A BOLD STROKE OF GENIUS

A BOLD STROKE OF GENIUS:

MAJOR GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT’S VICKSBURG OPERATIONS

BETWEEN NOVEMBER 1862 AND JULY 1863

Jacob Harris

Middle Tennessee State University History Department

Selection Committee

January 7, 2015

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President Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to identify a general-in-chief capable of employing

the full advantages of Union resources to defeat the Confederate Armies certainly contributed to

his aging during the Civil War (1861-1865). His man came unexpectedly from the West. Major

General Ulysses S. Grant fit Carl Von Clausewitz’s description of “the leader of brilliance”

because he overcame the accumulation of war-time complications known as “friction”1

to win

battles. In the Virginia Theater General Robert E. Lee established his excellent reputation as a

war leader during the Seven Days Battles in June, 1862.2 While the public subsequently focused

on the chain of floundering Federal Generals polished off by Lee and Major General Thomas J.

Jackson between 1862 and 1863, the quiet and unassuming Grant won decisive Western Theater

battles that crippled the Confederacy. From the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in

February, 1862, to his spectacular Chattanooga victory in November, 1863, Grant established

himself as the Union’s greatest general by winning the war in the West.3

Incredibly, numerous

influential critics and historians labeled Grant as a “dull and unimaginative…butcher,”4 and “not

an original or brilliant man.”5 The criticism does not stand up to the actual performance of the

general who matched Clausewitz’s description of “the leader of brilliance and exceptional

ability,” who “makes the right decision[s]…at every pulsebeat of war.”6 His Mississippi River

operations between November 1862 and July 1863 reflected superb strategy, coordination,

deception, maneuver, surprise, and violence of action.7 The Army of the Tennessee’s strategic

capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, cut the Confederacy in half and established complete

Union control of the Mississippi River.8 When Lincoln learned of the victory he declared that:

“Grant is my man…and I am his the rest of the war.”9 The Vicksburg Campaign was the

pinnacle of Grant’s military genius.

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Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant Ohio, and was the

son of the tanner and businessman, Jesse Root Grant, and Hannah Simpson Grant.10

As a 17-

year-old cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point he exploited an

administrative error to alter his name to Ulysses Simpson Grant.11

He was a strong

mathematician, an outstanding equestrian, and a shy and reserved student who graduated near the

middle of his class in 1843.12

Grant learned the importance of aggressive offensive actions,

speed and maneuver, deception, and methods of sustainment during service as quartermaster in

the 1844 Mexican War under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.13

After the war he

married Julia Dent on August 22, 1848, but in 1852 traveled alone to several remote duty

stations, experienced drinking and depression problems, and resigned from active duty on July

31, 1854.14

When the war erupted on April 12, 1861, he sought military employment after seven

unsuccessful years as a civilian. Grant took command of the 21st Illinois Volunteers on June 15,

1861,15

and dynamically rose to command of the Union forces in western Tennessee and northern

Mississippi as a Major General by the Fall of 1862.16

The British historian and Major General

JFC Fuller attributed Grant’s success to honesty, cool resolve and determination, clear-

headedness, physical and moral courage, wisdom, simplicity, and common sense.17

Unlike other

generals paralyzed by the friction of over-perfectionism and circumstances, Grant possessed the

uncanny ability to conquer fear and learn from experiences to campaign in the most effective

manner.18

His philosophy was that: “the art of war is simple enough; find out where your enemy

is, get at him as soon as you can, and strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”19

He

established the Union formula for victory in the West because determination and practical

experience taught him that success required nothing short of conquest.20

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As Union progress stagnated in the East between 1862 and 1863, Grant’s Western

victories laid groundwork for operations to clear the Mississippi River. He cooperated with the

Navy to aggressively exploit the Mississippi-Ohio-Tennessee-Cumberland River complex as

“highways of invasion into Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, and Northern Alabama,” and “the

Mississippi River [as] an arrow thrust into the heart of the lower South.”21

Grant gained

promotion to Major General because his victories at Fort Henry on the Tennessee River

(February 6, 1862) and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River (February 16, 1862), led to

Union Control of most of western Tennessee and threatened northern Alabama and Mississippi.22

His Shiloh victory (April 6, 1862) effectively positioned his army on the eastern flanks of

Confederate Mississippi River strongholds at Island Number 10, Fort Pillow, and Memphis.23

