Ad bellum Pace Parati: prepared in peace for war. This sentiment was much on the mind of Captain Arthur L. Wagner as he contemplated the quality of military education at the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, during the 1890s. Wagner believed that the school's curricula during the long years of peace had become too far removed from the reality of war, and he cast about for ways to make the study of conflict more real to officers who had no experience in combat. Eventually, he arrived at a concept called the "Staff Ride," which consisted of detailed classroom study of an actual campaign followed by a visit to the sites associated with that campaign. Although Wagner never lived to see the Staff Ride added to the Leavenworth curricula, an associate of his, Major Eben Swift, implemented the Staff Ride at the General Service and Staff School in 1906. In July of that year, Swift led a contingent of twelve students to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to begin a two-week study of the Atlanta campaign of 1864.

The Staff Ride concept pioneered at Leavenworth in the early years of the twentieth century remains a vital part of officer professional development today. At the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, the Army War College, ROTC detachments, and units throughout the world, U.S. Army officers are studying war vicariously in peacetime through the Staff Ride methodology. That methodology (in-depth preliminary study, rigorous field study, and integration of the two) need not be tied to a formal school house environment. Units stationed near historic battlefields can experience the intellectual and emotional stimulation provided by standing on the hallowed ground where soldiers once contended for their respective causes. Yet units may find themselves without many of the sources of information on a particular campaign that are readily available in an academic environment. For that reason, the Combat Studies Institute has begun a series of handbooks that will provide practical information on conducting Staff Rides to specific campaigns and battles. These handbooks are not intended to be used as a substitute for serious study by Staff Ride leaders or participants. Instead, they represent an effort to assist officers in locating sources, identifying teaching points, and designing meaningful field study phases. As such, they represent a starting point from which a more rigorous professional development experience may be crafted.

The Vicksburg campaign of 1862-63 is an effective vehicle for a Staff Ride. It raises a variety of teaching points, at both the operational and tactical levels, that are relevant to today's officers. Several different types of combat occurred in the course of the campaign. In addition, the campaign featured prominent participation by the Navy, thus raising a joint dimension. It also offers examples of combat support and combat service support activities, most notably military engineering and logistics.

The Staff Ride Handbook for the Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863, provides a systematic approach to the analysis of this key Civil War campaign. Part I describes the organization of the Union and Confederate Armies, detailing their weapons, tactics, and logistical, engineer, communications, and medical support. It also includes a description of the U.S. Navy elements that featured so prominently in the campaign.

Part II consists of a campaign overview that establishes the context for the individual actions to be studied in the field.

Part III consists of a suggested itinerary of sites to visit in order to obtain a concrete view of the campaign in its several phases. For each site, or "stand," there is a set of travel directions, a discussion of the action that occurred there, and vignettes by participants in the campaign that further explain the action and which also allow the student to sense the human "face of battle."

Part IV provides practical information on conducting a Staff Ride in the Vicksburg area, including sources of assistance and logistical considerations. Appendix A outlines the order of battle for the significant actions in the campaign. Appendix B provides biographical sketches of key participants. Appendix C provides an overview of Medal of Honor conferral in the campaign. An annotated bibliography suggests sources for preliminary study.

Because the organization, equipment, tactics, and training of the Confederate and Federal Armies were similar, the performance of units in battle often depended on the quality and performance of their leaders. General officers were appointed by their respective central governments. At the start of the war, most, but certainly not all, of the more senior officers had West Point or other military school experience. In 1861, Lincoln appointed 126 general officers, of which 82 were, or had been, professional officers. Jefferson Davis appointed 89, of which 44 had received professional training. The remainder were political appointees, but of these only sixteen Federal and seven Confederate generals had no military experience.

Of the volunteer officers who composed the bulk of the leadership for both armies, colonels (regimental commanders) were normally appointed by state governors. Other field grade officers were appointed by their states, although many were initially elected within their units. Company grade officers were usually elected by their men. This long-established militia tradition, which seldom made military leadership and capability a primary consideration, was largely an extension of the states rights philosophy and sustained political patronage in both the Union and the Confederacy.

Much has been made of the West Point backgrounds of the men who ultimately dominated the senior leadership positions of both armies, but the graduates of military colleges were not prepared by such institutions to command divisions, corps, or armies. Moreover, though many leaders had some combat experience from the Mexican War era, few had experience above the company or battery level in the peacetime years prior to 1861. As a result, the war was not initially conducted at any level by "professional officers" in today's terminology. Leaders became more professional through experience and at the cost of thousands of lives. General William T. Sherman would later note that the war did not enter its "professional stage" until 1863.

Major General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee was organized into four infantry corps. Major General Stephen A. Hurlbut's XVI Corps, however, remained headquartered in Memphis performing rear-area missions throughout the campaign, although nearly two divisions did join Grant during the siege. The remaining three corps, containing ten divisions with over 44,000 effectives, composed Grant's maneuver force during the campaign. Although some recently recruited "green" regiments participated, the bulk of Grant's army consisted of veteran units, many of which had fought with distinction at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and Chickasaw Bayou. Of Grant's senior subordinates, the XV Corps commander, Major General William T. Sherman, was his most trusted. Ultimately to prove an exceptional operational commander, Sherman was an adequate tactician with considerable wartime command experience. He and Major General James B. McPherson, commander of XVII Corps, were West Pointers. McPherson was young and inexperienced, but both Grant and Sherman felt he held great promise. Grant's other corps commander, Major General John A. McClernand, was a prewar Democratic congressman who had raised much of his XIII Corps specifically so that he could command an independent Vicksburg expedition. A self-serving and politically ambitious man who neither enjoyed nor curried Grant's favor, he nonetheless was an able organizer and tactical commander who had served bravely at Shiloh. The division commanders were a mix of trained regular officers and volunteers who formed a better-than-average set of Civil War commanders.

Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, a Pennsylvania-born West Pointer who had served with Jefferson Davis in the Mexican War, resigned his federal commission to join the South at the start of the war. Pemberton's army in the Vicksburg campaign consisted of five infantry divisions with no intermediate corps headquarters. Counting two brigades that briefly joined Pemberton's command during the maneuver campaign, he had over 43,000 effectives, many of whom had only limited battle experience. Of Pemberton's subordinates, Brigadier General John S. Bowen, a West Point classmate of McPherson's, was an exceptionally able tactical commander. Major General Carter L. Stevenson was also West Point trained, and the other division commander in the maneuver force, Major General William W. Loring, was a prewar Regular colonel who had worked his way up through the ranks. Significantly, none of these three men had any real respect for their commander and would prove to be less than supportive of him. Pemberton's other division commanders, Major Generals Martin L. Smith and John H. Fomey, both West Pointers, would remain in or near the city, commanding Vicksburg's garrison troops throughout the campaign.

Although Pemberton's five divisions represented the main Confederate force in the Vicksburg campaign, his army came under the jurisdiction of a higher headquarters, General Joseph E. Johnston's Department of the West. Johnston, in 1861, had been the Quartermaster General of the Regular Army and one of only five serving general officers. He had commanded in the eastern theater early in the war until severely wounded. In November 1862 after several months of convalescence, he assumed departmental command in the west. Johnston assumed direct command in Mississippi on 13 May 1863 but was unable to establish effective control over Pemberton's forces. When Pemberton became besieged in Vicksburg, Johnston assembled an Army of Relief but never seriously threatened Grant.

Morale of the troops was a serious concern for both the Union and Confederate commanders. Grant's army suffered terribly from illness in the early months of the campaign, which it spent floundering in the Louisiana swamps. But the men recovered quickly once they gained the high ground across the river. Inured to hardship, these men were served by able commanders and hard working staffs. Once movements started, morale remained high, despite shortfalls in logistical support. Pemberton's men, although not always well served by their commanders, fought hard for their home region through the battle of Champion Hill. Although they briefly lost their resolve after that defeat, once behind the formidable works at Vicksburg, they regained a level of morale and effectiveness that only began to erode weeks later when they were faced with ever-increasing Federal strength and their own supply shortages.

Naval power was a decisive element in the western campaigns of the Civil War. Given the enormous size of the western theater of operations (680 miles in a straight line from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans) and the relative austerity of the road and rail nets, navigable waterways were the preferred method of movement for both commercial and military enterprises. In a situation analogous to twentieth-century "air superiority," control of the western rivers conferred significant military advantages, particularly with regards to mobility and firepower.

In an age when most military transportation moved by muscle power, the Mississippi River steamboat was a logistician's dream come true. Cargo capacity ranged from 250 tons for the smaller boats up to 1,700 for the largest. By contrast, a horse-drawn military wagon could move only about one ton, depending on the conditions of the roads. A Civil War-era freight train of ten cars might carry 100 tons of goods, but rail lines were few and difficult to maintain in the western theater. If camped on the banks of a navigable stream, a field army of 40,000 men and 18,000 horses could subsist handily on the daily deliveries of one large (500-ton) steamboat, which traveled on a river that was not vulnerable to sabotage and was rarely "out of order."

Moreover, riverboats could move the army itself. One riverboat could transport a regiment; ten could move an entire infantry division. Such troop movements might be operational in nature, such as the flow of reinforcements that came to Grant's army from other departments during the siege of Vicksburg; or tactical, as demonstrated during the Chickasaw Bayou battle when Sherman used riverboats to move troops from one part of the battlefield to another.

The rivers that moved supplies for the Army carried guns for the Navy big guns, and lots of them. That portion of the Union's Mississippi squadron involved in the Vicksburg campaign possessed approximately 200 guns, which ranged from 24-pounder howitzers, to 11-inch smoothbores, and 100-pounder rifles. In comparison, Grant's army fielded 180 artillery pieces, mostly 12-pounders, when it first besieged Vicksburg. Pemberton's Confederates surrendered 172 pieces when the siege ended. Thus, the Mississippi River Squadron was by far the greatest source of artillery firepower in the theater.

It is important to understand that the Mississippi River was not a barrier to the Union ground forces involved in the Vicksburg campaign; rather, it was a superhighway. The free movement by river of both men and materiel was an essential precondition for Grant's campaign against Vicksburg. Conversely, when the Confederates lost the use of the rivers, their ability to wage war suffered. The U.S. Navy's presence along the Mississippi and its tributaries during the Vicksburg campaign seriously interfered with Confederate attempts to reinforce and resupply its ground elements opposing Grant. Unable to utilize water transport, the Confederates were forced to rely on the substandard roads and railroads. Moreover, the economic life of the Mississippi valley, and of the Confederacy as a whole, suffered significantly. Producers of commodities such as sugar and cotton were largely cut off from their markets in the east and overseas. By 1863, rather than producing cash crops that could not be transported, planters increasingly raised corn and hogs to feed themselves, commodities that they had imported by river before the war.

The U.S. Navy was able to exercise such pervasive control over the western rivers only because, by 1863, the Confederates lacked the means of challenging Union naval superiority. Such had not always been the case. In 1861, the Confederate War Department had established a "River Defense Fleet" in New Orleans, consisting of fourteen commercial riverboats converted into rams by strengthening their bows and stacking cotton bales on their decks as a form of armor (giving birth to the term "cottonclad"). Elsewhere on the Mississippi and its tributaries, about twenty-five other riverboats had artillery mounted on their decks making them into gunboats. Additionally, the Confederates laid keels for six new ironclad gunboats and began converting an existing boat into a seventh.

This imposing river force met with disaster in 1862. Two full-scale naval battles, one fought down river from New Orleans and the other upstream from Memphis, broke the back of Confederate naval power on the Mississippi. Every one of the fourteen rams of the River Defense Fleet was either destroyed in battle, captured, or burned to prevent capture. Only five of twenty-five gunboats survived into 1863, mostly by hiding upstream in such tributaries as the Red, Arkansas, White, and Yazoo Rivers. (Only one would remain by 1864.) The seven Confederate river ironclads fared little better. One was lost at the battle below New Orleans. Five were never commissioned, being captured or destroyed to prevent capture while still under construction. Just one, the Arkansas, saw action. Although its combat career lasted only three weeks, the Arkansas demonstrated that even one Confederate ironclad loose upon the Mississippi posed an intolerable threat to Union naval superiority. Measuring 165 feet in length, armed with a ram bow and eight guns, and protected by wood and iron armor measuring eighteen inches in thickness, her Achilles heel proved to be the power plant driving her twin screws. The Arkansas own crew scuttled her on 5 August 1862 after her steam engines failed.

Thus, at the time of the Vicksburg campaign, there were no Confederate ironclads and only a handful of gunboats on the western rivers. In fact, the greatest threat to the U.S. Navy during this campaign was that of its own vessels falling into enemy hands. In February 1863, two Union boats-the ram Queen of the West and the ironclad Indianola-ran downstream past the Vicksburg batteries. Confederates captured Queen of the West when she ran aground and then used her to disable Indianola, which they attempted to refloat. Queen of the West was later destroyed in action on the Atchafalaya River. The Confederates scuttled Indianola on 26 February when a Union "monitor" ran the Vicksburg batteries, as if on its way to recapture Indianola. This "monitor" was in fact an unmanned, unpowered barge rigged out to resemble an ironclad.

Essentially, the Confederacy's only means of asserting control over the Mississippi River in 1863 resided in the fortified batteries at Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, and Port Hudson. The absence of a credible Confederate river fleet greatly magnified the operational and strategic significance of these points. They were, in effect, a substitute for naval power.

The Union naval force that played such a large role in the Vicksburg campaign began its existence as an Army organization known as the Western Flotilla. In 1861, the War Department began to procure combat vessels both by converting commercial boats and by contracting for new construction. The U.S. Navy, which at first wanted little to do with the river war, provided officers and some of the crews, but the Army owned the boats. The first three commanders of the Western Flotilla, though Navy officers, took orders from the Army department commander.

On 1 October 1862, the flotilla transferred from Army to Navy control. (The Army, however, retained possession of the unarmed riverboats that it used as transports.) The flotilla was redesignated the Mississippi River Squadron and received a new commander, David D. Porter, later that month. Porter held the rank of Flag Officer, which (at that time) was equivalent to a major general. Later, Porter was promoted to the rank of acting rear admiral, which theoretically made him the highest-ranking Union officer in the theater-Grant was still a two-star general.

Neither Porter's rank nor the separation of the squadron from Army control altered the fact that the war in the Mississippi Valley was primarily an Army war. In practice, the ground force commander initiated the majority of joint operations. However, it was a wise general who kept his naval counterpart intimately involved in the planning process. Since the squadron commander no longer took orders from the Army, he could effectively veto any plan that he considered unfeasible. Thus, it was best not to surprise him with a scheme that had not received Navy input. Under these circumstances, only the mutual trust and respect between Army and Navy commanders prevented disagreements from escalating into deadlock. By 1863, Grant understood what Porter could and could not be asked to do, and Porter understood the type of support that the Army needed. Both Grant and Porter knew that if they failed to cooperate effectively, their superiors in Washington would be sure to intervene. Neither man desired that.

At the time of the Vicksburg campaign, the Mississippi River Squadron numbered approximately sixty combat vessels. Of these, about twenty to twenty-five would be involved in the Vicksburg operation at any given time. The remainder could be found patrolling the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, interdicting Confederate trade along the Mississippi, and undergoing repairs. A grand total of approximately thirty-three Union combat vessels participated in the Vicksburg campaign at one time or another-thirteen ironclads, seven rams, eleven light draughts (commonly called "tinclads"), and two "timberclads." The variety of vessel types reflects the diversity of missions that the squadron executed.

For heavy combat, the squadron relied upon its ironclads. Their firepower and armor protection allowed them to trade blows with any enemy, ashore or afloat. Seven of the squadron's ironclads were built to a common design, created for the War Department in 1861 by a U. S.Navy "constructor" named Samuel M. Pook. James B. Eads of St. Louis won the contract to build the seven "City Class" ironclads, so called because each was named after a midwestern river town. The seven were the Cairo, Carondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburg, and St. Louis (later renamed the Baron De Kalb).

