Vicksburg
Vicksburg National Military Park
Vicksburg National Military Park is located in northeastern Vicksburg, Mississippi: on Clay Street (US Highway 80) about one mile from Interstate Highway I-20.
Vicksburg National Military Park is administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior. The mailing address is 3201 Clay Street, Vicksburg, MS 39180. Telephone: 601-636-0583.
The Park grounds are open daily until sunset. The National Park Service maintains a Visitor's Center and the U.S.S. Cairo Museum on the Park grounds, a gift shop, and audiovisual programs. The Visitor Center is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the U.S.S. Cairo Museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Both closed Christmas.
On the Park grounds is a sixteen-mile, self-guided driving tour covering the critical areas of fighting during the final siege of Vicksburg. Interpretive markers, monuments, and artillery pieces are situated along the driving trail.
Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on Vicksburg: MS011
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Vicksburg In The Vicksburg Campaign: May 18-July 4, 1863
Protected by heavy artillery batteries on the riverfront and with land approaches to the north and south guarded by densely wooded swamplands, Vicksburg defied large-scale land and river expeditions for over a year. Finally the tenacious Grant, in a campaign since accepted as a model of bold strategy and skillful execution, forced the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, splitting the Confederacy in two and securing for the North its great objective in the Western Theater.
Vicksburg, and the simultaneous repulse of Lee's invasion at the battle of Gettysburg, marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. Previously, there had been confidence that victory, although demanding desperate measures, could yet be achieved. Afterward, there was only the hope that the North might sicken of the frightful cost of continuing the war and terminate hostilities. The great objective of the war in the West--the opening of the Mississippi River and the severing of the Confederacy--had been realized with the fall of Vicksburg. While in the East the Union armies battled on in bloody stalemate before Richmond, the armies of the West would now launch their columns deep into the vitals of the Confederacy.
(Text Adapted From: Vicksburg Historical Handbook Series - publication of the National Park Service. 1961.)
Vicksburg - The 'Fortress City'
Vicksburg was considered a purely defensive position on the Mississippi River, and Confederate strategic doctrine was tied tightly to this mindset. With the narrow defeat at Shiloh in April 1862, and destruction of its naval fleet by Union ironclads at Memphis in June the same year, the Confederacy came to realize that for its survival, it was essential that control of the river be held at Vicksburg. The Federal blockade was increasingly effective, and needed war material from Europe and western Confederate states was becoming increasingly dependent on the supply line running from Matamoros, Mexico, to the railroad at De Soto, Louisiana, directly across the river from Vicksburg. Ferries would transport this material across the river, reloading it on the Southern Railroad of Mississippi to be shipped to points east.Brigadier General Martin Luther Smith took command of the Vicksburg garrison in May 1862, and immediately began fortifying the city. In June, Major Samuel H. Lockett became chief engineer in charge of developing the defensive perimeter around Vicksburg. First repairing and strengthening the river batteries damaged by U. S. Flag Officer David Farragut's naval squadron, he then turned his attention to laying out a line to guard the land approaches to the city. Spending a month reconnoitering, surveying, and studying "the complicated and irregular site to be fortified," he boasted that no greater topographical puzzle was ever presented to a military engineer.
Finally pinpointing the commanding, irregular ridgeline forming a crescent a mile or more beyond the city's outskirts, Major Lockett laid out a "system of redoubts, redans, linettes and field-works, connecting them by rifle-pits so as to give a continuous line of defense." Employing a large force of blacks hired, or impressed, from nearby plantations, work began in early September 1862.
The left defensive flank was anchored on the Mississippi River, 1 1/2 miles north of the city, near where the river road to Yazoo City entered Vicksburg. Fort Hill, served as an observation post for the Water Battery, located below and closer to the river. Where Graveyard Road passed through the perimeter, stood the Stockade Redan complex, given its name from the palisade of poplar logs constructed on the site. The 27th Louisiana Lunette lay north of the road, the Stockade Redan to the south, and a smaller redan, later called Green's Redan, sited 75 yards still farther south. A mile south of Stockade Redan, the Jackson Road entered the Confederate lines, and here two strongholds were positioned - the 3rd Louisiana Redan to the north and the Great Redoubt to the south. Located on the highest point in the area, the Great Redount was deemed the Confederates' most formidable work.
A mile farther south, guarding Baldwin's Ferry Road, was the 2nd Texas Lunette, an irregular work with no connecting rifle pits on its left. Several hundred yards south, and parallel to Baldwin's Ferry Road, was the Southern Railroad of Mississippi, running through a deep cut into the city. On the south side of this cut was the Railroad Redoubt, a fortification divided into three sections by two parallel traverses. One half mile south, on the ridges intersecting the defensive perimeter, was Square Fort, later renamed Fort Garrott in honor of Brigadier General Isham Garrott, killed by a sniper on the redoubt's parapet. (Although promoted from Colonel to Brigadier General prior to his death, Garrott did not live to receive notification of the action.)
Situated a mile farther south was the Salient Work, overlooking Hall's Ferry Road. Securing the Confederate right flank was South Fort, 1 3/4 miles south of the Salient Work, and just west of Warrenton Road. Originally part of Vicksburg's river defenses, the big guns mounted here at first could register on the river. But provision was soon made so the cannon could be quickly shifted to bear on Warrenton Road, in the event the city was attacked from the land side. These guns were the most powerful weapons emplaced in the land defenses around the city.
(Text Adapted From: Vicksburg National Park Service pamphlet distributed to visitors of the Vicksburg National Military Park.)
Source: Vicksburg Historical Handbook Series - publication of the National Park Service. 1961.