Americans, on July 4th, celebrate the nation’s birthday, when the Continental Congress officially declared that the United States was no longer a British colony, but an independent country. It gained that independence, of course, during eight years of war and the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783. Eighty years after the Treaty of Paris, during another war, Union forces on July 4, 1863, accepted the surrender of a Confederate army at Vicksburg, Mississippi, thereby gaining complete control of the Mississippi River and effectively cutting the Confederacy in two.
The previous day, Union forces at Gettysburg defeated Gen. Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North. Gettysburg effectively ended the military threat to Washington, D.C., and other northern cities. Vicksburg set the stage for the Union’s ultimate victory in the Civil War.
Its capture by Ulysses S. Grant’s army would mean Union control of the entire Mississippi River, which Lincoln called the “Father of Waters.”
Vicksburg, historian David J. Eicher notes, was a naturally defensible position, located on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River’s east shore where the river “arced sharply eastward.” Its capture by Ulysses S. Grant’s army would mean Union control of the entire Mississippi River, which Lincoln called the “Father of Waters.”
Gettysburg was a three-day ferocious battle. Vicksburg was a siege that lasted nearly two months from the middle of May to July 4, 1863. But the struggle to take Vicksburg began in the spring of 1862, after Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson and Memphis in Tennessee, and New Orleans. Union General Ulysses S. Grant tried to take the Confederate stronghold by sea power in May-June 1862, by land from the north in December 1862, and by constructing a canal to divert the Mississippi River near Vicksburg in February-March 1863. All of those efforts failed to dislodge the Southerners from a place that President Abraham Lincoln believed was the “key” to winning the war.
In late April 1863, Grant’s army crossed the Mississippi at Bruinsburg, clashed with Confederate forces at Jackson, the state capital, and engaged in battles at Champion Hill and Big Black River, resulting in Confederate forces under General John Pemberton retreating to defensive positions in fortifications at Vicksburg. Grant tried frontal assaults on Vicksburg between May 18 and May 22, but they, too, were unsuccessful. So Grant decided on a siege to take the city.
Military historian T.A. Heathcote described the Confederate fortifications at Vicksburg as “earthworks spaced at roughly 200-yard intervals, each mounting artillery emplacements, strengthened with heavy timbers and protected by formidable ditches filled with stakes, wire entangelements and other obstacles … connected by lines of entrenchments and rifle-pits sited to cover the intervening ravines and command the routes into the city.” The defenses were oblong shaped running from Fort Hill located at the bend of the river north of the city to South Fort. Union forces included General William Tecumseh Sherman’s corps opposite the northern fortifications, General James McPherson’s corps along the center, and General John McClernand’s corps toward the south.
Grant’s troops dug a series of trenches in zig-zag lines toward the Confederate positions, moving gradually closer as the days wore on. Heathcote notes that 75,000 troops and 220 guns made up the Union besieging force. Union warships also lobbed shells into the city. The bombardment caused much damage and suffering among Vicksburg’s residents. And both residents and Confederate troops suffered from a shortage of supplies, including food. Vicksburg’s starving population reportedly ate rats.
Grant also had a mine dug under Confederate positions where soldiers placed more than 2,000 pounds of gunpowder. On June 25, the mine exploded, destroying a lightly manned Confederate redoubt. As the siege continued, Confederate fit-for-duty forces dwindled to about 11,000. Food was scarce. General Pemberton held a council of war on July 2 and decided to seek surrender terms. Grant demanded unconditional surrender but as later at Appomattox his terms were gracious, allowing Confederate soldiers to be paroled.
On July 4, 1863, what was left of the Confederate garrison of Vicksburg marched out of the city. When Lincoln learned of the surrender at Vicksburg, he remarked: “The Father of Waters once more goes unvexed to the sea.” The Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf belonged to the Union.
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