Aftermath and Legacy of the Siege

Want to explore even more history Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world from the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland There is plenty to discover With your subscription, you'll unlock hundredundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exxploring everything from the ancient world to World War II Just visit historyhit d. com slash subscribe bring the past alive Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one, for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're ACast, and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget and launch And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers. Get started at aast dot com slash advertise This episode is brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts Summer is upon us. And you know what that means Vacation Whether you've been planning it for months or you're ready to pack a bag and go on a whim Having a place you can rely on makes every trip feel that much easier. That's where Best Western comes in. From scenic road trips to spontaneous adventures abroad You'll find welcoming stays wherever you land, so you can focus on making memories, not managing the details This summer get one thousand bonus points and a chance to win two hundred fifty thousand bonus points So wherever you're headed, make the stay part of the trip and make it count with this limited time offer Life's a trip. Make the most of it at bestwestern. com No additional purchase necessary for sweeps See bonus points, terms and conditions and sweeps rules for details. and visit bestwestern. com for complete terms and conditions It's July eighteen sixty three within the city of Vicksburg here on the banks of the Mississippi River. The ground shakes as yet another mortar shell crashes into the hillside. families hunker down in caves carved into the clay bluffs. They've dragged blankets, cooking pots, even pieces of furniture underground alongside their frightened children On the outskirts of town, tens of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers Crouch in trenches exchanging fire beneath a merciless Mississippi sun Meanwhile, inside the besieged city, casualties mount and food supplies dwindle every morning As citizens wake to another day in the grinding ordeal of war, It seems only a matter of time before Vicksburg The Confederacy's great stronghold on the Mississippi River finally falls I name'm Don Welman and this is American History Hip O guest today is Dr. Lindsy Prevette Associate prorofessor of History at Anderson University. She is the author of The Sgeon's Battle. How Medicine won the Vicksburg campaign and change the civil War Lindseay, hello nice to see you. Thanks for joining us Hi, thanks for having me on Before we discuss the events of Vicksburg, I want to take note of the fact that you are a Vicksburg native, am I right You are. I was born and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi. So I I know the town and its battlefield well. Our northern equivalent, I suppose would be getettysburg. Does life in Vicksbury is it so defined by what happened in the Civil War? As you're growing up and so forth? It really does The town itself has changed dramatically over the years. And I think one of the biggest draws, one of the things that really kind of sustains the town is really that tourism peoplee coming through and stopping at the military park and seeing the houses and all of the things that you would think of for a visit to Vicksburg would entail It's long been on my Civil War bucket list. I've yet to make it down there as a Yankee oint of Vicksburg, we're talking about eighteen sixty three Smmer of Where is the war at this moment? Late spring, early summer, We're coming off the Battle of Chancellorsville We're coming off the battle of Chancellor'svill We're about I think one of the useful things is to think about we're about two years into the war. So April of eighteen sixty one, we're two years removed into this war that Everyone assumed was going to be fairly short lived And depending on where you focus, the war is not going particularly well especially for the union If you're looking in the east In Virginia, the Union Army has like a slate of defeat to Robert. Lee and his Army of the Potomac Things are going a little bit better in the West The Union Army has made a lot of really good inroads into the state of Tennessee. They've made it as far south as Memis And they've also kind of managed to come down to the mouth of the Mississippi River and secure New Orleans, which is a very important port city. And they're kind of making their way up the river and capturing natches as well So we have kind of this polarization of what's happening in the East and the West. Sure. It's a duality there. I mean, we talk about it a lot opposing realities for the Union anyway of the West to the east. Back east the Chancellor'sville as we discussed on episode three hundred and eighty one really marked the end of that strategy just to sort of march to Richmond It's become such a slog for them throughout those those years that what is happening out west Thanks probably to better leadership and bolder leadership anyway, especially under ground. a much more effective strategy, relating a lot to the Anaconda plan, right? This is the idea of the stranglehold that the Union wants to put on the south using the Mississippi and the Gulf Exactly, exactly. So their idea is to blockade all of the ports that would be along the Atlantic Seaboard, the Gulf of Mexico create a very strong barrier across the top of the Confederacy through Tennessee And then use that Mississippi iver that's really going to sever the Confederacy in half. R Because you have