Sea Control - Sea Control 207 - Naval Integration in the Vicksburg Campaign with Dr. Anne Brinton & Dr. Laura June Davis

Episode Date: October 18, 2020

Link:Vicksburg: The Past and Future of Amphibious Operations, B.A. Friedman, Strategy Bridge, July 4, 2017

Hey folks, Jared here. We are back in the history classroom for this episode. We'll be discussing naval integration in the Vicksburg Campaign with Dr. Ann Britton and Dr. Laura June Davis. One note on timing, we recorded a lot of episodes in very close proximity to one another in August and early September. This is one of those, so when you hear us referencing Labor Day, that's why. Time flies when you're trapped in your home office. With that said, I still want to preface this episode with our usual disclaimer that all opinions are our own and not representative of any institutions with which we might otherwise be associated. Keep tuning in. We're going to have some exciting news here about changes for sea control coming very soon. With that,

I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International and Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, we have some more historical Naval Integration for You, the Vicksburg Campaign from the American Civil War. Joining me is Sea Control Veteran, Dr. Ann Britton. Ann, welcome back. Thank you. It's great to be back. And today we also have a new guest, Dr. Laura June Davis. Laura, welcome. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

So before we get going, I'd like to ask you to introduce yourselves to our listeners. Ann, why don't we start with you? I'm an Assistant Professor of History at Northwest Florida State College. We just began our fall term with a combination of online, synchronous, and hybrid instruction, and we're all excited to see how that goes. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the stories from the road, if you will, from your teaching experiences. Laura, if you don't mind. Yes, I'm an assistant professor of history at Southern Utah University. I'm also co-coordinator for women and gender studies here. And I teach a lot of courses in U.S. history, 19th century American history, military history, gender history, etc.

We have not started yet. We're going to start after Labor Day. So who knows what's going to happen in those two weeks. But we are tentatively scheduled to be face-to-face, online, online, synchronous, hybrid, all of the above. and fingers crossed things go well because I'm finally, finally getting to teach my civil war course for the first time here at SMU. Good luck. I was going to say maybe Anne can

share some notes with you then once we wrap the episode here but thank you both so much for agreeing to come on today. As a reminder, any opinions today are our own and not representative of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. So Anne, we'll start with you. The last

time you were here we talked about the battle for Island No. 10, and you gave us the strategic background for the war in general and the Western theater. Would you mind doing that again here? What's going on in the war at the time of Vicksburg and the Western theater in particular? Sure. So we left off last time with the battle for Island No. 10. Island No. 10 was a small Confederate stronghold in the middle of the Mississippi River, commanding a stretch of the river valley. And when it fell to the Union assault. It set off a string of celebration across the North and then was immediately eclipsed by the news of Battle of Shiloh, which happened at roughly the same time and was devastatingly bloody,

but another Union victory. For the Confederacy, word of the surrender of Island No. 10 took time to filter across the South, but once it did, it caused a crisis in the city of Memphis, for example, there was panic so severe that martial law had to be declared. The strategic focus of the river war in the West shifts to the South. Overall, we see the same pattern prevailing where we've got relative union success in the West and relative union failure in the East. The Confederate victory at Second Manassas or Second Bull Run brings rebel troops to the outskirts of D.C. itself. And there is one major bright point in the East, and it's a big one, and that is the Battle of Antietam, which is the most bloody single day of the war. And it is a fairly complicated

Union victory, but a victory nonetheless. And it gives Lincoln the rationale he's been waiting for to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which shifts the focus of the war and turns it from a war for limited goals, just the reunification of the Union, to sweeping goals, reunifying the nation and liberating four million human beings. As Union forces are going to push deeper into the Confederate heartland, they will liberate large numbers of the Confederate southern workforce. They will augment the strength of the Union army now that Black men will be authorized to fight in large numbers in Union lines.

And the fact that the war aims have shifted make it impossible politically for either England or France to offer diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. So that hope for them is gone. So I don't want to minimize the success of Antietam, but it's followed by devastating Union defeats in the East at Fredericksburg in the winter of 62 and at Chancellorsville later in the spring. In the West, things are relatively brighter. In April of 62, only a few weeks after island number 10 in Shiloh, New Orleans falls. The naval captain, David Farragut, and then in October, the Battle of Corinth leaves the city, another Western stronghold in Union hands. In December, right around the turn of the new year, there's another Union victory at Stones River. So it's after Corinth in October of 1862 that Ulysses S. Grant begins organizing his invasion, pushed southward down the Mississippi River with Vicksburg as his target.

Thanks. And Laura, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like you to tell us a little bit about the space where this operation is going to take place. What is the geography, hydrography around Vicksburg? How difficult is this problem going to be for the U.S.? And then why is Vicksburg so important? So the capture of Vicksburg is really central to the successful completion of the Anaconda Plan that I know Anne's talked about in previous episodes, right? The Anaconda Plan would include blockading the Confederate coastline along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico and then getting complete and total control of the Mississippi River. And so Vicksburg is the central component to completing that part on the Mississippi River. President Abraham Lincoln himself says, quote, Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until the key is in our pocket, end quote.