Grant’s deep thrust into enemy territory drew Confederate reinforcements from other regions,

and facilitated Union victories at Island Number 10 (April 8), New Orleans (April 24), and

Memphis (June 6).24

Subsequent victories at Iuka (September 19) and Corinth (October 3) in

Mississippi helped extinguish the Confederate invasion of Kentucky by preventing General

Braxton Bragg’s reinforcement at the Battle of Perryville on October 7.25

Iuka, Corinth, and

Perryville coincided with Major General George B. McClellan’s strategic Antietam, Maryland,

victory (April 17) to enable Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (September 22), prevent

Confederate international recognition, and decrease the Confederate hold on the Mississippi to

the two-hundred-mile span between Port Hudson, Louisiana, and Vicksburg, Mississippi.26

When Grant took command of the Army of the Tennessee on October 25, the vast extent of

Federally-controlled Western territory warranted his corps commander’s claim that their army

was “far in advance of the other grand armies of the United States.”27

From his Jackson,

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Tennessee, headquarters Grant set the well-defined strategic goal of clearing the Mississippi

River.28

Lincoln considered Vicksburg the key to the war. Clearing the Mississippi to allow free

navigation from the Old Northwest to the Gulf of Mexico, and to divide the Confederacy was the

concept of General Winfield Scott’s cordon strategy that Lincoln fully embraced.29

Vicksburg

and Port Hudson’s strategic locations on high ground overlooking the river made them the last

significant Confederate strongholds that disrupted Federal navigation. Grant intuitively grasped

Vicksburg’s significance:

Vicksburg was important to the enemy because it occupied the first high ground

coming close to the river below Memphis…from there a railroad runs east,

connecting with other roads leading to all points of the Southern States…So long

as it was held by the enemy, free navigation of the river was prevented. Points on

the River between Vicksburg and Port Hudson were held as dependencies; but

their fall was sure to follow the capture of the former place.30

The critical river span was the last link that connected the trans-Mississippi states of Texas,

Louisiana, and Arkansas to the “central and eastern portions of the Confederacy.”31

Between the

strongholds, the Mississippi formed junctions with the Red, White, and Arkansas Rivers, capable

of supplying Confederate Armies with unlimited cattle, corn, hogs, and a pool of 100,000

potential soldiers from the trans-Mississippi states.32

Vicksburg connected to the Louisiana

interior via the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Texas Railroad to the West; and forty-five miles to the

east, to Jackson, the Mississippi state capital and key railroad hub, by the Vicksburg and Jackson

Railroad.33

In the minds of Presidents Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Vicksburg was the crucial

trans-Mississippi junction that sustained Confederate Armies throughout the South.34

As the

Union blockade of Southern ports tightened in late 1862, the Vicksburg west-to-east conduit

became vital to Confederate sustainment and international communication through Texas and

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Mexico.35

Vicksburg’s capture would sever the trans-Mississippi states and cripple the

Confederate ability to wage war.36

The assault on the “Queen City of the Bluff” would not be easy. In order to succeed

Grant had to strike with a large and well-supplied army on the high, dry terrain east of the city.37

Major General William T. Sherman, Grant’s corps commander, wrote after the war that having

“since seen the position at Sevastopol,” Vicksburg was “the more difficult of the two.” 38

In

military terms Vicksburg was a strong-point: located on a 200-foot Mississippi bluff that

overlooked the southeastern portion of a hairpin-shaped river bend, she was protected by a

30,000-troop garrison, and bristled with nine major batteries and redoubts of 172 guns that

covered all river approaches and sandbars with devastating plunging fire.39

Vicksburg’s angle

from the river made her un-assailable by infantry from the west, and prevented effective naval

gunfire on the defenders.40

The northwestern approach was blocked by the Yazoo-Mississippi

alluvial delta—a swampy, marshy region “200 miles in length and 50 miles in average width,

bounded east and west by the rivers that gave it its compound name,” and north and south by a

line of hills that rose east of Vicksburg and extended to Memphis.41

The Yazoo River meandered

tortuously south along the hills to the batteries at Yazoo City and Haynes’ Bluff (three miles

northeast of Vicksburg), and then wound into the Mississippi.42

The rainy season between

January and April made overland operations and transportation of heavy equipment around

Vicksburg impossible because of soft alluvial soil and flooded roads on both sides of the

Mississippi.43

Only limited terrain east and south of Vicksburg offered feasible avenues of

approach.44

While on the Mississippi River a soldier wrote a letter about the terrain’s effects on

his unit: “There has been a great deal of sickness in our own and other regiments since we went

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to the Chickasaw swamps. Our company is not much more than half fit for duty.”45

The

campaign’s difficulty clearly required a tough army and an exceptional leader.

