Original subtitles

After the Battle of Antietam, the Civil War entered a new phase, thanks to

President Lincoln's bold political initiative that became known as the

Emancipation Proclamation.

As the campaigns of 1862 waxed and waned with no decisive advantage gained by

either side, Lincoln grew to realize that the North needed a new rallying

point to bolster morale and keep the country committed to the war effort.

As the lost returns mounted, the struggle against secession had to be

transformed into some broader cause.

In the fall of 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation succeeded in

doing just that.

From that point on, the North fought not just to return the South to the Union,

but to free the slaves.

Overnight, the Civil War became a struggle between liberation and

oppression.

Lincoln's proclamation represented a victory for the abolitionist movement,

which advocated that the freedoms proclaimed in the Declaration of

Independence and the Constitution apply to all, not just whites.

Since the time of the American Revolution, people had fought against

slavery and wanted it abolished.

They fought with resolutions and from public bodies. They fought with

newspapers. They fought with speeches. They fought with books. Uncle Tom's

cabin electrified the North, and Lincoln referred to its author as the little

woman who started the Civil War.

They fought by providing the Underground Railroad, a network of supporters and

sympathizers who provided aid for tens of thousands of slaves fleeing to the

North. When the Southerners tried to force Kansas into the Union as a slave

state, they fought with guns and swords when necessary.

John Brown, who was one of the fighters in Kansas, raided the federal arsenal at

Harper's Ferry for guns for a slave rebellion.

He failed and was hanged, but he provided a martyr for the abolitionist

cause, and Union troops marched off to war, singing, John Brown's body lies a

-moldering in the grave, but we go marching on.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation pleased a growing segment of the

northern population, it was a beacon of hope to some three million slaves.

Since the spring of 1862, Lincoln had wanted to free the slaves, but he only

wanted to do so on the heels of a Union victory, and he waited all year for that

to happen. Finally, after Antietam, he felt the timing was right, and he issued

the proclamation in the fall.

President Lincoln issued his initial draft of the proclamation on September

23, 1862, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

It stated that on January 1, 1863, all slaves held in a state or part of a

state which was in rebellion should be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

In its exact wording, the Emancipation Proclamation is a somewhat compromising

document because it only frees slaves in the territory that the Union did not

control.

doesn't touch those in the territory the Union did control.

But the fact is that was really irrelevant.

The basic principle had been enunciated. This war was now about the abolition of

slavery. There would be no compromise with the South. And from now on, the

Union was fighting for the high ground of liberation of people from slavery.

And this would, in fact, be the unifying theme for the rest of the war.

Lincoln ran the risk of losing political support with his proclamation since the

majority of Northerners viewed African Americans as inferior.

And a shift of focus from union to emancipation might not sit well with

voters, but he was forced to gamble.

Confederate overtures seeking foreign intervention fell on attentive ears in

Britain and France, where the desire to gain access to southern cotton and

weaken the United States found support in both government and industry.

But with this one stroke, Lincoln trumped the southern play.

The British and French governments could not take a stand on the side of slavery.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free a single slave,

it electrified the Union and rejuvenated the Northern war effort.

At the same time, it opened up a vast new pool of manpower to the federal

armed forces.

Lincoln's proclamation included a provision opening service in the

nation's Army and Navy to free black citizens.

All over the North and Union-occupied sections of the South, African-American

males flocked to join the struggle against slavery.

When Jefferson Davis learned that the Union Army was raising black regiments,

he was incensed, and he issued an edict that basically said that any black

troops captured would be either returned to slavery or executed.

And along with that, their white officers would be executed as well.

Davis' order led directly to several massacres of black troops, the worst of

which took place at Fort Pillow when Confederate raiders under firebrand

General Nathan Bedford Forrest stormed the Union Fort and shot down African

-American soldiers who attempted to surrender.

By his own account, Forrest stated that the river was dyed with the blood of the

slaughtered for 200 yards.

it is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the northern people that

negro soldiers cannot cope with southerners did edward forest and fort

piller order their killing of the blacks i don't think so but on the other hand

did he do anything to stop it i don't think so either and whether he gave the

order or not the general rule of thumb is a commander is responsible for

everything that happens under his command whether he orders it or not it

is his responsibility

Yet in spite of Southern atrocities against black troops, by war's end, over

180,000 African Americans had rallied to the flag, serving in every theater of

the war.

Those who volunteered did so under no illusions of their fate, should they

fall into Southern hands.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation breathed new life into the Union cause,

Lincoln knew words alone could not win the war.

A general had to be found who could lead the Army of the Potomac to victory in

Virginia. It would be a search that would bedevil Lincoln for over a year

and a half.

After Antietam, McClellan's refusal to pursue Robert E. Lee's crippled army

utterly infuriated Congress and the President.

General McClellan has a variety of excuses that he tries out on the

president to explain why he isn't pursuing Robert E. Lee after Antietam.

And they have this exchange involving cavalry horses, where McClellan claims

his horses are exhausted.

