Battle of Vicksburg

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Volunteer regiments from Indiana and Illinois joined them, but they could not enter the works because of intense Confederate fire. Other Union troops did not get as far. As one Southern officer wrote: ‘They marched up in one solid column … when [our men] opened a terrific volley of musketry. The enemy wavered a moment, and then marched forward. They were again met by another volley, when they broke and fled under cover of the hills.’

Many more Federal troops were pinned down between the lines, lying amid the canebrakes that covered the terrain. It was all they could do to remain low and avoid the killing rain of Minie bullets and artillery fire. Not long after, when night had obscured the battlefield, Sherman ordered all his advanced troops withdrawn.

This first attack was repulsed with some 950 Federal casualties, to a Confederate loss of about 250 men. True to form, Grant’s thoughts turned immediately to another attempt, this time making full use of all his command.

Historians have debated for years the wisdom of Grant’s ordering another assault. In his official report on the campaign, Grant himself gave four reasons for trying again. First, he hoped the advanced positions gained on the nineteenth would make success more certain. Also, he knew that Rebel General Joseph Johnston, to his rear, was increasing the size of his own army, which, if joined together with Pemberton’s, would outnumber Grant’s force of 45,000.

Third, a successful assault would free Grant’s men for action against Johnston and avoid the miasmal toll of a siege during a steamy Mississippi summer. Grant’s last and most important reason was his innate perception of his troops’ temperament. Even if another assault failed, he believed the men would not work as willingly on the trenches and other necessities of a siege unless they had first tried to take Vicksburg by the front door.

Here Grant was counting on the army’s confidence and swagger, built up by three weeks of brilliant success. For the most part, only Sherman’s troops had been bloodied on the nineteenth; the army still considered the Rebs demoralized and ripe for one more defeat, strong defenses or no. One observer noted, ‘They felt as if they could march straight through Vicksburg, and up to their waists in the Mississippi, without resistance.’ Observant Sergeant Oldroyd of Ohio had a clear view of the besieged city: ‘We can see the court house…with a Confederate flag floating over it. What fun it will be to take that down and hoist in its stead the old stars and stripes’

Grant planned a coordinated 10 a.m. assault. The night before, he issued full rations to his men, many of whom had spent the previous two days strengthening their positions or building roads. Perhaps he knew what lay ahead; certainly the troops did, as night stretched into morning. ‘The boys…were busy divesting themselves of watches, rings, pictures and other keepsakes’ one observer noted. ‘The instructions left with the keepsakes were varied: ‘This watch I want you to send to my father if I never return.’ ‘If I do not get back, just send these trifles home, will you?”

The attacking infantrymen were to move against the Confederate entrenchments as a solid unit–Sherman’s to the north, McPherson’s in the center on both sides of the road linking Vicksburg and Jackson, and McClernand’s to the south, centered on the Southern Mississippi Railroad track leading east out of Vicksburg.

They prepared to assault perhaps the best-defended Southern city outside Richmond. The rifle pits and trenches surrounding Vicksburg on three sides linked nine steep-walled forts, protected by ditches. Since these forts commanded high ground, they were of great advantage to the deadly marksmen wearing gray. Rebel artillerymen, in turn, had doubleloaded their cannons with grape and canister. A final obstacle faced the attackers: felled timber further choking the already rugged terrain.

Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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