Vicksburg

From May 18 to July 4, 1863, Union forces brought the Vicksburg campaign to its climax with a lengthy siege that became the campaign's decisive final chapter. Through a sequence of tactical movements, major general Ulysses S. Grant led his Army of the Tennessee across the Mississippi River, pushing Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's Confederate Army of Mississippi back into fortifications built around the city of Vicksburg. This maneuvering set the stage for a siege that would ultimately force the Confederates to capitulate.

Because Vicksburg represented the Confederacy's final significant foothold on the Mississippi River, its fall would fulfill a key objective of the Union's broader Anaconda Plan. Grant's army first attempted to storm the Confederate defenses outright, launching assaults on May 19 and again on May 22, but both attacks failed and cost many lives on the attacking side. Faced with these losses, Grant shifted strategy and settled in for a siege starting May 25. The defenders resisted for over forty days, but as their provisions dwindled to almost nothing, they finally laid down arms on July 4.

The fall of Vicksburg dealt a severe blow to the Confederacy's capacity to sustain its fight. Just days later, on July 9, Confederate forces downriver at Port Hudson also surrendered, this time to Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. Together these two victories handed the Union total control of the Mississippi River, a dominance that would persist through the remainder of the war.

Many historians regard the Confederate capitulation at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, alongside Lee's defeat at Gettysburg to Major General George Meade one day earlier, as the pivotal turning point of the entire conflict. The loss severed the Trans-Mississippi Department, which encompassed Arkansas, Texas, and part of Louisiana, from the remainder of the Confederate States, dividing the Confederacy into two disconnected halves for the war's duration. Lincoln himself described Vicksburg as "the key to the war."

Background

After landing his army south of Vicksburg at Bruinsburg and pushing northeast, Grant defeated Confederate forces at Port Gibson and Raymond, then seized Jackson, the state capital of Mississippi, on May 14, 1863. This success compelled Pemberton to pull his men westward. Further Confederate efforts to halt the Union push at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge came to nothing. Aware that Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's corps was moving to strike him from the north, Pemberton found himself with a single option left: retreat or risk being cut off entirely. As his men fell back toward the well-fortified city of Vicksburg, he ordered the bridges spanning the Big Black River destroyed and left a trail of ruin across the surrounding countryside.

Confederate forces abandoned Hayne's Bluff, and by May 19 Sherman's cavalry had taken the position. This meant Union steamboats no longer had to brave Vicksburg's cannon fire, since dozens could now tie up safely along the Yazoo River. With this new route open, Grant's supply lines improved dramatically compared to the old path, which had wound through Louisiana, crossed the river at Grand Gulf and Bruinsburg, and then looped back northward.

The two previous engagements had cost Pemberton more than half his army, and many inside Vicksburg held out hope that General Joseph E. Johnston, head of the Confederate Department of the West, would come to their rescue. That relief never came. Meanwhile, Union soldiers in great numbers pressed forward to surround the city, rebuilding the bridges across the Big Black River and crossing on May 18. Johnston pressed Pemberton to give up Vicksburg and preserve his army, but Pemberton would not hear of it. Born in the North himself, Pemberton likely dreaded the public backlash that would follow if he surrendered the city without a fight.

Torn between two conflicting demands, Pemberton found himself trapped by circumstance. Jefferson Davis insisted that Vicksburg and Port Hudson could not be given up under any circumstances, while Johnston viewed both locations as militarily worthless. This left Pemberton stuck between them, undone by a tangled chain of command and his own hesitation. Unable to think with any clarity in his discouraged state, he ultimately marched his worn-down troops into Vicksburg instead of retreating north, where he might have preserved his force for future battles. That decision to withdraw into the city ultimately doomed both his army and the very place he had sworn to protect.

By the time Union troops reached Vicksburg, Pemberton could muster only 18,000 men to hold his lines, while Grant commanded upward of 35,000, with reinforcements still arriving. Still, the landscape and defensive works around Vicksburg gave Pemberton a formidable edge, making his position extremely difficult to breach. Stretching roughly six and a half miles, or ten kilometers, the defensive perimeter took advantage of uneven ground, including hills and knobs with steep faces that any attacking force would have to climb while under fire. Scattered along this line were numerous gun pits, forts, trenches, redoubts, and lunettes. Key strongpoints included Fort Hill, perched on a bluff overlooking the city from the north; the Stockade Redan, which controlled the northeastern approach along Graveyard Road; the 3rd Louisiana Redan; the Great Redoubt; the Railroad Redoubt, guarding the opening where the rail line entered the city; the Square Fort, also called Fort Garrott; a salient positioned along Hall's Ferry Road; and the South Fort.

Siege

Grant, eager to crush Confederate resistance before it could solidify, pushed for an attack on the Stockade Redan on May 19. Sherman's corps struggled to close on the position, facing rifle and artillery fire from the 36th Mississippi Infantry, part of Brig. Gen. Louis Hébert's brigade. Attackers had to work through a steep, abatis-choked ravine and cross a ditch eight feet wide and six feet deep before even reaching the seventeen-foot walls of the redan itself. This opening effort was turned back without difficulty. Grant then called for artillery to weaken the defenses, and around 2 pm Maj. Gen. Francis P. Blair's division, part of Sherman's command, tried again; only a handful of soldiers managed to reach the ditch beneath the redan, and the effort dissolved into a close-range trade of rifle shots and thrown grenades.

The setbacks of May 19 dented the optimism that recent Mississippi victories had produced. The Union lost 157 killed, 777 wounded, and eight missing, whereas the Confederates suffered only eight dead and 62 injured, a lopsided result showing that the defenders had not lost their fighting spirit after all.

Grant set his sights on another attempt for May 22, this time preparing more deliberately. He wanted his men to scout the ground beforehand and to have artillery and naval guns weaken the works first. Ladders were issued to the leading units so they could scale the walls, and rather than a drawn-out siege, Grant intended a single coordinated push by his whole army along a broad front.

Even after the costly failure of May 19, morale among Union troops stayed high, buoyed by food they had

Aftermath

Since Vicksburg stood as the Confederacy's final major bastion along the Mississippi, its fall brought the Anaconda Plan's second phase to fruition. The Confederate war effort suffered a severe blow once the campaign concluded in Union favor. Paired with Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks's acceptance of Port Hudson's surrender on July 9, this gave Union forces control of the river, a hold they would not relinquish for the remainder of the war.

When the Confederates laid down arms at ten in the morning on July 4, 1863, the moment became linked in historical memory to Gen. Robert E. Lee's loss at Gettysburg the day before at the hands of Maj. Gen. George Meade; together these events are often viewed as the war's decisive turning point. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas found themselves cut off from the remaining Confederate territory, dividing the Confederacy into two separate halves for the rest of the conflict. This Union triumph also permanently cut communications between the Trans-Mississippi Department and the rest of the Confederacy.

A persistent piece of folklore claims that Vicksburg refused to mark the Fourth of July until World War II arrived. The story does not hold up, since the city hosted substantial Independence Day festivities as far back as 1907.