Preserved Under Glass On The Floor Of the Dining Room At Cedar Grove Bed And Breakfast, A Hole Where A Union Shell Penetrated During The Siege of Vicksburg
John C.Pemberton, Confederate Commander At Vicksburg
From May 25, 1863 until July 4th 1863, Ulysses S Grant had decided that the best way to wrest control of the Mississippi River from the Confederate forces around Vicksburg Mississippi would be a siege. His opponent, John C. Pemberton, a northerner by birth, was left with 18,000 men once the siege began and Grant had surrounded him with 35,000 men and incoming reinforcements would pile up over the next month and a half. Vicksburg is a lovely town built on a series of descending hills that hit the Yazoo (and Mississippi). For most of the war, Union naval boats had to run the gauntlet of Confederate cannonades. So Pemberton enjoyed natural defenses that made up for a lack of troops and superior numbers of and quality of cannons. Remember at the moment Vicksburg was under attack in the west, the Army of Northern Virginia was invading the north through Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac was assembling under George Meade and preparing a defense. The point here is that both of these massive armies were looking for each other, looking for advantage except for the Confederates there were no extra troops to spare for the defense of the Mississippi River.
Grant had conducted a series of assaults on the Confederate defenses that ended up disastrously. He lost a few thousand on the way and it severely dampened Union morale. That said, Grant decided to build entrenchments around the city, surrounding them and providing cannon fire from both the army and the Union fleet in the river. Essentially he did the same thing here that Caesar did to Vercingetorix at the battle of Alesia in 52 BC. He surrounded them, built fortifications that hemmed them in, satrved them out and pounded them and waited.
Antebellum Wrought Iron Fencing On Grove Avenue
The bombardment began on May 25th 1863 and continued for 45 days. Before long the Confederates were out of food as were the citizens of the town. Flour, salt, meat, even show leather became luxury items. One Confederate citizen remarked that it wasn’t the random death of Union cannon shells that he feared. It was the Confederates raiding his vegetable garden.
Modern Day Vicksburg Is A Mixture Of The Adorbale And The Moribund. This House Is Now A Defunct Car Dealership.
By the middle of June over 75,000 Union soldiers surrounded Vicksburg. Pemberton tried to break through and organized an assault on a poorly trained and poorly equipped Colored Regiment. It was an attempt to cut Grant’s supply line and open a hole for Joe Johnston’s troops to enter. Though the losses to the Colored regiment were high and the Confederate losses were low, it failed.
Vicksburg was completely surrounded and Pemberton refused any offers of surrender from Grant, probably because he felt that the hapless residents would have hung him had he given them. By the time the city surrendered few probably cared.
The surrender of Vicksburg happened on July 4th. It was deacdes before Vicksburg residents even recognized Independance Day again.
CSA Cannons At Vicksburg
