On 18 May 1863 Ulysses S. Grant's Union army reached the defenses of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Confederate stronghold that blocked the Mississippi River, and Grant ordered an immediate attack. Two assaults, on 19 and 22 May, were thrown back, and Grant settled into a siege. Soldiers and civilians inside the city were shelled and slowly starved, and on 4 July John C. Pemberton surrendered his army. Vicksburg's fall gave the Union the river and cut the Confederacy in two.
Into the fortress
Grant crossed the Mississippi below Vicksburg at the end of April 1863 and moved inland. In mid-May his army took Jackson, the state capital, and beat Pemberton's army at Champion Hill and on the Big Black River, after which Pemberton fell back into Vicksburg and Grant followed. The American Battlefield Trust dates the battle from 18 May, when Grant ordered an immediate assault. The National Park Service counts the siege proper from 23 May, after the assaults had failed, but like Mississippi History Now it speaks of 47 days in all.1
The Confederates had had more than a year to prepare. The Park Service describes a ring of earthen forts and trenches built around the three main roads into the city and armed with more than 170 cannon.2
Two assaults thrown back
On 19 May Grant attacked, and the assault failed. The American Battlefield Trust says only William T. Sherman's Fifteenth Corps was in position that day, and it was stopped at the Stockade Redan. On 22 May Grant attacked along the whole front, and this assault failed as well. According to the Trust, Union troops broke into the Railroad Redoubt, the only Confederate work taken that day, and Grant then decided to lay siege to the city.3
The Union army dug its way forward toward the Confederate works. The Trust records that on 25 June Union sappers set off a mine of 2,200 pounds of black powder under the Confederate line, but the attacks through the crater failed.4
Life in the caves
The city was under fire from land and from the river, where Admiral David Dixon Porter's mortar boats shelled it regularly. Residents dug caves into the hillsides, from single rooms to suites of several, and families sometimes joined their caves together so they could escape if a shell brought one down. Mississippi History Now notes that enslaved laborers did most of the digging. The Park Service quotes a witness who later told Mark Twain of twenty or twenty-five people packed into one cave, and adds that the caves were not bombproof: a direct hit by a mortar shell could bury those inside.5
Soldiers and civilians alike went short of food and clean water, and rations were cut again and again to make supplies last.6
Surrender on the Fourth of July
On 3 July Pemberton rode out under a flag of truce and met Grant between the lines near the Third Louisiana Redan, but they could not agree. Grant first demanded unconditional surrender, then sent amended terms that night: the garrison would be paroled instead of sent to prison camps, and Pemberton and his generals accepted. At 10 a.m. on 4 July the Confederates marched out of their works, stacked their arms and furled their flags. The American Battlefield Trust puts the number at some 29,000 men.7
Casualty figures differ between sources. The American Battlefield Trust gives 37,273 in all, 4,910 Union and 32,363 Confederate, most of them prisoners, out of about 77,000 Union and 33,000 Confederate troops engaged. The National Park Service summary for the whole campaign gives 37,532, 4,835 Union and 32,697 Confederate.8
The Confederacy cut in two
With Pemberton's army gone and Port Hudson taken five days later, the Union held the whole Mississippi and the Confederacy was split in half. Mississippi History Now recalls that Abraham Lincoln had called Vicksburg the key to the river. The Park Service adds that the victory carried Grant toward command of all the Union armies. The full story of the campaign is in our article on the siege of Vicksburg, and the general who led it in our biography of Ulysses S. Grant. The Union victory at Gettysburg came the day before the surrender.9
Also on this day
- 1794: Battle of Tourcoing. Near Tourcoing, north of Lille, a French Republican army under Souham and Moreau faced encirclement by a coalition army under Prince Josias of Coburg.
