Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller
The astonishing story of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war.
Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. General Grant moved his army south and joined forces with Admiral Porter, but even together they could not come up with a successful plan. At one point Grant even tried to build a canal so that the river could be diverted away from Vicksburg.
In Vicksburg, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city. He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. Grant’s efforts repeatedly failed until he found a way to lay siege and force the city to capitulate. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution.
Ultimately, Vicksburg was the battle that solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but in the end he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war, the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.
I’m not sure what kind of message the author was trying to convey. That Grant was a great general who saved the Union? Or that his victory was a drunkard’s plain good luck? Because while he lauds Grant with praises after the victory at Vicksburg, before then he misses no chance to bring up every accusation against Grant regarding his drinking.
Was Grant an alcoholic? If so, Miller doesn’t seem to understand what makes an alcoholic and how stopping overnight is something rarely, if ever, done. Yet Miller takes none of that into consideration, more often than not making it sound as if Grant could have stopped anytime he wanted to. But many historians think that many of the accusations were from those who would have gained from Grant’s removal.
As far as the history of the actual battle (which, going by the title was what I thought was the focus of the book,) there’s plenty of information given. Perhaps a bit too much, as the book focuses on the entire Mississippi campaign. Several other battles are also covered.
Several times Miller writes as if he knows what someone was thinking at the time, or what they actually planned, often going against what that person later wrote. It made it hard to not take anything he wrote without a huge grain of salt.
Yet the book is interesting enough. I only wish the author would have kept his own feelings about Grant and others out of it.
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Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller