At the start of July, Confederate troops and civilians were starving. Many people survived by eating rats and other animals in the city. Pemberton surrendered his army on July 4, This victory followed the Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, and helped increase Union morale. In the siege of Vicksburg and the battles leading up to the siege, Grant lost over four thousand men.
The Confederate military lost over thirty-five thousand soldiers. Toggle navigation. Jump to: navigation , search. Photographic copy of a lithograph by Alfred E.
Mathews depicting the siege of Vicksburg. See Also Ulysses S. Ballard, Michael B. Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi. Dee, Christine, ed. Athens: Ohio University Press, Grant won acclaim from the press for the ensuing battle, though he was driven back by Confederate reinforcements, and the Mississippi Squadron won respect from Grant, who escaped capture or death when the transport Belle Memphis turned back and ran out a plank to evacuate him under fire.
This experience was surely a visceral demonstration of the capabilities of combined arms tactics—the military concept of harmonizing disparate weapons and equipment to multiply their effect on the battlefield.
At the Battle of Belmont, the movement ability and heavy firepower of the riverboats was used to multiply the ground-taking capability of the infantry. In February of , the Mississippi Squadron now reinforced by the completed City Classers, Foote and Grant were moved to attempt their previous operation on a larger scale. The target they chose was Fort Henry on the Tennessee River.
This time, combined operations broke down. One ironclad, the USS Essex , took a shell to her boiler and was engulfed in scalding steam—32 were killed or wounded. Foote immediately sent his timberclads on a raid as far as Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where the shallows prevented further progress.
In four days the timberclads captured three warships, seized tons of war material, and forced the destruction of six transport vessels. This sort of action clearly demonstrates the pattern of river warfare—when a bottleneck fort falls, there is little that can be done to protect the rest of the bottle. Meanwhile, Foote devoted his energy to repairing his ironclads, all in various stages of disrepair following the bruising battle on the Tennessee River.
The Essex would be out of action until the summer. Nevertheless, on February 11, only five days after the battle, Grant and Foote pivoted to attack Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. On the afternoon of the 14th, Foote moved downriver with seven gunboats, repeating the charging double-line tactic that had subdued Fort Henry.
But Fort Donelson was a much stronger position, with its batteries on much higher ground. When the Union vessels closed to within four hundred yards the Confederates let loose, their shot ripping through the weak top armor of the ironclad front line. For civilians trapped in the city, the siege proved to be a time of hourly uncertainty.
Between brief lulls came terror and extreme mental stress. Caves provided the only security. The soil around Vicksburg was mostly easy to dig, yet firm enough so that caves could be dug into the sides of the hills without great fear of cave-ins. People carefully selected cave sites in order to minimize risks of being hit with artillery shells.
Both White citizens and their enslaved laborers worked with shovels, though most of the work fell on the latter. The caves could be simple one-room abodes or multi-room suites. They contained parlors and bedrooms that were furnished with items from home; most cooking was done outside the main cave entrance.
Sometimes there were connecting openings from one family cave to another for escape purposes in case an artillery shell caused the earth to crumble. All caves were prepared, as near as possible, in this manner. As the fragments of shells continued with the same impetus after the explosion, in but one direction, onward, they were not likely to reach us, fronting in this manner with their course.
On one occasion, I was reading in safety, I imagined, when the unmistakable whirring of Parrott shells told us that the battery we so much feared had opened from the entrenchments.
I ran to the entrance to call the servants in; and immediately after they entered, a shell struck the earth a few feet from the entrance, burying itself without exploding. I ran to the little dressing room, and could hear them striking around us on all sides. One fell near the cave entrance, and a servant boy grabbed it and threw it outside; it never exploded.
And so the weary days went on. While some women coped with caves, others braved the streets to help out at hospitals. Women, like all others in besieged Vicksburg, civilian and soldier alike, suffered also from a lack of food and good drinking water.
By the time Pemberton surrendered his army, there were still ample supplies in town, but rations had been cut severely in an effort to make food last longer. Women, as did Confederate soldiers in the trenches, lost weight, became dehydrated, and suffered from severe malnutrition. When the day siege ended on July 4, , Vicksburg women shed tears, but many remained defiant. Margaret Lord, wife of a local minister who served in a Mississippi regiment, refused to be disheartened.
She turned down the offer of a hated Yankee to help find supplies for her family. At 10 a. Sherman attacks again down the Graveyard Road, Maj. James B. John A. Surrounded by a ditch 10 feet deep and walls 20 feet high, the redoubt offers enfilading fire for rifles and artillery. After intense hand-to-hand fighting, Federals breach the Railroad Redoubt, capturing a handful of prisoners. The victory, however, is the only Confederate position captured that day.
Reduced in number by sickness and casualties, the garrison of Vicksburg is spread dangerously thin. Civilians are hard hit, with many forced to live in crudely dug caves due to the heavy shelling. June After more than 20 hours of hand-to-hand fighting in the foot deep crater left by the blast, Union regiments are unable to advance and withdraw back to their lines. The siege continues.
July 3—4. With the situation dire for the Confederates, Grant and Pemberton meet between their lines. Grant insists on an unconditional surrender, but Pemberton refuses.
Later that night Grant reconsiders and offers to parole the Confederate defenders. On July 4, the day siege of Vicksburg is over. At a. With Vicksburg in Union hands and the Mississippi in their control, Lincoln has great cause for optimism. Now, if Gen. Meade can complete his work so gloriously prosecuted thus far, by the litteral sic or substantial destruction of Lee's army, the rebellion will be over.
Yours truly, A. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war…. For 47 days, the people of Vicksburg were in constant danger. As the siege went from days to weeks—to more than a month—food became scarce. The Vicksburg Daily Citizen reported on the lack of necessities and posted notices of civilian illnesses, casualties, and deaths. The paper—like the residents—learned to improvise in hard times.
With no newsprint left in stock, it printed its editions on pieces of cut-up wallpaper. Then he came up with an ambitious plan to use the navy to provide transports for the river crossing.
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