And an exasperated President Lincoln asks him, what have they been doing that

they could be exhausted?

And this exchange really is the final straw that dooms McClellan.

In November of 1862, Lincoln fired McClellan and ordered General Ambrose

Burnside to take his place.

Burnside, who had been stung by McClellan's criticism after Antietam.

He has offered the command and he refuses it. He says, I'm not capable.

This is way above me.

I respect a man who knows his limitations. I respect a man who says,

this country would be better served with somebody else in that position than me.

That's a much higher level of patriotism untainted by ambition.

Burnside immediately came under pressure from Washington to launch another

offensive. Like McClellan before him, he made the classic mistake of making

Richmond, not Lee's army, his main objective.

When Burnside took command of the Army of the Potomac, it was sitting between

two wings of Lee's army.

Jackson was over in the valley and Lee was east of the valley, so...

Burnside had this incredible opportunity to turn on one of the wings and defeat

Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in detail, but he didn't do it. Instead,

his target was Richmond. Again, he was fixated, like so many of these other

generals, on a geographic point, and so he drove right between them, heading for

Richmond, and the move was such a mistake that it caught Lee completely by

surprise.

Pushing south, the Army of the Potomac reached the Rappahannock River on

November 17th, stealing a march on the clearly surprised Southerners.

Lee himself questioned Burnside's move, believing it gave him an opportunity to

strike a devastating blow against the Army of the Potomac.

Had Burnside crossed the Rappahannock on November 17th, something might have been

accomplished. Despite the rain, the river was still fordable in places, and

only about 500 Confederate cavalry troopers defended Mary's Heights.

Once Burnside reaches the Rappahannock, he decided not to actually cross it

until his pontoon bridges arrived, because he was afraid that if he sent

units across the river to Fredericksburg, they would be trapped as

the river level rose and destroyed on the opposite bank.

In the end, the cautious Burnside settled down to wait for his equipment

to catch up with the army.

He was able to get to Fredericksburg before Lee was able to position his army

at that place and block him.

But he couldn't take advantage of it because the pontoon bridges were slow in

arriving despite his orders to the contrary. And there's been debate and a

lot of acrimonious accusations that the people who were still loyal to McClellan

were trying to undermine Burnside deliberately by preventing him from

getting those bridges.

The lack of pontoons would not have dissuaded a Grant or a Sherman.

Any other general would have just said, well, we have no pontoons.

Get across anyway.

Find a way. Tear down the houses.

Build whichever you do. Cross over the dams. Find the shallows.

Get your bloody army across that river.

That delay gave Lee all the time he needed to bring his own force to Mary's

Heights outside of Fredericksburg and move Jackson over from the valley to

guard his right flank.

By the time Burnside's pontoon bridges arrived, it was too late.

The Southerners were entrenched on the south shore of the river, ready to

repulse any attack.

Seeing the Confederate response, Burnside fretted over what to do next.

An honest, if unimaginative man, he considered a flanking attempt, but gave

up when his balloon observers discovered Jackson's arrival.

He settled on a frontal assault.

Once Burnside was unable to surprisingly or get a better position on him, he

should not have tried the frontal assaults. It was just too strong of a

position, and unfortunately it led to the huge disaster at Fredericksburg.

Construction of the pontoon bridges in front of Fredericksburg began on

December 11th, and though the engineers suffered greatly from sniper fire, Union

troops successfully crossed the Rappahannock and entered the lightly

held town.

setting the stage for one of the Civil War's most infamous slaughters.

On the Union left, in the vicinity of Prospect Hill, General Meade's division

actually breaks through the Confederate lines, but he isn't supported and it's

not followed up, and ultimately Jackson will counterattack and push him back out

of the Confederate position.

Little more than two miles north of Prospect Hill, Burnside sent the

divisions of Hooker and Sumner toward the Confederates on Mary's Heights.

Advancing by brigade, the waves of blue-clad soldiers were cut down in one

of the most courageous and hopeless attacks of the war.

General Longstreet, when asked if he could hold his line, answered, If you

put every man now on the other side of the Potomac in that field to approach me

over the same line and give me plenty of ammunition, I will kill them all before

they reach me.

Witnessing the terrible slaughter, Robert E. Lee uttered some of his most

enduring words.

It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it.

When darkness fell, the field below Mary's Heights was littered with the

dead and dying.

Joshua Chamberlain, a lieutenant colonel with the 20th Maine, later recalled that

terrible night.

A smothered moan rose and fell, pierced by shrieks of pain.

Some calling on God for pity, and some unfriendly hands to finish what the

enemy had so horribly begun.

And underneath, all the time, that deep bass note from closed lips too

hopeless or too heroic to articulate their agony.

One of the men moved by the plight of the Union wounded on the field at

Fredericksburg is Sergeant Richard Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina.

and he goes all the way up to his brigade commander to get permission, and

finally he is allowed to take a bunch of canteens of water, cross out of

Confederate lines, and give water and comfort to the Union wounded on the

field at Fredericksburg.