Arkansas, Louisiana and the state of Texas that's going to be on the west side of the river And everything else is on the east side of the river. And so once you sever it, you lose transportation lines, you lose the ability to move troops back and forth manufactured goods, ammunition it really can do some damage And we're deep into the middle of steam now. So you got these steam shhipips that move very quickly up and down the Mississippi as opposed to old days. I mean, this is a super highway for these times. Most definitely. ye. And so coming down the Mississippi River, you have these dominant port cities Under union control, a town that we wouldn't talk about much would be Kiaook, Iowa in Cro, Illinois. But then most people would be familiar with Saint Louis, Missouri, Memphis, Tennessee Vicksburg would be the next one down from that, and then you would have the cities of Natchis, Mississippi, and the New Orleans. And so those are your big transportation hubs Where does Vicksburg sit in the midst of this? and how does it figure into the union strategy Right. So Miss Vicksburg, Mississippi is really significant. because it is situated there between Memphis and New Orleans geographically. And Vicksburg is a connector not just north to south as an important port city on the Mississippi River, but it's also an important connector east to west because this is one of the ways that the railroad actually crosses, one of the points that the railroad crosses the Mississippi River. And even today, if you were to visit Vicksburg interstate twenty, goes across right there. So if you're going straight to Dallas or straight to Atlanta You've got to go through Vicksburg. It's still one of one of your major crossing points So by the time we get to really the fall winter of eighteen sixty two Vicksburg is really the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. Memphis is under union control, New Orleans is under union control. and it really is just Vicksburg now. And one of the things that's so challenging about it is Vicksburg, unlike those other two cities, sits on these really tall bluffs that are about two hundred feet over the river and it sits on a hairpin curve in the river. So any river traffic has to kind of come up and make this curve and drop down And these batteries, these Confederate held batteries have prime position to do damage of this river traffic. So it's really kind of a a risky thing to try to run the batteries and it's not a really sustainable long term solution That's why they need Vicksberurg. They called it the Gibraltar of the Confederacy. It was that well defended. that dug in. I think as you're talking about the geography, it's interesting. it's similar to where West Point is on the Hudson River, you know, up north where there's a bend in the river. And as a result of that, everybody's got to slow down and take their time getting around this resetting sales in the old days, but it still takes a while and that makes that that traffic especially vulnerable. So that's really what's unique about the geography and the topography of this particular location Both sides understood, you know, the stakes here, the strategic advantage of this place Confederate President Jefferson Davis said that Vicksburg was the nail head that holds the South's two halves together I mean, that's how important this is Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in the pocket That's those two that kind of sums it up, doesn't it? It couldn't get more important than Vicksburg as far as the South was concerned Where does Grant come into this story He's been marching down through the West, distinguishing himself unlike most Union generals at this time of the war Has he had Vicksburg in his cross haairs the whole time Gran is slowly making a name for himself in the West, as you kind of said. We have the major battles in the spring of eighteen sixty two at Shiloh at Corinth, and he's beginning to shift his attention to Vicksburg He's not the first to do it. The summer of eighteen sixty two, the Navy actually tries to take the city. by bombardment before Grant kind of really begins his posturing to try to figure out how to acquire Vicksburg. And I think one of the really important things to remember is that grrant isn't the grant that we think of yet, right? He's not the Union genereral grant. In fact, it's really going to be what he manages to do at Vicksburg that's really going to put him on Lincoln's radar and pull him to the east where he does kind of take that looming figurehead position that we think of today when we think of US Gants We're talking about the Mississippi River. This is a big river. This is a lot of water. This is almost like a naval expedition. as you said before. This is the first time they tried it was to come up from New Orleans and take it that way. But it's a boots on the ground situation, isn't it? It's got to come from both angles There's a lot to manage in terms of being a military leader like Grant at this point This all sort of begins in april eighteen sixty three, right? That's the general flow of things at this point I'm just curious what has happened right before that that sets this up So what we typically think of as the campaign in siege is actually Grant's third attempt to take Picksburgh And actually the overall fourth attempt. So you have that failed naval bombardment In December of ' sixty two, Grant actually tries to take the city, orchestrate the taking of the city by foot across the bay use from the north And then in January, he kind of returns to a project from the previous summer where he even kind of tries to just shift the course of the river So you don't actually have to take the city They bring out these dredging units and they tri to