Vicksburg
Little Round Table
Vicksburg - The Siege
1. Vicksburg, Gibraltar of the West. Deserved or hype?
2. What battle sealed Vicksburg’s fate? Champion Hill? Seems the obvious answer, but what about—
Jackson - cuts Vicksburg’s MSR; effectively isolates it.
Bruinsburg - Grant is across the river and has room to maneuver.
Porter running the fleet past Vicksburg to link up with the army and ferry them across.
Fort Donelson – Grant's career does a 180
Other?
3. What is a siege? What others occurred during the Civil War?
4. Who designed Vicksburg’s defenses?
5. What was the first Union unit to reach and secure Hayne’s Bluff, thus reestablishing contact with Union lines west of the Yazoo River?
6. Why did Pemberton place his two fresh divisions on the Graveyard and Jackson roads? When Union forces finally closed on the city’s fortifications, the city was effectively covered on three sides (east, north, and the Mississippi). Why was Grant’s left flank open?
7. Why did Grant choose to immediately attack the Vicksburg entrenchments on May 19, the day after the Union victory at Big Black River Bridge? Why again on May 22?
8. Who or what was the Forlorn Hope?
9. Why was Johnston so cautious in his planning and attempt(s) to relieve Pemberton?
10. How effective was Johnston’s force? What was its potential? How about Johnston himself?
11. Did circumstances support the possibility of a breakout by Pemberton to the NE with a link-up in the Mechanicsburg corridor with Johnston coming SW from Canton? Should Pemberton have reinforced the forces he initially had occupying the Walnut Hills area rather than recalling them to the Vicksburg entrenchments?
12. When Pemberton contacted Grant to discuss terms for surrender, Grant initially responded that there would be no terms – surrender would be unconditional. He later agreed to terms. What were they, and why did he allow them?
13. Who on the Confederate side had primary responsibility for the fall of Vicksburg? Pemberton? Johnston? Davis? Someone else? Explain your answer.
14. How long did it make sense to hold onto Vicksburg? Was there a point that it made more sense strategically for Pemberton to abandon the city and link up with Johnston?
Vicksburg Campaign 1- Holly Springs to Chickasaw Bayou to Arkansas Post
On July 23th the Little Round Table launched our study of the Vicksburg Campaign. The session began General Van Dorn’s successful raid on Holly Springs and Sherman’s defeat at Chickasaw Bayou, north of Vicksburg, in December 1862. We ended the night with the Confederate defeat at Arkansas Post in early January 1863.
1. How did what would be the Vicksburg campaign's principal cast of characters (Van Dorn, Pemberton, Johnston, Grant, Sherman, McClernand, & Porter) assemble in Dec 1862 - Jan 1863?
2. What two cavalry raids did Pemberton coordinate in December 1862? Were they intentionally coordinated?
3. These coordinated raids were one of the two most influential cavalry raids of the war, why? What was the only raid to rival this one in its impact?
4. What did Grant do to provision his army after the raids?
5. Did Sherman have any realistic chance of prevailing at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, why?
6. What was behind Sherman's willingness to take considerable casualties in the assault?
7. Why were communications an issue for the union army during this two month period?
8. What was Sherman's reasoning for diverting his army and attacking Arkansas Post (Fort Hindman), an installation on the Arkansas River and miles north of his original objective?
9. John Alexander McClernand and his new bride entered Grant's command area in early 1863, how did he come to be there and what proved to be his undoing?
Vicksburg Campaign 2 - Bayou and Canal Operations
In 1862 the path of the river past Vicksburg was more extreme than today. Just north of the city it turned due east then at Tuscumbia Bend it did a 180 and flowed due west just as it passed in front of the town.
June 28, 1862 Farragut makes his famous run past the Vicksburg batteries to link up north of the town with Flag Officer Davis' advance flotilla, Davis's fleet (four ironclads and six morter scows) would arrive a few days later after coming down from Memphis. All but three of Farragut's ocean going ships passed the batteries and only one of the trio still downstream was damaged. The transports did not attempt the run, they were too slow and too fragile to try the upriver run, and too few troops had been allocated for a land assault on the town. Beginning the day before these troops (under General Williams) began digging a canal across the base of Desoto Peninsula.