On November 2, 1862, Grant led the Army of the Tennessee from Grand Junction,

Tennessee, south down the Mississippi Central Railroad against Vicksburg in a two-pronged

assault. As Grant attacked overland from the northeast, his corps commander, Major General

William T. Sherman, took an army from Memphis down the Mississippi and up the Yazoo River

for a waterborne assault from the northwest.46

Reinforcements and orders from the War

Department on December 18 to reorganize his army47

compelled Grant to officially organize his

mobile force into three corps: Major General John A. McClernand’s XIII Corps, Major General

William T. Sherman’s XV Corps, and Major General James B. McPherson’s XVII Corps.48

The

Confederate Western Departmental Commander, Lieutenant General Joseph E. Johnston,

warned the Secretary of War that Grant’s tough Midwesterners (mainly from Ohio, Indiana,

Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana) were equivalent to twice their number of

Northeastern soldiers.49

Grant was faced by Confederate Lieutenant General John C.

Pemberton’s Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana—composed of 30,000 Mississippi,

Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia soldiers around Vicksburg and Port

Hudson.50

Pemberton organized his army into the two infantry corps of Major Generals Sterling

Price and Mansfield Lovell, and a cavalry corps under Brigadier General William H. Jackson.51

Grant’s handling of a disastrous initial offensive demonstrated his determination and

resilience. The Confederate Cavalry commanders Earl Van Dorn and Nathan B. Forrest

destroyed his supply and telegraph lines on December 20, and thereby prevented his cooperation

with Sherman’s consequentially disastrous Chickasaw Bluffs Assault (three miles north of

Vicksburg), on December 29.52

Grant was compelled to retreat to Tennessee, but nevertheless

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made the best of the situation. He reversed his army’s path along the railroad and ordered the

soldiers to spread abreast fifteen miles on either side to gather food, forage, and supplies from

the countryside as they marched north. He later explained his satisfaction with the results:

I was amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded. It showed we could

live off the country for two months instead of two weeks without going beyond

the limits designated.53

Despite failure, he improved his generalship by taking two important lessons from the

experience: the soldiers could temporarily live off the land if necessary; however, to prevent

vulnerable supply lines, future operations would be connected to the Mississippi River in

coordination with the Navy.54

Since a water-borne assault was not feasible during the rainy season, Grant focused on

the maintenance of his army until March.55

He moved his headquarters to Memphis on January

10, 1863,56

and on January 29 traveled downriver to Young’s Point, near Vicksburg, to

personally take command of two corps under his rogue subordinate, John McClernand.57

Grant

refused to return to Memphis because the perception of retreat would encourage Northern war

opposition, discourage Union enlistments, and demoralize his men.58

He established

headquarters at Milliken’s Bend, twenty miles northwest of Vicksburg, and decided there “was

nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory.”59

Temporarily unable to access

dry ground on the east side of the river, Grant employed his corps on five major hydraulic

engineering experiments until April in order to distract attention from the enemy, his troops, and

the public.60

Three experiments attempted to bypass Vicksburg’s batteries by creating navigable

canals and waterways to move troops, gunboats, and transports to a secure crossing south of the

city.61

The other projects attempted to establish navigable routes through the Yazoo-Mississippi

River alluvial delta in order to flank Vicksburg from the north.62

Grant never banked on the

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projects’ success, and they all failed. The Army of the Tennessee, however, benefitted from

hardship. JFC Fuller pointed out in his book, Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and

Generalship, that the experiments “formed admirable training for Grant’s army, hardening and

disciplining the men, in fact turning them into salted soldiers.”63

While Grant conditioned his

army he completed a brilliant offensive plan by the spring.64

The Army of the Tennessee’s amphibious Bruinsburg landing (April 30, 1863) was

brilliant for its boldness, simplicity, deception, and skillful execution. During the wet season

Grant’s army was strung out for approximately fifty miles on dry levees along the west bank of

the Mississippi: the XV Corps at Young’s Point; the XIII Corps at Milliken’s Bend; and the