One of the City Class boats, the Cairo (pronounced Kay-row), is on display at the Vicksburg National Military Park. Visitors are often surprised by how large the Cairo is-175 feet long and 51 feet wide. She had a draft of only six feet (meaning that she could float in six feet of water). Two steam engines driving a center-mounted paddlewheel propelled the vessel to a top speed of approximately six knots. For armament, the Cairo mounted three 7-inch rifles, three 8-inch smoothbores, six 32-pounder smoothbores, and one 30-pounder Parrot rifle. The guns were located in a slope-sided casemate with three ports facing forward, four to each side, and two to the stern. (Thus, unlike seagoing vessels of the day, which could fire half their guns at one time with each broadside, the ironclad could train only roughly one-fourth of its armament on a given target.) The casemate was protected by 2½ of iron armor fixed over timbers two feet thick. Railroad rails provided additional protection on the rounded corners of the casemate. The octagonal pilothouse carried 1½ inch of iron over timbers. Armor was thickest on the forward surfaces. The rear of the vessel was essentially unarmored as were the underwater surfaces. The Cairo sank in December 1862 after a "torpedo" (mine) blew a hole in her hull.

Three other ironclads, the Tuscumbia, Chillicothe, and Indianola were, like the Eads boats, specially designed and constructed to be ironclad gunboats. Their builder was Joseph Brown of Cincinnati. Unlike the Eads vessels, these were poorly constructed, lightly armed, and imperfectly armored. Tuscumbia was the worst of the lot-her hull had a twist to it, the deck sagged, and her already-inadequate armor plates tended to fall off when struck by artillery. The Tuscumbia carried only five guns, the Chillicothe two, and the Indianola four.

Another three ironclads, Choctaw, Lafayette, and Benton, were converted from commercial riverboats. They were stronger, safer, and more effective than Joseph Brown's vessels. Moreover, they were significantly larger than either the Eads or Brown ironclads. The Choctaw and Lafayette carried a layer of rubber, in addition to their iron armor, to help deflect projectiles (it did not work). The Benton, which sometimes served as Porter's flagship, was the Mississippi River Squadron's most powerful vessel. She measured 202 feet long by 72 feet wide, and carried sixteen guns.

The ironclads' primary mission during the Vicksburg campaign was to silence Confederate fortified batteries ashore. At one time or another, Union ironclad., pounded Haynes' Bluff, Vicksburg's river batteries, and Grand Gulf The ironclad: subdued none of these positions, but the fact that the Confederates deemed it necessary to build major fortifications to house these batteries is itself testimony to the power of ironclad gunfire.

The approved tactic for bombarding a fort was to fight it head-on from the downstream side of the fort-head-on to take advantage of the ironclad's heaviest armor (located on the forward surfaces), and from the downstream direction because the boats handled better with their bows facing the current. Moreover, by approaching the fort from downstream, any vessel disabled by enemy fire would drift to safety, away from the enemy guns. The range of engagement could be quite short-the ironclads might close to within 100 yards of the fortification, blasting with grape and exploding shell in an attempt to break down the earthen parapet (front wall) of the fort and disable its guns.

Ironclads were also highly effective in combat against other vessels on those increasingly rare occasions when Confederate boats challenged the Mississippi River Squadron. However, a different category of vessels existed strictly for combat against other boats. These were the rams. In 1862, a civil engineer named Charles Ellet, Jr., obtained a colonel's commission and authorization from the War Department to convert nine riverboats into rams. The necessary modifications involved reinforcing their hulls and filling their bows with timber so that they could survive deliberate collisions with enemy boats. The Ellet ram fleet had its day of glory on 6 June 1862 when it played a prominent part in the naval victory at Memphis. But since they carried little or no armament other than their rams, Ellet's vessels were of limited utility once the Confederate fleet had ceased to be an immediate threat. Even so, six Ellet rams were on hand for the Vicksburg campaign: the Lancaster, Lioness, Monarch, Queen of the West, Switzerland, and Fulton. The Ellet ram fleet, which remained an Army organization, was not technically a part of the Navy squadron, although it operated under Porter's orders.

Porter did possess one ram of his own: a Confederate vessel sunk at Memphis in 1862 but salvaged and returned to duty under the U.S. flag. This was the General Price, which differed from the Ellet rams in that it carried four heavy guns, making it more useful in joint operations than Ellet's boats.

The light draught vessels, or "tinclads," were, like the rams, modified riverboats, but by 1863, they were much more important to the day-to-day business of the squadron. Tinclads provided the naval presence that kept waterways under Union control, even when the riverbanks belonged to the Confederates. The tinclads got their name from the iron plating, 1/2-inch to 3/4 -inch thick, that protected the power plant and pilot house from small-arms fire. To drive off "bushwhackers," the typical tinclad mounted six 24-pounder howitzers facing to the sides, more than enough firepower to cope with most threats. Tinclads could even double as troop transports in joint operations, each one carrying up to 200 infantry. Their shallow draft enabled them to prowl waterways inaccessible to heavier war vessels. Some tinclads could float on as little as eighteen inches of water when lightly loaded.

The Mississippi River Squadron possessed thirty-four tinclads in June 1863, ten of which played roles in the Vicksburg campaign: the Cricket, Forest Rose, Juliet, Linden, Glide, Marmora, Petrel, Rattler, Romeo, and Signal. In addition, the "large tinclad" Black Hawk, which mounted thirteen guns, and two "timberclads," Lexington (eight guns) and Tyler (ten guns) were involved in operations around Vicksburg.

If the tinclads were the most versatile, certainly the most specialized instruments at Porter's disposal were the mortar boats. These were unpowered scows or rafts, each carrying one squat, kettle-shaped 13-inch siege mortar. The mortar itself weighed 17,120 pounds. With a full 20-pound charge, it could lob a 200-pound shell a distance of over two miles. During the siege of Vicksburg, thirteen mortar boats anchored on the western side of De Soto point, from where they maintained a steady barrage against the invested city

By early 1863, Porter's Mississippi River Squadron controlled the Mississippi from St. Louis to Vicksburg. To the south, Rear Admiral David G. Farragut's Western Gulf Blockading Squadron dominated the river from its outlet to the Confederate fort at Port Hudson, Louisiana. On 14 March 1863, Farragut succeeded in running upstream past Port Hudson in his flagship, the screw-sloop Hartford, in company with the small gunboat Albatross. The Hartford was powerful and fast, but being an ocean-going warship, she was ill-suited to conditions on the Mississippi. She measured 225 feet long by 44 feet wide and had a draft in excess of seventeen feet--far too deep for safe navigation on the western rivers. Her three masts looked absurd on the Mississippi, but her twenty-seven-gun armament commanded respect. Farragut's greatest contribution to the Vicksburg campaign was to blockade the mouth of the Red River until Porter's gunboats got below, thus severing a major military and commercial artery of the Confederacy.

On the night of 16-17 April 1863, Porter led a portion of the Mississippi River Squadron downstream past the batteries of Vicksburg in order to provide support and transportation for Grant's army, which was in the process of marching southward on the western side of the river. Seven ironclads ran the batteries-the Carondelet, Pittsburg, Louisville, Mound City, Benton, Lafayette, and Tuscumbia-along with one ram, the General Price, one tug, and three Army transports. Porter left behind the ironclad De Kalb and the tinclad fleet to keep the river safe upstream from Vicksburg. Two additional ironclads, the Cincinnati and Choctaw, arrived later from upriver to assist the De Kalb. The seven ironclads that ran the Vicksburg batteries tried, but failed, to silence the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf on 29 April.

In May, when Grant's army crossed to the east bank of the Mississippi and marched inland, Porter subdivided the downstream portion of his force. The ironclads Louisville, Tuscumbia, Mound City, and Carondelet kept station at Grand Gulf, safeguarding Grant's line of communications. Porter himself led the ironclads Benton, Lafayette, and Pittsburg, plus the rams General Price and Switzerland (which had run the Vicksburg batteries in March), on operations up the Red River and its tributaries in conjunction with ground elements under Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. These joint operations on the Red River, plus the presence of ironclads at Grand Gulf, helped ensure that the Confederate defenders of Vicksburg received no reinforcements from west of the Mississippi during a critical period of the campaign.

In the last week of May, when Grant's army laid siege to Vicksburg by land, Porter's squadron besieged it by water. Not only did ironclads and mortarboats fire 11,500 projectiles in support of the siege, but also Porter landed thirteen heavy cannon from his gunboats for the Army to use as siege artillery. These land batteries fired 4,500 rounds. And, of course, the squadron assured that supplies and reinforcements flowed to Grant's army without interference from the enemy.

The war on the western rivers did not end when Vicksburg fell to Grant on 4 July 1863. Union forces could occupy only key points along the Mississippi and other rivers. To the end of the war, "bushwhackers" and raiders continued to harass Union riverboat traffic, necessitating a continuous program of patrols and escorts by the tinclads and ironclads of the Mississippi River Squadron.

During the 1850s, in a technological revolution of major proportions, the rifle-musket began to replace the relatively inaccurate smoothbore musket in ever-increasing numbers, both in Europe and America. This process, accelerated by the Civil War, ensured that the rifled shoulder weapon would be the basic weapon used by infantrymen in both the Federal and Confederate armies.

The standard and most common shoulder weapon used in the American Civil War was the Springfield .58-caliber rifle-musket, models 1855, 1861, and 1863. In 1855, the U.S. Army adopted this weapon to replace the .69-caliber smoothbore musket and the .54-caliber rifle. In appearance, the rifle-musket was similar to the smoothbore musket. Both were single-shot muzzle loaders, but the rifled bore of the new weapon substantially increased its range and accuracy. The rifling system chosen by the United States was designed by Claude Mini &, a French Army officer. Whereas earlier rifles fired a round, nonexpanding ball, the Mini & system used a hollow-based cylindro-conoidal projectile, slightly smaller than the bore, which could be dropped easily into the barrel. When the powder charge was ignited by a fulminate of mercury percussion cap, the released propellant gases expanded the base of the bullet into the rifled grooves, giving the projectile a ballistic spin.

The Model 1855 Springfield rifle-musket was the first regulation arm to use the hollow-base .58-caliber Mini & bullet. The slightly modified Model 1861 was the principal infantry weapon of the Civil War, although two subsequent models were produced in about equal quantities. The Model 1861 was fifty-six inches long, had a forty-inch barrel, and weighed 8.75 pounds. It could be fitted with a twenty-one inch socket bayonet (with an eighteen-inch blade, three inch socket) and a rear sight graduated to 500 yards. The maximum effective range of the Springfield rifle-musket was approximately 500 yards, although it had killing power at 1,000 yards. The round could penetrate I1 inches of white pine board at 200 yards and 3'/a inches at 1,000 yards, with a penetration of one inch being considered the equivalent of disabling a human being. Range and accuracy were increased by the use of the new weapon, but the soldiers' vision was still obscured by the dense clouds of smoke produced by its black powder propellant.

To load a muzzleloading rifle, the soldier took a paper cartridge in hand, tore the end of the paper with his teeth, poured the powder down the barrel, and placed a bullet in the muzzle. Then, using a metal ramrod, he pushed the bullet firmly down the barrel until seated. He then cocked the hammer and placed the percussion cap on the cone or nipple, which, when struck by the hammer, ignited the gunpowder. The average rate of fire was three rounds per minute. A well-trained soldier could possibly load and fire four times per minute, but in the confusion of battle, the rate of fire was probably slower, two to three rounds per minute.

In addition to the Springfields, over one hundred types of muskets, rifles, and rifled muskets-ranging up to .79-caliber-were used during the American Civil War. The numerous American-made weapons were supplemented early in the conflict by a wide variety of imported models. The best, most popular, and most numerous of the foreign weapons was the British .577-caliber Enfield rifle, Model 1853. Fifty-four inches long (with a 39-inch barrel), the rifle weighed 8.7 pounds (9.2 with the bayonet), could be fitted with a socket bayonet with an eighteen-inch blade, and had a rear sight graduated to a range of 800 yards. The Enfield design was produced in a variety of forms, both long and short barreled, by several British manufacturers and at least one American company. Of all the foreign designs, the Enfield most closely resembled the Springfield in characteristics and capabilities. The United States purchased over 436,000 Enfield-pattern weapons during the war. Statistics on Confederate purchases are more difficult to ascertain, but a report dated February 1863 indicates that 70,980 long Enfields and 9,715 short Enfields had been delivered by that time, with another 23,000 awaiting delivery.

While the quality of imported weapons varied, experts considered the Enfields and the Austrian Lorenz rifle-muskets very good. Some foreign governments and manufacturers took advantage of the huge initial demand for weapons by dumping their obsolete weapons on the American market. This practice was especially prevalent with some of the older smoothbore muskets and converted flintlocks. The greatest challenge, however, lay in maintaining these weapons and supplying ammunition and replacement parts for calibers ranging from.44 to .79. The quality of the imported weapons eventually improved as the procedures, standards, and astuteness of the purchasers improved. For the most part, the European suppliers provided needed weapons, and the newer foreign weapons were highly regarded.

All told, the United States purchased about 1,165,000 European rifles and muskets during the war, nearly all within the first two years. Of these, 110,853 were smoothbores. The remainder were primarily the French Mini & rifles (44,250), Prussian rifles (59,918), and Austrian Model 1854s (266,294), Bokers (187,533), and Jagers (29,850). Estimates of total Confederate purchases range from 340,000 to 400,000. In addition to the Enfields delivered to the Confederacy (mentioned above), 27,000 Austrian rifles, 21,040 British muskets, and 2,020 Brunswick rifles were also purchased, with 30,000 Austrian rifles awaiting shipment.

Breechloaders and repeating rifles were available by 1861 and were initially purchased in limited quantities, often by individual soldiers. Generally, however, they were not issued to troops in large numbers because of technical problems (poor breech seals, faulty ammunition), fear by the Ordnance Department that the troops would waste ammunition, and the cost of rifle production. The most famous of the breechloaders was the single-shot Sharps, produced in both carbine and rifle models. The Model 1859 .52-caliber rifle was 47 1/8 inches long, and weighed 8 ¾ pounds, while the carbine was .52 caliber and 39 1/8 inches long and weighed 7¼ pounds. Both weapons used a linen cartridge and a pellet-primer-feed mechanism. Most Sharps carbines were issued to Federal cavalry units.

The best known of the repeaters was probably the seven-shot, .52-caliber Spencer, which also came in both rifle and carbine models. The rifle was 47 inches long and weighed 10 pounds, while the carbine was 39 inches long and weighed 8¾ pounds. The first mounted infantry unit to use Spencer repeating rifles in combat was Colonel John T. Wilder's "Lighting Brigade" on 24 June 1863 at Hoover's Gap, Tennessee. The Spencer was also the first weapon adopted by the U.S. Army that fired a metallic, rimfire, self-contained cartridge. Soldiers loaded rounds through an opening in the butt of the stock, which fed into the chamber through a tubular magazine by the action of the trigger guard. The hammer still had to be cocked manually before each shot.

Better than either the Sharps or the Spencer was the Henry rifle. Never adopted by the U.S. Army in large quantity, it was purchased privately by soldiers during the war. The Henry was a sixteen-shot, .44-caliber rimfire cartridge repeater. It was 43½ inches long and weighed 9 ¼ pounds. The tubular magazine located directly beneath the barrel had a fifteen-round capacity with an additional round in the chamber. Of the approximate 13,500 Henrys produced, probably 10,000 saw limited service. The government purchased only 1,731.

The Colt repeating rifle (or revolving carbine), Model 1855, also was available to Civil War soldiers in limited numbers. The weapon was produced in several lengths and calibers, the lengths varying from 32 to 42 inches, while calibers were.36, .44, and.56. The.36 and.44 calibers were made to chamber six shots, while the.56 caliber had five chambers. The Colt Firearms Company was also the primary supplier of revolvers, the .44-caliber Army revolver and the .36-caliber Navy revolver being the most popular (over 146,000 purchased) because they were simple, sturdy, and reliable.

Initially armed with sabers and pistols (and, in one case, lances), Federal cavalry troopers quickly added the breechloading carbine to their inventory of weapons. However, one Federal regiment, the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, carried lances until 1863. Troopers preferred the easier-handling carbines to rifles and the breechloaders to awkward muzzleloaders. Of the single-shot breechloading carbines that saw extensive use during the Civil War, the Hall .52 caliber accounted for approximately 20,000 in 1861. The Hall was quickly replaced by a variety of carbines, including the Merrill ..54 caliber (14,495), Maynard.52 caliber (20,002), Gallager.53 caliber (22,728), Smith.52 caliber (30,062), Bumside.56 caliber (55,.567), and Sharps.54 caliber (80,512). The next step in the evolutionary process was the repeating carbine, the favorite by 1865 being the Spencer. 52-caliber, seven-shot repeater (94,194). Because of the South's limited industrial capacity, Confederate cavalrymen had a more difficult time arming themselves. Nevertheless, they too embraced the firepower revolution, choosing shotguns and muzzleloading carbines as their primary weapons. In addition, Confederate cavalrymen made extensive use of battlefield salvage by recovering Federal weapons. However, the South's difficulties in producing the metallic-rimmed cartridges required by many of these recovered weapons limited their usefulness.