And the reason he's saying that is that by the spring of 1863, the United States, as Anne has mentioned, controls almost all of the Mississippi River. The only holdout is this 250-mile stretch from Vicksburg in the north and Port Hudson in the south. So there's just this tiny little portion that's been held on by the Confederacy. It's actually known as the Gibraltar of the Confederacy because it's been so hard to take. So the successful capture of this final section of the river would give the United States a hugely important strategic victory. It would gain complete control of the Mississippi River. It would split the Confederacy in two and isolate the far west from the rest of the rebel state. For the Confederacy, losing Vicksburg also means losing two crucial supply lines.

The river port ships large quantities of Louisiana sugar, molasses, salt, Texas cattle, much needed bullets from Missouri, as well as southern butter, sweet potatoes, wool and other goods across the river. So kind of, you know, goes from the Mississippi River to virtually every point of the Confederacy. Also at Vicksburg is the Southern Mississippi Railroad, which transports beef, corn, rice, soldiers, other goods from Vicksburg to the Mississippi capital at Jackson to further points eastward. So because of the river and the railroad, Vicksburg is a key distribution point for war material and arms, many of which have actually been smuggled in from Mexico. So in short, without Vicksburg, the Confederacy is not going to have access to key waterways

and railroads that are feeding and arming its soldiers, right? This is how they're able to successfully wage a war, and they need this. Interestingly enough, Confederate President Jefferson Davis' plantation, which is in Davis, Mississippi, is only 20 miles south of Vicksburg, which is why he said, quote, Vicksburg was the nailhead that holds the South's two halves together. Now, the reason that Vicksburg is one of the last Confederate strongholds goes to your question about space, right? It's directly related to the geography and topography of the area. The city itself sits atop 200-foot bluffs along the lower end of this kind of sharp-ass hairpin turn of the river. And making things even more challenging is that from Vicksburg north to Memphis is a chain

of hills that form a 200-mile protective arc, and within the arc is a closed-in 50-mile-wide delta that's got swamps and rivers and thick forests and things you just don't want to have to cross to try to take vicksburg right and then along the river and the city itself lieutenant john i'm sorry lieutenant general john c pemberton who i know ann's gonna talk about later has constructed a series of fortifications in an eight mile arc that includes nine major forts connected by rifle pits artillery and wooden parapets as well as rudans earthenworks redoubts Right. By the fall of 1862, when Grant is first trying to take Vicksburg, Vicksburg is actually second only to Richmond in terms of its fortification. So this is a very difficult city to take because of all of the fortifications, as well as that really tough geography and geography of the city.

Thanks. So, Anne, we have Grant commanding the Union forces in the Vicksburg campaign. He's starting to accumulate some power and prestige. What is his confidence level as he moves into what's going to be a really complex operation? It's certainly come a long way since his early command experiences a year and a half before. He is facing actually two fairly serious challenges to his authority during this, as this campaign gets off the ground. He's actually not the only general with Vicksburg as a target in his sights. He's got a former subordinate engaging in some shenanigans behind the scenes. And this is General John A. McLernand, who's a political general. So in the Civil War, that means he didn't come up through the military academies. His military career has not followed the traditional path. He's come to command through his political connections. And some generals of that background turned out to be absolutely stellar, and some were a bit more variable in their abilities and talents. He has gone directly to Lincoln and to General and Chief Halleck for permission to organize his own expedition to Vicksburg, and he's got secret orders, and he's now organizing his own armed force with the hope that he can lead an independent command on this mission.

His motivation is personal ambition is obviously part of it. He's quite salty about being thwarted and passed over by West Point trained officers, but also there's a broader significance to the Vicksburg campaign in general and to his motivation in particular. The inaccessibility of stretches of the Mississippi River have been very hard on Midwestern farmers who used to float their surplus down the river to the Port of New Orleans out into the wider Atlantic world. And in the absence of this outlet for their market goods, they've been using the railways to send their goods overland, but they are being ruthlessly price gouged by the railroad corporations. And the situation's bad enough that it's beginning to turn them against the war, because they're now, you know, it's not just the casualty lists. It's not just all the normal sacrifices of wartime. Now their bottom line or their budget is being impacted. And so McClernand's, one of his motivations here is to participate in reopening the Mississippi, to bring this region back. And the region sort of trends Democratic in general to restore their confidence in a Republican-led war effort. So he's recruited his troops, he's dispatched them to Memphis, Tennessee, and he has not consulted Ulysses S. Grant at all. All of this is going on behind Grant's back. He knows there's something going on because obviously the military rumor mill is productive. And so he knows there's something, but he doesn't know entirely what. And so he's making his own preparations for what's going to turn out to be arguably the most important campaign of his life with this thing going on in the background that he's not clear on.

Ultimately, when he asks to clarify the exact scope of his authority, he's told by General Halleck that he is in charge of all troops within his district, and this supersedes McClernand. It clarifies that no, Grant is in charge. McClernand is not going to be carrying out an independent mission without regard to Grant. McClernand is left out in the cold and saltier than ever. So half of General McLernand's troops will be under his command, subordinate to Grant. The other half will be placed under Sherman, Sherman's leadership. And then Grant will be in charge of coordinating those two, those two cohorts. Conveniently, the message informing McClernand of this shift is delayed. And so he shows up in Memphis intending to assume command, only to find that he does not really have the command he expected to have. And the troops have already been sent southward under the command of General Sherman. So that has been one of the challenges to Grant's authority that he's been coping with and coping with well. One of the things I'm struck by when I read about his leadership during the Vicksburg campaign and overall is his ability to come back from failure.

