A Civil War Tragedy – Vicksburg National Military Park, MS [October 9, 2017]

The Vicksburg Campaign is noted as one of the decisive battles during the American Civil War.  20,000 Americans in grey and blue uniforms died there, sometimes shooting at each other at point blank range.  So sad.  So tragic.  So many died that afterwards (sometimes many years afterwards), States erected huge monuments to their fallen, in the area where those troops had been located.  Not to glorify the act of war but to recognize the supreme sacrifices these men and their families had made, and to represent their grief.

The Illinois Memorial

Vicksburg is located on the banks of the Mississippi River.  In 1863, it presided high upon a hill overlooking a bend in the River (the Mississippi has since moved to another nearby location, but that is the nature of this river).  This was a strategic military location.  The Confederacy (South) used the Mississippi River to move troops and supplies.  The Union (North) felt that commanding the River would disrupt this movement and would also separate Texas, Arkansas and parts of Louisiana from the rest of the Confederacy.  Many battles were fought to maintain or gain control of the river.   Finally, in October 1862, there were only two places along the river still controlled by the Confederates, and one of them was Vicksburg.

The Shirley house was part of the Union lines and managed to survive despite the battle fought around it

General Grant tried unsuccessfully to win Vicksburg with his Union troops from March – May 1863.  His efforts (some of them fairly ingenious) were repulsed by Confederate troops led by Lt. General Pemberton.  So, Grant had his troops surround the town and laid siege for 47 days.  Skirmishes continued throughout the siege.  The townsfolk and the Southern soldiers starved and got sick.  Finally, Pemberton surrendered on July 4, 1863.

You pass under this arch to begin the drive around the battlefield

The park has a 14 mile road that leads you around the battlefield, which is dotted with memorials to the fallen. Blue signs indicate Northern troop locations and Red signs indicate Southern troop locations.  Some of them were so close to each other that it must have been a blood bath. 

One of the redoubts (or maybe it was a redan or a lunette).  Note the white smaller memorials and blue signs indicating Union troop placement.