Artillery in the Civil War era consisted of four general weapon types-guns, howitzers, mortars, and columbiads. Guns were long-barreled cannon that delivered high-velocity, flat-trajectory, long-range fire. Howitzers were lighter and shorter than guns, and used a smaller powder charge to fire explosive projectiles at shorter distances. Mortars, the shortest pieces, used a small powder charge to lob a large projectile at a very high angle. Columbiads combined characteristics of all three. They were generally of large caliber, possessed relatively long barrels, and used a large powder charge to fire a heavy projectile great distances.

Artillery was also categorized as to method of employment-field, siege (officially classified as "siege and garrison"), and seacoast. Field artillery, the lightest and most mobile, operated within tactical units as part of the standard combined arms team. Siege and seacoast artillery operated more or less independently of the other combat arms. Siege artillery units normally formed siege trains that were called to the front only under special circumstances. Seacoast artillery, the heaviest Civil War ordnance, was emplaced in fixed positions.

In 1841, the U. S. Army selected bronze as the standard material for field pieces and at the same time adopted a new system of field artillery. The 1841 field artillery system consisted entirely of smoothbore muzzleloaders: 6- and 12-pounder guns; 12-, 24-, and 32-pounder howitzers; and 12-pounder mountain howitzers. A pre-Civil War battery usually consisted of six field pieces-four guns and two howitzers. A 6-pounder battery contained four 6-pounder guns and two 12-pounder howitzers, while a 12-pounder battery had four 12-pounder guns and two 24-pounder howitzers. The guns fired solid shot, shell, spherical case, grapeshot, and canister rounds, while howitzers fired shell, spherical case, grapeshot, and canister rounds.

The 6-pounder gun (effective range 1,523 yards) was the primary field piece used from the time of the Mexican War until the Civil War. By 1861, however, the 1841 system based upon the 6-pounder was obsolete. In 1857, a new and more versatile field piece, the 12-pounder gun-howitzer (Napoleon), Model 1857, appeared on the scene. Designed as a multipurpose piece to replace existing guns and howitzers, the Napoleon fired canister and shell like the 12-pounder howitzer and solid shot at ranges comparable to the 12-pounder gun. The Napoleon was a bronze, muzzleloading smoothbore with an effective range of 1,680 yards using solid shot (see table 5 for a comparison of artillery data). Served by a nine-man crew, the piece could fire at a sustained rate of two aimed shots per minute. With less than fifty Napoleons initially available in 1861, obsolete 6-pounders remained in the inventories of both armies for some time, especially in the western theater.

Another new development in field artillery was the introduction of rifling. Although rifled guns provided greater range and accuracy, they were somewhat less reliable and slower to load than smoothbores. (Rifled ammunition was semi-fixed, so the charge and the projectile had to be loaded separately.) Moreover, the canister load of the rifle did not perform as well as that of the smoothbore. Initially, some smoothbores were rifled on the James pattern, but they soon proved unsatisfactory because the bronze rifling eroded too quickly. Therefore, most rifled artillery was either wrought iron or cast iron with a wrought iron reinforcing band.

The most common rifled guns were the 10-pounder Parrott and the Rodman, or 3-inch, ordnance rifle. The Parrott rifle was a cast-iron piece, easily identified by the wrought-iron band reinforcing the breech. The 10-pounder Parrott was made in two models: the Model 1861 had a 2.9-inch rifled bore with three lands and grooves and a slight muzzle swell, while the Model 1863 had a 3-inch bore and no muzzle swell. The Rodman or Ordnance rifle was a long-tubed, wrought-iron piece that had a 3-inch bore with seven lands and grooves. Ordnance rifles were sturdier than the 10-pounder Parrott and displayed superior accuracy and reliability.

By 1860, the ammunition for field artillery consisted of four general types for both smoothbores and rifles: solid shot, shell, case, and canister. Solid shot for smoothbores was a round, cast-iron projectile; for rifled guns it took the form of an elongated projectile known as a bolt. Solid shot, with its smashing or battering effect, was used in a counterbattery role or against buildings and massed troop formations. The rifle's conical-shaped bolt lacked the effectiveness of the smoothbore's cannonball because it tended to bury itself upon impact instead of bounding along the ground like round shot.

Shell, also known as common or explosive shell, whether spherical or conical, was a hollow projectile filled with an explosive charge of black powder detonated by a fuse. Shell was designed to break into jagged pieces, producing an antipersonnel effect, but the low-order detonation seldom produced more than three to five fragments. In addition to its casualty producing effects, shell had a psychological impact when it exploded over the heads of troops. It was also used against field fortifications and in a counterbattery role. Case or case shot for both smoothbore and rifled guns was a hollow projectile with thinner walls than shell. The projectile was filled with round lead or iron balls set in a matrix of sulphur that surrounded a small bursting charge. Case was primarily used in an antipersonnel role. This type of round had been invented by Henry Shrapnel, a British artillery officer, hence the term "shrapnel."

Lastly, there was canister, probably the most effective round and the round of choice at close range (400 yards or less) against massed troops. Canister was essentially a tin can filled with iron balls packed in sawdust, with no internal bursting charge. When fired, the can disintegrated, and the balls followed their own paths to the target. The canister round for the 12-pounder Napoleon consisted of twenty-seven l ½ inch iron balls packed inside an elongated tin cylinder. At extremely close ranges, artillerymen often loaded double charges of canister.

The 1841 artillery system listed eight types of siege artillery and another six types as seacoast artillery. The 1861 Ordnance Manual included eleven different kinds of siege ordnance. The principal siege weapons in 1861 were the 4.5-inch rifle; 18-, and 24-pounder guns; a 24-pounder howitzer and two types of 8-inch howitzers; and several types of 8- and 10-inch mortars. The normal rate of fire for siege guns and mortars was about twelve rounds per hour, but with a well-drilled crew, this could probably be increased to about twenty rounds per hour. The rate of fire for siege howitzers was somewhat lower, being about eight shots per hour.

The carriages for siege guns and howitzers were longer and heavier than field artillery carriages but were similar in construction. The 24-pounder model 1839 was the heaviest piece that could be moved over the roads of the day. Alternate means of transport, such as railroad or watercraft, were required to move larger pieces any great distance.

A 13-inch mortar, now located on the grounds of the Grand Gulf Museum.

The rounds fired by siege artillery were generally the same as those fired by field artillery, except that siege artillery continued to use grapeshot after it was discontinued in the field artillery (1841). A "stand of grape" consisted of nine iron balls, ranging from two to about three and one-half inches in size depending on the gun caliber.

The largest and heaviest artillery pieces in the Civil War era belonged to the seacoast artillery. These large weapons were normally mounted in fixed positions. The 1861 system included five types of columbiads, ranging from 8- to 15-inch; 32- and 42-pounder guns; 8and 10-inch howitzers; and mortars of 10- and 13-inches.

Wartime additions to the Federal seacoast artillery inventory included Parrott rifles, ranging from 6.4-inch to 10-inch (300-pounder). New columbiads, developed by Ordnance Lieutenant Thomas J. Rodman, included 8-inch, 10-inch, and 15-inch models. The Confederates produced some new seacoast artillery of their ownBrooke rifles in 6.4-inch and 7-inch versions. They also imported weapons from England, including 7- and 8-inch Armstrong rifles, 6.3-to12.5-inch Blakely rifles, and 5-inch Whitworth rifles.

Seacoast artillery fired the same projectiles as siege artillery but with one addition - hot shot. As its name implies, hot shot was solid shot heated in special ovens until red-hot, then carefully loaded and fired as an incendiary round.

Like the Army, the U.S. Navy in the Civil War possessed an artillery establishment that spanned the spectrum from light to heavy. A series of light boat guns and howitzers corresponded to the Army's field artillery. Designed for service on small boats and launches, this class of weapon included 12- and 24-pounder pieces, both smoothbore and rifled. The most successful boat gun was a 12-pounder smoothbore howitzer (4.62-inch bore) designed by John A. Dahlgren, the Navy's premier ordnance expert and wartime chief of ordnance. Typically mounted in the bow of a small craft, the Dahlgren 12-pounder could be transferred, in a matter of minutes, to an iron field carriage for use on shore. This versatile little weapon fired shell and case rounds.

Naturally, most naval artillery was designed for ship killing. A variety of 32-pounder guns (6.4-inch bore) produced from the 1820s through the 1840s remained in service during the Civil War. These venerable smoothbores, direct descendants of the broadside guns used in the Napoleonic Wars, fired solid shot and were effective not only in ship-to-ship combat but also in the shore-bombardment role.

A more modern class of naval artillery weapons was known as "shellguns." These were large-caliber smoothbores designed to shoot massive exploding shells that were capable of dealing catastrophic damage to a wooden-hulled vessel. Shellguns could be found both in broadside batteries and in upper-deck pivot mounts, which allowed wide traverse. An early example of the shellgun, designed in 1845 but still in service during the Civil War, was an 8-inch model that fired a 51-pound shell.

John Dahlgren's design came to typify the shellgun class of weapons. All of his shellguns shared an unmistakable "beer-bottle" shape. The most successful Dahlgren shellguns were a 9-inch model (72.5-pound shell or 90-pound solid shot), an 11-inch (136-pound shell or 170-pound solid shot), and a 15-inch, which fired an awesome 330-pound shell or 440-pound solid shot. A pivot-mounted 11-inch shellgun proved to be the decisive weapon in the U.S.S. Kearsarge's 1864 victory over the C.S.S. Alabama. The famous U.S. Navy ironclad Monitor mounted two 11-inch Dahlgrens in its rotating turret. Later monitors carried 15-inch shellguns.

The U.S. Navy also made wide use of rifled artillery. These high-velocity weapons became increasingly important with the advent of ironclad warships. Some Navy rifles were essentially identical to Army models. For instance, the Navy procured Parrott rifles in 4.2-inch, 6.4-inch, 8-inch, and 10-inch versions, each of which had a counterpart in the Army as either siege or seacoast artillery. Other rifled weapons, conceived specifically for naval use, included two Dahlgren designs. The 50-pounder (with approximately 5-inch bore) was the better of the two Dahlgren rifles. An 80-pounder model (6-inch bore) was less popular, due to its tendency to burst.

The Confederacy relied heavily on British imports for its naval armament Naval variants of Armstrong, Whitworth, and Blakely weapons all saw service. In addition, the Confederate Navy used Brooke rifles manufactured in the South. The Confederacy also produced a 9-inch version of the Dahlgren shellgun that apparently found use both afloat and ashore.

The wide variety of infantry weapons available to Civil War armies is clearly evident at Vicksburg. A review of the Quarterly Returns of Ordnance for April-June 1863 reveals that approximately three-quarters of Grant's Army of the Tennessee carried "first class" shoulder weapons, the most numerous of which were British 1853 Enfield rifle-muskets (.577 caliber). Other "first class" weapons used in the Vicksburg campaign included American-made Springfield rifle-muskets (.58 caliber), French rifle-muskets (.58 caliber), French "light" or "Liege" rifles (.577 caliber), U.S. Model 1840/45 rifles (.58 caliber), Dresden and Suhl rifle-muskets (.58 caliber), and Sharps breechloading carbines (.52 caliber). Approximately thirty-five Federal regiments (roughly one-quarter of the total) were armed primarily with "second class" weapons, such as Austrian rifle-muskets in .54, .577, and .58 calibers; U.S. Model 1841 rifled muskets (.69 caliber); U.S. Model 1816 rifled muskets altered to percussion (.69 caliber); Belgian and French rifled muskets (.69 and .71 calibers); Belgian or Vincennes rifles (.70 and .71 calibers); and both Austrian and Prussian rifled muskets in .69 and .70 calibers. Only one Federal regiment, the 101st Illinois Infantry, was armed with "third class" weapons, such as the U.S. Model 1842 smoothbore musket (.69 caliber), Austrian, Prussian, and French smoothbore muskets (.69 caliber), and Austrian and Prussian smoothbore muskets of.72 caliber. After the surrender of Vicksburg, the 101 st Illinois, along with about twenty regiments armed with "second class" arms, exchanged its obsolete weapons for captured Confederate rifle-muskets.

Although the Confederate records are incomplete, it seems that some 50,000 shoulder weapons were surrendered at Vicksburg, mostly British-made Enfields. Other weapons included a mix of various .58-caliber "minié" rifles (Springfield, Richmond, Mississippi and Fayetteville models), Austrian and French rifle-muskets in .577 and .58 calibers, Mississippi rifles, Austrian rifle-muskets (.54 caliber), various .69-caliber rifled muskets altered to percussion, Belgian .70-caliber rifles, and British smoothbore muskets in .75 caliber.

The diversity of weapons (and calibers of ammunition) obviously created serious sustainment problems for both sides. Amazingly, there is little evidence that ammunition shortages had much influence on operations (the Vicksburg defenders surrendered 600,000 rounds and 350,000 percussion caps), even though the lack of weapons standardization extended down to regimental levels.

Whereas there was little to differentiate Union from Confederate effectiveness so far as small arms were concerned, the Union forces at Vicksburg enjoyed a clear superiority in terms of artillery. When Grant's army closed on Vicksburg to begin siege operations, it held about 180 cannon. At the height of its strength during the siege, the Union force included some forty-seven batteries of artillery for a total of 247 guns-13 "heavy" guns and 234 "field" pieces. Twenty-nine of the Federal batteries contained six guns each; the remaining eighteen were considered four-gun batteries. Smoothbores outnumbered rifles by a ratio of roughly two to one.

No account of Union artillery at Vicksburg would be complete without an acknowledgment of the U.S. Navy's contributions. Porter's vessels carried guns ranging in size from 12-pounder howitzers to 11-inch Dahlgren shellguns. The Cairo, which is on display today at Vicksburg, suggests both the variety and the power of naval artillery in this campaign. When she sank in December 1862, the Cairo went down with three 42-pounder (7-inch bore) Army rifles, three 64-pounder (8-inch bore) Navy smoothbores, six 32-pounder (6.4-inch bore) Navy smoothbores, and one 4.2-inch 30-pounder Parrott rifle. Porter's firepower was not restricted to the water. During the siege, naval guns served ashore as siege artillery.

The Confederates possessed a sizeable artillery capability but could not match Federal firepower. Taken together, the Confederate forces under Pemberton and Johnston possessed a total of about 62 batteries of artillery with some 221 tubes. Pemberton's force besieged in Vicksburg included 172 cannon-approximately 103 fieldpieces, and 69 siege weapons. Thirty-seven of the siege guns, plus thirteen fieldpieces, occupied positions overlooking the Mississippi. (The number of big guns along the river dropped to thirty-one by the end of the siege-apparently some weapons were shifted elsewhere.) The thirteen field pieces were distributed along the river to counter amphibious assault. The heavy ordnance was grouped into thirteen distinct river-front batteries. These large river-defense weapons included twenty smoothbores, ranging in size from 32-pounder siege guns to 10-inch Columbiads, and seventeen rifled pieces, ranging from a 2.75-inch Whitworth to a 7.44-inch Blakely.

In most of the engagements during the Vicksburg campaign, the Union artillery demonstrated its superiority to that of the Confederates. During the siege, that superiority grew into dominance. The Confederates scattered their artillery in one- or two-gun battery positions sited to repel Union assaults. By declining to mass their guns, the Confederates could do little to interfere with Union siege operations. By contrast, Union gunners created massed batteries at critical points along the line. These were able both to support siege operations with concentrated fires and keep the Confederate guns silent by smothering the embrasures of the small Confederate battery positions. As the siege progressed, Confederate artillery fire dwindled to ineffective levels, whereas the Union artillery blasted away at will. As much as any other factor, Union fire superiority sealed the fate of the Confederate army besieged in Vicksburg.

The Napoleonic Wars and the Mexican War were the major influences on American thinking at the beginning of the Civil War. The campaigns of Napoleon and Wellington provided ample lessons in battle strategy, weapons employment, and logistics, while American tactical doctrine reflected the lessons learned in Mexico (1846-48). However, these tactical lessons were misleading because in Mexico relatively small armies fought only seven pitched battles. Because these battles were so small, almost all the tactical lessons learned during the war focused at the regimental, battery, and squadron levels. Future Civil War leaders had learned little about brigade, division, and corps maneuver in Mexico, yet these units were the basic fighting elements of both armies in 1861-65.