In a lot of ways, the Vicksburg campaign is a story of repeated failure and then ultimate success. There are several attempts. There's this autumn of 1862 attempt to reach Vicksburg that fails. There will be four more over the next months. They will all fail. And it's the final, most direct approach that ultimately pays off. um each uh each endeavor he seems to learn from and then tries again so uh while he is making these repeated attempts that that don't pay off that that squander that seem to squander money and time and men's lives he's taking increasing heat in the press in the north not just from democrats who are critical of the republican-led war effort to begin with but from republicans too People call him a failure. They call him a drunkard. He is accused of wasting time and money and, worst of all, wasting young men's lives. Lincoln refuses to abandon him. And it's not clear. Some of the negative reports about him were probably slanderous. They were probably made up of whole cloth, but not all of them. Some of the stories that were told about Grant and his alcohol abuse are too similar to all be untrue.

His most recent biographer thinks he probably was an alcoholic, not in the sense that he was physically dependent on alcohol to function, but in the sense that once he drank, even after a long period of abstinence, he couldn't moderate or he couldn't stop. And so in order to investigate the truth of this situation and how much of the reports of his less than productive habits were true and how many were slander. So the Secretary of War actually dispatched the Assistant Secretary of War, Charles Dana, to spy on Grant and report back. Grant responded to this by making friends with the man and welcoming him to his headquarters and being as gracious a host as you could want. And the report that Charles Dana sent back was that Grant was an excellent general and sober at all times, which he actually had to walk back at a later date. But his initial reports were very positive and complimentary. So in the context of, you know, in our modern era, I think we're more sympathetic about these kind of personal challenges. It's very human to develop an issue with a substance like that. But in the context of the mid-19th century, rumors about alcohol abuse were seen as a failure of character, as moral weakness.

And so they were they were potentially devastating to a man's career. Thanks, Laura. The U.S. Navy is going to be critical of this operation. Who's commanding the naval forces? What's his relationship to Grant from a chain of command perspective? And how did the two commanders get along? By October 1862, David Dixon Porter is going to be the commander of the Mississippi Squadron, and he has the rank of acting admiral. After the successful completion of Vicksburg, that title will go from acting to permanent. Some background on Porter, he actually comes from one of the most established and well-known naval families in American history. His grandfather,

David Porter, and his uncle each captained a Massachusetts vessel during the American Revolution. His father, also named David Porter, fought in the First Barbary War and the War of 1812 before causing some controversies by trying to lead an impulsive attack on the Puerto Rican city of Fajardo as an act of revenge against Spanish, who'd apparently arrested one of his officers. This causes some problems. So, you know, this is the family that David Dixon Porter is born into. He also has a very famous foster brother that we've already mentioned today that david glasgow farragut you know who gained spain for the battle of mobile bay and supposedly saying damn the torpedoes full speed ahead david dixon porter himself began his naval career at a pretty

young age he sailed the west indies with his father um at the age of 10 at the age of 13 he joined the mexican navy where his father was serving because of all that controversy with Spanish, and he served as a midshipman aboard the Guerrero off the coast of Cuba. David Dixon Porter is actually captured by the Spanish. He's going to spend some time in the Havana prison. At the age of 16, he transfers over to the U.S. Navy, so he will serve with distinction aboard the USS Spitfire during the Mexican-American War. He apparently had no problems fighting against a country he had once defended. And in 1855, he has what I think is a unique pleasure, But he actually was not proud of commanding the ship's supply, which had been detailed to procure camels for the very short-lived U.S. Camel Corps.

And I just love this idea of camels for the ship. When the Civil War began in 1861, David Dixon Porter is going to take command of the Powhatan without the knowledge or permission of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells. Porter was trying to relieve Fort Piggins, Florida. Now, that doesn't quite work out well for him. he gets in some hot water but it's all short-lived and he's quickly forgiven he'll serve u.s naval forces in the blockade of southern port cities and eventually finds his way over to the mississippi river in march of 1862 porter with his flotilla of mortar boats will work alongside the flotilla of his foster brother flag officer david farragut in the attacks of fort jackson and saint philip

guarding the Mississippi approach to New Orleans that Anne had already talked about. And it's for these efforts around New Orleans that Porter gets the approval of Secretary Gideon Wells, and Wells will appoint Porter command of the Mississippi squadron, which is great for Porter, but it's slightly controversial because there's 80 officers in rank who are superior to him. And so they don't feel like they should have been skipped over. There's a lot of rumor mills and newspaper articles claiming that Porter has a reputation for being ambitious and vain and arrogant because he will just step over anybody, you know, to get into command. But most people do seem to agree that he's skilled and resourceful when it comes to rivering warfare.

Now, in terms of Porter's and Grant's relationship, you have to remember that during the Civil War, no Army officer can order any Navy officer of any rank on what to do. So this needs to be a collaborative relationship if the campaign is going to succeed. It is not a chain of command relationship. So Grant will plan the commands, but Porter has ultimate veto power over anything River related. And so they do need to work together. Now, luckily, the two leaders got along very well. Porter has a lot of respect for Grant, as well as for Major General William Sherman. Sherman and Porter actually become lifelong friends.