What this action told the Navy was that fast boats that could take some punishment could steam north past Vicksburg with a reasonable degree of risk. They would soon discover that ocean going ships did not really belong on the river and that falling water levels could trap them if they did not prudently head back south in time. Falling water levels could also render the canal useless. But the more immediate problem was The Arkansas with would go into action in mid-July.
In the summer of 1962 Van Dorn had about 15,000 troops defending Vicksburg. Had the army furnished Farragut with enough troops at that point he could have taken the city.
Pemberton and Johnston had contradictory combat preferences. Pemberton preferred to fight from fixed positions, strongly fortified. Johnston favored movement and mobility, seeking to keep his enemy off-balance and wait for this to uncover an opportunity. Pemberton considered each position under his command a sacred trust, to be defended whatever the cost. Johnston was comfortable relinquishing any amount of real estate if it increased the chance for ultimate victory.
On January 30, 1863 Grant joined the army at Young's point, on the west bank of the Mississippi, south of Milliken's Bend. He took over command from McClernand. Now there was a single general whose control extended over both banks of the river. Who had the unqualified support of President Lincoln and General Halleck, the approval of Admiral Porter, and the undivided loyalty of General Sherman. As Grant saw it on January 30th, "The real work of the campaign and the siege of Vicksburg now began..."
During the Winter of 1863 Grant conducted a series of initiatives to approach and capture Vicksburg, these are called "Grant's bayou operations". Their general theme was to use or construct alternative waterways so that troops could be positioned within striking distance of Vicksburg, without requiring a direct approach on the Mississippi under the Confederate guns. These included:
Grant's Canal - The Williams Canal across De Soto Peninsula had been
abandoned by Adm. Farragut and Brig. Gen. Williams in July 1862, but
it had the potential to offer a route downriver that bypassed
Vicksburg's guns. In late January 1863, Sherman's men, at the urging
of Grant—who was advised by the navy that President Lincoln liked the
idea—resumed digging. Sherman derisively called the work "Butler's
Ditch" as the previous summer Benjamin Butler had sent Williams
upriver to do the work, which was barely 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep.
Grant, undoubtedly influenced by Lincoln's continuous inquiries as to
the status of the canal, ordered Sherman to expand the canal to 60
feet wide and 7 feet deep and to reorient the entrance point to align
better with the river current. It was not properly engineered based
upon the hydrology of the Mississippi River, however, and a sudden
rise in the river broke through the dam at the head of the canal and
flooded the area. The canal began to fill up with back water and
sediment. In a desperate effort to rescue the project, two huge
steam-driven dipper dredges, Hercules and Sampson, attempted to clear
the channel, but the dredges were exposed to Confederate artillery
fire from the bluffs at Vicksburg and driven away. By late March, work
on the canal was abandoned. (Remnants of about 200 yards of Grant's
Canal are maintained by the Vicksburg National Military Park in
Louisiana).
Lake Providence expedition - Grant ordered Brig. Gen. James B.
McPherson to construct a canal of several hundred yards from the
Mississippi to Lake Providence, northwest of the city. This would
allow passage to the Red River, through Bayous Baxter and Macon, and
the Tensas and Black Rivers. Reaching the Red River, Grant's force
could join with Banks at Port Hudson. McPherson reported that the
connection was navigable on March 18, but the few boats that had been
sent to Grant for navigation of the bayous could only transport 8,500
men, far too few to tip the balance at Port Hudson. Although this was
the only one of the bayou expeditions to successfully bypass the
Vicksburg defenses, historian Ed Bearss calls this episode the "Lake
Providence Boondoggle".