The U.S. Army's experience in Mexico validated Napoleonic principles-particularly that of the offensive. In Mexico, tactics did not differ greatly from those of the early nineteenth century. Infantry marched in column and deployed into line to fight. Once deployed, an infantry regiment might send one or two companies forward as skirmishers, as security against surprise, or to soften the enemy's line. After identifying the enemy's position, a regiment advanced in closely ordered lines to within one hundred yards. There, it delivered a devastating volley, followed by a charge with bayonets. Both sides used this basic tactic in the first battles of the Civil War.

In Mexico, American armies employed artillery and cavalry in both offensive and defensive battle situations. In the offense, artillery moved as near to the enemy lines as possible-normally just outside musket range in order to blow gaps in the enemy's line that the infantry might exploit with a determined charge. In the defense, artillery blasted advancing enemy lines with canister and withdrew if the enemy attack got within musket range. Cavalry guarded the enemy's flanks and rear but held itself ready to charge if enemy infantry became disorganized or began to withdraw.

These tactics worked perfectly well with the weapons technology of the Napoleonic and Mexican wars. The infantry musket was accurate up to 100 yards but ineffective against even massed targets beyond that range. Rifles were specialized weapons with excellent accuracy and range but slow to load and therefore not usually issued to line troops. Smoothbore cannon had a range of up to one mile with solid shot but were most effective against infantry when firing canister at ranges under 400 yards. Artillerists worked their guns without much fear of infantry muskets, which had a limited range. Cavalry continued to use sabers and lances as shock weapons.

American troops took the tactical offensive in most Mexican War battles with great success, and they suffered fairly light losses. Unfortunately, similar tactics proved to be obsolete in the Civil War because of a major technological innovation fielded in the 1850s-the rifle-musket. This new weapon greatly increased the infantry's range and accuracy and loaded as fast as a musket. The U.S. Army adopted a version of the rifle-musket in 1855, and by the beginning of the Civil War, rifle-muskets were available in moderate numbers. It was the weapon of choice in both the Union and Confederate Armies during the war, and by 1862, large numbers of troops on both sides had rifle-muskets of good quality.

Official tactical doctrine prior to the beginning of the Civil War did not clearly recognize the potential of the new rifle-musket. Prior to 1855, the most influential tactical guide was General Winfield Scott's three-volume work, Infantry Tactics (1835), based on French tactical models of the Napoleonic Wars. It stressed close-order, linear formations in two or three ranks advancing at "quick time" of 110 steps (eighty-six yards) per minute. In 1855, to accompany the introduction of the new rifle-musket, Major William J. Hardee published a two-volume tactical manual, Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics. Hardee's work contained few significant revisions of Scott's manual. His major innovation was to increase the speed of the advance to a "double-quick time" of 165 steps (151 yards) per minute. If, as suggested, Hardee introduced his manual as a response to the rifle-musket, then he failed to appreciate the weapon's impact on combined arms tactics and the essential shift the rifle-musket made in favor of the defense. Hardee's Tactics was the standard infantry manual used by both sides at the outbreak of war in 1861.

If Scott's and Hardee's works lagged behind technological innovations, at least the infantry had manuals to establish a doctrinal basis for training. Cavalry and artillery fell even further behind in recognizing the potential tactical shift in favor of rifle-armed infantry. The cavalry's manual, published in 1841, was based on French sources that focused on close-order offensive tactics. It favored the traditional cavalry attack in two ranks of horsemen armed with sabers or lances. The manual took no notice of the rifle-musket's potential, nor did it give much attention to dismounted operations. Similarly, the artillery had a basic drill book delineating individual crew actions, but it had no tactical manual. Like cavalrymen, artillerymen showed no concern for the potential tactical changes that the rifle-musket implied.

Regular Army infantry, cavalry, and artillery practiced and became proficient in the tactics that brought success in Mexico. As the first volunteers drilled and readied themselves for the battles of 1861, officers and noncommissioned officers taught the lessons learned from the Napoleonic Wars and validated in Mexico. Thus, the two armies entered the Civil War with a good understanding of the tactics that had worked in the Mexican War but with little understanding of how the rifle-musket might upset their carefully practiced lessons.

In the battles of 1861 and 1862, both sides employed the tactics proven in Mexico and found that the tactical offensive could still be successful but only at a great cost in casualties. Men wielding rifled weapons in the defense generally ripped frontal assaults to shreds, and if the attackers paused to exchange fire, the slaughter was even greater. Rifles also increased the relative numbers of defenders, since flanking units now engaged assaulting troops with a murderous enfilading fire. Defenders usually crippled the first assault line before a second line of attackers could come forward in support. This caused successive attacking lines to intermingle with survivors to their front, thereby destroying formations, command, and control. Although both sides favored the bayonet throughout the war, they quickly discovered that rifle-musket fire made successful bayonet attacks almost impossible.

As the infantry found the bayonet charge to be of little value against rifle-muskets, cavalry and artillery made troubling discoveries of their own. Cavalry soon learned that the old-style saber charge did not work against infantry armed with rifle-muskets. Cavalry, however, retained its traditional intelligence-gathering and screening roles whenever commanders chose to make the horsemen the "eyes and ears" of the army. Artillery, on its part, found that it could not maneuver freely to canister range as it had in Mexico because the rifle-musket was accurate beyond that distance. Worse yet, at ranges where gunners were safe from rifle fire, artillery shot, shell, and case were far less effective than close-range canister. Ironically, rifled cannon did not give the equivalent boost to artillery effectiveness that the rifle-musket gave to the infantry. Moreover, the increased range of cannons proved no real advantage in the broken and wooded terrain over which so many Civil War battles were fought.

Poor training may have contributed to high casualty rates early in the war, but casualties remained high and even increased long after the armies became experienced. Continued high casualty rates resulted because tactical developments failed to adapt to the new weapons technology. Few commanders understood how the rifle-musket strengthened the tactical defensive. However, some commanders made offensive innovations that met with varying success. When an increase in the speed of the advance did not overcome defending firepower (as Hardee suggested it would), some units tried advancing in more open order. But this sort of formation lacked the appropriate mass to assault and carry prepared positions and created command and control problems beyond the ability of Civil War leaders to resolve. Late in the war, when the difficulty of attacking field fortifications under heavy fire became apparent, other tactical expedients were employed. Attacking solidly entrenched defenders often required whole brigades and divisions moving in dense masses to rapidly cover intervening ground, seize the objective, and prepare for the inevitable counterattack. Seldom successful against alert and prepared defenses, these attacks were generally accompanied by tremendous casualties and foreshadowed the massed infantry assaults of World War I. Sometimes, large formations attempted mass charges over short distances without halting to fire. This tactic enjoyed limited success at Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864. At Spotsylvania, a Union division attacked and captured an exposed portion of the Confederate line. The attack succeeded because the Union troops crossed the intervening ground quickly without artillery preparation and without stopping to fire their rifles. Once inside the Confederate defenses, the Union troops attempted to exploit their success by continuing their advance, but loss of command and control made them little better than a mob. Counterattacking Confederate units, in conventional formations, eventually forced the Federals to relinquish much of the ground gained.

As the war dragged on, tactical maneuver focused more on larger formations-brigade, division, and corps. In most of the major battles fought after 1861, brigades were employed as the primary maneuver formations. But brigade maneuver was at the upper limit of command and control for most Civil War commanders. Brigades might be able to retain coherent formations if the terrain were suitably open, but most often, brigade attacks degenerated into a series of poorly coordinated regimental lunges through broken and wooded terrain. Thus, brigade commanders were often on the main battle line trying to influence regimental fights. Typically, defending brigades stood in line of battle and blazed away at attackers as rapidly as possible. Volley fire usually did not continue beyond the first round. Most of the time, soldiers fired as soon as they were ready, and it was common for two soldiers to work together, one loading while the other fired. Brigades were generally invulnerable to attacks on their front and flanks if units to the left and right held their ground or if reinforcements came up to defeat the threat.

Two or more brigades constituted a division. When a division attacked, its brigades often advanced in sequence, from left to right or vice versa-depending on the terrain, suspected enemy location, and number of brigades available to attack. At times, divisions attacked with two or more brigades leading, followed by one or more brigades ready to reinforce the lead brigades or maneuver to the flanks. Two or more divisions constituted a corps that might conduct an attack as part of a larger plan controlled by the army commander. More often, groups of divisions attacked under the control of a corps-level commander. Division and corps commanders generally took a position to the rear of the main line in order to control the flow of reinforcements into the battle, but they often rode forward into the battle lines to influence the action personally.

Of the three basic branches, cavalry made the greatest adaptation during the war. It learned to use its horses for mobility, then dismount and fight on foot like infantry. Cavalry regained a useful battlefield role by employing this tactic, especially after repeating and breechloading rifles gave it the firepower to contend with enemy infantry. Cavalry also found a role off the battlefield, in long-range raids that interdicted enemy supply lines and diverted enemy troops, in a manner that foreshadowed air interdiction in the twentieth century. The campaign for Vicksburg included two excellent examples of this function. The first of these was a Confederate raid on the Union supply depot at Holly Springs, led by Major General Earl Van Dom in December 1862, that effectively thwarted Grant's first offensive into Mississippi. The second was a Union raid from Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, led by Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson, which diverted Confederate attention away from Grant's main effort in April 1863.

In contrast to the cavalry, which reasserted itself as an offensive arm, artillery found that it could best add its firepower to the rifle-musket and tip the balance even more in favor of the tactical defensive, but artillery never regained the importance to offensive maneuver that it held in Mexico. If artillery had developed an indirect firing system, as it did prior to World War I, it might have been able to contribute more to offensive tactics. Still, both sides employed artillery decisively in defensive situations throughout the war.

The most significant tactical innovation in the Civil War was the widespread use of field fortifications after armies realized the tactical offensive's heavy cost. It did not take long for the deadly firepower of the rifle-musket to convince soldiers to entrench every time they halted. Eventually, armies dug complete trenches within an hour of halting in a position. Within twenty-four hours, armies could create defensive works that were nearly impregnable to frontal assaults. In this respect, this development during the American Civil War was a clear forerunner of the kind of warfare that came to dominate World War I.

In the Civil War, the tactical defense dominated the tactical offense because assault formations proved inferior to the defender's firepower. The rifle-musket, in its many forms, provided this firepower and caused the following specific alterations in tactics during the war:

• It required the attacker, in his initial dispositions, to deploy farther away from the defender, thereby increasing the distance over which the attacker had to pass.
• It increased the number of defenders who could engage attackers (with the addition of effective enfilading fire.)
• It reduced the density of both attacking and defending formations.
• It created a shift of emphasis in infantry battles toward firefights rather than shock attacks.
• It caused battles to last longer because units could not close with each other for decisive shock action.
• It encouraged the widespread use of field fortifications. The habitual use of field fortifications by armies was a major American innovation in nineteenth-century warfare.
• It forced cavalry to the battlefield's fringes until cavalrymen acquired equivalent weapons and tactics.
• It forced artillery to abandon its basic offensive maneuver: that of moving forward to within canister range of defending infantry.

The basic unit of operational maneuver for Union forces in the Vicksburg campaign was the corps. For the Confederates, it was the division (there being no corps echelon in Pemberton's order of battle). On the battlefield, the brigade was the basic tactical unit for both sides. (One obvious exception to this rule was the battle of Raymond, where the Confederate force was a single brigade, and the brigade commander deployed and maneuvered regiments.)

Union forces held the initiative at the operational level throughout the campaign. Not surprisingly, in most tactical encounters, Union forces were on the offensive. Union commanders relied heavily on frontal attacks-neither Grant nor his subordinates were noted for their tactical finesse. Frontal assaults in the Civil War were generally costly, but they sometimes worked, as the Vicksburg campaign demonstrates. At the battle of Port Gibson, the Union corps commander who ran the battle, Major General John A. McClernand, enjoyed a heavy numerical advantage over the Confederates, but rugged terrain and jungle-like vegetation greatly facilitated the defense. McClernand responded by packing his forces two, three, and four regiments deep, on whatever open ground was available-crowding out his artillery in the process.

Whether this was a conscious adaptation to circumstances or a blind urge on McClernand's part to gather more and more force is a matter of speculation. Although McClernand's men eventually drove the Confederates from the field in a series of frontal attacks, Port Gibson does not stand out as an example of effective offensive tactics.

Undoubtedly, the most successful frontal attack of the campaign occurred during the battle of the Big Black River on 17 May. Brigadier General Michael K. Lawler, a Union brigade commander, perceived a weak spot in the Confederate fieldworks opposing him. He formed his brigade into a formation reminiscent of the assault columns used by Napoleon: two regiments leading, with a third following closely in support, a fourth in reserve, and two regiments on loan from another brigade to pin the enemy with fire and serve as an exploitation force. Lawler utilized natural cover to bring his brigade close to the enemy, and when the attack came, it was vigorous and impetuous. The unsteady Confederate regiment facing Lawler broke and ran when this assault force reached its breastworks.

The Napoleonic influence can be seen on a larger scale as well. During the Union march from Port Gibson to Jackson, and then to Champion Hill, Grant deployed his corps on separate routes to facilitate movement, but close enough to support each other should Confederates be encountered in force. Napoleon referred to this practice as the battalion carr6c, which can best be summarized by the adage, "march dispersed, fight massed." As he closed on the Confederates at Champion Hill on 16 May, Grant contrived to bring three converging corps-size columns to bear upon the enemy in a classic "concentric attack." The outnumbered Confederates could have been attacked from three directions and possibly destroyed, but Union command, control, and communications were inadequate to the task of coordinating the action. Only one of the three Union columns ever became fully engaged.

But if Union tactical art was mediocre on average, Confederate skill was generally lower still. The Confederate forces defending Mississippi constituted a "department" and never were formally designated as an "army." Prior to the campaign, units were dispersed, having spent the winter in garrison and in fortified positions. Regiments had little recent experience operating together as brigades and divisions. Not until Grant crossed the Mississippi and moved into the interior did a major portion of the department assemble as a field army. Not surprisingly, the assembled forces had difficulty even forming up and marching as a unit, let alone fighting. At the battle of Champion Hill, the Confederate army was unresponsive and uncoordinated. Individual brigades and regiments fought hard and well, but higher-level command and control was lacking.

But at the lower echelons, some of the more imaginative and daring tactics of the Vicksburg campaign were executed, or at least attempted, by Confederates. Whereas Grant's forces relied almost exclusively on the frontal attack, on two occasions during the maneuver phase of the campaign, Confederate commanders attempted to attack their enemy in flank. During the battle of Port Gibson, Brigadier General John S. Bowen tried to thwart McClernand's steamroller tactics by leading a portion of Colonel Francis M. Cockrell's brigade in an attack against the Union right flank. But as was so often the case in the Civil War, by the time Cockrell's men reached their jump-off point, the enemy had begun to respond. After initial progress, Cockrell's men were stopped by Union reserves drawn up to oppose them. Later in the campaign, at the battle of Raymond, Confederate Brigadier General John Gregg attempted another flank attack. Unaware that his brigade confronted a Union corps, Gregg detached three of his five regiments and sent them off to attack the Union right. But when the flanking forces reached their jump-off position and realized the numerical odds against them, they opted not to attack.

When the campaign of maneuver ended and the siege of Vicksburg began, an entirely new set of tactics came into play. Whereas there was little formal doctrine for battlefield tactics in the Civil War (and none at all for operational maneuver), the sciences of fortification and siegecraft were well-established and understood by any military engineer trained at West Point. In keeping with the principles of fortification, the Confederates had erected strong earthwork fortifications that afforded interlocking fields of fire and commanded the approaches into Vicksburg. Trenches or "rifle pits" connected the major fortifications. After two failed assaults (by far the bloodiest frontal attacks of the campaign), the Union forces responded with a siege that was also the product of conventional doctrine. Grant established two separate forces, one to face outward and block any Confederate interference from outside, and the other to enclose Vicksburg and "reduce" its fortifications. Union troops crept up to the Confederate positions through zigzag trenches called "saps" or "approaches" and dug mines under some of the major fortifications.

But the siege ended before the last act of the doctrinal script was played out-there was no final assault.