And I believe they die within a day of each other. Now, Porter is not that close with Grant, but they do have a strong working relationship and their success at Vicksburg will help with that. It's because of that good relationship and respect that Porter will go along with Grant's risky plans that I know we're going to talk about more about later. After the end of the campaign, Grant is overwhelmingly generous in his praise of Porter for their combined work. Grant knows that the success of Vicksburg would not have been possible without Porter and his men. And when Ulysses S. Grant becomes president, he will actually appoint Porter as a special advisor to the Navy Department, making Porter kind of the de facto secretary of the Navy. So, again, their relationship is strong and lasts quite a long time. And Porter retires at the rank of admiral, making him the second only officer to achieve that rank.

And the first was, of course, his foster brother, David Glasgow Farragut. And I just love that continued relationship between the two. Now, that's a hell of a naval family. And I'm going to have to go back and look up the Camel Corps thing. As someone who has sailed past a few livestock carriers in his days, I have the deepest sympathy for Admiral Porter. What forces did Porter have at his disposal for this operation? So at this time, the Mississippi Squadron has about 58 combat vessels. That's going to include 13 ironclads, 34 tinclads, two timberclads, and six steamboat rams commanded by Colonel Alfred Ellett.

The ironclads are what we'd consider city-class ironclads. Those have been financed by the wealthy steamboat salvager, James Eads. He's also got 13 mortar boats, each featuring a single 14-inch mortar that would fire 200-pound shells. And the jewel in his crown is the USS Black Hawk. That's the flagship of the Mississippi Squadron. It boasted a lot of luxuries and amenities, including a gourmet kitchen and, believe it or not, a cow for fresh milk. And so Grant and Sherman would actually come aboard the Black Hawk to dine with Porter, because apparently the food was much better there than in their own encampments.

Where did all these vessels come from? I'm presuming they're being built upriver in Minnesota or Wisconsin or somewhere. I mean, at this point, they've been amassed from various other places on the river. So some have been built north, some have been partaking in various other campaigns and moving southward. So it's kind of a combined set of forces that have been amassed over time. Okay. What is the level of the amphibious training for the U.S. prior to the Vicksburg operation? We've obviously seen this at Island No. 10 and I want to say Fort Henry and Donaldson, but where are we at here? in terms of like training amphibious warfare still relatively new during the civil war the first major amphibious assault in u.s history had only been two decades prior during the war with mexico when woodville scott lands his troops at vera cruz and so there's not like an official

training manual it's more kind of you know training by experience and yes there have been some amphibious assaults up, you know, on the upper part of the Mississippi River, but most of the amphibious assaults are really happening along the Atlantic coastline in places like Hatteras Inlet and Fort Royal, South Carolina, Roanoke Island and Fort Sumter, Morris-J. Miles, those things. And there's also a major attack at Galveston. So like I said, I don't, I wouldn't say there's really amphibious training, just more than hands-on experience and kind of, you know, So going with the flow and figuring it out as we go. But Vicksburg will be a substantial amphibious operation. At that point in time, it's really the largest American amphibious operation to date. And it shows a lot of mastery of modern day amphibious operations and techniques because Grant and Sherman are able to work so well together. You know, this joint Army-Navy operation allows them to land troops, to continually supply troops, you know, to have a successful supply line, to naively bombard the city, and, you know, things I know that we'll get into more detail later.

Yeah. So, Anne, back to you. Who's commanding for the Confederates? What does he have at his disposal? And then what is his plan to hold the Gibraltar of the West? That would be John C. Pemberton. He was kind of an interesting fellow. He was actually northern-born in Pennsylvania, in fact. And then as a young man, he met a Virginia woman, fell in love, married her, and made his life in the South. This is going to cause him problems. He had attended the University of Pennsylvania and then transferred to West Point because it offered a better pathway to a career as an engineer. And his career path from then on out was very typical of men of his generation. Like many men of his generation at West Point, he studied with and lived with and became close friends with men he would later find himself fighting against indirectly and directly. His roommate was George Gordon Meade, for example. His career pattern, he fought the Seminoles in Florida, he fought the Cherokee, and then he served in the Mexican-American War. After that war, he married his Virginia lady and became a Southerner by adoption. We don't know much about his commitment to the Confederate cause. His private and public writings didn't yield a lot in terms of, you know, rhetoric about Southern independence or a commitment to slavery and white supremacy and so forth. So it's possible that his Confederate loyalty may have been personal and familial as much as ideological or even more than ideological.

Nonetheless, when Virginia seceded, he resigned his commission in the U.S. forces and recommissioned in the Confederate Army. As an artillery expert, he was responsible for strengthening the coastal defenses of Georgia and South Carolina and Florida. At one point, he commanded the defenses of Charleston, but his northern background earned him distrust. It made it hard for him to progress as rapidly as he might have hoped, and many of his superiors and colleagues were unwilling to put full trust in him because of that question of his birth and what his politics might or might not have been. And this is part of what explains his transfer to the Western theater to try to, you know, kick him out of the way a bit. He also doesn't seem to have been a popular choice for command in the West because he had limited combat experience. And then again, there was the question of his birth and his upbringing. So he finds himself in command of the Vicksburg garrison and troops have been shuffled around to augment his defensive forces. been given 7,500 men from the Army of Tennessee, despite the vigorous protests of the commander of