XVII Corps at Lake Providence.65

As roads dried in March he concentrated 47,000 men at

Milliken’s Bend for an amphibious operation that incorporated the most crucial lessons of his

military experience.66

He planned to march his army south down the Louisiana side of the river

while Admiral David Dixon Porter ran his fleet past Vicksburg’s batteries in order to link up

with the invasion force south of Vicksburg.67

Once below Vicksburg, Porter’s boats would

transport the soldiers across the river to dry land for the assault on Vicksburg’s “soft

underbelly.”68

The plan was risky. A successful landing meant that Grant’s army must quickly

fight its way deep through enemy territory—without conventional communication and supply

lines—to Vicksburg, and either reestablish contact with the river fleet, or face possible isolation

and destruction.69

Furthermore, if Porter’s fleet managed to pass four miles of Vicksburg’s

batteries that dominated the river, the heavily armored iron-clad gun boats lacked the power for a

return voyage.70

The enterprise would either succeed or end in catastrophe, and there was no

turning back.71

To ensure success Grant was physically present at every crucial event.

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On April 5 he sent McClernand’s corps from Richmond, Louisiana, west of Vicksburg,

to clear a 30-mile invasion route south along the Louisiana side of the river to New Carthage,

below Vicksburg.72

On April 16 at 10 p.m., from his steamer, Magnolia, Grant observed Admiral

Porter’s fleet of seven ironclads and four steamers successfully run the Vicksburg batteries as

they fired 525 rounds, but sank only one boat.73

Porter’s down-river movement helped clear

resistance along McClernand’s avenue of advance by compelling by-passed Confederates along

the west bank to withdraw across the Mississippi to avoid being cut off.74

On April 17 Grant

personally traveled to New Carthage to assess the XVII Corps’ progress, and directed

McClernand to push 12 miles further south to Perkin’s Plantation for a better crossing point.

Grant then returned to Milliken’s Bend and issued Special Orders Number 110 that directed the

remaining corps to follow McClernand and forage along the march route.75

His thorough

assessment of supply requirements and cumulative sustainment wisdom prompted his decision to

send a second fleet of supply ships to run the batteries on April 22 to support his units south of

Vicksburg.76

By April 25 Grant concentrated his strike force, supply base, and naval

transportation fleet south of Vicksburg for the amphibious landing.77

On April 29 he attempted to

cross the first 10,000 soldiers in transport ships from Hard Times, Louisiana (63 miles south of

Milliken’s Bend), five miles further downriver to Grand Gulf, Mississippi, but prudently decided

on a landing even further south. Porter’s gun boats failed to disable Confederate Brigadier

General John S. Bowen’s artillery batteries that covered the desired landing area and protected

Vicksburg’s southern approach.78

Despite Bowen’s identification of the Army of the Tennessee

across the river, his urgent request to Pemberton for reinforcements on April 28 was largely

unaccommodated due to Grant’s perfectly coordinated diversions north and east of Vicksburg.79

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In early April, Grant sent Major General Frederick Steels’ division north up the

Mississippi in transports toward Greeneville to convince Pemberton that he was reinforcing

Major General William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland in East Tennessee. Pemberton took

the bait and sent 8,000 reinforcements to General Braxton Bragg in Tennessee.80

Grant

convinced his cavalry commander, Colonel Benjamin Grierson, to conduct a 600-mile raid with

1,700 cavalry, from LaGrange, Tennessee, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on April 17. The raid

destroyed portions of the north/south Mobile and Ohio Railroad, the east/west Southern

Railroad, the north/south New Orleans and Jackson Railroad, thirty-eight rail cars, the telegraph

line linking Meridian with Jackson and Vicksburg, and millions of dollars of Confederate

assets.81

Grierson fooled Pemberton into sending all of his cavalry on a fruitless pursuit in the

wrong direction.82

Finally, Grant convinced Sherman to feign an attack on Snyder’s Bluff,

northeast of Vicksburg, while eight naval gunboats simultaneously shelled nearby Haynes’ Bluff

on April 29.83

In an article after the war, General Joseph Johnston (appointed overall commander

of Confederate forces in Mississippi on May 9, 1863) described the extent of Pemberton’s

confusion: “in the first half of April, General Pemberton had become convinced that General

Grant had abandoned the design against Vicksburg…and on April 11th

he expressed the belief

that most of those troops were being withdrawn to Memphis, and stated that he himself was

assembling troops at Jackson to follow this movement.”84

By April 17, Pemberton realized that

Grant had resumed Vicksburg operations—too late to sufficiently reinforce Bowen to oppose

Grant’s amphibious landing at Bruinsburg (below Grand Gulf) on April 30.85

Retired Marine

Corps General Walter E. Boomer describes the keys to his success:

He reinforced my belief that commanders from top to bottom had not only to be

on the battlefield, but involved enough in the battle to smell it and taste it; even

more critical, to understand it.86

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After a bold, simple, perfectly coordinated, and unopposed landing, Grant maintained the

initiative.