Victory on Civil War battlefields seldom hinged on the quality or quantity of tactical logistics. On the operational and strategic level, however, logistical capabilities and concerns always shaped the plans and sometimes the outcomes of campaigns. And as the war lengthened, the logistical advantage shifted inexorably to the North. The Federals controlled the majority of financial and industrial resources of the nation, and with their ability to import any needed materials, the Federals ultimately created the best-supplied army the world had yet seen. Despite suffering from shortages of raw materials, the Confederates, on their part, generated adequate ordnance, but they faltered gradually in their ability to acquire other war materiel. The food supply for Southern armies, moreover, was often on the verge of collapse, largely because limitations of the transportation network were compounded by political-military mismanagement. Still, the state of supply within field armies on both sides depended more on the caliber of the people managing resources than on the constraints of available materiel.

One of the most pressing needs at the start of the war was for sufficient infantry and artillery weapons. Large quantities of outmoded muskets were on hand for both sides, either in arsenals or private hands, but the Federals initially had only 35,000 modern rifle-muskets, while the Confederates had seized about 10,000. Purchasing agents rushed to Europe to buy existing stocks or contract for future production. This led to an influx of outmoded weapons, which resulted in many soldiers going into battle with Mexican War-era smoothbore muskets. As late as the fall of 1863, soldiers on both sides in the western theater were armed with muskets; several of Grant's regiments in the Vicksburg campaign noted exchanging their muskets for captured Confederate Enfields. Modern artillery pieces were generally available in adequate quantities, though the Confederates usually were outgunned. Although breechloading technology was available and the Confederates had imported some Whitworths from England, muzzleloading smoothbore or rifled cannon were the standard pieces used by both armies.

With most of the government arsenals and private manufacturing capability located in the North, the Federals ultimately produced sufficient modern firearms for their armies, but the Confederates also accumulated adequate quantities-either from battlefield captures or through the blockade. In addition, exceptional management within the Confederate Ordnance Bureau led to the creation of a series of arsenals throughout the South that produced large quantities of munitions and weapons.

The Northern manufacturing capability permitted the Federals eventually to produce and outfit their forces with repeating arms, the best of which had been patented before 1861. Initially, however, the North's conservative Ordnance Bureau would not risk switching to a new, unproved standard weapon that could lead to soldiers wasting huge quantities of ammunition in the midst of an expanding war. By 1864, after the retirement of Chief of Ordnance James Ripley and with President Lincoln's urging, Federal cavalry received seven-shot Spencer repeating carbines, which greatly increased its battle capabilities.

Both sides initially relied on the states and local districts to provide some equipment, supplies, animals, and foodstuffs. As the war progressed, more centralized control over production and purchasing emerged under both governments. Still, embezzlement and fraud were common problems for both sides throughout the war. The North, with its preponderance of railroads and developed waterways, had ample supply and adequate distribution systems. The South's major supply problem was subsistence. Arguably, the south produced enough food during the war to provide for both military and civilian needs, but mismanagement, parochial local interests, and the relatively underdeveloped transportation network often created havoc with distribution.

In both armies, the Quartermaster, Ordnance, Subsistence, and Medical Bureaus procured and distributed equipment, food, and supplies. The items for which these bureaus were responsible are not dissimilar to the classes of supply used today. Some needs overlapped, such as the Quartermaster Bureau's procurement of wagons for medical ambulances, but conflicts of interest usually were manageable. Department and army commanders requested needed resources directly from the bureaus, and bureau chiefs wielded considerable power as they parceled out occasionally limited resources.

When Major General Earl Van Dom's cavalry destroyed Grant's advance depot at Holly Springs in December 1862, it wrecked Grant's plan for an overland, railroad-centered attack to support Sherman's Chickasaw Bayou expedition. Although the outcome of that expedition would probably not have been altered, this episode illustrates how closely operational planning relied on a fixed logistical base for overland operations. Grant, in his memoirs, however, credits the Holly Springs raid with providing him the key to a less-conventional strategy. Forced to rely upon foraging and requisition in the surrounding countryside to feed his army in the weeks following Van Dom's raid, Grant came to realize that the Mississippi valley, though relatively under populated, was indeed a rich agricultural area, abounding in beef, hogs, and grain. Thus, Grant credited Van Dom with showing him the solution to his supply dilemma should he choose to operate far from any secure logistical pipeline. War materiel (weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, etc.) would still have to be hauled by wagons, along with some limited food items such as coffee and bread. The countryside, however, could sustain his army with bulky animal forage, meat, and other provisions.

In January 1863, Grant established an impressive logistics system running from his depots at Cairo, Illinois, and Memphis to advance bases established along the levees at Lake Providence, Milliken's Bend, and Young's Point-the latter being just ten river miles from Vicksburg. Supplies as well as troops moved down river on a sizeable fleet of army-contracted riverboats. These transports varied considerably in size, but many were capable of carrying 300,000 pounds of supplies-the equivalent of 150 wagonloods. At the end of March, when Grant decided to move his army south of Vicksburg on the Louisiana side of the river, he hoped to have water transport most or all of the way. Union engineers, augmented by details from McClernand's and Sherman's corps, dug a canal at Duckport linking the Mississippi to the network of bayous paralleling the army's route of march. The canal was completed successfully, but falling water levels made it useless before it could do any good. As a last resort, Union logisticians pushed wagon trains along the sixty-three-mile route that McClernand's and McPherson's corps traveled, from Milliken's Bend to Bruinsburg. Some supplies were hauled by wagon from Milliken's Bend to Perkins' Plantation, just below New Carthage. There, they were loaded on riverboats that had run by the Vicksburg batteries, for delivery to the army downstream. About 11 May, over a week after the bulk of the army had crossed to the east bank, Sherman's men completed a new road from Young's Point to Bowers' Landing, across the base of De Soto point. This road shortened the wagon haul to twelve miles-still a two-day haul over the rough roads. From Bower's Landing, steamers carried supplies down the river to the newly won logistical base at Grand Gulf.

The net effect of these efforts was to give Grant two sets of well-stocked advance depots, one below Vicksburg and several just above the city. After Grant moved away from his new base at Grand Gulf, his army had only to reestablish links with the river and its supply problems would essentially disappear. The Confederates knew this, and expected Grant to stay close to the river during his advance toward Vicksburg. Thus, his movement inland came as a surprise.

In his postwar memoirs. Grant stated that he "cut loose" from his supply lines when he pushed inland from Grand Gulf. Many historians have taken those words at face value, asserting that Grant's men relied entirely upon food and forage gathered from the countryside. Grant, however, never cut completely loose from his supply lines, nor did he intend his words to convey that. As his army maneuvered east of the river, a steady stream of wagons carried supplies from Young's Point to Bower's Landing, where the supplies were loaded on steamboats and carried to Grand Gulf. From Grand Gulf, huge wagon trains, escorted by brigades hurrying forward to join the main force, carried supplies to the army. No "line of supply" existed only in the sense that Union troops did not occupy and garrison the supply route. An aggressive Confederate thrust into the area between Grand Gulf and Grant's army might have thwarted the Union campaign-Grant's men could forage for food, but only so long as they moved forward. Moreover, the barns and fields of Mississippi did not provide any ammunition to the foragers. One of the ironies of the campaign is that Pemberton's single offensive action, the attempt to strike south from Edwards toward Dillon's Plantation on 15 May, would probably have led him to Grant's ammunition train. However, heavy rains, confusion, and indecision led instead to the battle at Champion Hill.

During the campaign of maneuver, Grant was well served by his logistical staff in the rear and by the aggressive support of Rear Admiral David Porter. As Grant's army neared Vicksburg, Porter sensed the opportunity to establish a logistic base just north of Vicksburg on the Yazoo River at Johnson's Plantation (the site of Sherman's landing in the abortive Chickasaw Bayou expedition). The Navy's initiative led to supplies being on the ground by 18 May when Grant's army reached the outer works around the city. That, and efficient construction of roads from the plantation by Federal engineers, enabled Grant to fulfill a promise to provide hardtack for his troops by 21 May. At the same time, Porter's gunboats reduced the Warrenton batteries just a few miles below the city and enabled Grant's logisticians to move the lower supply base from Grand Gulf to Warrenton. These two bases cut the overland wagon haul to a maximum of six miles for units manning the siege lines. Thus, as Grant closed on Vicksburg, his supply situation changed dramatically, almost overnight, whereas the Confederates then had to rely almost completely on whatever stores had been placed in the city in advance.

Curiously, the Confederate logistical situation in the Vicksburg campaign was almost uniformly worse than that of the Union forces. The fact that the Confederates were conducting defensive operations within their own territory resulted in as many logistical problems as advantages. The bountiful forage discovered by Grant's troops was generally not available to the Confederate army, due in large part to the farmers' reluctance to part with their produce. In March, Pemberton complained of a shortage of beef, yet one of his staff officers noted an abundance of cattle in the region between Vicksburg and Jackson. Federal surgeons found apothecary shelves in Jackson well stocked with drugs, yet Confederate surgeons were critically short of medical supplies. The explanation, however, is simple: the invading Federals could take what they needed, whereas the defending Confederates could not so easily requisition from their own people.

Thus, the Confederates had to rely upon their established logistical systems and procedures. Confederate logistical doctrine in the Civil War called for armies to supply themselves, as far as possible, from the resources of the area in which they were stationed. There was no shortage of basic supplies in the Vicksburg region. The Mississippi Delta (the area between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers) and farmlands to the east produced large quantities of food for man and beast. The transportation net, with the main rail line running from Vicksburg to the major rail nexus at Jackson, and the numerous navigable waterways, offered the Confederates the ability to stockpile or shift supplies quickly. The telegraph network provided communications that could support the management of logistical resources. Depots and manufacturing centers in Jackson. Enterprise, and Columbus, Mississippi, helped support a variety of Confederate needs.

Three major factors, however, limited Pemberton's ability to optimize his logistical support. The first problem was the inefficiency of, and competing priorities between, the Confederate quartermaster and commissary departments. Many of the supplies from Pemberton's area were needed to support other military departments. Even so, the management of these resources was inefficient, and not enough funds were available for local purchase of food. Pemberton also had concerns about his own staff-officials in Richmond had received civilian complaints about Pemberton's Quartermaster. This problem, however vexing, did not prove insurmountable.

The second problem was largely beyond Pemberton's control-Union naval superiority. Prior to the war, most bulk commodities were moved by water. But in the course of the Vicksburg campaign, Porter's gunboats denied the Confederates the use of the Mississippi and its tributaries, thus throwing heavier demands on the overtaxed road and rail transport systems. Even before Grant's army crossed to the east bank of the Mississippi, Pemberton found it difficult to gather and distribute supplies.

The third and greatest problem hampering Confederate logistical efforts was Pemberton's lack of overall vision for the campaign. In the absence of a campaign plan, the Confederate logisticians, like Pemberton himself, could only react to Union initiatives. Supplies could not be positioned to support any particular scheme of maneuver.

After Grant seized and destroyed Jackson, all supplies became critical for Pemberton. With Porter on the Mississippi and with the eastward rail lines interdicted, Pemberton was effectively cut off from any resources beyond the immediate vicinity of his army. Fortunately, his largest supply depots were in Vicksburg, a fact that helps explain Pemberton's reluctance to risk the loss of the city. Rations that could be stretched out for perhaps two full months were stockpiled inside Vicksburg before 18 May. Ordnance officers had managed to gather significant quantities of small arms and ammunition as well. The main shortages in the city after the siege began were artillery, medical supplies, engineer tools, and percussion caps for rifle-muskets. The latter shortage was eased when couriers penetrated the Union siege lines with several hundred thousand caps.

As the siege progressed, the contrast between Union and Confederate logistics became increasingly pronounced. Confederate stockpiles dwindled, rations were cut, and ammunition expenditure curtailed. But the Union forces, situated as they were on North America's greatest transportation artery, received reinforcements and supplies in seemingly limitless quantities. Predictably, Confederate morale deteriorated until Pemberton felt that his troops had lost the ability and will to fight. Finally, logistics played a role in determining the final surrender terms. An important factor influencing Grant's decision to parole the entire Vicksburg garrison of over 29,000 men was the simple fact that the Confederate government, not the Federal army, would then have to deal with transporting and feeding those troops.

Engineers on both sides performed many tasks essential to every campaign. Engineers trained at West Point were at a premium; thus, many civil engineers, commissioned as volunteers, supplemented the work being done by engineer officers. The Confederates, in particular, relied on civilian expertise because many of their trained engineer officers sought line duties. State or even local civil engineers planned and supervised much of the work done on local fortifications.

In the prewar U.S. Army, the Corps of Engineers contained a handful of staff officers and one company of trained engineer troops. This cadre expanded to a four-company Regular engineer battalion. Congress also created a single company of topographic engineers, which joined the Regular battalion when the engineer bureaus merged in 1863. In addition, several volunteer pioneer regiments, some containing up to 2,000 men, supported the various field armies. The Corps of Engineers also initially controlled the fledgling Balloon Corps, which provided aerial reconnaissance. The Confederate Corps of Engineers, formed as a small staff and one company of sappers, miners, and pontoniers in 1861, grew more slowly and generally relied on details and contract labor rather than established units with trained engineers and craftsmen.

Engineer missions for both sides included construction of fortifications; repair and construction of roads, bridges, and, in some cases, railroads; demolition; limited construction of obstacles; and construction or reduction-of-siege works. The Federal Topographic Engineers, a separate prewar bureau, performed reconnaissance and produced maps. The Confederates, however, never separated these functions in creating their Corps of Engineers. Experience during the first year of the war convinced the Federals that all engineer functions should be merged under a single corps because qualified engineer officers tended to perform all related functions. As a result, the Federals also merged the Topographic Engineers into their Corps of Engineers in March 1863.

Bridging assets included wagon-mounted pontoon trains that carried either wooden, canvas-covered, or inflatable rubber pontoon boats. Using this equipment, trained engineer troops could bridge even large rivers in a matter of hours. The most remarkable pontoon bridge of tire war was the 2,200-foot bridge built by Army of the Potomac engineers in 1864 over the James River-one of over three dozen pontoon bridges built in support of campaigns in the east that year. In 1862, the Confederates began developing pontoon trains after they had observed their effectiveness. In fact, during the Atlanta campaign of 1864, General Joseph Johnston had four pontoon trains available to support his army.

Both armies in every campaign of the war traveled over roads and bridges built or repaired by their engineers. Federal engineers also helped clear waterways by dredging, removing trees, or digging canals. Fixed fortifications laid out under engineer supervision played critical roles in the Vicksburg campaign and in actions around Richmond and Petersburg. Engineers also supervised the siege works to reduce those fortifications.

While the Federal engineer effort expanded in both men and materiel as the war progressed, the Confederate efforts continued to be hampered by major problems. The relatively small number of organized engineer units available forced Confederate engineers to rely heavily on details or contract labor. Finding adequate manpower, however, was often difficult because of competing demands for it. Local slave owners were reluctant to provide labor details when labor was crucial to their economic survival. Despite congressional authorization to conscript 20,000 slaves as a labor force, state and local opposition continually hindered efforts to draft slave labor. Another related problem concerned the value of Confederate currency. Engineer efforts required huge sums for men and materiel, yet initial authorizations were small, and although congressional appropriations grew later in the war, inflation greatly reduced effective purchasing power. A final problem was the simple shortage of iron resources, which severely limited the Confederates' ability to increase railroad mileage or even produce iron tools.

In 1861, maps for both sides were also in short supply; for many areas in the interior, they were nonexistent. As the war progressed, the Federals developed a highly sophisticated mapping capability. Federal topographic engineers performed personal reconnaissance to develop base maps, reproduced them by several processes, and distributed them to field commanders. Photography, lithographic presses, and eventually photochemical processes gave the Federals the ability to reproduce maps quickly. Western armies, which usually operated far from base cities, carried equipment to reproduce maps on campaigns with their army headquarters. By 1864, annual map production exceeded 21,000 copies. Confederate topographic work never approached the Federal effort in quantity or quality. Confederate topographers initially used tracing paper to reproduce maps. Not until 1864 did the use of photographic methods become widespread in the South.

The engineering operations conducted in support of the Vicksburg campaign were perhaps the most diverse and complex of the war. For much of the campaign, Federal engineers focused on mobility operations, while Confederate engineers emphasized countermobility, particularly in denying the Federals the use of streams and bayous in the swamps north of the city. Confederate engineers also supervised the construction and repair of the fortifications around the city. During the siege phase of the campaign, Grant's engineers focused on the reduction of those works, utilizing procedures such as sapping, mining, and other related tasks, as well as the improvement of roads and landings to enhance logistical support. This wide range of activities, which required engineers on both sides to construct roads, emplace or construct bridges, clear or obstruct waterways, construct field works, emplace batteries, divert the flow of rivers, and numerous other tasks, is made even more remarkable by the limited numbers of trained engineers available to accomplish them.

