Vicksburg Is The Key

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Read the Esquire Gettysburg Reenactment series in its entirety here.

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Getting your head around the Gettysburg Campaign is sometimes viewed as a daunting task by those not used to the narrative. There are so many names, people, places, and all of them seem terribly complex to many people. In this series I am trying to make it a little more digestible, but I would be remiss if I were to leave out the bigger picture. This is because in truth, Gettysburg was just one of the things happening in these weeks of June and July 1863. Arguably, in some ways it was not even the most important event of that first week of July.

I know, that seems like an extreme statement. After all, was not the Battle of Gettysburg the biggest ever fought by Americans? Was it not the most lethal and horrific? Was not Gettysburg the turning point of the war? Ah, yeah, on that last one? No. Possibly, but not definitively. The depiction of it as the turning point came much later, and for reasons other than those you might suspect. At the time, however, it was just one part of the scene.

And that is why I have to talk about the bigger picture.

I readily confess that academics love nothing more than to argue over esoteric issues, the proverbial angels dancing on the heads of pins. We historians are by no means immune to that addiction. Accordingly, you do not have to throw the ball very far to find two historians who disagree on a great deal, if not everything. When you add to that the masses of information that are available to argue about -- and Gettysburg did produce a massive number of eyewitness accounts to supplement the official documentation -- there is plenty of ammunition to keep historians tossing the frothy ball for, well, 150 years so far.

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But one thing that almost all will agree upon is that the idea of Gettysburg being a defining "turning point" is almost completely useless from an intellectual point of view. Other battles, at around the same time, took place on more critical ground. Other events both before and after Gettysburg did more to bring the war to its ultimate conclusion. In the timeframe that we are talking about, the siege of Vicksburg was the most obvious.

For those not deeply entranced by American geography I will stick to the basics. Right down the middle of our country there is a whopping big river called the Mississippi. Today we do not really think of it as much of a barrier anymore, particularly since you can cross it doing 65 miles per hour and even at the widest part, be across the thing in less than a minute. In 1863, not so much. But the key element for you to think about -- the thing that will put all of this into perspective and help you stop asking, "What the hell is Bateman blathering on about" -- is to imagine the major veins and arteries that flow through your body.

This is how you need to think about the Mississippi River. Not as a minor sidebar in your cross-country drive, or something seen out of the window at 35,000 feet, but as both the central vein and artery of just about everything and every community west of the Appalachian mountains. In other words, in 1863, most of the damned country.

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Then, as now, the river was a major conduit for trade, the lifeblood of any nation's economy and strength. Before the war the river was the essential artery and vein (with trade flowing in and out) of the entire center of the country. Materials and goods from all of the Midwestern states, north and south, flowed down to New Orleans and then out across the planet.

If you nick a vein, or an artery, you are in trouble. You need to apply direct pressure, fast, and seek medical attention. If you actually slash one open, you have minutes to live, at best. You need to immediately apply a tourniquet, and hope that it does not leak, so that what blood remains inside you keeps going to the vital parts.

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The Civil War put a gaping slash to the artery of the United States. Saying that it greatly affecting the economies that had relied upon the river is a massive understatement. So for the obvious reasons, one of the first general plans of the war was to regain control of the river. Both because it was needed for the Union, and because doing so would essentially slice from the Confederacy one third of the resources they claimed.

By June 1863, the United States was on the cusp of fixing that cut to the artery that the rebellion had caused. Of course, that had been a long time in coming.

In early 1862, the United States Navy had begun to assemble off the coast of lower Mississippi. Then, in their ocean-going ships, they started to actually cross the banks at the mouth of the river and anchor inside. In April of 1862, in a bold dash which even I have to admit took big brass ones the size of cannonballs, the naval forces under an Admiral named David Farragut broke past the defenses below New Orleans, carrying the Army with them. Doing this merely meant that he would be charging past at night, in a river, without lights, in wooden ships, with massive brick forts on each side of the river mounting 300 cannon, most of which pointed at the river. Nothing to it.

(Two and a bit years later this same Admiral was in charge of confronting the rebels in Mobile Bay. The bay was mined, heavily, and when one ship hit a mine the others started pulling back. This is the origin of the quote, "Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead." The thing is, this is one of those moderately rare instances when a really good quote is not just true, it is also an understatement. (A "torpedo" back then is what we would now think of as a Sea-mine.) "Damn the torpedoes!" said Farragut, "Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett full speed!" Farrugut was essentially betting his own personal life, reputation, ship – because of course, he was in one of the lead ship -- and fleet in his raging desire to rip the throat out of the rebellion.)

So, anyway, back in 1862 Farragut ran past the forts, the guns, and the barriers, and got the US Army to New Orleans. Then the Army retook the city. In the first half of the same year, American armies began to regain territory from the rebels in the north, with a series of campaigns that ultimately saw a self-effacing dude named U.S. Grant in charge of the whole shooting match.

By early 1863 the United States Navy, working closely with the Army, was pinching from the north and the south, opening more and more of the Mississippi River every month. The final bit that really mattered, the so-called "Gibraltar" of the rebels' hold on the river, was a place called Vicksburg. That was the last bastion, the last link between the two sides of the river, and on 18 May 1863 Grant arrived with his army outside those the city and its defenses.

After two disastrous attempts to break in to Vicksburg, Grant ceded to military reality. He started a siege on 25 May 1863. It was a siege that could only have one conclusion. Eventually, Vicksburg would fall and more than 30,000 rebels would march into captivity. (In the end, it was slightly less. The US Army killed more than 3,000 of the enemy first, so only around 29,000 eventually survived to become prisoners.)

So that was the "Big Picture" in May-June 1863. In the newspapers across the United States and in the parts of the country in rebellion, most of the focus this whole time was on Vicksburg. How long could the defenders hold out? Could another rebel army relieve the besieged forces? What would happen when the south was essentially cut-off from steady contact with 1/3 of their territory? These were the issues that people obsessed with at the time.

Yes, there was panic in some American newspapers, particularly in Pennsylvania, as it became apparent to the general public that Lee was coming north. But Lee had never made any statement that he wanted to capture or conquer any part of the Union, so his threat was always somewhat vague. Lee was going north to forage, to lift some of the logistic weight of the war in the east off of the rebels, and to make the United States pay for his supplies. While frightening, this did not itself form a true existential threat to the America, because Lee would never be able to stay long. Even Lee knew that.

Lee was also going north because he believed (and had convinced his political leaders) that a while their victories in Virginia mattered, they had not brought international recognition from countries like England and France. He thought that a resounding victory against the United States in Pennsylvania, could gain the rebels that international recognition and then the military support the rebels so desperately needed.

Does any of that strike anyone as vaguely familiar?

Next, the promised thoughts on cavalry, command, and knowing your limits…

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