And for these actions, he's dubbed the Angel of Mary's Heights by the Union

forces in the area.

In spite of the terrible loss his army had suffered at Fredericksburg, Burnside

was unwilling to admit defeat.

On December 15th, he undertook another crossing of the Rappahannock above the

town. Burnside was not a quitter. He didn't give up. So he was going to try

to do something else. Unfortunately for him, he tried it during a time of the

year that the rains came, the roads turned into quagmires of mud, his army

couldn't march.

He tried to outflank Lee, ironically, in a way that would be done successfully by

Joseph Hooker later that spring.

He couldn't move in what was then ridiculed as the mud march. The terrible

losses at Fredericksburg seriously affected the morale of the army.

Soldiers wrote home that, I am sick and tired of disaster and the fools who

bring disaster upon us.

All think Virginia is not worth such a loss of life.

And though Burnside manfully shouldered the blame, Lincoln bore the brunt of the

criticism. Upon learning of the debacle at Fredericksburg, he said, if there is

a worse place than hell, I am in it.

By the time Burnside was relieved as commander of the Army of the Potomac,

events in the West had captured the attention of both North and South.

At stake was control of the key border state of Kentucky.

General Braxton Bragg, the temperamental commander of the Army of Tennessee, had

pitted his men against the Army of Ohio and Don Carlos Buell in a series of

engagements culminating in the Battle of Perryville.

Commanding a much larger army, Buell forced the Confederates to withdraw, but

his lackadaisical pursuit of the fleeing rebels ultimately led to his

replacement. Bragg withdrew in haste to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

where he began gathering supplies and men for an attempt to recapture the

important city of Nashville.

The loss of Nashville is very significant because that was most of the

heavy industry.

And the South has to recreate that heavy industry in Atlanta.

The real upsurge of industrialization, albeit on a minor scale compared to the

North and the Deep South, is because they lose Nashville and some of the

other more northern parts of the Confederacy that were more

industrialized.

Major General William S. Rosecrans, selected to replace Buell, was well

aware that Lincoln wanted his armies to advance all across the map before winter

set in, and clearly his objective was to be Bragg.

In late December, General Rosecrans and his army moved south to attack the

Confederate position at Stones River, some 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

By the evening of December 30th, the respective forces were in position

opposite each other, but the next morning...

Bragg struck first.

In a battle reminiscent of Shiloh, the Confederates badly mauled the Union Army

the first day, but were unable to drive them from the field.

After a day of inactivity, Bragg ordered a disastrous flank attack on January 2nd

that was sent back with 1,500 casualties.

By January 3rd, the rebel commander had had enough. He decided to abandon his

position and retreat.

The stubborn refusal of Rosecrans to yield in spite of heavy losses had

gained a minor Union victory.

Historians don't give Rosecrans much credit for being a good general because

of his poor performance at Chickamauga in 1863.

But if you look at his performance at Stones River or Murfreesboro before that

in the winter, his refusal to accept defeat despite the fact his forces were

initially defeated and the fact that he stubbornly held on,

He basically was in a face-to-face confrontation with Bragg, if you want to

look at it that way, an analogy, and Bragg blinked. It was just that simple,

and Bragg was the one who decided he'd had enough and retreated. So the

Confederates went from being able to have a significant victory to having yet

another defeat of one among many that Bragg and the Army of Tennessee would

suffer.

Stones River was also important for Lincoln, and a lot of people don't

realize this, that Lincoln had just received really bad news about

Fredericksburg in December also.

And Rosecrans having a victory, no matter how slim, it still was perceived

as a victory, and that was what was important, perception.

Lincoln thanked him profusely because he needed that boost politically, and

Rosecrans gave it to him.

The events at Stones River reverberated through the north, sparking talk of an

end to the war and encouraging a new offensive in the east.

This time, the armies, blue and gray, would meet in Virginia, near the town of

Chancellorsville.

With the 1863 campaign season only a few months away, Lincoln needed victories

out of the Army of the Potomac.

Clearly, Ambrose Burnside was not the man to deliver them.

It remained to be seen who could.

But Lincoln grew determined to sort through his brass hats to find the right

man for the job.

Following the catastrophic defeat at Fredericksburg and the embarrassing mud

march, Lincoln relieved Burnside and replaced him with General Fighting Joe

Hooker in January of 1863.

General Hooker, as a pure military mind, was probably a pretty astute guy, but he

had two major character flaws that ultimately led to his doom and the

destruction of his career, the worst of which was the fact that he couldn't get

along with his subordinates, and he was constantly scheming against his peers

and his superiors.

That, combined with the fact that he was a man of low moral integrity and was

known to travel with prostitutes, contributed to Lincoln's unease at

giving him the Army of the Potomac.

Although President Lincoln had strong reservations about Hooker, the new

commander of the Army of the Potomac implemented many changes that were to

have a profound effect in future campaigns.

Hooker took over at a very bad time. A lot of men were deserting. They were fed

up with the war.

They felt the northern cause was hopeless.