Grant's Army of the Tennessee contained three formally organized engineer units. The largest was the Missouri Engineer Regiment of the West. Organized initially in July 1861, its ranks held skilled railroad men, engineers, and ironworkers recruited from St. Louis and surrounding areas. By the time of the Vicksburg campaign, it had extensive experience in a variety of construction operations and had been involved in some minor skirmishing. The regiment, with a strength of roughly 900 men, constructed roads around Young's Point in February 1863 and in March cut levees on the west side of the river and constructed casemated battery positions opposite Vicksburg. In April, six companies of the regiment returned to Memphis to begin the repair of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Companies A, D, F, and I, which were designated the 2d Battalion, remained with Grant's main force during the decisive phases of the campaign. The other two formally organized engineer units were the Kentucky Company of Engineers and Mechanics and Company I of the 35th Missouri, which was designated as the army's pontoon company. Since Grant then had barely 500 "trained" engineers at his disposal for his operations below Vicksburg, most of his divisions detailed men for engineer tasks or designated one of their infantry companies as engineer troops. Known as "pioneer" companies and detachments, or as the "pioneer corps" of their parent divisions, these ad hoc units generally undertook missions requiring higher degrees of skill than those assigned to normal labor details.

The most strenuous engineer labors of the campaign took place between January and April 1863, as Grant sought ways to bypass the strong Confederate position at Vicksburg by creating flanking routes though the bayou country. Several of these efforts involved alternate water routes around the city. One scheme involved digging a canal that would divert the Mississippi through the peninsula directly opposite Vicksburg, a project initiated during Farragut's expedition in June 1862. Beginning in January 1863, details of infantry under engineer supervision labored the better part of two months before the rising river flooded them out. A month later, labor details working under engineer supervision cut the levee at Yazoo Pass to divert Mississippi River water into the Delta region in hopes that gunboats and transports could find a way to Vicksburg from the north. In March, the 1st Missouri Engineers used black powder to blow a gap in the western levee along the Mississippi River at Lake Providence. The plan was to flood enough of the countryside to link the bayous and rivers west of the Mississippi and thus provide an alternate route for steamboats all the way to the Red River. Once the levees were broken, the engineers used man-powered underwater saws, which swung pendulum-like from barge-mounted trestles, to cut off trees and stumps and allow passage of vessels. This backbreaking work required the men to spend much of their time in the water untangling the saws. It took the Missouri Engineers eight days to clear a two-mile stretch of bayou. Unfortunately, falling water levels led to the abandonment of the project.

Grant's subsequent march from Milliken's Bend to Hard Times, a distance of sixty-three miles through the swampy floodplain, entailed a vast amount of engineering work. Much of the roadbed had to be corduroyed (paved with logs laid side-by-side); stretches of quicksand required layers of planking to create sufficient buoyancy for wagons; and numerous water courses had to be bridged using materials found on site. Engineers and infantry details constructed eight major bridges, totaling more than 1,700 feet, along the road to Hard Times. Again, the shortage of qualified engineer troops meant that most of the actual labor involved details of infantry, under the supervision of engineer-trained officers. This road-building effort continued on the west bank even after Grant crossed the river at Bruinsburg and pushed inland.

During the campaign of maneuver on the east side of the river, Union bridge builders demonstrated their ingenuity to the fullest. Twenty-two trestle, suspension, pontoon, and raft bridges were employed in the campaign. Engineers used all available materials in their bridges, including boards pulled from buildings, cotton bales, telegraph wire, vines, cane, and flatboats, in addition to the supplies forwarded from engineer depots upriver. The pontoon company of Sherman's corps ultimately brought along its inflatable rubber pontoons, which were employed in the crossing of the Big Black River.

Once Grant decided to initiate a formal siege to reduce Vicksburg, he was faced with a critical shortage of trained engineer officers. Grant ordered all officers with West Point training or civil engineer experience to assist chief engineer Captain Frederick E. Prime and the other three engineer officers on Grant's staff. These men supervised infantry details at the different approaches, while the trained engineer units worked in the saps and trenches. Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, Major General John A. Logan's chief engineer, was able to procure experienced coal miners, drawn from the ranks, to construct the mine undertaken by Logan's division.

On the Confederate side, the engineering effort in this campaign came under the general authority of chief engineer Major Samuel H. Lockett, who arrived at Vicksburg in June 1862. At that time, Vicksburg's only fortifications consisted of a few batteries along the river. Union naval bombardments on 27-28 July 1862 persuaded the Confederate command to fortify the city on both the landward and river fronts. Lockett spent the month of August surveying the rough terrain and planning on how best to utilize it for defensive purposes. On 1 September 1862, the actual construction began, using hired or impressed slave labor. Lockett's fortified line extended nine miles, from the river above Vicksburg to the river below. Thirteen river batteries studded the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. Snyder's (Haynes') Bluff to the north and Warrenton to the south were also fortified. In addition, the Confederates also constructed a set of floating barriers called "rafts" across the Yazoo River to block incursions by Union gunboats.

When Pemberton assumed command of the department on 1 November 1862, Lockett's responsibilities increased. He exercised authority over the entire area from Holly Springs to Port Hudson and from Vicksburg to Jackson. As part of his duties, Lockett surveyed defensive positions around Jackson and Edwards Station. In May 1863, after Grant had crossed the river, Lockett laid out defensive bridgeheads at several crossing sites along the Big Black River.

One other Confederate engineering effort is worthy of note. Brigadier General John S. Bowen, given command of Grand Gulf in March 1863, used slave labor to shave the cliffs overlooking the mouth of the Big Black River and built a series of batteries and rifle pits that would withstand over one hundred tons of ordnance fired by Porter's gunboats during their unsuccessful bombardment of the position on 29 April.

As the campaign unfolded, Lockett continued to support the Confederate army, often on his own initiative. It was Lockett who found and repaired the washed-out bridge over Baker's Creek that gave Pemberton a withdrawal route after the battle of Champion Hill on 16 May. Lockett later prepared the railroad bridge over the Big Black for demolition and fired it on 17 May just before the Federals reached it after their destruction of the Confederate bridgehead. Following that disastrous engagement, Lockett rushed back to Vicksburg to supervise the repair of fortifications damaged by the winter rains. Once the siege began, Lockett was busy supervising the repair of fortifications damaged by Union artillery. When the Federals began mining efforts, Lockett responded with at least fifteen countermines, three of which he exploded.

Lockett operated with even fewer engineer assets than the meager number available to Grant. Although Lockett and his three-man staff equaled the number of engineers assigned to Grant's staff, and although he did have four other trained engineers as assistants, his troop assets included only one company of sappers and miners that numbered less than three dozen men. Most of the entrenching work had been done by a relatively small number of hired or impressed slave laborers. Apparently, Confederate infantrymen were less willing than their Union counterparts to dig and maintain earthworks. When Lockett reached Vicksburg on 18 May, he had only twenty-six sappers and miners, eight detailed mechanics, four overseers, and seventy-two slaves (twenty of whom were sick) to quickly repair nine miles of fortified lines. Lockett noted having only 500 shovels available.

Although the Confederate army at Vicksburg was obviously blessed with an engineer staff officer of talent and initiative, not all of Lockett's countrymen appreciated his efforts. General Joseph E. Johnston, when he toured the works around Vicksburg in December 1862, felt that "[the usual error of Confederate engineering had been committed there. An immense, entrenched camp, requiring an army to hold it, had been made instead of a fort requiring only a small garrison." This defect, however, was not Lockett's fault. He received little command guidance; therefore, he planned his defenses to suit the best engineering aspects of the terrain.

Topographical engineering played little role in this campaign for either side. Grant's topographic engineers became fully involved in the more crucial field engineering missions, and the speed of movements in May precluded useful mapping work. The Confederates, as was typical in most of the western theater, paid almost no attention to mapping or even detailed reconnaissance of their area of operations. As a result. Pemberton did not know the topography of his own department any better than Grant did during the campaign of maneuver.

Communications systems used during the Civil War consisted of line-of-sight signaling, telegraphic systems, and various forms of the time-honored courier methods. The telegraph mainly offered viable strategic and operational communications, line-of-sight signaling provided operational and limited tactical possibilities, and couriers were most heavily used for tactical communications.

The Federal Signal Corps was in its infancy during the Civil War, Major Albert C. Myer having been appointed the first signal chief in 1860. His organization grew slowly and became officially recognized as the Signal Corps in March 1863. It achieved bureau status by November of that year. Throughout the war, the Federal Signal Corps remained small, its maximum strength reaching just 1,500 officers and men, most of whom were on detached service with the corps. Myer also indirectly influenced the formation of the Confederate Signal Service. Among the men who assisted Myer in prewar testing of his wigwag signaling system was Lieutenant E. P. Alexander. (Myer's wigwag system, patented in 1858, used five separate, numbered movements of a single flag. Four-number groups represented letters of the alphabet and a few simple words and phrases. The system could also be employed at night by using kerosene torches.) Alexander used wigwag signals to the Confederates' advantage during the First Battle of Bull Run and later organized the Confederate Signal Corps. Officially established in April 1862, the Confederate Signal Corps was attached to the Adjutant and Inspector General Department. It attained the same size as its Federal counterpart, with nearly 1,500 men ultimately being detailed for service.

Myer also fought hard to develop a Federal field telegraph service. This field service utilized the Beardslee device, a magneto-powered machine operated by turning a wheel to a specific point. This sent an electrical impulse that keyed the machine at the other end to the same letter. Although less reliable than the standard Morse code telegraph key, the Beardslee could be used by an operator with only several hours' training and did not require bulky batteries for a power source. Myer's field telegraph units carried equipment on wagons that enabled its operators to establish lines between field headquarters. The insulated wire used could also be hooked into existing trunk lines, thus offering the potential to extend the reach of the civilian telegraph network. Control over the existing fixed telegraph system, however, remained with the U.S. Military Telegraph Service. Myer lost his struggle to keep the field telegraph service under the Signal Corps when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton relieved Myer as the signal chief in November 1863 and placed all telegraph activity under the Military Telegraph Service.

Although the Confederate Signal Corps' visual communications capabilities were roughly equal to those of the Federals, Confederate field telegraph operations remained too limited to be of operational significance. The Confederates' existing telegraph lines provided strategic communications capabilities similar to those of the Federals, but lack of resources and factories in the South for producing wire precluded their extending the prewar telegraph networks.

The courier system, using mounted staff officers or detailed soldiers to deliver orders and messages, remained the most viable tactical communications option, short of commanders meeting face to face. Although often effective, this system was fraught with difficulties, as couriers often were captured, killed, or delayed in route. Commanders sometimes misinterpreted or ignored messages, and situations often changed by the time messages were delivered. The weaknesses of the courier system, though not always critical in themselves, tended to compound commanders' errors or misjudgments during campaigns and battles.

Operating along river lines of communication meant that Grant's army often would leave behind its excellent strategic telegraph network. Memphis, two days by steamboat from Vicksburg, was the nearest telegraph station upriver, and the telegraph lines running north from Memphis often were cut by guerrillas. For much of the campaign, Cairo, Illinois, was the closest point that had reliable telegraph links with the East. Once Grant began operations south of Vicksburg, he essentially broke off his communications with Washington. President Lincoln, on 22 May 1863 (the day Grant launched his deliberate assault against Vicksburg), telegraphed Major General Stephen Hurlbutt at Memphis with a situation update based upon information gleaned from Confederate newspapers smuggled out of Richmond. The next day, Lincoln, who had not yet heard from Grant about his landing at Bruinsburg, finally received a telegraphic report. Grant's message, describing his operations since 30 April, had been sent upriver by courier on a steamer only after the Federal army had closed on the city on 18 May.

As for Federal tactical communications, Grant's signal corps detachment struggled to fill its ranks with detailed officers and men, but the full complement of forty-five officers was not assigned until late in the campaign. Signal officers operating with the field army probably provided their best service as scouts, since they usually advanced ahead of the main force, reconnoitering potential signal sites. The nature of the terrain generally precluded communications by flag, but stations set up along the riverbanks and at key areas along the line of march offered some limited local communications. Interestingly, Admiral Porter early saw the value of the army signal system. He detailed seven Navy officers to work with the signal corps. Thus Porter, on the river, could maintain a link with the army as long as the gunboats operated within visual range of army signal stations on shore.

Telegraph played no tactical role in the Vicksburg campaign. Although six field telegraph units were assigned to Grant's army, they did not arrive in Memphis until late June and did not reach Vicksburg until after the surrender. During the campaign of maneuver, Grant's most reliable means of tactical communication was the courier, and this method was fraught with problems. On 16 May, as the Federal army advanced on multiple routes toward Champion Hill, the courier system failed badly. When the northernmost of the three Union columns became fully engaged with the enemy, Grant, accompanying that column, sent a message to McClernand, three miles away, to bring the other two columns into action. But the courier carrying the message chose to take a twelve-mile route by road rather than riding three miles across country. As a result, four hours elapsed before McClernand's divisions pushed the enemy, and part of his force never attacked at all. Another problem arose during the deliberate assault of the Vicksburg works on 22 May, when Grant's inability to communicate directly with McClernand led to confusion about the need to support a supposed success in McClernand's sector.

The Confederates, on the other hand, operated with an excellent network of fixed telegraphic communications until Grant cut the lines into Vicksburg as he advanced from the south and east. The existence of a civilian telegraph net allowed Pemberton to get by with a signal corps detachment of only three officers. Virtually every significant town was linked by telegraph line; thus, Pemberton initially had excellent operational as well as strategic communications. In December 1862, Confederate telegraphers, using a line running along the west bank of the Mississippi, alerted Pemberton to the approach of Sherman's Chickasaw Bayou expedition, enabling the Confederates to bring in reinforcements from other parts of the department.

Ironically, the effectiveness of his telegraph communications may have worked to Pemberton's disadvantage as the campaign progressed because the telegraph system also allowed him to receive contradictory advice from two key subordinates, Bowen and Stevenson. Bowen argued that the main Federal effort was coming from below Vicksburg, while Stevenson argued that it was coming above Vicksburg. The telegraph also provided Pemberton with conflicting instructions from Joseph Johnston and Jefferson Davis about whether he should defend or evacuate Vicksburg as Grant advanced on the city. Most important, the allure of the telegraph may well have been a factor in keeping Pemberton tied to his headquarters long after he should have taken the field in person.

After 4 May, when advancing Federals began to cut telegraph wires, the Confederates relied increasingly on couriers. This system also had its problems. One of the three couriers Johnston sent out on 13 May with an order directing Pemberton to join him at Clinton was actually a Federal spy, who instead delivered the message to the Federals. Thus Grant learned of the order before the other two couriers reached Pemberton!

Once Pemberton withdrew behind the works at Vicksburg, couriers became his only means of communication with the outside world. Although a few men were able to slip through Federal lines early in the siege, couriers ultimately were forced to use the river, clinging to floating logs or pieces of debris in order to enter and leave the city. Messages conveyed by this dangerous route took from five to ten days to pass between Johnston and Pemberton, and often couriers destroyed their messages if capture seemed imminent. The last message Pemberton received from outside the city came in by courier on 23 June.

Federal and Confederate medical systems followed a similar pattern. Surgeons general and medical directors for both sides had served many years in the prewar Medical Department but were hindered by an initial lack of administrative experience in handling large numbers of casualties, as well as by the state of medical science in the midnineteenth century. Administrative procedures improved with experience, but throughout the war, the simple lack of knowledge about the true causes of disease and infection led to many more deaths than direct battlefield action.

After the disaster at the Battle of First Bull Run, the Federal Medical Department established an evacuation and treatment system developed by Surgeon Jonathan Letterman. At the heart of the system were three precepts: consolidation of field hospitals at division level, decentralization of medical supplies down to regimental level, and centralization of medical control of ambulances at all levels. A battle casualty evacuated from the front line normally received treatment at a regimental holding area immediately to the rear. From this point, wagons or ambulances carried wounded men to a division field hospital, normally within a mile of the battle lines. Seriously wounded men could then be further evacuated by wagon, rail, or watercraft to general hospitals, located usually in towns along the lines of communication in the armies' rear areas.

Although the Confederate system followed the same general principles, Confederate field hospitals were often consolidated at brigade rather than division level. A second difference lay in the established span of control of medical activities. Unlike their Federal counterparts, who had control over all medical activities within an army area, a Confederate army medical director had no control of activities beyond his own brigade or division field hospitals. A separate medical director for large hospitals was responsible for evacuation and control. In practice, both sets of medical directors resolved potential problems through close cooperation. By 1863, the Confederacy had also introduced rear area "wayside hospitals," which were intended to handle convalescents en route home on furloughs.

