In the American Civil War, 1861–65, the capture of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, cut the Confederacy in two, and the battle of Gettysburg proved a Confederate invasion of the North impossible. Out of the many great battles of that war it is historically essential that these two should be emphasized.

After Fort Sumter was fired upon, April 12, 1861, the relative efficiency of the South and the unpreparedness of the North were soon illustrated in the battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. In the East, where the main objective point of the Northern attack was Richmond, there followed McClellan’s organization of the Army of the Potomac. In the West were Halleck and Buell, with headquarters at St. Louis and Louisville, and the main end in view in the Western campaign was the control of the Mississippi. February, 1862, brought Northern successes in the Western campaign in Grant’s capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, followed by Shiloh, Corinth, and Memphis, which opened the Mississippi to Vicksburg. At the same time Farragut’s fleet in the South captured New Orleans, a victory which, like the effect of the blockade throughout the war, was a weighty demonstration of the influence of sea power upon history. After Farragut had cleared the lower river, it was practically Vicksburg alone which remained to unite the eastern and western territory of the Confederacy. But in the East there had been a series of Northern disasters, culminating in Chancellorsville.—Editor.

When the defeated Federals recrossed the Rappahannock, May 5, 1863, after Chancellorsville, the fortunes of the North were at the lowest ebb. Then came the turning of the tide, and in an unexpected quarter. General Grant had shot up into fame through his capture of Fort Donelson, early in 1862, but had done little thereafter to confirm his reputation. Though in responsible command in northern Mississippi and southwestern Tennessee, the few successes there which the country could appreciate went to the credit of his subordinate, Rosecrans. The world remembered his shiftlessness before the war, and began to believe that his success had been accidental. All things considered, it is strange that Grant had been kept in place. The pressure for his removal had been great everywhere, but his superiors stood by him faithfully, though Lincoln’s persistence was maintained in the midst of misgivings.

In the fall of 1862, Grant, in command of fifty thousand men, purposed to continue the advance southward through Mississippi, flanking Vicksburg, which then must certainly fall. His supplies must come over the Memphis & Charleston road and the two weak and disabled lines of railroad, the Mississippi Central and the Mobile & Ohio. To guard one hundred and fifty miles of railroad in a hostile country the army must necessarily be scattered, as every bridge, culvert, and station needed a detail. From Washington came unwise interference; but he moved on with vigor. As winter approached, he pushed into Mississippi toward Jackson. If that place could be seized, Vicksburg, fifty miles west, must become untenable, and to this end Grant desired to unite his whole force. He was overruled, and the troops divided: while he marched on Jackson, Sherman, with thirty-two thousand, was to proceed down the river from Memphis. Grant’s hope was that he and Sherman, both near Vicksburg, and supporting each other, might act in concert.

Complete failure attended this beginning. Forrest, operating in a friendly country, tore up the railroads in Grant’s rear for scores of miles, capturing his detachments and working destruction. On December 20th, also, Van Dorn, now a cavalry leader, surprised Holly Springs, Grant’s main depot in northern Mississippi, carrying off and burning stores to the amount of $1,500,000.227 Grant’s movement southward became impossible: the army stood stripped and helpless, saving itself only by living off the country, an experience rough at the time, but out of which, later, came benefit.228 Co-operation with Sherman could no longer be thought of. Nor could news of the disaster be sent to Sherman, who, following his orders, punctually embarked and steamed down to the mouth of the Yazoo; this he entered, and on December 29th, believing that the garrison of Vicksburg had been drawn off to meet Grant, he flung his divisions against the Confederate lines at Chickasaw Bayou, with a loss of eighteen hundred men and no compensating advantage.229

The difficulty and disaster in the Mississippi campaign were increased by a measure which strikingly reveals the effect in war of political pressure at the capital. At the outbreak of the war, John A. McClernand was a member of Congress from Illinois, and later commanded a division at Donelson and Shiloh. Returning to Washington, he stood out as a War Democrat, a representative of a class whose adherence to the administration was greatly strained by the Emancipation Proclamation, and whose loyalty Lincoln felt it was almost vital to preserve. When, therefore, he laid before Lincoln a scheme230 to raise by his own influence a large force in the West, over which he was to have military command, with the intention of taking Vicksburg, Lincoln and Stanton yielded, the sequel showing that McClernand was a soldier of little merit....

McClernand went West, and kept his promise by mustering into the service, chiefly through his personal influence, some thirty regiments, a welcome recruitment in those dark days. With this new army McClernand appeared at the mouth of the Yazoo just at the moment when Sherman emerged from the swamps with his crestfallen divisions. McClernand assumed command, Sherman subsiding into a subordinate place; but he had influence enough with his new superior to persuade him to proceed at once to an attack upon Arkansas Post, not far away.231 This measure proved successful, the place capitulating January 11, 1863, with five thousand men and seventeen guns. Though the victory was due in great part to the navy, Sherman alone in the army having rendered conspicuous service, yet before the country the credit went to McClernand, nominally the commander, giving him an undeserved prestige which made the situation worse.