With the first division on dry ground on the enemy side of the river, Grant moved like

lightning to establish a strong foothold and continue the offensive. Frederick E. Whitton, the

British military historian, called the campaign “a brilliant vindication of the tactical maxim to hit

hard, hit often, and keep on hitting.”87

Despite his vulnerability deep in enemy territory with his

back to the mile-wide Mississippi, Grant concentrated reinforcements and deployed before

Pemberton established a coordinated defense.88

He supervised the landing of 23,000 troops into

the morning of May 1, pushed McClernand inland to seize Port Gibson in order to establish a

suitable beachhead, and directed McPherson and Sherman’s corps to expeditiously join him.89

The diversions that reduced local Confederate resistance to a mere 8,000 soldiers enabled

McClernand’s corps to steadily overwhelm and outflank Bowen’s two brigades two miles west

of Port Gibson on May 1.90

Grant was present at the decisive point of the 18-hour engagement

and sealed the victory when he reinforced McClernand’s left wing with two freshly arrived

brigades from McPherson’s corps.91

Of the 4000 Confederates actually engaged, 832 were killed,

wounded, or missing; the Federals, who fought on the offensive, lost 875 killed, wounded, or

missing.92

Bowen retreated from Port Gibson that evening, and by May 3 abandoned Grand Gulf

for a defensive position opposite the protective arc of the Big Black River, which flowed

southeast of Vicksburg and into the Mississippi.93

Grant established a strong river base at Grand

Gulf on May 3, linked up with the navy, assessed the situation, and made a crucial decision.94

Although correspondence from the maladroit General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck

directed Grant to reinforce Major General Nathaniel P. Banks downriver with McPherson’s

corps for an assault on Port Hudson, he instead “determined to move independently of Banks, cut

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loose from [his] base, destroy the rebel force in rear of Vicksburg and invest or capture the

city.”95

During the first two weeks of May 1863 Grant violently executed a plan of indirect

approach that confused, surprised, out-maneuvered, and decisively defeated the armies of

Generals Pemberton and Johnston in detail. 96

While awaiting Sherman’s corps at Grand Gulf on

May 3, Grant ordered McPherson and McClernand north and east to probe Confederate defenses

in order to keep Pemberton off-balance and assess his disposition and intent.97

Union

reconnaissance patrols along the Big Black River both confirmed and encouraged Pemberton’s

focus on Vicksburg’s southern defenses in anticipation of a Federal thrust directly north from

Grand Gulf.98

Grant, however, adopted an indirect plan of attack in order to avoid Vicksburg’s

strong southern defenses and prevent Pemberton’s escape or consolidation with Johnston’s

reinforcements.99

In his own words, the plan was “to get to the railroad east of Vicksburg, and

approach from that direction.”100

The XV Corps arrived at Grand Gulf on May 6 and 7. Grant

concentrated 44,000 soldiers, and on May 8 applied the lessons of previous campaigns by

marching without a conventional supply line. Wagon trains shuttled mostly hard tack and

ammunition from Grand Gulf to Grant’s army, which foraged from the countryside as it

marched.101

Assigned soldier details at the front commandeered all available wheeled vehicles

and draft animals for the systematic mass requisition of beef, mutton, poultry, bacon, molasses,

and corn to sustain the Federal war machine.102

The Army of the Tennessee’s fast movement northeast toward Jackson, with its flanks

protected by the Big Black River to the north and Big Bayou Pierre to the south, mystified and

fixed Pemberton on the horns of a dilemma.103

The relentless drive toward the Vicksburg and

Jackson Railroad put a wedge between Pemberton and Johnston. Johnston did not arrive in

Jackson to personally take command until May 13, but on May 1 and 2 telegraphed Pemberton to

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concentrate outside of Vicksburg against Grant. President Davis, however, had instructed