But he was able to rebuild morale.

by a lot of simple expedients, getting the men fed, getting them mail,

improving their living conditions, not making them do mud marches like

Burnside. And he also instituted a series of corps insignia for each corps

that became very famous and became a source of military pride among the

different formations.

Hooker really rebuilt the morale of the army, and when he led it in the

Chancellorsville in that campaign,

He accomplished what he wanted to. He was not going to try and attack Lee. He

wanted to get behind Lee and force Lee to abandon his good positions at

Fredericksburg and attack him. He knew how dangerous defensive positions could

be because the Union Army had thrown themselves against them unsuccessfully.

He was hoping Lee would do the same thing.

To force Lee into the open, Hooker settled upon a surprise march to swing

around the Confederate left flank.

He would leave 45,000 men at Fredericksburg to keep the pressure on

Lee and take the rest of the Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock River

before pushing south across the Rapidan.

At that point, he'd be able to threaten Lee's communication with Richmond.

Ultimately, the Army of Northern Virginia would be flanked and forced out

of its defenses around Fredericksburg.

Hooker executed the first stage of his plan at the end of April, and the sudden

move caught Lee off guard.

He had sent Longstreet down to South Carolina to stave off a series of Union

seaborne incursions, so he was down to just 60,000 men compared to Hooker's 100

,000. One other aspect of Hooker that a lot of people do not look at closely

and yet very critical to the performance of the Army of the Potomac at

Chancellorsville, but if you look at the campaign...

was very successful in its initial stages and caught lee completely by

surprise and one of the reasons that he was able to do this is because of his

improved intelligence services using the locals also forming an intelligence

service a military intelligence service within his headquarters that performed

extremely well not only for him but later for me during the battle of

gettysburg in the campaign in pennsylvania before lee could react

hooker had shoved 70 000 men across the rapidan behind lee's left flank it was a

brilliant coup but one hooker failed to exploit after reaching the crossroad

village of chancellorsville hooker issued order number 47 which was read to

the entire army that evening it is with heartfelt satisfaction that the

commanding general announces to the army

that the operations of the past three days have determined that our enemy must

either ingloriously fly or come out from behind his defenses and give us battle

on our own ground where certain destruction awaits him lee realized he

was caught in a trap the holding force hooker had left behind at fredericksburg

combined with the flanking force now headed for chancellorsville greatly

outnumbered his army of northern virginia hooker's really put lee and the

army of northern virginia in a vice And Lee really only has three options.

He can retreat, he can stand at Fredericksburg, or he can leave a

covering force at Fredericksburg and take his main body and attack Hooker's

army.

Lee, being who he is and constantly offensively minded, chooses a third

option and counterattacks Hooker in an attempt to smash him.

On April 30th, Lee put his army on the road.

Leaving behind Early's division, reinforced with an additional brigade,

he took the rest of his men and marched them west to engage Hooker.

Meanwhile, the Army of the Potomac began a creeping march east, which set up a

meeting engagement with Lee's onrushing veterans.

Hooker's advance guard soon bumped into Anderson's division from Jackson's

Corps.

The Union soldiers quickly occupied high ground and began preparations to

counterattack the outnumbered Confederates, but at this crucial

moment, Hooker lost heart.

He ordered his corps to abandon the ridges they held and retire to the

clearing around Chancellorsville.

General Meade was outraged by Hooker's timidity and was heard to say, my God,

if we can't hold the top of a hill, we certainly cannot hold the bottom of it.

The position the Union Army occupied near Chancellorsville faced generally

south, anchored on the Rappahannock to the east or left, but hanging weak and

unanchored on the right in Howard's 11th Corps area.

Jeb Stuart discovers that Hooker's right, which is Howard's 11th Corps,

isn't anchored on any sort of terrain feature and is weakly prepared.

So with this information, Lee, in conference with Jackson, makes the

decision to send Jackson on this long flanking march to attack the right flank

of the Army of the Potomac.

On May 2nd, Jackson marched his men right across the front of the Union line

along a concealed road.

Federal outposts detected the southern columns, but when this information was

passed on, it made no impression on the Union commanders, who either ignored it

or misinterpreted the move as a southern withdrawal.

Meanwhile, Lee made his presence known by sporadic artillery firing and

threatening movements in Hooker's front without actually committing to a battle.

Late that afternoon, Jackson's men finally reached their jump-off point,

and the southern commander ordered the attack to begin.

With the characteristic rebel yell, the gray-coated line crashed into the

startled Yankees.

Oliver Howard, commander of the 11th Corps, later recalled the attack.

It was a terrible gale. The rush, the rattle, the quick lightning from a

hundred points at once.

The roar redoubled by echoes through the forest.

The panic, the dead and the dying in sight, and the wounded straggling along.

The frantic efforts of the brave and patriotic to stay the angry storm.

Although a few scattered units made desperate stands, the majority of the

Federal force was soon in full flight as the Confederate attack swept forward.

In no time at all, Howard's 11th Corps was a shambles.