Procedures, medical techniques, and medical problems for both sides were virtually identical. Commanders discouraged soldiers from leaving the battle lines to escort wounded back to the rear, but such practice was common, especially in less-disciplined units. The established technique for casualty evacuation was to detail men for litter and ambulance duty. Both armies used bandsmen, among others, for this task. Casualties would move or be assisted back from the battle line, where litter bearers evacuated them to field hospitals using ambulances or supply wagons. Ambulances were specially designed, two- or four-wheel carts with springs to limit jolts, but rough roads made even short trips agonizing for wounded men. Brigade and division surgeons staffed consolidated field hospitals. Hospital site considerations were the availability of water, potential buildings to supplement the hospital tents, and security from enemy cannon and rifle fire. The majority of operations performed at field hospitals in the aftermath of battle were amputations. Approximately 70 per cent of Civil War wounds occurred in the extremities, and the soft Minié ball shattered any bones that it hit. Amputation was the best technique then available to limit the chance of serious infection. The Federals were generally well supplied with chloroform, morphine, and other drugs, though shortages did occur on the battlefield. Confederate surgeons often lacked critical drugs and medical supplies.

Grant's Army of the Tennessee had adopted most of the Letterman system by March 1863. Thus, field hospitals were consolidated at the division echelon, and medical supplies were distributed down to regimental level. Ambulances were under positive medical control, with commissioned or noncommissioned officers in charge at division and brigade and ambulance drivers and assistants assigned to each regiment. When Regular army surgeon Madison Mills became Grant's medical director in March 1863, he inherited a growing field hospital established at Milliken's Bend. Mills established convalescent camps and opened more field hospitals there to support Grant's guidance that ill troops be kept with the command insofar as possible to enable them to rejoin their units upon recovery.

Federal surgeons were able to stockpile a significant amount of medical supplies in the depot established at Young's Point. Most were kept on the steamer Des Arc, which could move supplies to any secure drop-off point along the river. By May, Mills estimated that six months of medical supplies had been stockpiled. He was assisted in this by Grant's standing order that any steamer with space that moved down river from Memphis was to bring additional medical supplies. The medical department also received invaluable assistance from the U.S. Sanitary Commission in the. form of supplies and evacuation of sick and wounded.

The river constituted an excellent evacuation as well as supply route. In addition to the 1,000-bed general hospital and convalescent camps established just north of Vicksburg, thousands of beds were available in general hospitals up river. Memphis alone had 5,000 available beds, with many more available in general hospitals in Cairo, Mound City, Paducah, Evansville, and St. Louis. Three steamers, R. C. Wood, D. A. January, and City of Memphis, served as hospital ships for evacuation to these upriver hospitals. A round trip to Memphis took four to five days.

The most severe medical problem facing Grant's army between January and July 1863 was disease, a problem severely exacerbated early in the campaign when the army occupied swampy encampments along the river. From January to March, high water forced the troops to crowd together on the tops of the levees. Unfortunately, the levees also served as roads, latrines, and graves. Thus, Grant's army experienced over 170,000 cases of serious illness during this encampment. One should be skeptical of historians' assertions that work on projects such as the canal helped put Grant's men in excellent shape for the campaigning to come. Reports from regiments engaged in these projects routinely list more men on the sick lists than were present for duty. Once Grant began to maneuver, however, the combination of continual movement and healthier terrain led to dramatic decreases in serious disease.

During the campaign of maneuver, surgeons were forced by the nature of operations to carry sick and wounded soldiers along with the marching columns or leave them behind to be captured. By the time Grant began the siege of Vicksburg, over 2,000 Federal wounded from the battles of Raymond, Jackson, and Champion Hill had been left under Confederate control. Nineteen Federal surgeons stayed behind to attend these men. Four additional Federal surgeons stayed to help attend the Confederate wounded from those battles, which indicates the critical shortage of doctors serving Pemberton's army. On 20 May, five wagons displaying a flag of truce and loaded with medical supplies rolled east from the Federal siege lines into Confederate territory to support the wounded from those earlier battles. After the surrender of Vicksburg on 4 July, fifty ambulances moved to Raymond under a flag of truce to recover many of these wounded.

Although the Federal corps commanders' emphasis on medical support varied, medical officers had adequate supplies throughout the campaign. Sherman's corps allocated enough wagons for medical needs. McClernand, on the other hand, accorded low priority to medical requirements, thus Surgeon Mills had to scramble to support his XIII Corps surgeons. Shortages of medical supplies were partly made up in Jackson and other towns as surgeons raided the stocks of local drug stores. There also seemed to be no shortage of food for the wounded. Surgeons reported an abundance of beef for making soup and an adequate supply of hard bread and vegetables. After the supply line to the river was fully reestablished on 21 May, even ice became available.

After Grant initiated the siege of Vicksburg, division hospitals were established a mile behind the lines, using combinations of buildings and tents. Water often came from cisterns because of a shortage of wells and springs. The policy of keeping wounded and sick soldiers close to their commands, whenever practicable, was maintained. A consolidated evacuation hospital near Johnson's plantation on the Yazoo River housed the seriously ill and wounded until medical steamers could move them up the Mississippi to general hospitals.

Except for the assaults of 19 and 22 May, when more than 3,000 Union soldiers were wounded, battle casualties averaged close to a hundred per week, numbers that the medical staffs could manage effectively. Upon the Confederate surrender on 4 July, however, the Federal surgeons were confronted with over 6,000 Confederate sick and wounded from the city. The well-established Federal hospital, supply, and evacuation network proved adequate to meet this new demand.

Relatively little specific information is available concerning Confederate medical efforts during the campaign. However, it is safe to assume that problems with sickness and disease, particularly for those units posted in the Delta, were of similar magnitude to those encountered by Union troops when they, too, camped on the floodplain. It is clear that the Confederate army suffered from supply shortages and from an inadequate number of trained surgeons. Since Federal surgeons reported finding large stocks of medical supplies in Jackson, it would seem that some of Pemberton's logistical problems hindered his medical staff as well. Reports on the medical condition of the army at the time of the surrender reveal that, within the city, the Confederates were "almost destitute" of medical supplies.

Map 1 (click Image to enlarge)

The central and dominating feature of the Vicksburg campaign is the mighty Mississippi River. This great waterway, which drains more than 1,234,000 square miles of the North American continent, shaped and constrained the Civil War in the West at every level-strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategically, opening the Mississippi River system to Union commerce was a key objective for the Lincoln administration and a potential death knell to Confederate aspirations of nationhood. Operationally, the river was the axis of advance and main line of communications for Union forces penetrating the Confederate heartland from north and south. By November 1862, the Confederates retained control over only the stretch of river between Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana.

The Mississippi River created the terrain over which much of the Vicksburg campaign would be fought and thus influenced the tactical level of operations. The Mississippi is an "aggrading" stream, meaning that it is depositing sediments in its bed rather than eroding them away. In other words, it is building up the land, raising its own bed in the process, instead of cutting a channel down into the land. The process of sediment deposition occurs fastest at the banks where the river's waters run. slowest, leading to the creation of natural levees flanking the channel. When the river rounds a bend, it tends to scour away at the outside of the bend and deposits sediment at the inside, thus moving itself laterally across the landscape. Periodically, the river breaks through its banks, seeking a shorter and lower course, where it begins again the process of building up its bed with sediments. Since the last Ice Age, when the Mississippi assumed its present configuration, the great river has wriggled back and forth across its vast floodplain, just as a rivulet of rainwater writhes upon a windowpane. It has deposited millions of tons of sediment and left a patchwork of waterways and abandoned natural levees to mark each change of its channel. Lake Providence, the Yazoo River, and the countless waterways of the "Delta" are all relics of Mississippi River channels in bygone ages (see map 1).

Periodically, the Mississippi floods, more or less inundating the entire floodplain, leaving only the tops of the levees above water and rendering temporarily navigable many of the tributaries and abandoned channels that abound in the river's proximity. Such was the case in the first quarter of 1863. Unusually heavy rains filled the floodplain with water and kept the river well above flood stage from mid-January until early April.

In the twentieth century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has sought to contain the Mississippi within a set of fixed banks. Before that time, however, major changes of course were a frequent occurrence. Thus it is that much of the Mississippi's 1863 riverbed is today either slack water or dry land. The river settlements of Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, and Bruinsburg have all been deserted by the channel. Owing to the intervention of man, the floodplain, as a whole, is a much drier place today than it was in 1863.

The river channel is an imposing terrain feature. Averaging in 1863 about one-half mile in width, at the hairpin turns adjacent to Vicksburg and Grand Gulf, it narrowed to one-quarter mile and ran one hundred feet deep. Water velocity at these constricted points was about six knots, making for treacherous navigation.

Although the Mississippi represented one of the great transportation arteries on the continent, access to the river from the shore and vice versa was not easy. It is true that riverboats could tie up at any of the numerous plantation landings dotting the riverbanks. However, since these habitations relied on the river for access to the outside world, roads running inland from them were few and unreliable. When the bottomlands filled with water, road travel was all but impossible on the Mississippi floodplain.

The best interfaces between roads and the river occurred wherever the river touched the eastern edge of the floodplain. Here, there stood a line of bluffs running from Kentucky to Louisiana. In 1863, the river met this bluff line at Columbus, Kentucky; Memphis, Tennessee; Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, Rodney, and Natchez in Mississippi; and Port Hudson and Baton Rouge in Louisiana. Just north of Vicksburg, the Yazoo River, a navigable tributary of the Mississippi, touches this bluff line at a place called Haynes' Bluff. Not surprisingly, each of these places figured prominently in the Mississippi River campaigns. For the Confederates, such locations were the best spots for siting artillery to command the channel, thus closing the river to Union navigation. From the Union perspective, at these sites where river met bluff, armies could offload from riverboats directly onto high, dry ground, avoiding the watery maze of the floodplain. These rare interfaces between river and bluff constituted decisive terrain in 1863.

One other important characteristic of the terrain in the Vicksburg campaign is directly attributable to the Mississippi River. At the end of the last Ice Age, when the river flowed with 10 to 100 times its present volume, it assumed the form of a "braided stream," meaning that it followed multiple channels that threaded among a vast array of islets and sandbars. Westerly winds blowing across these alluvial features raised clouds of dust out of the floodplain and deposited the sediment in a belt reaching five to fifteen miles inland from the bluff line. These yellowish-brown deposits, two hundred feet thick at Vicksburg, are known as "loess" (pronounced "loss") soil. Loess has some remarkable properties. Relatively impermeable to water, it erodes easily but is capable of holding a vertical slope. Thus, the terrain of the loess region (including Vicksburg) has been carved by erosion into a fantastic array of razorback ridges and precipitous ravines. Furthermore, being easy to dig and requiring little bracing, the loess soil of Vicksburg facilitated tunneling and fortification construction during the war.

Just as the Mississippi River formed the land it occupies, so it shaped the campaigns waged for its control during the Civil War. The struggle for the western waters began in February 1862 when Union forces captured Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively. These positions outflanked Columbus, Kentucky, the Confederacy's northernmost outpost on the Mississippi, which was promptly evacuated. The next Confederate strongpoints downstream, New Madrid and Island Number 10, fell in April 1862 to Union Army and Navy forces under Brigadier General John Pope and Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote. Pope, together with Foote's successor, Flag Officer Charles H. Davis, secured Forts Pillow and Randolph in June. Union forces occupied Memphis shortly thereafter. The next defensible terrain downstream from Memphis was at Vicksburg.

Loess soil in a Vicksburg road cut, showing its ability to hold a vertical slope.

After Memphis, the Union flotilla under Davis proceeded to reconnoiter the river to Vicksburg, where on 30 June it met Flag Officer David G. Farragut's Western Gulf Blockading Squadron. Farragut had worked upstream with his ocean-going warships following the 1 May capture of New Orleans. Thus, the U.S. Navy controlled the entire Mississippi River in the early summer of 1862-except for a short stretch of water commanded by five batteries of Confederate guns at Vicksburg.

Farragut could not stay at Vicksburg. His expedition included only 3,200 Army troops, under Brigadier General Thomas Williams-too few to assault the bluffs and silence the guns. Williams' men tried but failed to cut a canal across the peninsula opposite Vicksburg that would have bypassed the city and its guns. Falling water levels-Farragut's blue-water sloops drew up to seventeen feet-and the appearance of a Confederate ironclad, the Arkansas, persuaded Farragut to return to New Orleans before his little fleet became stranded.

The U.S. Navy's appearance at Vicksburg alarmed the Confederate high command. Farragut's departure gave the Confederates an opportunity that they exploited fully. Under Captain Samuel Lockett, work began on improving the fortifications of Vicksburg, making it the "Gibraltar of the West," with works facing both landward and toward the river. The Confederates also erected a similar but smaller fortress some 250 miles down river at Port Hudson, Louisiana, thus securing to the Confederacy the river between these two points.

In October 1862, Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton assumed command of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana. Pemberton's responsibilities included not only the river bastions at Vicksburg and Port Hudson but also the field forces confronting the Union Army of the Tennessee under Major General Ulysses S. Grant, which menaced northern Mississippi. Two flaws in the Confederate command structure would complicate Pemberton's life. First, the western boundary of his department rested upon the largest high-speed avenue of approach in North America-the Mississippi River. He had no authority over forces on the far shore. Second, Pemberton was authorized to report directly to Richmond, bypassing General Joseph E. Johnston, overall commander between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. When catastrophe loomed in 1863, the easily offended Johnston attempted to deny responsibility for Pemberton's situation.

Command arrangements on the Union side of the upcoming campaign appeared to be just as disordered. In mid-1862, command authority over Army contingents in the Mississippi Valley was divided between the Department of the Mississippi in the north and the Department of the Gulf in the south. In July, Major General Henry W. Halleck, commanding the Department of the Mississippi, was promoted to the position of general in chief and departed for Washington, without designating a successor. Instead, the huge department fragmented into four smaller departments, the smallest of which was Grant's Department of the Tennessee. Halleck intended to coordinate the Army commands west of the Appalachians from Washington. President Lincoln made things worse when he authorized Major General John McClernand, a prominent political general, to raise yet another force, with which McClernand promised to open the Mississippi. McClernand proceeded to assemble his "private" army at Memphis, within Grant's department.

Similarly, the two Navy components on the Mississippi operated independently of each other. Farragut and Flag Officer David D. Porter, commander of the newly designated Mississippi Squadron, both reported to the Navy Department in Washington. Needless to say, there was no joint commander on the Mississippi with the authority to direct the combined efforts of Army and Navy.

In practice, the Union command arrangement worked better than one might have expected. Porter and Grant proved to be congenial spirits who achieved through cooperation what could not be done by command. Moreover, in the course of the campaign, Halleck effectively enlarged the boundaries of Grant's small department to give him control over both banks of the Mississippi. He also directed neighboring departments to provide Grant with substantial reinforcements. Making a virtue of necessity, Grant exercised considerable latitude in his interpretation of instructions from Washington. This was due in large part to his distance from the seat of power. On the Confederate side, Pemberton received plenty of advice from his superiors, but less in the way of tangible assistance.

In November 1862, Grant opened his first campaign against Mississippi. His plan involved advances on two axes, which were to converge in the Vicksburg-Jackson region. Grant led 45,000 troops southward from western Tennessee. His subordinate, Major General William T. Sherman, on his part, conducted a river-bome expedition from Memphis to the Yazoo River just above Vicksburg. Departing from the vicinity of La Grange, Tennessee, Grant's column methodically forced the Yalobusha and Tallahatchie River lines, rebuilding the Mississippi Central Railroad as it advanced. Pemberton, commanding 30,000 troops in Grant's path, seemed reluctant to give battle. On 20 December, Pemberton gained a reprieve when Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General Nathan B. Forrest and Major General Earl Van Dom raided Grant's extended line of communications in several places. Van Dom's destruction of the major Union advanced depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi, forced Grant to call off the overland campaign.

Sherman's river-bome expedition fared even worse. Much of his army consisted of raw recruits that he had "borrowed" from McClernand's independent command-without McClernand's knowledge. The expedition suffered a bloody repulse on 29 December at Chickasaw Bayou 2).