the Army of Tennessee. Jefferson Davis believed that Vicksburg was a much more important post to hold than Central Tennessee was. And actually, the fall of Vicksburg is going to coincide with the culmination of the Tullahoma campaign, which leaves Middle Tennessee in Union control. And then, of course, also with the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. But Joseph Johnston, General Joe Johnston, had accompanied President Davis to inspect the Vicksburg defenses, and neither one of them were entirely pleased with what they saw there. Johnston's recommendation was for Pemberton to contract his lines so that his defenses could be held by a skeleton crew of soldiers and he could use the bulk of his forces for mobile

operations outside the wire, so to speak. He also thought their forces were too weak in general. And there was some talk of beefing up the Vicksburg defenses again, even if it meant sacrificing the Confederate hold on Arkansas. Jeff Davis recommended a troop transfer out of Arkansas, but didn't command it. And so since it was a recommendation and not a requirement, it never actually took place. And there's going to be repeated trouble over whether to reinforce Vicksburg, how much to reinforce Vicksburg, what cost to reinforce Vicksburg. That's going to be part of the debates over how and why the city ultimately was lost. Nonetheless, in the autumn in winter and early spring of 1862, the Confederate position there looked pretty solid.

And the Confederates of that region were optimistic. Cavalry raids led by men like Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn successfully disrupted Grant's supply lines on his first push towards Vicksburg. In the long run, of course, this benefits Grant because it teaches him one of his important lessons. It teaches him that he can operate in a deep and enemy country without a supply line. But in the short run, of course, it's quite alarming. And as Grant's forces try more than once and fail more than once to take Vicksburg, obviously Confederate optimism rises. By the spring of 63, they're quite confident that the city will not fall and they're so confident they plan a party a ball uh to celebrate their their

secure position and then of course it's during this party as the band strikes up a new tune that see flashing lights and hear the thunder of artillery because grant's uh gunboats are are running the the vicksburg batteries thanks uh laura why the confederacy never attempt to build naval vessels on the river is it just a question of capacity they actually do have a little bit shipbuilding on the river. But overall, the Confederate shipbuilding project is very complicated and curtailed for a variety of military, geographical, and political reasons. You have to remember that when the Civil War began, the Confederacy has not a single ship to its name, right? I like to say it has to duct tape a navy together. But really,

it's going to have to build, buy, or rehab ships into service. And during the Industrial Revolution or the market revolution, we often call it in American history, most of the industrialization had centered in the north. So that meant there's only really a handful of shipbuilding yards in the south and places like Norfolk, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, but there are some at Memphis and New Orleans. So there are some shipbuilding yards on the Mississippi River. But these are going to be quickly lost, right? A lot of these major shipbuilding towns are lost early in the war. So when the Confederacy loses New Orleans, Memphis, as well as Norfolk, Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida, New Bern, North Carolina,

and Pensacola, Florida in 1862, they've lost a lot of their substantial shipbuilding program. Secondly, you have to remember that the Confederate States Navy, when it was organized, didn't have a specific bureau to oversee ship construction. So shipbuilding efforts are going to be widespread, poorly organized, often extremely localized. This is why you actually see in several Confederate cities, these lady gumboat societies, you know, in places like Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and Richmond, where Confederate women are quite literally raising money to build their own ironclad. Thirdly, the South's shipbuilding efforts are chronically plagued with shortages of material, machinery, and labor, which again,

ties back to that lack of industrialization in the South. It was really difficult for the Confederacy to procure iron for shipbuilding. Even though there are pig iron deposits in the South, they were often in extremely remote areas that were hard to access. So pre-Civil War, most Southern iron mills actually got their iron ore from Pennsylvania and not from their Southern neighbors. And that shortage of shipbuilding supplies is going to be matched by a shortage of skilled labor in the confederacy many southern shipbuilders had actually been transported northerners or foreigners who are going to leave the region once the civil war starts others had been volunteered or conscripted into military service and lastly as historian

william still junior who's probably the foremost expert on confederate shipbuilding mentions and explains time is just not on the confederacy side right it's an extremely short-lived country and he says, quote, materials needed to complete vessels were delayed because facilities were destroyed or had to be moved in the face of advancing enemy forces. Time and time again, uncompleted ironclads and wooden gunboats had to be destroyed to prevent their capture. So when you take all of these factors together, lack of industry, lack of supplies, lack of builders, and lack of time, you can understand why there's just not a major shipbuilding program in the confederacy at all let alone along the mississippi river all right so i have two things

to look up now camel cores and ladies gunboat societies so this is going swimmingly because that sounds amazing uh and as i read the article you ported which i think we need to mention here vicksburg the past and future of amphibious operations by b.a creedman writing for strategy bridge which we'll link in the show notes i was really struck by the extent that grant went to to bend the terrain to his will. Can you tell us what his plans were and how those unfolded? Sure. I'm going to talk here about his second sort of group of attempts to move on Vicksburg, and I think my material might overlap with Laura's a bit, but that's okay. So during his second attempt to drive on Vicksburg, nature is really his biggest challenge, but also something

that he hopes to use to his advantage. Federal troops control the swamps and bayous north and west of the city, but the rains have been heavy in the winter and continue to be heavy, and this hampers army movements and also causes trouble with readiness. Disease is a problem, and so is death, unfortunately.