Well, as the Union troops fall back, various different officers begin to

rally fragments of the 11th Corps and also pull in other units. And a new

Union line is established in the area of Hazel Grove.

And against the stiffening Union resistance, the Confederate attack

stalls.

Stonewall Jackson had been urging his men on throughout the day, but as the

attack began to lose momentum, he grew impatient.

A little after 9 p.m., Jackson went forward to find a way to renew the

assault and destroy the Union army.

That night, Jackson went forward to find out where the Union line was coalescing.

And on his way back...

He came across a Confederate picket line, and this picket line mistook

Jackson and his staff for a Union cavalry detachment, so they opened fire,

and Jackson was wounded.

And as he was being carried to a hospital, he was dropped out of his

litter and was subsequently injured again.

So by the time he got to an aid station and into a surgeon's care, he was really

sick and in very bad shape.

With Jackson incapacitated, A.P. Hill took command of the Confederate left,

but a Union shell fragment soon made him a casualty, and Jeb Stuart, the Rebel

cavalry leader, took command of Jackson's corps.

With the coming of dawn, Lee hoped to push the Yankees out of Chancellorsville

and to reunite the two wings of the Army of Northern Virginia.

However, the corps of Dan Sickles stood in the way of such a junction, squarely

between the Rebel forces.

In fact, a Union counterattack at this point may have sent the Southerners

reeling, but Hooker could think only of defense.

For most of the morning on May 3rd, Stewart slugged it out with the stubborn

Federals, who managed to turn back the vigorous Confederate assaults.

Sickles, however, began to fear that his artillery might be cut off, and so

abandoned his position near Hazel Grove.

Rebels quickly advanced onto the abandoned ground and soon Confederate

guns opened up on the Union lines.

Hooker, standing on the porch of the Chancellor House, fell prey to the

Confederate barrage.

When Hooker was wounded by an artillery projectile that went through near where

he was standing, he was knocked senseless. And they didn't understand

what a concussion was. Some of the men accused him of being drunk when he was

really concussed by the shell.

And he lost control of the battle and then ordered a retreat.

As the Union troops began to abandon their positions and fall back toward the

Rappahannock, Lee and Stewart were able to join forces.

They were about to continue their pursuit when word arrived of heavy

fighting at Fredericksburg.

General John Sedgwick had been summoned the previous evening to reinforce

Hooker, but to reach him, he would have to break through the Confederate lines

at Mary's Heights.

After a brief but hotly contested battle, the Federals broke through the

thinly held line and set off for Chancellorsville, but they never got

there. The Union advance was stopped cold about six miles east of its

objective by elements of the Confederate First Corps.

Sedgwick attacked from the march near Salem Church, but he was unable to

dislodge the Southerners.

Confederate reinforcements arrived throughout the day and gradually the

Federals fell back toward the Rappahannock.

Though the action had clearly shifted from his front, Hooker made no effort to

come to the aid of Sedgwick.

On the night of May 5th, he ordered a general withdrawal.

Fighting Joe Hooker had had enough fighting.

Joseph Hooker is often denigrated by historians for his performance at

Chancellorsville, but if you look at the campaign, the army that left

Chancellorsville did so intact.

It did so with only one corps badly damaged, and that was the army that

fought successfully at Gettysburg.

Hooker was a good general that was denigrated because of his personal

habits and because he lost the Battle of Chancellorsville.

He was not that bad of a general, and in fact did a lot to help instill the

quality in the Army of the Potomac that would carry it through to final victory.

Chancellorsville ranked as Lee's greatest victory.

He had defeated an army nearly twice the size of his own and turned the table on

Hooker, whose Army of the Potomac was forced to ingloriously fly.

But the Southern Triumph came at a tremendous cost.

On May 10th, Stonewall Jackson died of the wounds he had received from his own

men, and his last words have gone down in Southern lore.

Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.

The death of Jackson deprived Lee of his greatest tactical officer, and indeed,

he was to prove irreplaceable.

His passing plunged the Confederacy into mourning.

And in the coming years, many Southerners would journey to his

gravesite at the Virginia Military Institute, where Thomas Jackson had

taught before the war.

In spite of the loss of Stonewall, whom Lee had called his right arm, the

victory at Chancellorsville left the next move in the East up to Lee.

After Chancellorsville, Lee proposed a second invasion of the North for two

reasons.

First... He knew that the Virginia countryside was being stripped bare by

both armies, and he wanted to carry the war into Pennsylvania, where there was

much more food to be found, and give the Virginia farmers a chance to recover.

But also, and more importantly, he really felt that an invasion of the

North would encourage the Northern Democrats and the Copperheads and the

peace movement within the Union to try to seek and force Lincoln to make some

sort of an accommodation with the South.

An invasion of Pennsylvania might also serve to reduce the pressure in the

West, where General Grant and the Army of the Tennessee were threatening

Vicksburg, the Confederacy's final bastion on the Mississippi River.

By early 1863, the Union forces on the Mississippi had very nearly cut the

Confederacy in half.