Yazoo Pass expedition - The next attempt was to get to the high ground
of the loess bluffs above Hayne's Bluff and below Yazoo City by
blowing up the Mississippi River levee near Moon Lake, 150 miles above
Vicksburg, near Helena, Arkansas, and following the Yazoo Pass into
the Coldwater River, then to the Tallahatchie River, and finally into
the Yazoo River at Greenwood, Mississippi. The dikes were blown up on
February 3, beginning what was called the Yazoo Pass Expedition. Ten
Union boats, under the command of Lt. Cmdr. Watson Smith, with army
troops under the command of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss, began moving
through the pass on February 7. But low-hanging trees destroyed
anything on the gunboats above deck and Confederates felled more trees
to block the way. These delays allowed the Confederates time to
quickly construct a "Fort Pemberton" near the confluence of the
Tallahatchie and Yalobusha Rivers near Greenwood, Mississippi, which
repulsed the naval force and the effort was abandoned in April.
Steele's Bayou expedition - Admiral Porter started an effort on March
14 to go up the Yazoo Delta via Steele's Bayou, just north of
Vicksburg, to Deer Creek. This would outflank Fort Pemberton and allow
landing troops between Vicksburg and Yazoo City. Confederates once
again felled trees in their path, and willow reeds fouled the boats'
paddle wheels. This time the Union boats became immobilized, and
Confederate cavalry and infantry threatened to capture them. Sherman
sent infantry assistance to repel the Confederates bedeviling Porter,
and the boats were extracted.
1. By taking command at Young's Point on January 30, 1863 Grant
immediately achieved significant organizational advantages over his
opponent. What were they?
2. What physical characteristics of the Mississippi River north of
Vicksburg made canal and bayou operations so tempting?
3. Although the union occupation of DeSoto point ended the operation
the Southern Railroad from Louisiana to Mississippi it did not have a
huge logistical impact on the Confederacy as long as they held the
stretch of river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Why?
4. What is the significance of the slogan "Deluded People - Cave In"?
5. What was the basic difference in fighting philosophies that would
affect the relations between Johnston and Pemberton and seal the fate
of Vicksburg? (Hint: Pemberton's philosophy was well suited to the
period of canal & bayou operations but not for the later stages of the
campaign).
6. Grant called his battles in the bayous "experiments", although he
hoped for their success he was skeptical. What were some of the
reasons he elected to take on these experiments?
7. What were the main flaws in the concept and execution of Grant's Canal?
8. The Lake Providence experiment bypassed the Mississippi by going 40
miles west of the river. Although technically the most successful of
Grant's experiments, in the end he did not follow through on it.
Why?
9. Why was McPherson the logical person to place in charge of the Lake
Providence experiment?
10. What about the basic tactical nature of the Yazoo Pass and
Steele's Bayou experiments made their limited scale inappropriate?
Vicksburg Campaign 3 - Porter Moves South – Grand Gulf
By late March 1863 both Lincoln and Halleck had come to believe in Grant. But Secretary Stanton and the War Department rarely agreed with Lincoln . Stanton distrusted Grant, who was late with reports and openly unimpressed with those in top authority in Washington. On April 6th a key figure in Grant's future would join his army in what was quite possibly the most ironic and underrated development of the war. Who was this and why was this such a positive event for Grant?
The actions of the two opposing commanders at Vicksburg helped inspire a famous military axiom. What military theorist came to believe that successful armies must be adaptive networks of human relationships and not machines, and articulated it as “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”?
Although the premise is that holding the 150 mile stretch of river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson was key to the survival of the Confederacy, neither Pemberton nor Johnston was physically present in Vicksburg in late April 1863. Where had they elected to set up their respective headquarters? What does this say about their focus during this critical period?
The Federals lacked information about the area south of Vicksburg but received invaluable military information from fugitive slaves, often in the middle of an engagement. What was their term for these intelligence sources?
While the Iron Brigade was busy adding to its elite unit status up in Pennsylvania, its counterpart in the Confederate army was doing great things around Vicksburg. Led by a future United States senator (whose future wife shared a surname with Ellen Sherman) this Brigade effectively operated in the vacuum left by Kirby Smith's refusal to allocate resources in support of Vicksburg and would further distinguish itself at the Battle of Champion Hill. It is generally regarded as the best brigade in either army participating in the Vicksburg Campaign. What brigade was this?