Three days later, Sherman gave up the expedition, reembarked his troops, and returned to the Mississippi, where an irate John McClernand reclaimed his "borrowed" army. McClernand proceeded to lead an expedition up the Arkansas River that culminated in the capture of a Confederate fort at Arkansas Post on 10 January.

Map 3 (click Image to enlarge)

During the course of the Civil War, the struggle for control of Vicksburg spanned about a year and involved operations separated by hundreds of miles. Because of the wide chronological and geographical span of the campaign, it has been necessary to exercise selectivity in packaging a staff ride that can be executed within a reasonable amount of time. Actions at outlying places, such as the raid on Holly Springs, Grierson's raid, the battle of Jackson, and the siege of Port Hudson have been omitted here to save travel time, even though they were significant elements of the overall campaign.

The resulting itinerary involves considerable driving time. The full itinerary, with discussions at each stand, will absorb approximately three days. Individual groups can tailor this schedule to accommodate the time available to them or to focus upon aspects of the campaign that are of particular interest to them.

In following this itinerary, be aware that not all of the stands are designated by signs or monuments. For this reason, directions are as specific as possible in terms of mileages, road names, and landmarks. Even so, roads and landmarks may change over time, and mileages are no more accurate than the odometer of the vehicle. A set of topographic maps (see bibliography) and route advice from park personnel will help prevent unintentional detours.

Directions: To reach Snyder's Bluff from Vicksburg, go east on I-20 to exit 5A, then north on U.S. Route 61 to Redwood. At Redwood, turn on State Route 3 north. Approximately 1.1 miles north of Redwood, on the left, there is a pull-off and a historical marker. Park here and find a spot where the Yazoo River is visible through the vegetation (see map 3 on page 82).

Orientation: Snyder's Bluff is one of those key places where navigable water runs along the foot of a bluff. In this case, the water happens to be the Yazoo River, which in the 1860s emptied into the Mississippi a few miles upstream from Vicksburg (about fourteen miles south and west from here). This bluff, as well as the hills traversed while driving north from Vicksburg, are part of the Walnut Hills, a section of the north-south bluff line that marks the eastern edge of the Mississippi floodplain.

Situation 1: Confederate Defenses, December 1861-May 1863. The U.S. Navy's victory at Memphis, on 6 June 1862, exposed the Mississippi River between Memphis and Vicksburg to attack by Union gunboats since there was no defensible terrain between those two points. Also vulnerable were the tributaries, such as the Yazoo, flowing into that section of the Mississippi. Following the Union expedition to Vicksburg in the summer of 1862, the Confederates fortified this spot, which is the first high ground encountered when coming upstream on the Yazoo. Although the purpose of this fortified complex was to block Union gunboats from raiding the fertile Yazoo River valley, it also constituted an outpost of the main Vicksburg fortifications, which were located twelve miles to the south. Any river-borne Union force seeking to bypass the Vicksburg defenses by sailing up the Yazoo could be blocked here.

In December 1862, the Snyder's Bluff defensive position, which was anchored on this hill and extended approximately two miles southward, was commanded by Colonel Edward Higgins. His force consisted of nine large guns and two regiments, the 22d Louisiana and the 3d Mississippi, for a total garrison of approximately 1,300. The guns were positioned in earthworks here on the bluffs, while the infantry was sheltered in rifle pits located among the guns and down near the riverbank. The batteries at this particular spot commanded the entire stretch of river to the left as far as the next bend downstream. Union vessels coming up this stretch not only presented an easy target, but also had to sail single file and could fight back with only their bow guns. Moreover, the Confederates obstructed the channel with "torpedoes," or mines, and a floating log barricade, referred to as a "raft," that blocked the river from bank to bank immediately in front of this stand. Viewed from above, this raft was shaped like the letter "W" (see map 4).

Directions: From Snyder's Bluff, backtrack south on State Route 3, then merge with U.S. Route 61 South toward Vicksburg. Turn right on Business Route 61, which marks the approximate trace of the Confederate positions during the Chickasaw Bayou battle. Travel 4.1 miles on Business Route 61 to the first traffic light. Then, turn right at the light, in the direction of the Port of Vicksburg. After 0.6 mile, turn right on Long Lake Road. After 4.6 miles, turn right at the T intersection and travel one mile. Park near the white church (see map 5.)

Orientation: The last mile on the route to this stand passes along the section of the Yazoo River bank that Sherman used to land his force on 26-27 December. In 1862, this was the only useable landing site between the mouth of the Yazoo and Haynes' Bluff. This stand is on the ground occupied by Morgan's division. The body of water beside the church is Boat Slough (pronounced "slew").

Map 8 (click Image to enlarge)

Directions: Exit the Cairo museum area, and turn left at the gatehouse. Ascend the hill to the first parking area (stop 9 on the battlefield tour route) (see map 8).

Orientation: Fort Hill anchored the northwest comer of the Vicksburg defenses. Landward defenses follow the ridge that runs east from this stand. The river batteries extend south from this location. The waterway at the base of the bluff today is not the Mississippi River; it is the outflow of the Yazoo Diversionary Canal, which occupies part of the old Mississippi riverbed. The crescent-shaped Vicksburg harbor area to the northwest approximates the river's hairpin bend around De Soto Point, as it would have appeared in 1863.

The mounted artillery pieces visible near the highway at the foot of Fort Hill indicate the site of Water Battery.

Situation 1: River Batteries. The Confederate river defenses at Vicksburg, commanded by Colonel Edward Higgins, consisted of thirty-seven large-caliber antiship guns, plus thirteen field artillery pieces, distributed in thirteen batteries covering three miles of waterfront. Three of these batteries, Marine Hospital Battery, Wyman's Hill Battery, and Water Battery, were particularly significant. All three stood thirty to forty feet above river level, which gave them the benefits of some plunging fire, without the drawbacks of depressing the gun muzzles too far. (The projectiles of muzzleloading artillery pieces had a tendency to shift forward, or "start," when the muzzle was depressed, with adverse effects on ballistics.) The guns of these three batteries were also close to the river, which simplified aiming and ensured high projectile velocity at the target. Marine Hospital Battery, located south of downtown Vicksburg, contained three 42-pounder smoothbores, two 32-pounder smoothbores, and two 32-pounder rifles. Wyman's Hill Battery, located on the northern outskirts of Vicksburg, held three 10-inch Columbiads, one 8-inch Columbiad, one 32-pounder rifle, one 2.71-inch Whitworth rifle, and one 3-inch Armstrong rifle. The most important of these batteries was Water Battery. Water Battery commanded the hairpin turn in the river, where vessels had enough trouble navigating without the added burden of combating Confederate firepower. In April 1863, Water Battery mounted three 32-pounder rifles, one 32-pounder smoothbore, and one 10-inch Columbiad.

The high velocity of the Mississippi at Vicksburg was both good and bad for the Confederate defenders. The river ran too fast for them to emplace barrier rafts or torpedoes, as they had done on the Yazoo. On the other hand, the current made it extremely dangerous for Union vessels to attempt an upstream passage of the Vicksburg position. Racing downstream, a Union vessel might get through the danger zone in front of the batteries in as little as twenty minutes. Clawing her way upstream, the same vessel would be under fire for ninety minutes. In effect, Union boats running down river past Vicksburg were making a one-way trip so long as the river batteries remained in Confederate hands.

The view from Fort Hill during high water. The curving waterway in the upper right is the remnant of the hairpin bend in the Mississippi (1997).

Teaching Points: Terrain analysis, placement of defenses.

Situation 2: Running the Batteries. On the night of 16-17 April, Rear Admiral Porter led a portion of his squadron down river in a dash past the Vicksburg batteries. In the lead were six ironclads: the Benton, which bore Porter's flag and which had the tug Ivy lashed to its starboard side; Lafayette, with the ram General Price lashed alongside; Louisville; Mound City, Pittsburg, and Carondelet. Next came three transports, the Silver Wave, Henry Clay, and Forest Queen. Bringing up the rear was the misbegotten ironclad Tuscumbia. All the vessels had one or more barges lashed alongside, which carried coal for the ironclads and supplies for Grant's army. One barge loaded with ammunition floated downstream by itself.

Porter's flotilla left its anchorage at the mouth of the Yazoo at 2115. As the vessels neared Vicksburg, their captains reduced steam so as to avoid alerting the Confederates with the sound of churning pistons. At 2310, Benton drifted around the hairpin bend and received a spattering of musket fire from sentinels along the shore. It took another six minutes for the Confederate artillery to open. Benton ran close in to the Mississippi shore and, at 2323, began blasting away with her guns in the general direction of the Confederate batteries.

For the next two hours, the Vicksburg waterfront was transformed into a surreal scene. One after the other, Union vessels swept around the treacherous bend. Ironclads and shore batteries filled the air with shot and shell as the Union boats groped their way downstream. Dazzled by the light of fires set by the Confederates to illuminate the river, confused by smoke, and buffeted by eddies, several pilots lost control of their vessels, some of which spun completely around before facing downstream again. Collisions occurred as the formation fell apart. One of the transports, Silver Wave, sought safety in speed. She left her place in line and raced ahead among the ironclads, ultimately to emerge unscathed from the gauntlet. The other two transports, Henry Clay and Forest Queen, apparently sought safety in retreat. In any event, their bows were pointed upstream when Tuscumbia, bringing up the rear, herded them back down river. Tuscumbia took Forest Queen under tow when a Confederate shot severed the transport's steam line. Henry Clay was not so fortunate. Disabled and set afire by Confederate shells, she was abandoned by her crew and burned to the waterline.

The "Widow Blakely," one of Vickburg's river defense guns.

By 0200, the Confederate guns had fallen silent, and in the pre-dawn hours, Union vessels straggled in to the rendezvous point at New Carthage, some twenty-five miles below Vicksburg. Although every vessel had sustained hits, the only losses were Henry Clay and one coal barge. Incredibly, personnel losses totaled twelve wounded and no fatalities.

Back in Vicksburg, there was consternation over the poor showing of the river batteries. On the average, each gun had fired only seven rounds during the entire engagement. The gunners did better on 22 April, when six unarmed and unarmored Union transports, manned largely by Array volunteers, ran the Vicksburg batteries. This time, the Confederates were fully alert. Moreover, there was no return fire to interfere with their gunnery. Each gun fired an average of fourteen rounds on this occasion, sinking one transport and six of the twelve barges.

The presence of Union ironclads below Vicksburg did little to clarify the strategic picture for Pemberton, who remained at his headquarters in Jackson. There were still Union ironclads and troops above Vicksburg, which meant that he could not rule out the possibility of a direct attack on Vicksburg. Moreover, with Union troops, transports, and ironclads below Vicksburg, the entire eastern riverbank from Vicksburg to Port Hudson was vulnerable to assault.

Vignette 1 (except from the log of the gun boat Benton, 16 April:"At 8:45 P.M. the admiral and staff came on board. 9 o'clock hoisted signals for fleet to get underway [from anchorage at the mouth of the Yazoo]. 9:15 got underway, with the tug Ivy lashed to the starboard quarter, and steamed down slowly toward Vicksburg, the other vessels taking their places in line astern of us. 9:50 stopped the engines and drifted slowly down, waiting for the other boats ... 10:30 started ahead very slowly, the lights of Vicksburg plainly in sight. 11 o'clock rounded the point. 11:10 the enemy's musketry opened upon us; they also beat the long roll [summoning troops to their posts]. [11:16] the enemy's batteries opened upon us, slowly at first, but afterwards quite rapidly. 11:23 opened fire on batteries and town with forward and port batteries and went ahead at full speed. The rebels built fires to light up the batteries, which showed our vessels very plainly. The enemy now firing very rapidly. 12:29 arrived opposite Biggs plantation (below the canal). General Sherman and Mr. Bridgman came on board, conversed, and went on shore. 1:15 passed Warrenton; not a shot fired at us ... Eighty-one shot fired from this vessel, VI, three IX-inch shrapnel, five-second [fuse]; eighteen IX-inch shell, five-second; sixteen 42-pounder shell, five-second; twenty-one 32-pounder shell, five-second; twenty-three 32-pounder stand grape ... Were struck six times; but one shot passing through casemate. Casualties, 5 wounded.. (Abstract log of the Benton, in O.R. Navies, vol. 24, 681-85.)

Vignette 2 (from Charles A. Dana's report to the Secretary of War): ". for an hour and a half the cannonade was terrific, raging incessantly along the line of about 4 miles in extent. I counted five hundred and twenty-five discharges . . . " (Dana to Stanton, 17 April 1863, in O.R., vol. 24, pt. l, 76.)

Vignette 3 (Pemberton's reaction to news of Porter running the batteries): "I regard the navigation of the Mississippi River shut out from us now. No more supplies can be gotten from the Trans-Mississippi Department." (Pemberton to Chalmers, 18 April 1863, in O.R., vol. 24, pt. 1v 313.)

Teaching Points: Joint planning and risk assessment, defense plan, engagement area.

Directions: To reach Grand Gulf from Vicksburg, take Interstate 20 to Exit 1B. Travel south twenty-two miles on US Route 61. Turn right at the sign for Grand Gulf State Park, and drive approximately 8.1 miles, past the park headquarters, and through what is left of Grand Gulf (bear left at the ruins of the old schoolhouse), until the road ends in a cul-de-sac (see map 9).

Orientation: This is the site of Fort Cobun. In 1863, the Mississippi River flowed in from the west to the foot of this bluff, where it made a bend to the south. This is the first place south of Vicksburg where the river met the bluffs. The Big Black River emptied into the Mississippi just a few hundred yards north of this spot.

Situation 1: The March Down-River. On 29 March, Grant ordered McClernand to move his corps from Milliken's Bend to New Carthage, which is south of Vicksburg on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River. When Grant issued this order, he had not yet given up all hopes of out flanking Vicksburg from the north. Union elements of the Yazoo Pass expedition still lingered near Fort Pemberton. Grant still toyed with the idea of assaulting again at Chickasaw Bayou. However, with the floodwaters receding at last, maneuver on land became a possibility once more. On 31 March, Brigadier General Peter J. Osterhaus led his division from Milliken's Bend to Richmond, Louisiana, the first leg of a march that would outflank Vicksburg from the south. The remainder of McClernand's corps followed.

Largely, the terrain of the Mississippi floodplain dictated the Union army's route of march. Much of the route to New Carthage followed the levees along Roundaway Bayou, which was once the main channel of the Mississippi. Although the route required extensive improvement, at least the levees were above the still-inundated swamps.

On the same day that Osterhaus moved out from Milliken's Bend, engineers began work on yet another experiment to open a navigable water route around Vicksburg. Near Grant's headquarters at Young's Point, work began on the Duckport Canal, which was intended to link Roundaway Bayou to the Mississippi. This would open a water route to New Carthage that could supplement the march route along the levees. Ironically, this was one experiment that would have worked - were it not for the falling river levels, which eventually left the canal high and dry.

Directions: (This route involves travel on some narrow, rough, unpaved roads. It should not be attempted by bus. If you are not confident that your vehicle is capable of negotiating this route, backtrack 6.1 miles to Lookout Point and conduct stand 10 there. Afterwards, proceed to Port Gibson and on to stand 11.)

Directions: Continue west on the old highway through Bovina to Vicksburg, where Route 80 becomes Clay Street. From Clay Street, turn right into the National Military Park and begin the battlefield vehicle tour. (Military groups should coordinate with park headquarters in advance and secure a waiver of the park admission fee.) Stop 5 on the tour is the Stockade Redan Attack.

Orientation: Seen on a map, the Confederate fortified line protecting Vicksburg resembles the numeral "7," with both ends of the figure resting on the Mississippi River. Stockade Redan constitutes the apex of the "7." On the far side of the ravine west of this stand is a large earthwork that replicates Stockade Redan. (A redan was a "V"-shaped fortification, open to the rear.) Approximately seventy-five yards south of Stockade Redan, near the Missouri monument, is Green's Lunette. (A lunette was a small outwork, sometimes crescent-shaped, usually on the flank of a larger fortification.) Approximately 150 yards west of the redan is the 27th Louisiana Lunette. The lunettes provided enfilade fire over the ground in front of the redan. The road passing from this stand to Stockade Redan is Graveyard Road.

In 1863, the ridge tops were under cultivation, while the ravines were choked with vegetation.

1. Information and Assistance.

a. The Staff Ride Committee of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth has conducted Vicksburg Staff rides for numerous military groups and can provide advice and assistance on every aspect of the campaign. Resources include files of historical data, detailed knowledge of the campaign and battles, and familiarity with the Vicksburg battlefield park and surrounding areas.