Only the vital strong point at Vicksburg remained in southern hands.

It was through Vicksburg that livestock and food supplies flowed from the

westernmost states of the Confederacy to points farther east.

War materials and other supplies from Europe that could not penetrate the

blockade were landed in Mexico and then transported overland via the railroads

that passed through the town.

If Vicksburg could be taken, the Confederate states west of the river

would be cut off and unable to contribute further to the war effort.

To defend Vicksburg, General John Pemberton had fortified the hills and

bluffs surrounding the town.

Well protected with earthwork emplacements and heavy artillery,

Vicksburg's defenses were among the most formidable of the war.

After the fall of New Orleans in late April 1862, flag officer David Farragut

continued upriver toward Vicksburg, capturing Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and

Natchez, Mississippi, without a shot being fired.

He hoped that his luck would hold, but Farragut was in for a rude surprise.

Farragut and the fleet arrive at Vicksburg on the 18th of May, and he

immediately calls on the city to surrender.

However, his appeal is rebuffed by the Confederates, and he finds himself

unable to bring his guns to bear on the city's defenses, which are high up on

these bluffs.

So he and the fleet retire.

Farragut returned in late June with a fleet of mortar boats and ocean-going

vessels that shelled the city for three days, but inflicted only minor damage on

the Confederate defenses.

It became clear that Vicksburg could only be taken by land.

and in the west the man for the job was ulysses grant after grant had his near

disaster at shiloh he was retained in command in the west and vicksburg was

under the purview of grant who tried several different ways very persistent

very dogged try and capture vicksburg the last major bastion along the

mississippi river where the confederates were blocking union shipping

Grant's campaign against Vicksburg became one of the most prolonged,

difficult, and innovative operations of the Civil War.

He began by attempting to storm Vicksburg with a combined Army-Navy

expedition against the Chickasaw Bluffs north of the main defenses.

He sent his trusted subordinate, General Sherman, downriver with 30,000 troops,

supported by Admiral Porter's gunboat fleet, in an effort to surprise the

Confederates. However, the Federal move was detected by an alert telegraph

operator so that when the Federals went ashore on Christmas Eve 1862, they were

met by 25,000 waiting Confederates.

Sherman quickly realized he had no chance for success and withdrew. The

South had won the first round.

Grant had intended to support Sherman with an overland attack to draw rebel

strength from the Vicksburg area. However, his move south stalled as a

result of Confederate cavalry raids.

His overland campaign was a failure because as his troops moved down, Nathan

Bedford Forrest led the first of many successful cavalry raids behind Union

lines, destroyed...

Grant's depot and supplies and forced the abandonment of the first overland

attack on Vicksburg. Grant was determined to prevent similar

distractions in the future, but in the meantime, he settled on an unusual

approach to solve the problem presented by Vicksburg.

Grant tries a variety of different water routes to circumvent the defenses of

Vicksburg, and collectively these are known as the Bayou Expeditions.

For instance, he tries the Yazoo River route. He attempts to dig a canal to

circumvent the bend in the river at Vicksburg. None of these things work,

but he's really accomplishing three things.

First, he's keeping his own troops busy.

Secondly, he's probing the defenses of Vicksburg to see where the strong and

weak points are.

And lastly, he's confusing and diffusing Pemberton's defensive effort.

By March of 1863, Grant was no closer to capturing Vicksburg than when he had

started. Though his efforts thus far had achieved little, Grant believed it

better to keep his men busy rather than allow them to stand idle.

As the Union armies struggled to close on Vicksburg, the Navy undertook a

series of raids to cut off Rebel shipping and further isolate the city.

Admiral David Dixon Porter unleashed the Federal ram Queen of the West to strike

south of Vicksburg.

Colonel Charles Rivers Ellett, son of Charles Ellett, Jr., the man most

responsible for the development of the steam ram, was one of six men from his

family who served in the Union Navy.

On February 3, 1863, he spotted the steamer City of Vicksburg moored at the

city's docks and proceeded to ram her before setting her ablaze.

Though the Queen of the West sustained some damage, she was able to continue

down the Mississippi.

Ella took the Queen of the West up the Red River and captured a number of

vessels and did a lot of damage to the Confederate cause.

But then about 85 miles upriver, he came across a Confederate battery, and his

pilot, who probably had Southern sympathies, ran him aground under the

guns. With wounded aboard, he couldn't scuttle the vessel, so instead he was

forced to surrender it, and it fell into Confederate hands and became a very

valuable asset to the Confederate Navy.

The Confederates repaired the Queen of the West and used her to strike at the

federal ironclad Indianola just below Vicksburg, which was badly damaged and

surrendered after dogged attacks by the CSS Webb and the Queen of the West.

Porter quickly formulated a plan to destroy the Indianola before it could be

repaired and put into service by the Confederates.

The Union Navy took a coal barge, a cheap coal barge.

and disguised it to look like a gunboat and sent it downriver against the

Indianola and the ships defending it.

