![]() ![]() In the end he bagged the city and the army that defended it, thus placing the full length of the mighty Mississippi back in Union hands. Grant’s winning strategy involved him marching southward along the Louisiana side of the river, crossing south of Vicksburg, fighting numerous battles and finally besieging the city until its defenders capitulated. Grant’s masterful plan which resulted in its capture. ![]() In just over 400 pages of narrative, Ballard traces in detail the intricacies of this multi-faceted campaign, chronicling desperate attempts to bombard the city by the Union navy, overland campaigns launched from Memphis, several failed experimental routes of approach to the city, and finally U.S. ![]() It included innumerable skirmishes, several large battles, two primary assaults on a fortified citadel, and a prolonged siege of a major urban center. The Union campaign to capture Vicksburg, in contrast, lasted nearly a year and involved multiple armies, numerous naval forces, and featured maneuvering over vast expanses of land in two states. Most Civil War studies discuss a short campaign highlighted by a climactic battle of single day or a few days, which makes it easier for historians to research and write about and easier for readers to read and comprehend. Ballard’s tome Vicksburg, The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi, seeks to correct this oversight by tracing the Union’s multi-year efforts to capture the city and encouraging an appreciation of the campaign’s centrality to the war’s outcome.īallard suggests that the Vicksburg Campaign tends to be overshadowed in Civil War scholarship due to its complexity, length, and scope. Recently deceased (2016) Vicksburg historian Michael B. Since the war ended, historians and the general public have long focused on the battles between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia and the war’s perceived turning point at Gettysburg. ![]() The climatic Civil War campaign for Vicksburg has long been overshadowed by the more famous events in the war’s eastern theatre. ![]()
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