Grant initially choose Warrenton as the place to insert his army south of Vicksburg, then rejected it. Other options were Grand Gulf, Bruinsburg, and Rodney. What general factors were at play in this decision?
Grant's decision making style when he had the initiative can be described as "on-the-fly"; what "on-the-fly" decision did he make upon establishing his beachhead between Grand Gulf and Port Hudson?
His presence within a 300 mile radius of Port Hudson kept 15,000 Confederate troops on station and unavailable to Pemberton. At least in this sense Nathaniel P. Banks did not live up to his nickname during the Vicksburg Campaign. What was his Union army nickname?
The terrain south of Vicksburg (specifically from the river to Port Gibson) consists of a twisting network of narrow (less than 100 yards wide) but relatively clear ridges separating impassable overgrown ravines, with very little open ground for maneuver. This "you can't get there from here" negative took away much of the advantage the defense typically enjoys from having interior lines, but was offset by other significant advantages it gave to the defenders. What were these advantages?
When Grand Gulf is abandoned its relatively immobile batteries are destroyed. What was illogical about this action? Did this reveal anything about Pemberton's expectations for the future?
In retrospect it is inconceivable that Grant was allowed to cross the Mississippi virtually unopposed. There is plenty of blame for this to go around. What are the salient screw-ups, staggering miscalculations, and directionless leadership that led to this disaster?
It is perfectly alright to knock Pemberton's. Sure he was in a difficult situation but he was a horribly flawed commander. Say that you are Fred Grant, 12 years old and sitting with you father in his cabin the night before the landing at Bruinsburg. You ask what would be the best possible outcome to crossing the river. Grant would tell you that it would be a moderate amount of fighting leading to the bagging of Pemberton's army and the occupation of fortress Vicksburg by mid-summer. .
Pemberton is cause in a situation where he is removed from the scene of action and must rely on two competing direct reports. Stevenson is an alarmist too focused on his immediate sector. Bowen has broken the code and figured out Grant's immediate strategy. But Pemberton is too far away to directly evaluate the situation and must rely on the representations of his two commanders, and he has failed to correctly assess the veracity of either.
In segment #3 of our Vicksburg discussion we continue to compare and contrast Pemberton and Grant. Grant is seen in late April and early May taking chances and keeping the initiative. He is creatively responding to a fluid situation at a time when he should be able to simply grind it out. Grant is doing what Pemberton should be doing, taking chances and getting creative. Meanwhile Pemberton, trying to cover a large geographical area with only 51,000 men refuses to take the gamble of concentrating his forces and aggressively neutralizing the most serious threat. His attitude is puzzling because a tiny bit of forward thinking would reveal that he is headed toward the worst possible outcome, allowing the bulk of his army to be encircled and starved into submission. For Grant this was the best possible outcome and to at least some extent Pemberton could have avoided it. Virtually any action he takes would be a better outcome than what will happened if he plays things conservatively at this stage of the campaign. His worst case fall-back should be to leave Vicksburg with the minimum amount of troops to put up a decent defense after encirclement, if fact it would be better to error on the side of less troops left there because assuming they do not get rolled over the food supply will last longer; with the result that not only will he increase the forces available for future operations but he will add weeks to likely surrender date of the city.
But Pemberton's fatal flaw is a temperament poorly suited to his mission. In a situation requiring aggressive responses he does not even take enough risk to afford a slight possibility of success. You could second guess him for sending what is obviously too few troops for anything but a long shot chance of success, but he does not send enough to afford them an outside chance of success. What does he have to lose.