And this arrival of this gunboat, supposed gunboat, caused all kinds of

chaos. The Confederate ships sailed away in panic and the salvage crew aboard the

Indianola panicked as well and blew the vessel up rather than let it fall back

into Union hands.

By early April, Rebel shipping had been effectively eliminated on the

Mississippi, and Grant was ready to launch his next attempt to subdue

Vicksburg. Grant, with these various moves known as the Bayou Expeditions,

has really done a couple of things. He's distracted Pemberton's attention to the

north and northeast of the city, and he's also kind of lulled the

Confederates into a false sense of security, having easily turned back all

of these efforts.

So now Grant will take his army.

In a completely unexpected move, down the west bank of the river to a point

south of Vicksburg, he'll cross the river and then attack the city from that

direction. Grant launched several diversionary actions that managed to

deflect attention from his main effort.

By far, the most important was a cavalry raid led by Colonel Benjamin Grierson.

On April 17th, Grierson's 1,700 troopers rode south out of LaGrange, Tennessee,

beginning an operation that would go down in history simply as Grierson's

Raid. During the expedition, we killed and wounded about 100 of the enemy,

captured and paroled over 500 prisoners, many of them officers, destroyed between

50 and 60 miles of railroad and telegraph, captured and destroyed over 3

,000 stands of arms and other army stores and government property to an

immense amount. We also captured 1,000 horses and mules. Colonel Benjamin

Grierson. Benjamin Grierson was actually kind of an interesting cavalry commander

and an unlikely cavalry hero.

As a kid, he'd been kicked by a horse, and so he hated the animals.

And also, he had very little military experience because before the war, he'd

been a composer.

But despite these things, he had a very cagey, wily intellect, and he was able

to lead what became probably the most successful Union cavalry operation of

the Civil War.

After Grierson's raid, the off-balance Confederates dispersed their forces in

an effort to defend all of Grant's potential targets.

In the end... They defended nothing.

Having captured Grand Gulf, Grant now will take his army and move cross

-country to the northeast towards Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital.

He'll easily push into that city, and in doing so, he's placed his army squarely

between the forces of Johnston and Pemberton.

He'll then turn back to the west and follow the rail line that he has cut

towards the city to attack it.

And this move, all these moves together will draw Pemberton out into the open to

a battle.

On May 16, 1863, Union forces were essentially ambushed by Pemberton's

three divisions, which had been deployed on some high ground called Champion's

Hill, about halfway between Jackson and Vicksburg.

Troops of General McLernan's Corps were the first to come under the rebel fire,

and soon both sides had deployed skirmishers.

The battle began in earnest when a brigade commanded by Union General

George Francis McGinnis charged straight up Champion's Hill.

At the crest, they encountered rebel artillery, and McGinnis ordered his men

to fall prone just as the first blasts of canisters zinged overhead.

One of McGinnis' men, Corporal William Hollingsworth, recalled what happened

next. We went into them with bayonet and captured a full battery of artillery.

We followed up the rebels nearly a mile, killing and taking prisoners all the

time, and not without thinning our ranks considerable.

By 1 p.m., the Confederate left was crumbling.

but a determined counterattack managed to recapture the vital position.

For a brief time, it looked like the rebels would break through to the Union

supply wagons in the rear, but Union reinforcements were flung into the fray

and outflanked Pemberton's men.

The battle raged back and forth along the crest of Champion's Hill for the

rest of the afternoon.

One participant, a Union soldier from the 24th Iowa, wrote, Every human

instinct is carried away by a torrent of passion Kill kill kill seems to fill

your heart and be written over the face of all nature Realizing that

all was lost Pemberton ordered a general retreat Grant had won another round and

the Confederates were rapidly running out of room to maneuver As Pemberton's

force is retreating from Champion's Hill, when they cross the Big Black

River, he leaves a rear guard to destroy the bridges there and delay the Federal

advance.

Early the next morning, they haven't destroyed the bridges yet. The Federals

will attack, seize the bridges, and the rear guard will be destroyed.

And the Confederates have suffered yet another reverse, and the spirit of the

Army at this point is just completely destroyed.

With Pemberton penned up in Vicksburg, Grant could now assault the city from

the east.

On May 19th and again on the 22nd, he ordered his men to storm the Confederate

works. General Grant orders these initial assaults against the defenses of

Vicksburg for a couple of reasons.

First of all, he believes that the morale of the Confederate Army is

shattered, having the evidence of this action at the Big Black River.

The second reason is, before he settles into a protracted siege for the...

own morale of his army, he believes that he has to attempt an assault.

Having satisfied the desires of his men, Grant settled down for a siege and

planned to starve Pemberton out of Vicksburg.

Soon after, Union troops began constructing bomb proofs to protect

themselves from Confederate artillery fire.

