![]() A cutoff canal was attempted, a project that would essentially bypass Vicksburg and allow the Navy to transport his army south of the beleaguered city. Grant pinned his hopes on trying to get his 45,000-man army to flank Vicksburg and proceed to the dry and stable ground to the east of the city. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee were not about to give up so easily. It seemed that all Union plans were plagued by ill luck. William Tecumseh Sherman proved abortive. The capture of Vicksburg was an essential ingredient in the North’s plans to subdue the South and restore the Union.īut from late 1862 to the spring of 1863 Federal efforts were cursed by failure. Once Vicksburg was taken, the entire length of the river would be under Union control, and the Confederacy would be divided in two. The Federals had already taken New Orleans in April 1862 and were working their way north, while Grant’s forces were moving south down the mighty river. ![]() It was also a railroad hub where men and supplies from the western Confederacy were funneled through to the east. If the Mississippi River was, in Lincoln’s phrase, the “backbone of the rebellion,” then Vicksburg was its guardian. In war it assumed a strategic importance far beyond its population figures. In peacetime Vicksburg was a prosperous town of some 4,500 souls. All they received for their trouble were 12 months of aborted attacks and frustrated hopes. But the Northerners had tried to take the city for a year. Vicksburg citizens knew that somewhere out there in the inky void Union land and naval forces were hovering. It was the time of a new moon, and therefore much the surrounding countryside was shrouded in darkness. The city was perched on high bluffs above the mighty Mississippi River, just below a place where the father of waters bent back on itself. The sky on April 16, 1863, was cloudless, and as the ruddy glow of twilight faded, the vast expanse was speckled with stars. ![]() The citizens of Vicksburg would scarcely remember a more beautiful evening. ![]()
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