Vicksburg

Strategic Setting

Background

• Strategic Situation• Importance of

Vicksburg and the Mississippi River– Lincoln’s Assessment– Scott’s Anaconda

Plan• Confederate supply

lines• Two halves of the

Confederacy

Strategic Situation

Importance of Mississippi River and Vicksburg

• At  the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi River was the single most important economic feature of the continent

• Confederate forces closed the river to navigation, which threatened to strangle northern commercial interests

Lincoln’s Assessment

• “See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.... We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg…. I am acquainted with that region and know what I am talking about, and as valuable as New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg will be more so.”

Scott’s Anaconda Plan

• Blockade the Southern ports and stop all imports and exports. – The blockade would stop the sale of agriculture goods drying up

the money supply and the blockade would stop the receiving of war martial from foreign nations.

• Recapture the Mississippi River.  – By recapturing the Mississippi River the South would be cut in

half making communications difficult between the two sections.

• After the wearing down of the peoples’ resolve to make and sustain a war march to and capture the Confederate capital.

• Although initially rejected, Scott’s plan became the de facto Federal strategy in execution

Trans Mississippi Confederacy as a Supply Source

• Texas led the nation in cattle, with an estimated three and a half million head– Virginia and Georgia, the next largest Confederate cattle-

producing states, counted slightly more than one million each.

• Texas ranked behind only Tennessee in the number of horses and mules, fourth in the number of sheep, and seventh in the production of swine.

• Texas was a significant source of livestock for armies in the west, but that could only remain the case so long as those animals could cross the river safely.

• Federal success at Vicksburg would deny the eastern Confederacy access to these and other supplies

Key Railroad from Monroe, LA through Vicksburg to Jackson and points east

Splitting the South in Two

• Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas (as well as the Indian Territory) accounted for almost half of the Confederacy’s total land mass

• Federal control of the Mississippi River would isolate the western and eastern halves of the Confederacy

• So Grant’s mission is to seize Vicksburg in order to control the Mississippi River and separate the Confederacy in two

Terrain

• Vicksburg was part of a line of bluffs that extended from Columbus, KY to Baton Rouge, LA– Formed an escarpment

that greatly favored the

defense both on land

and on water

Vicksburg Bluff Line

Fortifications on the Mississippi

N

Columbus

Is. No. 10New Madrid

Ft. Pillow

Memphis

Vicksburg

Grand Gulf

Port Hudson

Ft. St. Philip

Ft. Jackson

New Orleans

0 200Miles

KY

MO

AR

LA

MS

AL

TN

River-Bluff Interface: Grand Gulf

Terrain

• What is going to make things difficult for Grant is the terrain

• Northeast of Vicksburg was the Delta– Flat, periodically flooded area

coursed by streams of various navigability

• Steele’s Bayou, Tallahatchie River, Yazoo River, etc

– Steep banked creeks, uncleared swamplands

• West of Vicksburg was Louisiana– Even flatter and swampier

• Would require much corduroying of roads

Vicksburg and the Mississippi

• As Union forces moved south toward Vicksburg in late 1862, the winter and the wet season began.– This ended all possibilities of moving forces by land.– Grant is forced to find an alternative route to reach

Vicksburg.– Makes several failed attempts from December 1862

through April 1863

Next

• Basic Military Doctrine