, if you will. I came to the conclusion that the gathering of these persons drove, in part, Union military strategy in the Mississippi Valley. Lincoln wanted slaves removed from southern owners, concentrated in areas convenient to Union logistics centers, and then redistributed to serve as soldiers or farmers on behalf of the United States. The longer the military campaigns in the Mississippi Valley dragged on, the more Federal officials could feed liberated slaves into the system. This strategy held that, once Union troops had removed slaves from bondage and repurposed them to other tasks, it would be nearly impossible for their former masters to re-enslave them. No matter the outcome of the war, the Federal government set out to break slavery-forever. Fearing a rapid collapse of the Confederacy, abolitionists intended to make sure that readmitted states did not reestablish slavery. Remember, slavery was then a state prerogative. Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment still lay months into the future. Concurrently, Lincoln believed Black troops would help achieve victory and then secure the peace. One the shooting ended these African-American regiments might serve as an army of occupation. The largest concentration of slaves lay in the Mississippi Valley and this population needed to be under Federal control. The Rebel forts at Vicksburg and Port Hudson were impediments. Even so, despite the presence of these Confederate citadels, US troops could remove the African-American population of this region into zones of their choosing with increasing impunity. The fall of these positions facilitated commerce and navigation on the Mississippi. Yet, the great gathering of African-Americans began, and continued, notwithstanding the Rebels in the earthworks.

The Vicksburg Campaign, argues Timothy B.Smith, is the showcase of Ulysses S.Grant's military genius.From October 1862 to July 1863, Grant tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate river city.His final, daring move allowed him to land an army in Mississippi and fight his way to the gates of Vicksburg.

Examines the 1862-63 battle for Vicksburg through the eyes of three children: ten-year-old Lucy, the daughter of a Vicksburg merchant; eleven-year-old Willie, the son of a minister; and twelve-year old Frederick, the son of Ulysses S. Grant.

On May 25, 1863, after driving the Confederate army into defensive lines surrounding Vicksburg, Mississippi, Union major general Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee laid siege to the fortress city. With no reinforcements and dwindling supplies, the Army of Vicksburg finally surrendered on July 4, yielding command of the Mississippi River to Union forces and effectively severing the Confederacy. In this illuminating volume, Justin S. Solonick offers the first detailed study of how Grant’s midwesterners serving in the Army of the Tennessee engineered the siege of Vicksburg, placing the event within the broader context of U.S. and European military history and nineteenth-century applied science in trench warfare and field fortifications. In doing so, he shatters the Lost Cause myth that Vicksburg’s Confederate garrison surrendered due to lack of provisions. Instead of being starved out, Solonick explains, the Confederates were dug out. After opening with a sophisticated examination of nineteenth-century military engineering and the history of siege craft, Solonick discusses the stages of the Vicksburg siege and the implements and tactics Grant’s soldiers used to achieve victory. As Solonick shows, though Grant lacked sufficient professional engineers to organize a traditional siege—an offensive tactic characterized by cutting the enemy’s communication lines and digging forward-moving approach trenches—the few engineers available, when possible, gave Union troops a crash course in military engineering. Ingenious midwestern soldiers, in turn, creatively applied engineering maxims to the situation at Vicksburg, demonstrating a remarkable ability to adapt in the face of adversity. When instruction and oversight were not possible, the common soldiers improvised. Solonick concludes with a description of the surrender of Vicksburg, an analysis of the siege’s effect on the outcome of the Civil War, and a discussion of its significance in western military history. Solonick’s study of the Vicksburg siege focuses on how the American Civil War was a transitional one with its own distinct nature, not the last Napoleonic war or the herald of modern warfare. At Vicksburg, he reveals, a melding of traditional siege craft with the soldiers’ own inventiveness resulted in Union victory during the largest, most successful siege in American history.

\"The astonishing story of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn't do it. General Grant moved his army south and joined forces with Admiral Porter, but even together they could not come up with a successful plan. At one point Grant even tried to build a canal so that the river could be diverted away from Vicksburg. In Vicksburg, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city. He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. Grant's efforts repeatedly failed until he found a way to lay siege and force the city to capitulate. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. Ultimately, Vicksburg was the battle that solidified Grant's reputation as the Union's most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but in the end he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war, the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy\"-- Provided by publisher.

Ulysses S. Grant’s ingenious campaign to capture the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River was one of the most decisive events of the Civil War and one of the most storied military expeditions in American history. The ultimate victory at Vicksburg effectively cut the Confederacy in two, gave control of the river to Union forces, and delivered a devastating blow from which the South never fully recovered. Editors Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear have assembled essays by prominent and emerging scholars, who contribute astute analysis of this famous campaign’s most crucial elements and colorful personalities. Encompassed in this first of five planned volumes on the Vicksburg campaign are examinations of the pivotal events that comprised the campaign’s maneuver stage, from March to May of 1863. The collection sheds new light on Grant’s formidable intelligence network of former slaves, Mississippi loyalists, and Union spies; his now legendary operations to deceive and confuse his Confederate counterparts; and his maneuvers from the perspective of classic warfare. Also presented are insightful accounts of Grant’s contentious relationship with John A. McClernand during the campaign; interactions between hostile Confederate civilians and Union army troops; and the planning behind such battles as Grierson’s Raid, Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River Bridge.

The Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The May 16, 1863, fighting took place just 20 miles east of the river city, where the advance of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army attacked Gen. John C. Pemberton's hastily gathered Confederates.The bloody fighting seesawed back and forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line, sending Pemberton's army into headlong retreat. The victory on Mississippi's wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him the command of the entire U.S. armed forces.Timothy Smith, who holds a Ph.D. from Mississippi State and works as a historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive account of this long overlooked battle. His vivid prose is grounded upon years of primary research and is rich in analysis, strategic and tactical action, and character development.Champion Hill will become a classic Civil War battle study.

On May 22, 1863, after two failed attempts to take the city of Vicksburg by assault, Major General Ulysses S. Grant declared in a letter to the commander of the Union fleet on the Mississippi River that “the nature of the ground about Vicksburg is such that it can only be taken by a siege.” The 47-day siege of Vicksburg orchestrated by Grant resulted in the eventual surrender of the city and fulfilled a major strategic goal for the Union: command of the Mississippi River for the remainder of the war. In this revealing volume, Michael B. Ballard offers the first in-depth exploration of Grant’s thoughts and actions during this critical operation, providing a never-before-seen portrait of the general in the midst of one of his most notable achievements. After an overview of Grant’s early Civil War career from his first battle through the early stages of the attacks on Vicksburg, Ballard describes in detail how Grant conducted the siege, examining his military decisions, placement of troops, strategy and tactics, engineering objectives, and relationships with other officers.  Grant’s worried obsession with a perceived danger of a rear attack by Joseph Johnston’s Confederate army, Ballard shows, affected his decision making, and shows how threats of Confederate action occupied more of Grant’s time than did the siege itself.   In addition, Ballard soundly dispels a false story about Grant’s alleged drinking binge early in the siege that has been taken as truthful by many historians, examines how racism in Grant’s army impacted the lives of freed black people and slaves in the Vicksburg area, and explores Grant’s strained relationship with John McClernand, a politically appointed general from Illinois. The book concludes with the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, the expulsion of Johnston and his army from the region, and demonstrates the impact of the siege on the outcome on the short and long-terms of Grant’s military career. By analyzing Grant’s personality during the siege and how he dealt with myriad issues as both a general and an administrator, Grant at Vicksburg offers a revealing rendering of the legendary general.