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Battle of Vicksburg

Introduction

On the east of the Mississippi river lays the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg,

Mississippi which is halfway between New Orleans to the south and Memphis to the north and

during the American civil war in 1861-65 the Union forces formed a campaign to take Vicksburg

from the spring of 1862 until July 1863. The military genius of Union general Ulysses S. Grant

was proved in the siege of Vicksburg which divided the Confederacy. To reach and gain control

of Vicksburg Mississippi River was an essential route of approach for the union. For the

Confederate weaponry to fire upon any opponent approaching through the river, the Loess Bluffs

bordering the Mississippi River offered excellent viewing points. Ships were forced to slow

down to make the treacherous turn due to an oxbow north of the city’s waterfront for this reason

they were particularly vulnerable to their fire (Solonick, 122). There were no opportunities for

cover and concealment with the river approach. During the civil war, there was a fierce struggle

for control of this vital waterway which ended in Ulysses S. Grant’s siege of Vicksburg assisted

by union’s armored steamers and fortified gunboats. The Confederacy suffered a heavy

commercial and strategic blow after the river and Vicksburg fell into Union hands.
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The confederate had a great advantage with the positions at Fort Hill South Fort that gave

them clear fields of fire on approaching gunboats. The union strategy experienced a challenging

obstacle in the oxbow and the confederates at Fort Hill and the river batteries along the

waterfront considered this in the design and placement of weaponry positions. The canal to the

south and north of the city and the waters of the river were used by the confederates to place

additional obstacles in for of explosives mines. During the winter of 1862 one of these mines

sunk the U.S.S Cairo in the Yazoo river canal while it was in the mission of clearing river mines

and rid the channel of Confederate batteries. The key terrain was the city of Vicksburg, the

fortified city was sited to protect the Mississippi River and the outcome of the civil war would be

completely different without taking Vicksburg. Brother against brother, Americans against

Americans, marked the civil war which split the nation which lasted for four years and the

turning point of the war was the main battle of Vicksburg which was fought westward.

The Mississippi river twists and winds for almost one thousand miles between Cairo,

Illinois and the Gulf of Mexico which is normally referred to as the trunk of the American tree.

For the government and Confederate forces in the west the river was of great importance. On the

Louisiana-Mississippi state border the Vicksburg city, Mississippi is two hundred and fifty feet

high overlooking the Mississippi River. The passage of union ships was challenged by the

Confederate forces which mounted its artillery batteries. The union was prevented from bringing

their full weight to bear against Lee in Virginia since the Confederacy controlled the greater

river. It was very hard to attack because of the Vicksburg situation on a bend of the river. As

displayed by the fate of the U.S.S Cairo navel attacks were did not bear any fruit as it was sunk

in just a few moments (Lepa, 98). To try to reduce Vicksburg Grant carried out amphibious

operations or Bayou Expeditions during the winter of 1862 to 1863 which all failed. Grant in his
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military career had reached crossroads after months of failure and frustrations. There was a lot of

pressure in the northern press to eliminate him from command even President Lincoln was

advised to replace him as commander of the western army by the members of the United States

cabinet. The president decided to try the man a little longer; he could not spare the Grant because

he fought. At the moment Grant was where he began two months ago. Stopping northwest of

Vicksburg he had traveled down the west side of the river, fruitlessly, he tried to reach

Vicksburg. There were two tries to cross the Yazoo Delta to the north and another attempt to

bypass the city to the south. It was March 1863 and he was still at the beginning point.

A major reappearance in river trade was produced by the world war one. The river was

identified as an increasingly valuable asset as other means of transport became congested. New

barge lines were planned through the federal strategy and the yearly barge traffic going along the

river by 1931 was double the volume moved in any single year during the preceding century. For

example, in 1907 the steamer Sprague made a new record for size of tow, with a raft of sixty coal

barges weighed over sixty thousand tons covering an area of two and a half hectares. There has

been a robust growth in the commercial use of Mississippi waterway. Sulfur and crushed rock,

coal and coke, sand and gravel, chemicals, iron and steel, derivative products and petroleum are

by bulk loading cargoes. At the expense of their rivals, there has been the rapid growth of main

port cities with an increasing emphasis on bulk handling (Groom, 305).