The only real possibility for a relatively easy infantry maneuver was the high ground east of the city on the other side of the river. So the problem is going to be getting there. And the hope here is that he can use the high water in the swamps and bayous to get there, to use it as an asset. Since he's got David Dixon Porter's fleet, the hope is that he can get vessels through channels

that would ordinarily be too narrow or too shallow to permit access. So in the winter of 62 and early 63, we see four separate attempts to flank Vicksburg by water and to get the troops to the east bank of the river to then approach the city from the landward side. The first attempt, actually before I talk about the first attempt, Later on in his life, Grant talks, he describes these efforts as sort of half-hearted makeshift efforts and not as realistic plans. But if you look at his actions at the time, he certainly treated them as realistic. He approached them with the same level of determination he did everything else. And that suggests they were serious efforts.

He used manpower to do this, but also some of the newer technology that was available, things like steam shovels, which his biographer says shows his modern cast of mind, his innovative thinking. The first attempt was to complete a cutoff canal that had already been begun. Soldiers and contraband labor had already begun to cut a canal across the peninsula formed by the river's bend. And ideally, this would have left Vicksburg high and dry. Maybe I should say a word about what I mean by contraband here. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and then went into effect, the Union Army was liberating enslaved people, primarily enslaved men, wherever they went in the South. The first Confiscation Act provided a legal rationale for the quote-unquote confiscation of human beings who were being used in the Confederate war effort, in the same way that a general in the field might confiscate wagon loads of hospital supplies or an artillery caisson or anything, or horses or anything like that. And then the second Confiscation Act in 1862 provided for the confiscation of people who were owned by active Confederate sympathizers. And so these liberated slaves who often found paid work working for the Union forces are often referred to as contraband, as any other captured material of war would be. So soldier and contraband labor had already begun digging that cutoff canal.

And the hope was that the canal would reroute the river itself and leave the city high and dry. The river would not cooperate. And ultimately, the heavy rains collapsed the progress that they had made. They were piling up berms of dirt that then sort of got sodden and slumped back. Even if this project had been carried through to completion, it's not clear that it would have been the key to taking Vicksburg. It's possible that the Confederate defenders could have relocated guns in a position that would allow them to command the canal rather than the river. But when it became clear that the canal project was incurring

too much risk and not enough reward, Grant chose a different path, and his men attempted to chart a course through Lake Providence. Here he relies on troops under the command of General McPherson, who had been his chief engineer and was now a trusted combat officer. Again, with the relative lack of amphibious training, the men doing the bulk of this work went into the army to fight with a rifled musket and a bayonet. And here they find themselves dredging mud and sawing off trees below the waterline to clear the channel for gunboats and troop transports. And eventually, this effort is also going to be called off. There's an effort to find a water route through the Yazoo Delta. And again, the hope there is that if gunboats and transports could get through,

troops could land northeast of the city, and then they could actually fight. Some of these troops are under General McLernan's command, so he does play a part in this expedition, although not quite the part he had dreamed of. Under McLernan's command, troops blow up a levee 400 miles north of Vicksburg and try to float, to use the released water to float on down in an attempt to clear an initial passage. But here, again, nature is thwarting them at almost every step. Trees hung low and smashed everything above the deck. So your smokestack, your lifeboats, anything not tied down, it runs the risk of simply being whisked off into the water. Logs floating on the current smash into the hulls of ships. Confederate forces in the

region, chopped down trees to create artificial barriers. The naval commander in charge of this aspect of the mission shows signs of a nervous breakdown from the stress and anxiety of the job he's been asked to do. And then when his men come under enemy fire, the poor guy collapses entirely and the mission has failed. And then there's a roughly simultaneous effort made by Porter himself and some of Sherman's troops, and they encounter very similar obstacles. The soldiers involved in this recalled how snakes and raccoons and wildcats fell out of the trees and had to be swept off the deck of these boats with a broom, which again, not so much what they had trained for. The transports and gunships bogged down with Confederate infantry closing in, and Porter

sent a message to the infantry for support. The infantry came up. He reversed his ships and backed out of there. So all of this had taken two months. It had cost men's lives, and each of these roundabouts, circuitous efforts to make your way through the swamplands and the bayous and the lakes come to nothing. So Grant decides to do something different. And I think I'll leave that to Laura if she'd like to take over. Absolutely. So Laura, how is Grant going to plan to use his command of the river here? So as you can see, commanding the Mississippi River is almost impossible, as I think Anne has highlighted, right? It's a pretty daunting task. But what grant is going to try to do and you know this kind of risky and intricate plan that's going to take

shape in the spring of summer of 1863 is he needs to take advantage of the regions of the river that the united states already controls um he needs to find places strategically places troops and he needs to do things like distract pemberton from detecting his ultimate um assault plan right he needs to draw pemberton away from vicksburg further inland so that way there are potential river crossings that are going to be open to the united states but i think if we look at how the battle and operation really the campaign unfolds um that might better answer your question um but it's okay i'll talk about the operation itself yeah roll straight into it absolutely in the beginning of 1863 grant's going to work with porter to launch a substantial amphibious campaign

And part of it is this risky idea that we are going to take Porter's fleet and run them past the guns that are sitting atop of Vicksburg. And ultimately, Porter agrees to this risky plan, but he's worried because once he gets his boats south of Vicksburg, he doesn't think he's ever going to get them back north. Right. Their engines aren't quite strong enough to steam up there. Plus, you know, they're going to be fired upon and ultimately destroyed. But David Dixon Porter agrees to this plan. So the campaign's really going to begin on the evening of April 16, 1863. And that's when David Dixon Porter is going to lead seven river ironclads, three transports, and one wooden gunboat in a daring raid past Vicksburg's batteries. Now, Porter is trying to take every protective measure that he can. He's actually attached coal barges with heavy logs and wet bales of hay on the port side of his ironclad so they might be able to protect the ships and take the gunfire.

