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The Civil War was a unique war for the relatively young United States of America because it was a war in which brother fought brother and the very definition of liberty was questioned. The Union’s strategy for defeating the South was known as the Anaconda Plan. The theory behind the Anaconda Plan was to block supplies from being shipped to the South and drain the fire from the Confederate’s blood. By 1862, the South was incredibly dependent on a supply line running from “Matamoros, Mexico, to the railroad at De Soto, Louisiana, directly across the river from Vicksburg.” After being ferried across the Mississippi, supplies were reloaded onto the Southern Railroad of Mississippi and sent eastward.
Both the South and the North realized the significance of controlling the Mississippi River. For the South, the river was a source of soldiers, salt, food, and guns from Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. For the North, control of the Mississippi would divide the South and allow Northern commercial entities to continue their trade. To prevent the capture of such a valuable strategic landmark, the South constructed redoubts at strategic points on the river. However, the Northern navy and military fought southward from Illinois and northward from the Gulf of Mexico, seizing fort after fort. By late summer 1862, only Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana remained. In May of 1862, Brigadier General Martin Luther Smith of the Confederacy began fortifying Vicksburg and asked Chief Engineer Major Samuel H. Lockett to establish the defensive perimeter around the city. In September of 1862, work began on a “system of redoubts, redans, lunettes, and field-works, connecting them by rifle pits so as to give a continuous line of defense.’ The workforce was comprised of hired blacks and slaves from nearby plantations. Thanks to the intricate defensive fieldwork and geographical location, Vicksburg became a military fortress. Situated on top of an elevated bank, overlooking a river bend, Vicksburg was secured by “riverfront artillery batteries, a maze of swamps and bayous to the north and south, and a ring of forts with 172 guns guarding all land approaches.” President Lincoln stated, ‘Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.” In October 1862, Major General Ulysses S. Grant sought to obtain this same “key” by clearing the Mississippi of some 50,000 scattered Confederate troops whose goal was to keep the river under Southern control, no matter the cost.
Grant’s first attack was a full frontal assault on the bluffs at Chickasaw Bayou, northeast of Vicksburg. On December 29th, after a two-hour artillery bombardment, the infantry advanced but quickly confronted issues. “One brigade became lost and maneuvered in the wrong direction, another could not make it across the Bayou to get in the fight, and one unit found itself pinned down by relentless Confederate fire.” After five attempts to rush the defenders and 1,700 lost lives, the Union army withdrew. After the Union army’s defeat at the Battle of Chickasaw, Grant began tactical operations, now known as the Bayou Expeditions, to defeat Vicksburg. However, as January approached, Grant’s plans came to a halt as the primary objective became moving the army to the bluffs north and south of Vicksburg, out of the Mississippi floodplain. By January 20th, the weather had turned for the worse, the Mississippi had risen, and much of the floodplain was filled with water. The lack of unsoaked ground and the rise of disease in Grant’s army dramatically decreased Northern morale. In the words of a Sanitary Commission Agent inspecting the Union Army, “For miles, the inside of the levee was sown with graves… In most cases, the poor fellows had been wrapped in their blankets and buried without coffins… In places, the levee was broken or washed out by the waters, and the decaying dead were partially disinterred.”
Despite the agony of his soldiers, Grant continued with his operations to seize Vicksburg. These projects lasted between late January and early April of 1863. The first attempt was the digging of a canal through the peninsula opposite Vicksburg. The goal of this endeavor was to allow transports down the Mississippi while bypassing the batteries of Vicksburg. General Sherman, under the command of General Grant, began digging a canal sixty feet wide, six feet deep, and over a mile long with the assistance of runaway slaves and two steam dredges. By March, all workers had been driven out because of flooding and Confederate artillery bombardment.
Grant’s second project was led by General McPherson’s XVII Corps in Lake Providence, Louisiana. The intention of McPherson was to flood a system of swamps and rivers that drained into the Mississippi south of Vicksburg in order to provide safe passage for Union transports. Labor carried on through February and March but was eventually abandoned because of the immense difficulty of cutting a passage through hundreds of miles of cypress swamps.
Grant’s third effort to overwhelm Vicksburg was engineered effectively and seemed to be completely possible if not for Confederate countermeasures. As McPherson’s laborers worked tirelessly to cut through the swamp, Union engineers blew out the Yazoo Pass levee, further north of Vicksburg. The aim of this was to create a passage by which the Union army could land above the batteries at Snyder’s Bluff. After traveling down “200 miles of narrow waterways” the Union Navy came across Fort Pemberton, a Confederate embattlement. For three weeks, beginning on March 11th, a combined force of Northern ironclads and soldiers transferred from Arkansas and McPherson’s Corps sought to eliminate General Loring and his troops occupying Fort Pemberton. On April 5th, the Union army admitted defeat and retreated back north.
General Grant would go on to undertake two more Bayou Expeditions, neither of which would work completely. After five failed enterprises, Grant was looking for results. On March 31, 1863, Grant began marching his 45,000 soldiers south from his barracks at Milliken’s Bend with the purpose of crossing the Mississippi south of Vicksburg. By April 28th, the Union army was encamped at Hard Times, LA but was unable to cross the Mississippi because of “two fortified batteries, containing eight heavy artillery pieces.” In April of 1863, the Union army crossed the Mississippi at Bruinsburg. Marching now towards Vicksburg, the army “defeated parts of Pemberton’s forces near Port Gibson on May 1 and near Raymond on May 12. On May 14, Grant captured Jackson, the state capital, scattering its defenders.”
Grant’s seizure of the city of Jackson isolated Vicksburg from reinforcements and supplies from other Confederate-controlled military outposts and allowed Grant to finally organize a strike on the city. On May 19, Sherman’s corp charged towards Stockade Redan–a robust fortification overlooking one of the main roads leading to Vicksburg–under Union artillery bombardments. Despite the capture of the outer slope of Stockade Redan by the 1st Battalion, 13th United States Infantry, the assault was repelled. Federal casualties numbered around 1,000 men. (The 13th US Infantry, which is still in existence today, proudly uses the motto “First at Vicksburg.”) On May 22, Grant attempted another attack. Notwithstanding McClernand succeeding in the puncture of Railroad Redoubt, the Union army was again repulsed with deaths numbering nearly 3,000 men. One Union soldier was recorded to have said, “Thus ended another day of the bloody fight in vain, except for an increase of the knowledge which has been steadily growing lately, that a regular siege will be required to take Vicksburg.”
Comprehending that Vicksburg could not be taken by force, Grant began a formal siege by constructing a line of work around the city to block communication and supplies from traveling into and out of the city. Thirteen artillery batteries were installed to hammer strategic points along the Confederate defensive line as Admiral David D. Porter’s gunboats beat the city from the Mississippi. By June, the defenders of Vicksburg “suffered from reduced rations, exposure to the elements, and constant bombardment of enemy guns. Reduced in number by sickness and battle casualties, the garrison of Vicksburg was spread dangerously thin.” Confederate soldiers and Vicksburg citizens feared that support would never come.
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