Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy

by Donald L. Miller Narrated by Rick Adamson

Overview

Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York's Fletcher Pratt Literary Award
Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table's Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize
Winner of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award

“A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn't do it. It took Grant's army and Admiral David Porter's navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender.

In this “elegant...enlightening...well-researched and well-told” (Publishers Weekly) work, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city “with probing intelligence and irresistible passion” (Booklist). He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. With Vicksburg “Miller has produced a model work that ties together military and social history” (Civil War Times).

Vicksburg solidified Grant's reputation as the Union's most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but ultimately he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war-the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.

Editorial Reviews

JANUARY 2020 - AudioFile

Miller makes a strong case for the capture of Vicksburg being the turning point of the Civil War—more important than the almost simultaneous Battle of Gettysburg. The audiobook starts from the point when General Grant first began planning the campaign, a year and a half before the surrender, and includes not only the military history and biographies of all the major players but also the social effects on the people in and near the paths of the armies. Narrator Rick Adamson keeps track of quotations with subtle shifts in tone and avoids a confusing multiplicity of accents. He gives us a saga of military brilliance and incompetence linked to the struggle of emancipation. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

08/19/2019

In this elegant Civil War history, Miller (Masters of the Air) meticulously details Ulysses S. Grant’s success on the yearlong campaign to take Vicksburg, Miss., “the last obstacle facing Union forces struggling to regain control of the great river of America and split the Confederacy in two.” Miller’s enlightening chronology explains how the campaign established Union dominance on the western front despite Vicksburg’s natural bluffs, which aided the defending Confederate army as it waited desperately for relief that never came. Drawing on military records, personal letters, and diaries, Miller fleshes out the effects of the relentless campaign on the mistake-prone generals on both sides, newly freed slaves impressed into Union service, and the frightened but defiant Vicksburg residents, some of whom left mansions to hide in caves during the siege. Miller reveals that Grant’s perseverance despite several significant setbacks (both military and personal—he struggled with alcoholism) won him an unusual written apology from Abraham Lincoln and a promotion. Miller mistakenly repeats the assertion that rape by military personnel was uncommon during the war, but overall this account is well-researched and well-told, incorporating a variety of perspectives and events without becoming shaggy. Military buffs will delight in Miller’s rendering of Grant’s audacity. (Oct.)

The Wall Street Journal - John Steele Gordon

A superb account of both military leadership and soldierly warfare. . . . Books like Vicksburg are exactly what Thomas Hardy had in mind when he wrote that ‘war makes rattling good history.’

Booklist

"Readers will marvel at how Grant—a washed-up dry-goods clerk at the beginning of the Civil War—acquires the power and skill that made him the mastermind at Vicksburg of the largest amphibious army-navy operation staged by the U.S. military until D-Day. In a narrative taut with drama, Miller recounts how this resolute Union crusader takes the war down the Mississippi. . . . War history alive with probing intelligence and irresistible passion."

Civil War Times - John McMillan

"Miller does an excellent job of illustrating Grant's growth as a commanding general. . . . Well-written and narrative-driven, Donald Miller has provided a book that offers a thoughtful reconceptualization of the Vicksburg Campaign by taking a broad chronological approach and pairing military and political affairs."

LearnCivilWarHistory.com - Jonathan R. Allen

"Authoritative, complete, engaging, and enjoyable. . . . Brings to the reader all the rich and crucial history of Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg campaign. . . . Vicksburg will become a Civil War standard."

John M. Barry

"This is a magnificent book, certainly one of the very best ever written about the Civil War. It has breadth and depth, and it is written in a way that makes the reader truly understand not only the battle and siege of Vicksburg, not only the Civil War, but war itself."

Rob Citino

Grant has had his biographers over the years, but in Miller he has finally found a writer who captures him in his completeness as a man and a military leader, overcoming heavy odds and repeated failures to win the decisive campaign of the war.

Cathal J. Nolan

This superbly written narrative is a portrait of America’s greatest soldier, warts and all, an accounting of Grant’s moral evolution on the slave question, of his many tactical gambles and errors, as well as his strategic triumph in the decisive campaign of America’s most important war. We also meet ordinary soldiers, hear the iron dice roll, smell swamps and river lands that impede key logistics in the far-flung Western theater, feel the summer heat and thickly humid air. Most remarkably, we are guided up and down the Mississippi over the course of the greatest amphibious campaign of the 19th century.

David W. Blight

Carefully researched and written with sizzling and persuasive prose, Miller has found the way to write both military and emancipation history in one profound package. Never have headquarters, slave quarters, and the ultimate purpose of the war been so seamlessly and brilliantly demonstrated.

ARMY magazine

Miller has compiled the best single-volume treatment of the Vicksburg Campaign. His riveting narrative is well researched and highly informative. . . . A tour de force.

James M. McPherson James M. McPherson

The fullest and best history of the Vicksburg campaign.