Pemberton in December to hold Vicksburg at all costs.104

When Grant sent McClernand’s corps

north to Edward’s Station, 16 miles east of Vicksburg, Pemberton refused to weaken his defenses

by sending soldiers beyond the Big Black River.105

McPherson’s corps marched toward Jackson,

and on May 12 won a sharp engagement against Confederate Brigadier General John H. Gregg’s

brigade, twelve miles south of the town of Raymond. McPherson, who fought on the offensive,

lost 442 soldiers to Gregg’s 514.106

The Raymond engagement, and timely intelligence that

Johnston was gathering reinforcements in nearby Jackson, prompted Grant to deal decisively

with the Confederate threat to his right flank.107

He refined his strategy to: “seize the capital,

defeat Johnston there, and, having abolished this threat to his rear, turn west and defeat the main

Southern army near Vicksburg.”108

As Grant’s army approached Jackson, the bewildered

Pemberton sent 17,000 soldiers southeast from Vicksburg toward Dillon on a pointless mission

to sever Grant’s non-existent supply line from Grand Gulf.109

Johnston meanwhile attempted to gather 18,000 soldiers to cooperate with Pemberton,

but at 10 a.m. on May 14 McPherson and Sherman’s corps converged on Jackson from the west

and southwest and cleared his 6,000 Confederates from the capital.110

The Army of the

Tennessee fought on the offensive, but suffered only 300 casualties to the Confederate’s

“estimated 500 casualties and…loss of 17 cannons.”111

Although Johnston burned stores of

cotton and rolling stock as he withdrew, Sherman subsequently destroyed the “arsenal, foundries,

machine shops, cotton factories, warehouses,” and railroads.112

At Jackson Grant defeated the

only nearby Confederate Army, eliminated the junction whereby Vicksburg could be reinforced,

and received intelligence of Johnston’s plan to coordinate an operation against him with

Pemberton at Bolton Station (on the railroad midway between Vicksburg and Jackson).113

The

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Army of the Tennessee was poised to accomplish the final objective—to destroy the Confederate

Army and capture Vicksburg. On May 15 Grant sent the XIII and XVII corps west down the

Jackson Railroad to Bolton Station to either destroy or prevent the concentration of Pemberton

and Johnston’s armies.114

Additional intelligence of Pemberton’s approach along the railroad

compelled Grant to order Sherman to stop destroying Jackson and join them immediately.115

On the morning of May 16, Pemberton arranged three divisions of 23,000 soldiers on the

strong defensive position of Champion’s Hill (equidistant from Vicksburg and Jackson and

astride the Jackson Road) and was briskly assaulted by 32,000 of Grant’s troops.116

McClernand

formed the left wing, and made contact along the Raymond and Middle Roads around 7:30 a.m.;

McPherson (to the north) then aggressively attacked the Confederate left along the parallel

Jackson Railroad in an assault that carried the northern portion of the hill and threatened

Pemberton’s army with envelopment.117

Pemberton coordinated a counterattack in the afternoon

that drove McPherson’s troops back over the crest of the hill, but Grant was present at the

decisive point.118

He helped McPherson maintain order and sent a fresh division on a

counterattack that drove the rebels back over the hill and past the crossroads beyond, and

precipitated the route of Pemberton’s army.119

Grant fought on the offensive but lost 2441 men to

Pemberton’s 3624 men, 11 guns, and 7000-man division that was cut off from retreat.120

On May

17 Grant followed up the victory by assaulting the demoralized rebels who had fallen back to a

hasty defensive line east of the Big Black River121

and compelled their retreat into Vicksburg’s

defenses.122

The battle cost Grant only 276 killed and wounded, and 3 missing; the Confederates

suffered 1751 killed and captured, and lost 18 guns.123

Both battles eliminated the possibility of

Pemberton’s consolidation with Johnston or escape from Vicksburg.124

Grant and Sherman

crossed the Big Black River on May 18, and at 10:30 a.m. Sherman’s patrols made contact with

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the Navy at Haynes’ Bluff northeast of Vicksburg. All three corps crossed the river125

and after

two unsuccessful assaults on May 19 and 22, Grant settled in for a seige.126

He skillfully

augmented his strength from 51,000 to 77,000 men, cordoned off Vicksburg’s approaches, and

organized an “Army of Observation,”127

commanded by Sherman, to provide rear security.128

After 44 days of sustained sapping, mining, shelling, and tightening of the lines around

Vicksburg, Pemberton surrendered his army on July 4, 1863.129

Grant’s Vicksburg victory was arguably the most decisive of the Civil War. Pemberton

surrendered a 29,500-man army, 172 guns, and 60,000 rifles, and relinquished control of the