dig a canal across that hairpin turn and try to just shift the river west a little bit so that a lot of the river traffic could be out of right It's one of, I think, one of the more impressive feats of engineering if it had in fact worked the way they had wanted it to So when we get to April Grant has two attempts under his belt. He's bound to determine that a successful taking of the city is going to have to come from the east Vicksburg, of course, is bordered on the west by the river. The question then is how to get his army to the east And this is what we think of as the campaign. So he leaves out of his Supply base of operations. It's a place on the Louisiana side of the river just north of Vicksburggh called Millk and Spend And his men marched down the west bank of the Mississippi River It's full of bays and swamps. They're marching on levees. They're building roads and bridges as they go. It is takes the about us all in mind to get to the place to across the river. It is It's you can read about it in his memoirs. He goes into quite a bit of detail. Grant's memoirs go into detail about this campaign and it is Awful. You can just tell I mean, that time of year down there. Oh, you name it Not the least of which is malaria going on. I mean, there's all kinds of things happening Yeah, yeah, there's a ton of different components that he has going on here One of the things that I do think that is interesting though is how he's positioning the time of year. So he's seen this effort fail over the summer months because as you said, sickness, malaria, the mosquitoes are hatching and they're all over the place He has tried operations over the winter months where it's the wet season and it's flooded. So he really is kind of priming this campaign to hit through Mississippi in this April and May. so the spring months before the mosquitoes come out, but after the wet season has ended. All of your fresh vegetation is blooming. The state is kind of beautiful and green, the pressive hit heat hasn't kind of come in yet And one of the things to remember is that Grant had not planned on the siege, right? When he leaves Louisiana, when they cross into Mississippi The idea is still that they will be able to storm the city and take the city in one decisive victory. So ideally Vicksburg is theirs by the end of May I mean, he's continuing the momentum that he's had throughout that that you know, Tennessee and shil all the just the force of overwhelming force will will succeed. This is going to be different with Vicksburg because of the defensive topography that that's available to the to the Conedterors there. And they are dug in The idea generally, as you're describing it, is that he wants to sort of bypass all those defenses, right? byy landing Is it south of the city? He's trying to get around from the on the on the West Bank and come in a different way through a huge amphibious landing Not unlike a World War twoI type of thing, right? Yes. And in fact, this cooperation between the Army and the Navy, the amphibious landing of moving troops across the river is the largest amphibious landing in U. S. military history until we get to World War two. Wow. This is a massive scale operation that's a joint effort between both the Union and the Navy in a way that we haven't quite seen them unite in quite the same way. And I think you could probably argue that we won't see them unite quite the same way until we get into much later engagements in terms of US military history. Yeah. So much of the civil War, Napoleonic, All these big wars are so much about moving men and equipment around in preparation for the action g is on another level altogether. That's the problem here for Grant. He's looking at these huge bluffs and the dug in defenses that the Confederates have and his idea is to to bypass this, come around from the other side, land his men with ironclads coming down the river, the whole thing is happening In just seventeen days, Grant's army has marched one hundred and eighty miles and won along the way, five distinct battles. By may nineteenth, he has pinned Confederate Lieutenant General John Pememberton's forces. and the inhabitants inside Vicksburg. And this is becomes what is our real subject today, which is the siege of Vicksburg, something he hadn't planned to do, right Exactly. When he arrives on the outskirts of the city may nineteenth he actually kind of rushes unattacked because he thinks he has so much momentum that he can just break through and get in and is ultimately repelled And then he waits a couple more days and then launches another attack, which is arguably more kind of ferocious and its's fighting on may twenty second. And it's really being repelled on the twenty second that makes him back up and realize, all right, we got to we're going to have to do this a different way, which is really kind of the story of the entire ampaign And they are dug in for a siege of forty seven days, which is a living hell in Vicksburg. So when we come back We'll talk about what life was like during this time for the average citizen and the soldiers This episode is brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts Summer is upon us. And you know what that means Vacation Whether you've been planning it for months or you're ready to pack a bag and go on a whim Having a place you can rely on makes every trip feel that much easier That's where Best Western comes in. From scenic road trips to spontaneous adventures abroad You'll find welcoming stays wherever you land So you can focus on making memories, not managing the details This summer get one thousand bonus points and a chance to win two hundred fifty thousand bonus points. So wherever you're headed, make the stay part of the trip. and make