Obligation regarding managing the support and enhancement of the Mississippi as a

business conduit, and in addition the related assignments of surge control and bank protection

falls upon the Mississippi River Commission. Made by Act of Congress in 1879, the commission

has regulated a monstrous program of stream work that has significantly reshaped the character

of the Mississippi. The primary phases of the route enhancement program incorporate a channel
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nine feet profound and two hundred and fifty feet wide at low water between Cairo, Illinois, and

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, approved in 1896; a broadening of this channel to three hundred feet,

endorsed in 1928; and it’s extending to twelve feet, was started in 1944. Likewise, a ship channel

forty-five feet profound from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico has been under development

since its approval by Congress in 1945 (Wills, 178). More distant upriver, the exceptional

accomplishment has been the development of twenty-nine bolts and dams on the upper waterway

to take the nine-foot channel upstream to Minneapolis St. Paul. Associating into the Mississippi

is a huge complex of related conduits from the Intracoastal Waterway in the south, extending

among Florida and the Mexican outskirt, to the channels that lead up Ohio to its tributaries and

through the Illinois Waterway to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.

Flood control along the waterway dates to the establishment of New Orleans in 1717 by

the French, who manufactured a little levee to protect their newborn city. Throughout the

following two centuries, a complex collection exhibit of riverbank structures was raised along

the waterway to contain or occupy surges. However, it was not until after the cataclysmic flood

of 1927 that the central government ended up focused on an unmistakable program of flood

control. The objective has turned into an incorporated surge control framework ready to ace a

venture flood, the biggest hypothetical surge expected along the stream. This program has

changed the essence of the stream considerably more than the route program with which it is

connected has adjusted its bed (Wills, 980).

On a basic level, the Mississippi's floods are either contracted by levees, rushed out of

risk zones by floodways and enhanced channels, scattered down spillways and into repositories,

or kept by the appropriating from tributary surges. From Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to the Gulf

of Mexico, the stream is practically separated by a tremendous line of fundamental stem levees.
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This solid obstruction has, by chance, separated the stream from a great part of the encompassing

wide open; subsequently, numerous previous riverbank towns are presently disjoined from their

characteristic setting. If the fundamental levees are undermined, the abundance floodwater

depletes away down spillways, for instance, from north of New Orleans it is redirected past the

city by spillways driving through Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico or blasts meld plugs,

the uncommonly debilitated segments of levee prompting innocuous floodways or reservoirs. A

noteworthy case of this sort of floodway happens at New Madrid, Missouri, only south of the

Ohio juncture (Moore, 402). Now and again the framework is overpowered; for example, in

2005 when low-lying New Orleans was overflowed after the levees keeping down Lake

Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River were not able to contain the tempest flood waters going

with Hurricane Katrina. Another such event was in the spring of 2011 when snowmelt and

substantial downpours created record high surge peaks on the Mississippi that constrained the

opening of various conduits and sluiceways and delivered enormous flooding of farmland and

riverside towns.
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Works Cited

Groom, Winston. Vicksburg, 1863. New York: Random House, Inc, 2009. Print.

Lepa, Jack H. Vicksburg and Chattanooga: The Battles That Doomed the Confederacy. , 2014.

Print.

Moore, David G. William S. Rosecrans and the Union Victory: A Civil War Biography. , 2014.

Print.

Solonick, Justin S. Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg. , 2015. Print.

Wills, Brian S. "Occupied Vicksburg By Bradley R. Clampitt". Journal Of Southern History, vol

83, no. 4, 2017, pp. 983-984. Johns Hopkins University Press,

doi:10.1353/soh.2017.0283.