America’s Civil War: Digging to Victory at Vicksburg

Published Monday, June 12, 2006 in America's Civil War  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Perched on a steep bluff that loomed over the eastern bank of the Mississippi River at a sharp bend in that watercourse, the city of Vicksburg sat high and defiant above the brown water that flowed to the Gulf of Mexico. In the spring of 1863, however, Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was sprawled across the rough ground that ringed the landward side of the city, which was defended by 20,000 Confederates under Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton. To reach Vicksburg, the Yankees had executed a brilliant campaign during which they won five battles, seized the Mississippi state capital at Jackson, captured more than 6,000 Rebels, killed and wounded as many more, and ravaged the Mississippi countryside virtually unchecked. The Union forces had arrived outside Vicksburg on May 18. With Federal confidence soaring, Grant ordered assaults on May 19 and 22, but the Confederates handily turned back both attacks.

While the land approach to Vicksburg presented many problems, a riverborne Union assault on the city was also out of the question because Southern batteries on the bluff commanded the horseshoe bend in the Mississippi above the town. On May 23, Grant decided, as he put it, to ‘out-camp the enemy and dig into Vicksburg. That would be no easy undertaking. Numerous deep ravines cut the high ground on the landward side of Vicksburg, and the slopes of the hills surrounding the town were so sharp and covered with fallen timber that an unarmed man would have the greatest difficulty climbing them, let alone a soldier under fire, burdened with the gear of war. The only level areas were at the deep bottoms of the ravines, where the Confederates had littered the ground with more fallen trees.

An 1862 Union attempt to capture Vicksburg had spurred the Confederates to reinforce the town’s natural defensive position with a series of well-placed earthworks. Artillery batteries were planted on high points of the dividing ridges between the ravines. Shallow, 4-foot-wide trenches and rifle pits were dug to connect the forts and form a continuous defensive line. In a few places, the Confederates reinforced the gun emplacements with wooden stockade walls. Salients, protrusions of the line that gave the Confederates better fields of fire, had been built, and in front of several of them the Southerners had placed 2-to 8-foot-long sharpened stakes in the ground on an angle facing the enemy and woven telegraph wire among the protrusions to trip attackers.

The Southerners also had the advantage of interior lines, so they had shorter distances over which to shuttle troops to threatened points. This, coupled with the difficult terrain, helped offset the Union army’s superior numbers. Grant also had to use some of his troops to guard the rear of his investing forces and keep an eye out for troops sent from the east by General Joseph E. Johnston. Additionally, the Army of the Tennessee’s generals fretted that a siege might be protracted by bad weather or by an outbreak of disease. The quicker the Union army entered Vicksburg, the better.

The Confederate works around Vicksburg roughly resembled an ax, with the Mississippi River forming the handle and the blade of the ax head facing east. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s XV Corps was arrayed across the northern edge of the ax head. Major General James B. McPherson’s XVII Corps linked with Sherman’s troops near a point where the lines turned south and the Rebels had erected a strong work known as the Stockade Redan. The Federals had fruitlessly attacked that strongpoint on May 19 and 22. The Jackson Road ran through the middle of McPherson’s lines, and the Rebels had erected another redan on a narrow ridge that commanded the road as it entered the Confederate works. That work was called the 3rd Louisiana Redan after the regiment that manned it. South of McPherson’s corps, the XIII Corps under Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand paralleled the Confederate works until his troops reached a wide marsh near the river.

Grant had only a few engineering officers to lay out the Union lines around the Confederate stronghold. That handful of men instructed the Union troops who built the earthworks. Pioneer companies, supplied with axes and digging implements, were assigned to begin work on the trenches and saps, but there were too few of them. The pioneer companies hired former slaves liberated during the campaign to provide additional labor. The freedmen were paid $10 a month, and they did their work with gusto. Additional details were culled from infantrymen who were assigned to work in the trenches. An Iowan reported: Every man in the investing line became an army engineer. Day and night the soldiers worked at digging narrow, zigzag approaches to the rebel works. One of the Federal engineering officers involved in the siege commented: Whether a battery was to be constructed by men who had never built one before, a sap-roller made by those who had never heard the name, or a ship’s gun-carriage to be built, it was done, and, after a few trials, was well done.

Although the Union diggers were enthusiastic at the start of the siege, the novelty of sweaty digging soon wore off, and efficiency dropped. The neophyte sappers particularly disliked working at night in front of the Confederate works armed with only a pick or shovel. Even well-disciplined units were not able to advance the saps as effectively as the pioneers and their African-American cohorts.

Still, according to one of the Yankees, Every day the regiments, foot by foot, yard by yard, approached near the frowning, strong-armed rebel works. The soldiers burrowed like gophers and beavers — a spade in one hand and a musket in the other. In the evening, the diggers were relieved by a night crew, and when the day crew returned the next morning, they found that entrenchments had appeared as if by magic, in a single night.

While the diggers shoveled and picked at the Mississippi soil, Union sharpshooters kept the Confederates pinned down. According to a Yankee in the trenches: Forty-two days and forty-two nights the singular siege went on, and they were bold Rebels who dared to show their heads in all that time above the parapets of their forts, or over the sand bags of which they made little breastworks outside the ditch.

The ceaseless roar of gunfire was heard around the clock. At night, remembered an Iowan, batteries of artillery often joined in the midnight chorus, while the shells from the gunboats rose into the air like burning comets and fell into the devoted city. It was a wonderful spectacle.

To attack strategic points, such as the 3rd Louisiana Redan next to the Jackson Road, the Federals needed to dig saps wide enough for four men to march abreast. Messengers traveled between the main saps through narrow trenches known as bayous. The work on a trench line usually began at night. The Union diggers were placed about 5 feet apart, and each man was equipped with a pick, a shovel and a wicker basket. A worker dug a rifle pit for himself, and then he burrowed over to the man next to him. The wicker basket was hoisted to the enemy side of the trench and filled with dirt to deflect Minié bullets and shrapnel. At daybreak, new workers came in who widened and reinforced the trench. In addition to the gabions (cylinders of wicker filled with dirt and stones), fascines (bundles of tightly bound sticks) were used to add strength and protection to the topsides of the trenches.

To construct the large number of gabions needed for the works, the Union troops scavenged the area around Vicksburg for grapevines to weave into the cylinders, but the vines proved to be too heavy to use. The region’s abundant cane, however, was discovered to be excellent for gabions and fascines. Union troops became experts at crushing the joints of the cane and weaving it between the stakes that formed the frame for the gabion.

The Confederates were certainly aware of the Union efforts, and had more than 130 cannons within their lines at Vicksburg that they could have used against the Federal entrenchers. Yankee marksmen, however, particularly targeted Rebel artillerymen, and the infrequent Confederate shelling failed to materially damage the advancing trenches. On June 15, Lieutenant Peter Haines, the energetic and observant chief engineer of McClernand’s XIII Corps, reported: This morning the enemy opened one gun from the work on the right, to test the strength of the parapet. They did no damage whatever, their shells passing through the parapet, scarcely leaving a trace in it of their passage. After the siege, some Confederate officers cited the lack of ammunition for their failure to use artillery effectively against the sappers, but thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition were captured in the city.