Mississippi River.130

The Confederate loss and subsequent fall of Port Hudson to General Banks

on July 9131

opened the river to Federal navigation and split the Confederacy, “with the result

that…the cotton growing eastern states were cut off from the stock raising western.”132

President

Jefferson Davis reflected in his memoirs that: “within the first half of July…our disasters

followed close upon the heels of one another…The loss of Vicksburg and Port Hudson was the

surrender of the Mississippi to the enemy.”133

Grant rejoiced in his memoirs that the “news, with

the victory at Gettysburg won the same day, lifted a great load of anxiety from the minds of the

President, his Cabinet and the loyal people all over the North. The fate of the Confederacy was

sealed when Vicksburg fell.”134

The campaign, moreover, was incontrovertible proof of Grant’s

military brilliance. In his hard-fought Western victories between 1862 and 1863, he set the

conditions for the campaign and built his art of war by learning and applying lessons from

success and failure.135

From the April 30 Bruinsburg landing, to the July 4 Vicksburg surrender,

Grant’s campaign was the flower of his military genius. Historian Shelby Foote described it

succinctly:

In the twenty days since they crossed the Mississippi, they had marched 180 miles

to fight and win five battles—Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Big Black River—

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occupy a Deep South capital, inflict over 7000 casualties at a cost of less than

4,500 of their own, and seize no less that fifty pieces of field artillery, not to

mention two dozen larger pieces they found spiked in fortifications they

outflanked.136

Grant’s superb strategy that relied on speed, surprise, and use of an indirect offensive to confuse

and defeat the Confederate Armies in detail, was without parallel in the war. His success was no

accident, and any honest assessment of the man will recognize true military brilliance. War was

his medium, and Vicksburg was his masterpiece.

Notes

1. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1984), 119-20.

2. James McPherson and James Hogue. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and

Reconstruction. 4th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2010), 266.

3. McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 369.

4. Quoted in Edward H. Bonekemper III. Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not A Butcher: The

Military Genius of the Man Who Won the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc.,

2004), xiv.

5. Quoted in Al Kaltman. Cigars, Whiskey, and Winning: Leadership Lessons from

General Ulysses S. Grant (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998), xiii.

6. Clausewitz, War, 120.

7. Edward Hauser, ed. U.S. Army Field Manual 100-5 (Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army

Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, 1986), 91.

8. Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 2, (New York:

D.A. Appleton and Company, 1881), 425.

9. Quoted in McPherson and Hogue, 361.

10. Ulysses S. Grant, The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Lexington:

Empire Books, 2011), 3.

11. Bonekemper, Grant, 2.

12. Ibid., 2-3.

13. Grant, Memoirs, 30-47.

14. Bonekemper, Grant, 7-11.

15. Ibid.,15.


17. John Frederick Charles Fuller, Grant and Lee: A Study of Personality and

Generalship (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 57-94.

18. Fuller, Grant, 86.

19. John H. Brinton, Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton: Major and Surgeon, U.S.V.,

1861-1865 (New York: The Neal Publishing Company, 1914), 239.


21. John Fiske, The Mississippi River Valley in the Civil War (Ann Arbor: Houghton,

Mifflin, 1900), 190; McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 206.


23. Fiske, Mississippi, 190.

24. Ibid., 190-1.

25. Bonekemper, Grant, 69-71; McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 315.

26. Fiske, Mississippi, 83; McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 315-17.

27. William T. Sherman. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (New York: D.A.

Appleton and Company, 1889), 334.

28. Bonekemper, Grant, 71; Grant, Memoirs, 137.

29. Michael B. Ballard. Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi, (Chapel

Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 25; McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 228.

30. Grant, Memoirs, 137.


32. Fiske, Mississippi, 183; David Dixon Porter. Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil

War, (New York: D.A. Appleton and Company, 1885), 95.

33. Ballard, Vicksburg, 25; Shelby Foote. The Civil War: A Narrative, vol. 2, (New York:

Vintage Books, 1963), 360-2.