Charles Dana arrived at Milliken's Bend on April 6th 1863, his cover story was that he was investigating payroll distribution in the Western army. The cloak-and-dagger secrecy turned out to be superfluous. Grant and his staff knew that he had been sent by Secretary of War Stanton to investigate Grant's command. But Grant had nothing to hide and warmly welcomed the ex-journalist. He did not like letter writing and Dana daily dispatches relieved him of the necessity of describing what was going on each day. Lincoln felt that he was Grant's only friend but the often secretive Grant opened up to Dana on his hopes and plans and the reasoning behind them. With the thaw in Grant's relationship with Hallack (because they now had a mutual enemy in McClernand) and Dana's addition to his inner circle, Grant's reputation in the Capital was on the rise.
Between Milliken's Bend and Young's Point a chain of bayous and creeks twisted west and south through the Louisiana town of Richmond and approached the main river again at the village of New Carthage, almost equidistant in crowflight miles between the Confederate batteries at Warrenton and the fortifications at Grand Gulf.
A short canal beginning at Duckport Landing, connecting the Mississippi with the first of these bayous, would open a 40 mile inland waterway sufficient to accommodate tugs, barges, and small steamers without exposing them to Vicksburg's guns. If there were not enough vessels to carry the whole army to New Carthage, the infantry could make the overland trek on foot, while supplies followed them by boat. By this point Porter and Grant's people were familiar with navigating bayous, digging canals, and wading through swamps.
Things had changed a bit since the summer of 1862. Port Hudson now spouted big guns and Vicksburg had more guns bearing on the river. Meaning that it would now be difficult to run any kind of vessel up the river past these two points.
As Grant considers where to assault south of Vicksburg he has to balance several factors. Going further south has the advantage of steams with the current and being that much further for Confederate reinforcements to travel. On the other it extends his already tenuous Louisiana supply line.
The roads from the river to Port Gibson were twisting and narrow, mostly along the top of ridges. There was little open land and the ridges dropped sharply into overgrown ravines. This made it impossible to move rapidly enough to out flank the defenders or to trap them. And when the defenders withdrew the attacking formations were to disorganized for any effect pursuit.
Grant keeps the initiative throughout the campaign. Grant was a terror when he had the initiative because when his initial battle plan collapsed he could spot how to exploit developing advantages and his small ego allowed him to let go of his original plan and adapt to changing circumstances.
Once ashore and certain that Banks would not cooperate against Port Hudson, Grant can take on Vicksburg. Quickly concludes that a direct assault is less desirable than choking off the city by getting atop the railroad from Jackson. In effect the trap begins slowly springing closed once Grant's army is ashore. By May 1st 2/3's of his army - 23,000 from McClernand's & McPherson's Corps. Grant's first move is to get them inland and then take Port Gibson. Bowen has only two Brigades from his division and two from Vicksburg. The 3000 from Jackson have been called back.
All becomes very simple for Pemberton at that point. He should have realized that his options have been reduced to how many of his troops get trapped in the city, he appears to not realize this and to not realize that less is better than more for the additional reason that a smaller force can last longer under a siege. In retrospect Pemberton should have already done the calculus of this situation and realized that strategically and tactically his end game was keeping Vicksburg in operation as choke point on the river for as long as possible with as few troops inside as practical. While uniting the troops on the outside into a single force in the hope of making the siege less effective. Every movement he made should have been in the service of that goal.
If Grant's army lands on this side of the river the safety of Mississippi depends on beating it, Johnston advises Pemberton, for that object you should unite all your forces. This was the only real chance for victory but Pemberton was not the man to do it, and should have started sooner. Of course Johnston should have anticipated this and taken his own advice, taking troops from Bragg and going to the Vicksburg area himself.
Grant had a choice of first going for Vicksburg or for Jackson as it was waiting for Sherman's Corps to catch up and bring him to full strength at 43,000. And learning from Holly Springs that the country could support them they only had to worry about ammunition.
Fred Grant
A Rose For Emily
October 22, 2020 – Vicksburg Campaign 4 - Grierson's Raid & Snyder's Bluff
Led By Arley McCormick
The reason historians and military tacticians study Vicksburg, and why this night's topic is so important (in four words or less). From Grant's perspective the Vicksburg campaign is a chess match as he seeks to develop opportunities to exploit the element of surprise or to cause Pemberton to make reactive mistakes as he is panic into shifting his forces. Almost every union action can be seen as motivated by these goals. A year later, against Lee, Grant will shift his tactics to direct engagement of the fist and fight a war of attrition. The single most amazing thing about Grant was his ability to fight a war by such extreme shifts in his tactics.