Grant often found Halleck very trying; but in the present exigency the superior stood stoutly by him, and probably saved to him his position. The military sense of the general-in-chief saw clearly the folly of a divided command, and he enlightened the President, who made Grant major-general in command of operations on the Mississippi, McClernand being put at the head of a corps. January 30th, therefore, Grant, suppressing a scheme entertained by McClernand for a campaign in Arkansas, set to work to solve the problem of opening the great river.

Probably few generals have ever encountered a situation more difficult, or one in which military precedents helped so little. The fortress occupied a height commanding on the north and west, along the river, swampy bottom-lands, at the moment largely submerged or threaded with channels. These lowlands were much overgrown with canebrake and forest; roads there were almost none, the plantations established within the area being approached most conveniently by boats. But it was from the north and west, apparently, that Vicksburg must be assailed, for the region south of the city appeared quite beyond reach, since the batteries closed the river, which seemed the sole means of approach for Northern forces. The surest approach to the stronghold was from the east; but there Grant had tried and failed; public sentiment would not sustain another movement from that side. There was nothing for it but to try by the north and west, and Grant grappled with the problem.

Besides the natural obstacles, he had to take account of his own forces, and the strength and character of his adversary. In November, 1862, Johnston, not yet recovered from the wounds received at Fair Oaks in May, was ordered to assume command in the West, taking the troops of Kirby Smith, Bragg, and the army defending the Mississippi. The latter force, up to that time under Van Dorn, was transferred to John C. Pemberton, of an old Pennsylvania family, before and after the war a citizen of Philadelphia. Though a Northerner, he had the entire confidence of both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. His record in the old army was good; he was made lieutenant-general by the Confederacy, and received most weighty responsibilities. He served bravely and faithfully the cause he had espoused; though outclassed in his campaign, he did not lack ability. Pemberton commanded some fifty thousand men, comprising not only the garrison of Vicksburg, but also that of Port Hudson and detachments posted in northern Mississippi. On the watch at such a point as Jackson, the state capital, he could, on short notice, concentrate his scattered command to meet whatever danger might threaten.

Against this alert adversary Grant could now oppose about an equal number of men, comprised in four corps—the Thirteenth (McClernand), Fifteenth (Sherman), Sixteenth (Hurlbut), Seventeenth (McPherson). Hurlbut was of necessity retained at and near Memphis, to preserve communications and hold western Tennessee; the three other corps could take the field with about forty-three thousand. Among Grant’s lieutenants, two were soldiers of the best quality—Sherman and James B. McPherson, the latter a young officer of engineers, who during the preceding months had been coming rapidly to the front.232 Besides the army, Grant had a powerful auxiliary in the fleet, which now numbered seventy craft, large and small, manned by fifty-five hundred sailors and commanded by David D. Porter, an indefatigable chief.

Grant at the outset could, of course, have no fixed plan. Throughout February and March his operations were tentative; and though the country murmured at his “inactivity,” never did general or army do harder work. Might not Vicksburg perhaps be isolated on the west, and a way be found beyond the reach of its cannon to that vantage-ground south of it which seemed so inaccessible? Straightway the army tried, with spade, pick, and axe, to complete the cut-off which Williams had begun the previous summer; also to open a tortuous and embarrassed passage far round through Lake Providence and the Tensas and Washita rivers. Might not some insufficiently guarded approach be found through the Yazoo bottom233 to Haines’ Bluff, the height dominating Vicksburg from the northeast, which Sherman had sought to seize at Chickasaw Bayou? Straightway there were enterprises seldom attempted in war.234 The levee at Yazoo Pass was cut, far up the river, so that the swollen Mississippi flooded the wide region below. Through the crevasse plunged gunboat and transport, to engage in amphibious warfare; soldiers wading in the mire or swimming the bayous; divisions struggling to terra firma, only to find that Pemberton was there before them behind unassailable parapets; gunboats wedged in ditches, unable to turn, with hostile axemen blocking both advance and retreat by felling trees across the channel; Porter sheltering himself from sharpshooters within a section of broken smokestack and meditating the blowing-up of his boats; Sherman now paddling in a canoe, now riding bareback, now joining the men of a rescue-party in a double-quick—all in cypress forests draped with funereal moss, as if Death had made ready for a calamity that seemed certain.

April came, and nothing had been accomplished on the north or west. To try again from the east meant summary removal for the commander. Was an attack from the south, after all, out of the question, as all his lieutenants urged? Grant resolved to try; the river-bank to the west was so far dried that the passage of a column through the swamp-roads became possible. Porter was willing to attempt to run the batteries, though sure that, if once below, he could never return. The night of April 16th was one of wild excitements. The fleet was discovered as soon as it got under way, and conflagrations, blazing right and left, clearly revealed it as it swept down the stream. The Confederate fire could not be concentrated,235 and hence the injury was small to the armored craft; and even the transports in their company, protected only by baled hay or cotton, escaped with one exception. A few days later transports and barges again passed down.236 The column, toiling along the swampy road, was met, when at last it reached a point well below the town, by an abundance of supplies and ample means for placing it on the other bank. April 29th, Grand Gulf, the southern outpost of Vicksburg, was cannonaded, with ten thousand men on transports at hand for an assault, if the chance came. High on its bluff, it defied the bombardment, as the main citadel had done. Then it was that Grant turned to his last resource.