it count with this limited time offer Life's a trip Make the most of it at bestwestern. com No additional purchase necessary for swweeps. See bonus points, terms and conditions, and sweeps rules for details. and visit bestwestern d. com for complete terms and conditions Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Cosseum Find out on the ancient podcast from History Hit Twice a week Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago Babylonians, to the Celts, to the Romans And visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were That's the ancients from History Hit Welcome back. I'm speaking to Lindseay Preveett, Associate professor at Anderson University. about the siege of Vicksburg. Lindssey We are going to talk about something that when you read the accounts It is chilling It is relentless and it is deadly And this is what this city N knew was coming and what the North had no plans in doing It's a kind of an ironic circumstance that everybody's in, isn't it It really is. And the thing about being a civilian in Vicksburg, I think, is they're well aware of the city's importance And there's been so much activity around the city that To an extent There feels like an inevitability they would end up in the Union Amy crosshairs the way that they do The question is where how when and it all kind of comes to head here in the spring and summer of ' sixty three Before Vicksburg fell under the siege completely, both civilians and enslaved people had attempted to flee What prevented them from getting out? There's a handful of different things Trportation could be one easy way of getting maneuvering in and out of the city whereere Gran is kind of positioning himself, he's really kind of blocking Vicksburg If you're looking at the railroad line that goes east to Jackson, like that's the that's the line that he's actually marching in on So you're looking at wagons that are trying to take people mostly out to like surrounding farmsteds But you also have this element, right? The city has been under attack so many different times. many civilians kind of had a lot of faith in their Confederate garrison that the Union Army would be repelled They had a lot of faith that this wasn't necessarily going to be the be all end all. that it kind of turns into. So I think a lot of people probably just didn't take it as seriously as it ended up being What kind of population are we talking about? How many people are there Yeah, so for the city of Vicksburg I believe the eighteen sixty census has about five thousand residents So when we so it's a pretty good sized town in terms of eighteen sixty standards There's a lot happening in the city. It's actually also a really big cultural hub. But when you look at things like food and water supply, The city set up for five thousand and then when the Confederate Army shows up, they're adding thirty three thousand people on top of that.. One of the big strategy or issues ends up being the city water supply. There's about a year before the board of police recommends that the city update its water supply to be able to sustain water for more people in case there is something like a siege. And they never do that So the city water supply can sustain reliably five thousand people I want to understand the arrangement here. I assume that they are surrounded. I mean, otherwise they'd get out of here. So this the siege blocks them in or there's actually is the union encircling them completely? Yeah, the Union arrmy' pretty much pretty securely. So you have you have the city center which is pushed up against the Mississippi River Around the outside of that, you have Cfederate trench lines and fortifications. So you have fortifications that are connected with rifle pits. And then the Union Army creates their own set of trench lines on the outside of that And part of this process, and I think it's one of the things that makes it such an effective siege is that Grant actually makes a policy decision. or our strategic decision to not let civilians out. So as civilians come and try to plead their case, you know, can I cross siege lines The answer is no. So part of the strategy is that whoever was in this city when the siege lines closed was going to remain in the city until Spert val That is brutal. Where is Grant going to be firing from as far as his the shelling that's going to take place City's going to get it from both sides. So our union trench lines that are skirting around the eastern side of the city are going to shell into the city at various times, but we also have a union naval flotilla that is bordering the west bank of the city on the river, and they're also going to be indiscriminately firing into the city So you have soldiers in the trench lines that are under danger, but you also have residents who are in their homes, who are sustaining shelling And they're learning how to do things like try to figure out where the candonating is and try to move out of the way and position themselves in a place that they can be as safe as possible It's an unfolding drama and early on there's there are many records of this. Emma Balfur is a diarist in Vicksburg, and she wrote this extract early in the siege I'll quot her, What is to become of all living things in this place when the boats commence shelling? God only knows shhut up as in a trap, no ingress or eress are thousands of women and children who have all fled here for safety This is a fish in the barrel situation, isn't it deffinitely is. And by the time the Confederate Army kind of comes retreating back into the city They're discouraged and I think that's beginning to be when civilians begin to think about what a serious situation that they're in And then as this siege kind of progresses, things kind of