Van Dorn's raid on Holly Springs is a classic element of surprise engagement, he only didn't a few hours to complete his mission; so he went in small and fast and did not hang around to fight the Union forces that were deployed in response. The Battle of the Bulge employed the element of surprise but on a different time constraint. The Germans intended that Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army break through allied lines and drive all the say to Antwerp. They were able to achieve surprise by having all their assembly points in Germany where no partisan intelligence could uncover their activities. And by staying away from Enigma messages and communicating by phone and messenger. They knew that the element of surprise would not hold long enough (six weeks) to accomplish this so they came in with a fist of over 400K of mechanized infantry and 1100 tanks and self-propelled assault guns. Their gamble was that as their advantage from the element of surprise decayed, this fist would allow them to overwhelm the forces shifted in to oppose them.
These are diversions, Grierson goes in fast and light exploiting the element of surprise. Keeping southern forces off balance the raid continues for several weeks, all the time pulling attention and forces away from south of Vicksburg. Snyder's Bluff ignores the element of surprise as Grant seeks to actually draw attention to the activity as the goal is the immediate one of causing southern forces to shift to the north of town.
Who was commander of the Union Army's XVI Corps and what was his mission during the Vicksburg Campaign?
Liked and trusted by Grant, the commander of the XVI Corps was fully in the loop about Grant's intention to find a place south of Vicksburg where he could cross the river unopposed. Rather than worry about Grant no longer being able to reinforce him the commander of the XVI did what to provide material support of Grant's efforts?
Although Rosecrans regarded Streight's April 27th Raid as a failure, the commander of the XVI Corps found this activity in eastern Alabama a cause for relief. Why?
Grierson's deep-penetration raid initially exploited much the same Confederate organizational weakness that had worked to Grant's advantage around Vicksburg. What was this?
The raid toward Panola (17 - 24 April) pitted Bryant & Sooy Smith against Chalmers. It was a total failure in its secondary goal but a success in its two primary goals. What were the three goals of the raid?
On April 20th Pemberton (at his HQ in Jackson) received an urgent message from Johnston requesting that he send help to Colonel Roddey who was trying to stop a federal offensive approaching Decatur Alabama along the south bank of the Tennessee River. What assortment of challenges was Pemberton facing in Mississippi at that moment that would make this request exasperating to the point of being almost comical?
LTC Barteau had the best shot at intercepting Grierson with a force sizable enough to be a factor. But as he pursued Grierson southward from Pontotoc he made two critical mistakes, one ended any realistic possibility of disrupting the raid and the other ended any chance of claiming a lessor prize. What were these two mistakes?
What is the Mississippi college featured in "The Horse Soldiers" and why have they not been impacted by COVID-19?
20-20 hindsight reveals the folly of Pemberton's desperate attempt to intercept Grierson by detaching Van Wirt's cavalry from Bowen at what turned out to be the worst possible time. But this folly is actually magnified when one considers the dynamics of a deep-penetration cavalry raid. Pemberton's fixation on defending territory and his unfamiliarity with cavalry actions on this scale caused him to omit what dynamics from his decision-making and take a huge risk that promised no realistic reward?
Early May 1863 saw both Forrest and Sherman inventively utilize cover and concealment in combination with maneuver. How did this work out for them?
What is "a spraddled silhouette" from "A Rose for Emily"?
Literally, it is a shadow of someone standing or walking with spread legs. It works as a literal description of Emily's father's stance/gait. However, think of its symbolic meaning too: behind Emily there is (to translate the phrase) a sprawling shadow. It spreads out, filling the space, and her house and life is very much filled with darkness. Her father's black mark hangs over her, spraddling her life.
Faulkner doing Mark Twain
cultural satirists
Katherine Ann Porter's The Jilting of Granny Weatherall