![]() Grant had over 35,000, with more on the way. Fortifications Īs the Union forces approached Vicksburg, Pemberton could put only 18,500 troops in his lines. When he chose to take his army into Vicksburg, Pemberton sealed the fate of his troops and the city he had been determined to defend. Too dispirited to think clearly, he chose to back his bedraggled army into Vicksburg rather than evacuate the city and head north where he might have escaped to campaign again. Pemberton, trying to please Jefferson Davis, who insisted that Vicksburg and Port Hudson must be held, and to please Johnston, who thought both places worthless militarily, had been caught in the middle, a victim of a convoluted command system and his own indecisiveness. Pemberton, a Northerner by birth, was probably influenced by his fear of public condemnation if he abandoned Vicksburg. Johnston sent a note to his general, Pemberton, asking him to sacrifice the city and save his troops, something Pemberton would not do. They repaired the bridges over the Big Black River and crossed on May 18. Large numbers of Union troops were on the march to invest the city. Johnston, in command of the Confederate Department of the West, to relieve the city-which he never did. Over half of Pemberton's army had been lost in the two preceding battles and many in Vicksburg expected General Joseph E. Grant could now receive supplies more directly than by the previous route, which ran through Louisiana, over the river crossing at Grand Gulf and Bruinsburg, then back up north. The Confederates evacuated Hayne's Bluff, which was subsequently occupied by Sherman's cavalry on May 19, and Union steamboats no longer had to run the guns of Vicksburg, now being able to dock by the dozens up the Yazoo River. ![]() Pemberton burned the bridges over the Big Black River and devastated the countryside as he retreated to the well-fortified city of Vicksburg. Sherman was preparing to flank him from the north, and so had no choice but to withdraw or be outflanked. Attempts to stop the Union advance at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge were unsuccessful. Lincoln called Vicksburg "the key to the war." Background Military situation Īfter crossing the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg at Bruinsburg and driving northeast, Grant won battles at Port Gibson and Raymond and captured Jackson, the Mississippi state capital, on May 14, 1863, forcing Pemberton to withdraw westward. It cut off the Trans-Mississippi Department (containing the states of Arkansas, Texas and part of Louisiana) from the rest of the Confederate States, effectively splitting the Confederacy in two for the rest of the war. George Meade the previous day, the turning point of the war. The Confederate surrender on July 4, 1863, is sometimes considered, when combined with Gen. Banks on July 9, yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who would hold it for the rest of the conflict. This action, combined with the surrender of the down-river Port Hudson to Maj. The successful ending of the Vicksburg campaign significantly degraded the ability of the Confederacy to maintain its war effort. After holding out for more than forty days, with their supplies nearly gone, the garrison surrendered on the Fourth of July. ![]() When two major assaults against the Confederate fortifications, on May 19 and 22, were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. ![]() ![]() Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River therefore, capturing it completed the second part of the Northern strategy, the Anaconda Plan. Pemberton, into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, leading to the successful siege and the Confederate surrender. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate Army of Mississippi, led by Lt. The siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. ![]()
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