just deteriorate from there There are caves. There's a whole system of caves within this area that they're going to take refuge in, right Yeah. So one of the unique geographical features about Vicksburg is that it has a very unique soil composition. It sits on top of a type of soil called Lurse. You spell it L O E S S U And one of the dominant properties is that you can make a vertical cut in this soil. And it is impervious to erosion. And so this actually allows them to dig into the cliffs and the ravines and the ridges in order to create a system of caves to kind of protect them during the shaller. There's all sorts of different types I think it'smm Balfer that actually says that the business of cave digging kind of springs up overnight. And so it's really big to contract out to have someone come and dig you a cave And these caves get prettyret complex Yeah, and they're filled with furniture and household wares. I mean, they have they make homes. I mean, how much of the city refuge here, like percentage wise Yeahes, so they're they're different. types of caves But one type with we would find would be kind of like a community shelter cave if you would think about community shelters for like tornadoes or something along those lines. So those would just be large big rooms where peopleople who don't have access to a private cave could go during the shelling. But for women like Emma Balfor, who is married to a very prominent physician in the city, there's another woman named Mary Lothborough who has followed her husband to Vicksburg. These caves are pretty intricate. They have kind of openings, they have multiple rooms. As you said, they move their furniture into these cities The likelihood if you were a resident inside Vicksburg proper that you would have access to be able to utilize these caves. Now, whether you chose to utilize the caves could be a very different story I imagine this is like London Blitz kind of thing There must be some sort of system that they're aware of where they can kind of take shelter when they know it's coming. They hear the blasts, I suppose. Everybody runs for these things, but Was it different than I'm expecting that I'm that I'm describing? wasas it day and night and relentless The shelling does seem to come in waves. Most of the people, most of the civilians inside the city choose not to live in their caves full time Despite the fact that they've kind of made these creature comforts full of home And at least some of the reasons is because these caves are pretty misurerable It's Mississippi. It is June They're hot and they're sweltering, there's no air ventilation, but also they're beginning to complain of mosquitoes and flies. And especially if you're in caves that are small and overcrowded, you could think of like what having multiple bodies in a cave would kind of do. Emma Balfur all but refuses. I mean, she hates the caves. And there's some instances she actually talks about just trying to take shelter in her own house andead of instead of running out to them. So their solution for safety and they do a pretty good job. There are not very many civilian deaths due to shelling during the siege But they're not at all they don't at all kind of ease the discomfort of siege life There is another an entry. Lucy McCre is a child during during the siege. and she was buried in dirt when an explosion hit that hit her cave She later writes about a large mass of earth just slide from the side of the archway in a solid piece catching me under it. Mother had cried in distressing tones for help. So as soon as as the men could get to me, they pulled me out from the massive earth The blood was gushing from my nose, eyes, ears and mouth A physician who was then in the cave was called and said there were no bones broken, but he could tell he could not tell what my internal injuries are. I mean, we have seen this in recent years of sieges even today. Gaza comes to mind, you know, where you see civilian populations are really suffering under Under bombardment This is Vicksburg. This is the kind of intensity we're talking about here What happened to the enslaved people in the city? I would imagine they were left out of these caves, right I think it largely depended. Mary Lawborough, for example, who also later writes a memoir her My cave life in Vicksburg, She actually has two or three enslaved people with her in the city and they actually go to the caves with them especially as they're enduring long stretches because they're continuing to perform all of the responsibilities for Laooughborough that they would have in the city if she were in her residence. But in terms of somebody who's just generally taking shelter That in and of itself would not necessarily be a luxury afforded to the enslaved population luxury in quotation marks But they are still sent out to gather food and other necessary things that needed to happen, of course but food becomes quickly scarce Lvestock begins to die. Inhabitants have to resort to alternative sources of nourishment rats, mules, anything to start eating. This is how desperate things become While the civilians are huddled inside Vicksburg What's happening with the Confederate forces? Are they able to move more freely, I suppose? This If you're reading Emma Balfar and some of the civilians inside the city, there seems to be at least some movement back and forth between the trench line, at least with commanding officers as they kind of are moving into the city and looking for food So they'll kind of come look for food and then head back to the trench lines. But for the most part, for your common private enlisted Confederate soldier, they are trapped in these rifle pits And again, we can say Mississippi It is getting hotter and hotter. We