And he's taking his ships and they're operating quite silently, you know, without their engines going. They're hugging the coastline as close as possible. They're trying to, you know, in the middle of the night at about 11 p.m., while everybody's distracted, right, silently drift down the Mississippi River. But Confederate pickets will spot quarter ships and they begin firing. They launch about 525 rounds at this combined force. But luckily, the U.S. ships are hugging the coastline so closely that many of the rebel rounds will overshoot them. So in the end, all of the gunboats and two of the three transports successfully run the gauntlet and make it south of Dixburg. It's the Henry Clay is the only ship that is sunk, but her crew is rescued.

So ultimately, there are only 14 U.S. sailors who are wounded in the entire process. A few days later, Corder has arranged for a supply flotilla of 18 ships carrying about 600,000 rations for Grant's Army to also run the batteries. The civilian crews of these supply ships did not want to take any part in this whatsoever. So many of the ships are actually manned by Army members who have some sailing experience. 16 out of the 18 supply ships will successfully make it past the batteries so now you've got quarter a bunch of ships and all of these supplies and rations south of vicksburg and that's going to well situate grant to finally cross his troops over the mighty mississippi river he's trying to get to the confederate side which is the eastern side so grant wall you know is starting to plan

to confuse and distract Pemberton, right, after Porter has begun these efforts. So on April 17th, Grant launches a cavalry raid into the interior of Mississippi, and on the 29th, he directs Sherman to feign an attack north of Vicksburg. These efforts tie up Pemberton's army and leave a lot of river crossings unmanned, and that opens the door for Porter to start to help transport Grant's troops across the river. On April 29th, seven of Porter's gunboats will shell Grand Gulf, which is just south of Vicksburg, with 2,500 rounds for about five hours. And what they're really doing is they're pinning down the Confederates at that fort so that other U.S. Navy transport ships can take 23 U.S. soldiers and finally get them across to the right side

of the river, right, the Confederate side, eastern side, and put them in a good situation to attack vicksburg so they cross at bruinsburg which is just again a little bit further south by april 20th ulysses grant is in good shape he finally has a substantial key part of his army on the eastern side of the river and he's going to spend 17 days marching towards vicksburg but it's not a direct north march he's going to go indirectly and kind of out to the east to distract pemberton in route to Vicksburg. So over 17 days, his armies will march about 200 miles. They fight five battles. They capture 6,000 prisoners. Some scholars call this part of the campaign the blitzkrieg of the campaigns. It's so quick and intense and fierce. And the U.S. forces will successfully take Port

Gibson, Richmond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River. And the loss of Jackson, Mississippi is really significant because that's the state capital of Mississippi, and it's a very important industrial and railroad town. Now, rather than occupy the capital city, Grant's going to employ hard war tactics, destroying or burning factories, machine shops, telegraphs, railroad lines, anything of military value, right? Just make the city unuseful for launching any war efforts. While Grant's doing all of this, Porter's not sitting by, right? Porter's still doing things. This is a substantial joint Army-Navy operation. So Porter's sailors are going to occupy the abandoned Confederate base at Grand Gulf,

and they're going to set up a very important forward supply depot that's going to be able to supply Grant's troops as they go further north to Vicksburg, right? Because you need to be able to supply your army in order to successfully launch a campaign. And so after the success of Grant and these five battles, the success of Porter in establishing the supply depot, we have a situation where the United States Army can finally enter in the phase the final successful phase of the Vicksburg campaign and so things start in May 18th and Anne's already kind of alluded to this right on May 18th and May 22nd Grant tries to assault the town of Vicksburg and he fails in both of these direct assaults right even though he's well situated his troops at times did get atop some confederate parapets but their casualty rates are super high there's

a lot of forward back and these just direct forward assaults don't work well so after may 22nd grant decides that the way that he's going to finally finally finally take vicksburg is through a prolonged siege of this city right and he's going to have to work directly with david dixon porter to do this so grant's infantry is going to invest the city of vicksburg they're going to dig trenches and tunnels and earthworks to kind of dig their way closer and closer to the confederate lines his front lines are going to be constantly kind of refreshed and exchanged as he rotates in new reinforcements as well as some newly enlisted black troops and ann did a great job talking about the importance of this right after the emancipation proclamation but now all of a sudden we have some

african-american men fighting on behalf of the u.s army and this is the confederate soldiers worst nightmare, right? They don't support African American freedom or equality, let alone arming an African American man with a gun. This is the stuff of their worst nightmares. So this is going to do a lot to distract and infuriate the Confederate forces. Grant's armies are, like I said, doing a lot of digging at trenches and tunnels. On June 25th, they actually blow up the third Louisiana raid van, creating a substantial crater. So there's a crater at Vicksburg about a year before there's a crater at peterford um and by july 4th grant's engineers are a couple days away from being able to set off 13 simultaneous explosions kind of underneath all the armaments

