After six failed attempts to reach Vicksburg, General Ulysses S. Grant developed a plan. The Yazoo Pass Expedition was a Union army/navy operation meant to bypass Vicksburg by using the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta. Operations began on February 3, 1863, with a levee breach on the Mississippi River. The expedition was delayed as a result of natural obstacles and Confederate resistance, which allowed the Confederate army under Lieutenant General John Pemberton to block passage of the Federal fleet. The Confederates continued to rebuff the fleet and finally defeated it in the spring. Larry McCluney examines the expedition from start to finish in never-before-seen detail.
The dawn of 1863 brought a new phase of the Union’s Mississippi Valley operations against Vicksburg. For the first four months, Union attempts to reach high and dry ground east of the Mississippi River would be plagued by high water everywhere, and the resulting bayou and river expeditions would test everyone involved, including the defending Confederates. In Bayou Battles for Vicksburg, the latest volume in his five-volume history of the Vicksburg Campaign of the US Civil War, Timothy B. Smith offers the first book-length examination of Ulysses S. Grant’s winter waterborne attempts to capture the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The accepted strategy up to this point in the war was aligned with the principles of the Swiss theorist Antoine-Henri Jomini, whose work was taught at West Point, where commanders on both sides of the conflict had been educated. But Jomini emphasized secure supply lines and a slow, steady, unified approach to a target such as Vicksburg, and never had much to say about creeks, rivers, and bayous in a subtropical swamp environment. Grant threw out conventional wisdom with a bold, and ultimately successful, plan to avoid a direct approach and rather divide his forces to accomplish multiple goals and to confuse the enemy by cutting levies, flooding whole sections of watersheds, and bypassing strongholds by digging canals far around them. Bayou Battles for Vicksburg details each of the Union attempts to reach high ground east of the Mississippi River and includes fresh research on the Yazoo Pass and Steele’s Bayou expeditions, Grant’s canal, and the Lake Providence effort. Smith weaves several simultaneous Union initiatives together into a chronological narrative that provides great detail on the Union’s successful final attempt to get to good ground east of the Mississippi.
Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize Winner of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. It took Grant’s army and Admiral David Porter’s navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender. In this “elegant…enlightening…well-researched and well-told” (Publishers Weekly) work, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city “with probing intelligence and irresistible passion” (Booklist). He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. With Vicksburg “Miller has produced a model work that ties together military and social history” (Civil War Times). Vicksburg solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but ultimately he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war—the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.
Following the loss of the CSS Arkansas in early August 1862, Union and Confederate eyes turned to the Yazoo River, which formed the developing northern flank for the South's fortress at Vicksburg, Mississippi. For much of the next year, Federal efforts to capture the citadel focused on possession of that stream. Huge battles and mighty expeditions were launched (Chickasaw Bayou, Yazoo Pass, Steele's Bayou) from that direction, but the city, guarded by stout defenses, swamps, and motivated defenders, could not be turned. Finally, Union troops ran down the Mississippi and came up from the south and the river defenses and the bastion itself were taken from the east. From July 1863 to August 1864, sporadic Confederate resistance necessitated continued Federal attention. This book recounts the whole story.
This book is designed for the amateur historian who is interested in visiting location related to the Vicksburg campaign. This book contains photographs, locations along with mileage and GPS coordinates of significant places along the march. Also included are excerpts from the Official Records of the War Rebellion.
Describes the 14 month defense of Vicksburg, Mississippi by Confederate forces and the 47 day siege of Vicksburg by Union naval and land forces, which led to the complete opening of the Mississippi River. This publication is based on a previous publication by William C. Everhart.
From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War raged along the great rivers of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. While various Civil War biographies exist, none have been devoted exclusively to participants in the Western river war as waged down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Red River, and up the Ohio, the Tennessee and the Cumberland. Based on the Official Records, county histories, newspapers and internet sources, this is the first work to profile personnel involved in the fighting on these great streams. Included in this biographical encyclopedia are Union and Confederate naval officers down to the rank of mate; enlisted sailors who won the Medal of Honor, or otherwise distinguished themselves or who wrote accounts of life on the gunboats; army officers and leaders who played a direct role in combat along Western waters; political officials who influenced river operations; civilian steamboat captains and pilots who participated in wartime logistics; and civilian contractors directly involved, including shipbuilders, dam builders, naval constructors and munitions experts. Each of the biographies includes (where known) birth, death and residence data; unit organization or ship; involvement in the river war; pre- and post-war careers; and source documentation. Hundreds of individuals are given their first historic recognition.