Civil War Courier - Greg A. Romaneck

"While there have been many books written about Ulysses S. Grant, no recent publication surpasses Miller’s work in terms of capturing the contradictory nature of this man. . . . Miller has crafted an insightful and striking look at the actions of General Grant at a turning point not only of the Civil War but also of American history. This is a great book and one that Civil war enthusiasts should read.

Elizabeth R. Varon

Miller deftly conjures the campaign's uncertainty and drama—the surprises that lay around every bend of the region's forbidding terrain and swampy waterways. At the heart of his story is U.S. Grant, who emerges here as a master of maneuver and improvisation, and a hero made human and real. This is military history at its best.

James M. McPherson

The fullest and best history of the Vicksburg campaign.

Booklist

"Readers will marvel at how Grant—a washed-up dry-goods clerk at the beginning of the Civil War—acquires the power and skill that made him the mastermind at Vicksburg of the largest amphibious army-navy operation staged by the U.S. military until D-Day. In a narrative taut with drama, Miller recounts how this resolute Union crusader takes the war down the Mississippi. . . . War history alive with probing intelligence and irresistible passion."

JANUARY 2020 - AudioFile

Miller makes a strong case for the capture of Vicksburg being the turning point of the Civil War—more important than the almost simultaneous Battle of Gettysburg. The audiobook starts from the point when General Grant first began planning the campaign, a year and a half before the surrender, and includes not only the military history and biographies of all the major players but also the social effects on the people in and near the paths of the armies. Narrator Rick Adamson keeps track of quotations with subtle shifts in tone and avoids a confusing multiplicity of accents. He gives us a saga of military brilliance and incompetence linked to the struggle of emancipation. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2019-07-28
A skillful history of two years of fighting along the Mississippi River that ended with the July 1863 surrender of the fortress at Vicksburg.

Miller (Emeritus, History/Lafayette Coll.; Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America, 2014, etc.) begins in May 1861, when the first Union warship arrived to blockade the Mississippi. Nearly a year passed before Adm. David Farragut's fleet captured New Orleans, but Vicksburg, on a high bluff, refused to surrender despite several naval bombardments. Mostly, the author recounts Ulysses Grant's drive south, an operation that made him a national hero. Although more aggressive than most Union generals, his early efforts showed little skill. Luckily, his opponents showed less, and his February 1862 capture of forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee made headlines. Rewarded with an army, he moved south and fought off a surprise attack at the Battle of Shiloh in April. Its massive casualties cast a pall over his reputation, and his superior took over command. He regained it in July and kept pushing toward Vicksburg. A November march through eastern Mississippi failed after raiders destroyed his supply depot. From December to March 1863, Grant made a half-dozen attempts: one by land, others by boat, helped by dynamiting levees or digging canals. Miller vividly recounts the painful details of their failures. In April, after laboriously constructing a 70-mile road over swamps and rivers, Grant's army marched down west of the river and crossed over. Now south of Vicksburg on open ground, it won several battles and besieged the city, which surrendered after five weeks. "Vicksburg," writes the author, "was that rare thing in military history: a decisive battle, one with war-turning strategic consequences." Less enthusiastic historians point out that cutting off the trans-Mississippi states did not greatly weaken the Confederacy, as the subsequent 21 months of bitter fighting demonstrated. Still, it was the most satisfying Union campaign of the war, and Miller chronicles it with aplomb.

An expert, detailed account that should remain the definitive account for quite some time.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170794515
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Prologue PROLOGUE
“The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to interest the general reader than that of any other of the river towns.... Vicksburg... saw warfare in all its phases, both land and water—the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine.”1

—Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

“Will it not be the unquestioned sentiment of history that the liberty which Mr. Lincoln declared with his pen General Grant made effective with his sword.”2

—Frederick Douglass, “U.S. Grant and the Colored People”

In January 1863, Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the most important strategic point in the Confederacy. A fortified town on commanding bluffs above the Mississippi River, it was the last obstacle facing Union forces struggling to regain control of the great river of America and split the Confederacy in two, separating Arkansas, Texas, and much of Louisiana from secessionist states east of the Mississippi. A smaller Confederate river bastion, Port Hudson, in Louisiana, was one hundred and thirty miles downriver from Vicksburg. It was an integral part of Vicksburg’s river defense system and could not survive on its own if Vicksburg fell.

Employing steam-driven riverine warfare, Federal amphibious forces had retaken the Mississippi from Cairo, a Union naval base at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in southern Illinois, to the Yazoo River, which emptied into the Mississippi a few miles north of Vicksburg. The saltwater fleet of Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut controlled the river south of Port Hudson to the Gulf of Mexico. In April 1862, Farragut had steamed upriver from the Gulf, seized New Orleans, the South’s largest city and leading cotton port, and captured Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi, without a fight. Farragut stalled in front of lightly defended Vicksburg, however, when hardened secessionists defiantly refused to surrender. The fleet’s three-masted sloops-of-war, steam-driven wooden ships built for battles at sea, were unable to elevate their guns to bombard the city effectively. Fearing his big vessels would go aground when water levels dropped rapidly in late spring, Farragut headed back to New Orleans.

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