at vicksburg now sadly they don't get to do that because the city will fall for that while grant digging and tunneling his way towards the city porter is again at work his gunboats have encircled the city from the water and they provide a lot of additional firepower to the federal forces. So Porter's flotilla is going to fire roughly 22,000 shells into the Confederate fortifications over the course of 39 days. That averages out to about 564 shells per day. So if you're living in Vicksburg, all you are hearing is Porter's guns, right? And this joint army-navy operation against Vicksburg is really going to devastate Pemberton's army as well as the local population. In fact, many of the civilians who lived in and around Vicksburg have now resorted

to hiding out in caves or in underground like tunnels that they have dug out because they don't want to be shelled or face the bombardment. Food supplies are dwindling. You know, water is hard to come by. People are basically resorting to eating muskrat or mule meat. Disease is starting to run rampant. So things are looking really, really bad for Vicksburg. And so on the verge starvation, Pemberton is going to negotiate a surrender with Ulysses S. Grant. It takes about a day or so for them to negotiate proper terms, because initially Grant wanted unconditional surrender, but he will ultimately agree to just parole Pemberton's forces. But on July 4th, 1863, a very auspicious day, right, in American history, Vicksburg falls. And that's why Vicksburg,

the town, will not celebrate Independence Day for about 80 years. It takes a couple generations for them to get over the loss of their town. With the fall of Vicksburg, Court Hudson, that other Confederate stronghold on the river will fall just a matter of days later. And the United States seemingly gains complete control of the Mississippi River, right? President Abraham Lincoln famously says,

the father of the waters again goes on vexed to the sea. So it's a huge strategic victory for the United States. Thanks. And we'll close with a final question is, What lessons can we take for amphibious operations today? I don't know if Anne wants to chime in here, too, as well. But I think that article that she shared by Brett Friedman about Vicksburg amphibious operations really laid out some good key lessons here. I think the first of all is that in order for amphibious operations to work well, you need to have tight coordination between the land and the maritime forces.

It can't be a supporting relationship. It really needs to be one of equality and symbiosis. Vicksburg is a success because Grant and Porter worked together throughout the campaign, right? The Navy established that beachhead at Grand Gulf. They supplied troops ashore. They attacked riverine emplacements and bombarded the city, all while the Army is doing its own thing, right? Launching several successful battles, seizing and destroying coastal emplacements from the land side, contributing to river maneuverability and laying siege to the city um i think a second important lesson is knowing how you can use both the army and navy tools um to your advantage successfully and using speed to your advantage right with quarters a grant mounted that massive amphibious

operation marched hundreds of miles fought five battles in succession um but he did that because of he knew how to use and it to forces there had been previous joint army navy operations that did not work as well as they had at vicksburg and so porter and grant together dispersed that major confederate army and destroyed some vital supply lines because they worked so well together and they worked so quickly together in a very kind of respectful and efficient manner and then i think the article really highlighted how important combat engineering was and and discussed a lot of this and her comments, right? But the VIX4 campaign features building corduroy roids and bridges, destroying bridges, trying to divert the Mississippi River, constructing Grant's famous

canal, digging mines and trench works, and all of that came together for that ultimate U.S. success. Thanks. Anything to add to that, Anne? All right. Well, that's unfortunately all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Dr. Anne Brinton, Dr. Laura June Davis. Anne, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? You'll find me online on twitter.com. Search on my name. I had an article come out over the summer in a Polish journal called Texti Drugi about antebellum southern girlhood and the dialectic of resistance and accommodation. I'm currently working on two projects, one on gendered rebellion in Kentucky in the last months of the Civil War and the first

months of Reconstruction, and another on the slave markets in the border states during the war years. I'm hoping to help fill a gap in the historiography because most studies of the slave market cut off in 1860 or 61, and I would like to find out what these markets in hiring and sales look like under wartime conditions as it becomes increasingly clear that slavery will not survive the war by long if it survives the war at all. Thanks. I look forward to both of those, and I'll ask you for a link once we go offline here so we can link your article from this summer as well in the show notes. Laura, where can we find you online, and what are you working on? i'm also at twitter really easy to find i'm at laura june davis because i i'm not creative at

all um you can find some of my recent work in an edited collection called the gorilla hunters which is about irregular warfare and i have a chapter on irregular naval warfare along the lower mississippi river which is really related to my current project which is a book-length um project It's tentatively titled Vexed Waters that looks at what happens after Vicksburg falls. And that's the rise of sabotage, boat burning and naval guerrilla warfare along the lower Mississippi River. So these pro-Confederate sympathizers are not happy that the U.S. is trying to gain control of the river. And so they're going to challenge and thwart the U.S. military and economy by intentionally blowing up and sabotaging commercial steamboats, which are often carrying troops, money, supplies, you know, to grant armies in the West. I'll look for those as well. That sounds excellent and like something we would enjoy reading and discussing on the program.

But thanks again to both of you and to our listeners. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Sea Control is produced by Keegan Ingersoll. ¶¶ © transcript Emily Beynon