It requires attention to comprehend how a plan so audacious as that now adopted could succeed. First, the watchful Pemberton was bewildered and misled as to the point of attack. About the time the batteries were run, Grierson, an Illinois officer, starting with seventeen hundred cavalry from La Grange, Tennessee, raided completely through Mississippi, from north to south, so skilfully creating an impression of large numbers, so effectively wrecking railroads and threatening incursion now here and now there, that the back-country was thrown into a panic, and Pemberton thought an attack in force from that direction possible. Following close upon Grierson’s raid, Sherman demonstrated with such noise and parade north of the city that Pemberton sent troops to meet a possible assault there. Meantime, the Thirteenth and Seventeenth corps were ferried rapidly across the river below Grand Gulf, and, a footing on the upland having been obtained unopposed, Grant stood fairly on the left bank. He now sent word to Halleck that he felt this battle was more than half won.237

The event proved that Grant was not oversanguine. An easy victory at Port Gibson, over a brave but inferior force, gave him Grand Gulf. Joined now by Sherman, he plunged with his three corps into the interior, cutting loose from his river base, and also from his hampering connection with Washington. The previous fall he had learned to live off the country. Two more easy victories, at Raymond and Jackson, gave him the state capital, and placed him, fully concentrated, between the armies of Pemberton and Johnston. The number of his foes was swelling fast—from Port Hudson, from South Carolina, from Tennessee; but Grant did not let slip his advantage. Johnston, not yet recovered from his Fair Oaks wound, was not at his best. Pemberton, confused by an adversary who could do so unmilitary a thing as to throw away his base, vacillated and blundered. A heavy battle at Champion’s Hill, May 16th, in which the completeness of Grant’s victory was prevented by the bad conduct of McClernand, nevertheless resulted in Pemberton’s precipitate flight. Next day the Federals seized the crossing of the Big Black River, after which all the outposts of Vicksburg, from Haines’ Bluff southward, fell without further fighting, and Pemberton, with the army that remained to him, was shut up within the works. The Federals held all outside, looking down from those heights, which for so long had seemed to them impregnable, upon the great river open to the north. Supplies and reinforcements could now come unhindered and were already pouring in. The fall of Vicksburg was certain.... The siege once begun, the fortress was doomed without recourse. Pemberton, to be sure, did not lose heart, and drove back the repeated Federal assaults with skill and courage. Johnston, from the rear, mustered men as he could, tried to concert with the besieged army a project of escape, and at last advanced to attack. But within the city supplies soon failed, and outside no resources were at hand for the city’s succor. Johnston’s request for twenty thousand men, lying idle in Arkansas had been slighted;238 there was no other source of supply. Kirby Smith and Dick Taylor attempted a diversion on the west bank of the river; and still later, at Helena, Arkansas, a desperate push was made to afford relief. It was all in vain. The North, made cheerful by long-delayed success, poured forth to Grant out of its abundance both men and means. His army was in size nearly doubled; food and munitions abounded. The starving defenders were inexorably encircled by nearly three times their number of well-supplied and triumphant foes. Grant’s assaults, bold and bloody though they were, had little effect in bringing about the result; the close investment would have sufficed.239 On July 4th came the unconditional surrender. The Confederate losses before the surrender were fully 10,000; now 29,491, became prisoners, while in the fortress were 170 cannon and 50,000 small arms. Grant’s loss during the whole campaign was 9362.240 To this triumph, a week later, was added the fall of Port Hudson,241 which, with a depleted garrison, held out stubbornly for six weeks against the Federals. N.P. Banks, who after his tragical Virginia experiences succeeded, in December, 1862, Butler in Louisiana, was set, as in the valley, to meet a difficult situation with inadequate means. With an army of little more than thirty thousand, in part nine-months men, he was expected to hold New Orleans and such of Louisiana as had been conquered, and also to co-operate with Grant in opening the Mississippi. When his garrisons had been placed he had scarcely fifteen thousand men left for service in the field, a number exceeded at first by the Port Hudson defenders, strongly placed and well commanded. West of the river, moreover, was still another force under an old adversary in the Shenandoah country—Dick Taylor, a general well-endowed and trained in the best school. That Banks, though active, had no brilliant success was not at all strange; yet Halleck found fault. He could not extend a hand to Grant; but, risking his communications—risking, indeed, the possession of New Orleans—he concentrated at Port Hudson, which fortress, after a six weeks’ siege, marked by two spirited assaults, he brought to great distress. Its fate was sealed by the fall of Vicksburg—Gardner, the commander, on July 9th, surrendering the post with more than six thousand men and fifty-one guns.

The capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson was a success such as had not been achieved before during our Civil War, and was not paralleled afterward until Appomattox. In military history there are few achievements which equal it; and the magnitude of the captures of men and resources is no more remarkable than are the unfailing courage of the soldiers and the genius and vigor of the general.242