34. Ballard, Vicksburg, 24; Porter, Incidents, 95.

35. Ballard, Vicksburg, 72; Fiske, Mississippi, 183.


37. Fiske, Mississippi, 185; McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 335.

38. Sherman, Memoirs, 335.

39. Bonekemper, Grant, 84; Foote, Civil War, 62.

40. Foote, Civil War, 62; Grant, Memoirs, 145; Porter, Incidents, 97.

41. Foote. Civil War, 63; Grant, Memoirs, 145.

42. Ballard, Vicksburg, 119; Grant, Memoirs, 145.

43. Ballard, Vicksburg, 102-4.


45. William H. Jordan. "The 16th Indiana Regiment in the Vicksburg Campaign,"Indiana

Magazine of History 43, no. 1 (March 1947): 67-82.

46. Foote, Civil War, 61; Grant, Memoirs, 137-9.

47. Foote, Civil War, 62-4.

48. James M. McPherson, ed., The Atlas of the Civil War, (Philadelphia: Running Press,

2005), 104.

49. Alan Hankinson. Vicksburg 1863: Grant Clears the Mississippi, (Oxford: Osprey

Publishing, 1993), 50.

50. Ballard, Vicksburg, 87-8; Hankinson, Vicksburg, 16-17.

51. Ballard, Vicksburg, 87.



54. Ibid., 141-2.

55. Ibid., 144-6.

56. Ibid., 143.

57. McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 335; Sherman. Memoirs, 320.

58. Hankinson, Vicksburg, 21-3.


60. Bonekemper, Grant, 77; Foote. Civil War, 189-191; Grant, Memoirs, 145.


62. Ibid.,336.

63. John Frederick Charles Fuller. The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (Boston: Da

Capo Press, 1958), 134.


65. McPherson, Atlas, 104.

66. Foote, Civil War, 191; Grant, Memoirs, 150; McPherson, Atlas, 104.

67. Ibid.,150.

68. McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 337; Wilbur F. Crummer. With Grant at Fort

Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg: And an Appreciation of General U.S Grant, (Illinois, E.C.

Crummer & Co., 1915), 93.

69. Hankinson, Vicksburg, 33.

70. Ibid., 33.


72. Foote, Civil War, 342; Grant, Memoirs, 150-1.


74. Bonekemper, Grant, 86; Crummer, Grant, 93-4.

75. Ibid., 86; Ibid., 94.


77. Ibid., 89.

78. Bonekemper, Grant, 94-5; Crummer, Grant, 95.


80. Ibid., 89-93.

81. Ibid., 89.

82. Ibid., 91.

83. Bonekemper, Grant, 92-3; McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 338.

84. Joseph E. Johnston. “Jefferson Davis and the Mississippi Campaign,” in Battles and

Leaders of the Civil War: the Tide Shifts (Secaucus: Castle, 1883), 477.

85. Bonekemper, Grant, 93-5; Crummer, Grant, 94; Johnston, Battles, 477; McPherson

and Hogue, Ordeal, 338.

86. Kaltman. Cigars, forward.

87. Quoted in McPherson and Hogue, Ordeal, 340.

88. Bonekemper, Grant, 96; Davis, Rise, 399; Hauser, Army, 91.


90. Crummer, Grant, 98; Davis, Rise, 398-9.


92. Foote, Civil War, 348.




96. Hauser, Army, 91-3.


98. Bonekemper, Grant, 101; Hauser, Army, 91-3.

99. McPherson, Atlas, 106; Grant, Memoirs, 162-3.


101. Ballard, Vicksburg, 248-9; Grant, Memoirs, 162; Hankinson, Vicksburg, 46.

102. Ballard, Vicksburg, 248-9; Foote, Civil War, 357.

103. Bonekemper, Grant, 100; Davis, Rise, 408; Johnston, Battles, 478-82.


105. Johnston, Battles, 478.




109. Foote, Civil War, 368; Johnston, Battles, 479-80.

110. Bonekemper, Grant, 104-5; Crummer, Grant, 100.


112. Bonekemper, Grant, 104-5; Sherman, Memoirs, 349.



115. Foote, Civil War, 370; Sherman, Memoirs, 350.

116. Hankinson, Vicksburg, 56.

117. Ibid., 56-7.



120. Bonekemper, Grant, 108; Crummer, Grant, 103-4; Foote, Civil War, 374.

121. Crummer, Grant, 108.



124. Crummer, Grant, 109.


126. Hankinson, Vicksburg, 163-5.

127. Quoted in Bonekemper, Grant, 116.

128. Ibid., 115-17.



131. Ibid., 115-7.


133. Davis, Rise, 425.

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A BOLD STROKE OF GENIUS

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