The grounds and gardens of Wexford Lodge, the home of Union sympathizer

Alice Shirley, soon fell prey to Yankee spades.

war terrible war had come to our very hearthstone household treasures were

soon destroyed under the ruthless hand of the soldier choice books were carried

off and with them a diary i had kept for several years and this i suppose was

read by many a soldier much to my mortification

As the noose tightened around Pemberton, a small force of Texans under the

command of General Henry E. McCulloch attacked the federal outpost at

Milliken's Bend, a short distance upriver from Vicksburg.

The defenders at Milliken's Bend...

were actually black troops from the African Brigade. And they actually were

able to drive off the Confederate attack, but at a cost of almost half of

their men.

And it was this determination and this incredible casualty rate that convinced

many in the Union that these new black regiments would be effective.

Charles Dana, an Army observer dispatched by Washington, was impressed

by the tenacity of the black troops.

It's impossible for men to show greater gallantry than the Negro troops in that

fight. I heard officers who in private had sneered at the idea of Negroes

fighting express themselves afterwards as heartily in favor of it.

To deflect and repel attacks such as the raid on Milliken's Bend, Grant deployed

Sherman's Corps as a mobile screen while the rest of the army constructed siege

lines around Vicksburg.

As Union engineers and troops drove their trenches ever closer to the city,

federal gunners opened a nearly continuous bombardment.

Lucy McRae, barely in her teens, described an especially harrowing night.

Suddenly, a shell came down and a portion of the roof collapsed, catching

me under it. A physician was called who said there was no bones broken, but of

internal injuries he could not say.

During all this excitement, a baby boy was born.

He was called William Siege Green.

As the siege dragged on, food became scarce, and the population was soon

reduced to eating mules, horses, and eventually rats.

The incessant fire from the siege guns forced the residents of the city to

build dugouts in the river bluffs for shelter.

Life for Pemberton's men and the citizens he defended was rapidly

becoming a living hell.

Here at Vicksburg, for the first time in American history, American civilians

received a taste of what modern warfare was all about.

And its ghastly trappings caused panic and caused much anxiety and suffering

amongst the civilian population in the town. And their well-being became a

major millstone around Pemberton's neck and ultimately was one of the reasons

why he was forced to surrender.

Shortages of supplies led the men in the trenches to declare informal truces in

order to trade items.

An exchange of Yankee bread for rebel tobacco was described by a Union

infantryman. They met midway between the lines like brothers, made the exchange,

and returned to their respective stations.

But on the ensuing day, it would have been dangerous for either man to show

his head above the ramparts.

The bloodthirsty pastime of sniping made casualties of many an unwary soldier, as

both sides spent most days firing at the enemy line.

Union Private Hosea Rood understood the game very well.

Now, if a head did happen to show up above the works, we lost no time in

sending a little leaden messenger over to whisper a word of caution.

It must not be forgotten that now and then the little leaden messengers

carried death with them.

For the wounded, little comfort could be found on either side of the lines.

They suffered worst of all. From the trenches and front lines, they were

brought to makeshift field hospitals and houses, churches, and other public

buildings. Once there, overworked doctors and nurses struggled to save a

few from the overwhelming flood of tormented, mangled men.

They worked tirelessly for days on end, using primitive surgical techniques and

medieval-looking instruments.

Amputations were the worst of all, as frequently there wasn't even chloroform

available to render the patients unconscious.

Conditions in hospitals around Vicksburg were really typical of the period.

And in fact, making it to a hospital was no guarantee of survival by any means.

In fact, fully 50% of those who reached the aid stations and hospitals died

either from the shock of the surgeries that they endured or from subsequent

infections. As the misery grew, Grant's hold on Vicksburg tightened.

By the 1st of July, 1863, the Federal approach trenches were so close that

primitive hand grenades were being thrown into the Confederate positions.

Pemberton gathered his commanders and asked whether they thought a breakout

possible, and all four replied no.

Thus, on July 3rd, Grant received a message from Pemberton requesting

surrender terms.

After 47 arduous days, the siege of Vicksburg officially ended on July 4th,

1863. Capture of Vicksburg was far more important strategically and militarily,

although not more important politically, as the victory at Gettysburg, which

happened almost at the same moment.

Vicksburg basically opened up the Mississippi...

for all of the Western states to trade, send their goods down the Mississippi

and open up trade for them, which was economically critical as well as

politically for them.

And Vicksburg also militarily gave the Union another key operational base.

Whereas the victory at Gettysburg, while it was important to defeat Lee's army

and chase it back into Virginia, it was not as strategically important a

military target.

And therefore, victory there or anywhere else was just as significant.

But politically, Gettysburg was... very very important with the fall of

vicksburg all that remained between the union and complete control of the

mississippi river was port hudson nearly 300 miles down river port hudson was a

natural fortress located on high bluffs overlooking a sharp bend in the river

nathaniel banks had been unsuccessfully attempting to pry the southerners from

their position since late may but with vicksburg gone confederate commander

franklin gardner recognized holding on was not only hopeless but also useless

he surrendered on july 9th on that date the southern confederacy was effectively

severed it was with understandable pride that president lincoln could announce to

the nation that the father of waters again goes unvexed to the sea