have moved into the dry season. So there's not a lot of rain, there's not a lot of cloud coverage. And these rifle pitss aren't really shaded So they're and they're also very low. So men are kind of laying out. they don't have the ability in a lot of places to stand and stretch So their bodies kind of are beginning to deteriorate from exposure to the elements and then you add on top of that nutritional deficiencies. And so they're beginning to develop things like scurvy and other kind of issues as well Yeah, it's a laboratory of misery There are thirty three thousand, I want to remind people, thirty three thousand Confederate troops defending this city, seventy seven thousand Union troops outside the city with freedom of movement and a river to supply them Emma Balfour wrote of what she saw among the Confederate soldiers retreating back into the city, may seventeenth, eighteen sixty three Never to witness again such a scene as the return of our routed army From twelve o'clock until late in the night The streets and roads were jammed with wagons, cannons, horses, men mules, stock, sheep, Ething you can imagine that apppertains to an army being brought hurriedly within the entrenchment This was I mean, we it's a sizable town as we've mentioned, five thousand people were living there. It's still not. room for thirty three thousand people to move in And so that is the factor that I had not really calculated in terms of understanding the intensity and bizarrenness of the situation It's just people on top of people, isn't it It is it is. Now one thing that we can also kind of remember is that there is a little bit of space between city center and these in these siege lines. So not all of them are in downtown Vicksburg. But in terms of resources, in terms of space, like I said, access to food, water, basic medical supplies, it is people on top of people. And as Confederate soldiers get sick Their commanders and their physicians want to pull them out of the trenches and there's no place for them to go except far into the city. And so riding through the city after the surrender, one of the union surgeons actually makes note in his diary that Vicksburg has turned into a veritable hospital city every shelter, every house, the back gardens, the yards are all kind of being employed to house Confederate soldiers easily made sick because they're so malnourished, you know, as the weeks go on from both the soldiers and the civilians A last quote to readar June twenty eighth, Lieutenant General Pertton receives anonymous letter signed by, quote, many soldiers. Here's an extract Our rations have been cut down to one biscuit and a small bit of bacon per day Not enough scarcely to keep soul and body together much less stand the hardships we are called upon to stand. If you can't feed us, you hadd better surrender us Horrible as that idea is, the army is now ripe to mutiny unless it is fed. But You know, this is the beginning of what becomes Sherman's March, a whole intensity of union campaigning that sort of pays no notice to to the human misery that is being caused even among the civilian population. It It all goes to a different scale. ed on Vsbberg, doesn't it It does. I think this is one of the big takeaways that both Grant and then Sherman is willilliam to come see Sherman is one of the core commanders. and William Taccumse Sherman famously when Grant Gozast ends up in control of the Army of the Tennessee and is going to do his famous march to the sea. And so I think that there is a lot of learning that happens in Vicksburg in terms of how to take this army and utilize the land and the resources in order to make the fighting really, really effective. And it ends up being quite brutal At what point does surrender become offered. I mean, it become a conversation So It's right there at the end of June, beginning of July. You noted the letter written by anonymous soldiers, threatening mutiny And there's often conversation, Is that actually Confederates or is it actually Union spies that have circulated it to try to put some pressure on Pimberton Pemberton by the beginning of July actually, he starts to as secend notice his cororps commanders. Do we have the strength to fight our way out of the city This entire time, Pimemberton was hoping that Joseph Johnston was going to be coming to his aid. This is one of the big reasons why Pimperton's like Joe Johnston's coming. And then if we can get Grant's Army between these two, like we'll be relieved. And he's coming to the realization that Johnston's not coming He asks his corps commanders if they if he thinks their men can fight their way out of the city. and the result is a resounding note. One of them says that he doesn't think his men would make a mile if they could get out of the trench lines. So Pememberton's kind of beginning to realize that there isn't really an option but to surrender By the time we get to the beginning of July one The Confederate Army still has some food in its storehouses. and I think that's the thing that surprises a lot of people. They're not They're not completely out of food Pimberton wants to do almost a ceremonial. The reason that he asks for the surrender when he does is he thinks that maybe Grant will be more lenient on his conditions if Grant can take the city on july fourth. And so july fourth kind of becomes this big ceremonial you know, if you can take Vicksburg, right, Grant can march his men into the city and say that he claims Vicksburg on the july fourth holiday. And that's that's really kind of what motivates Pememberton to surrender the city at the time he ends up he ends up doing it. So they meet a little bit on july second, july third. They're trying to hammer out some specifics. Grant chooes to go back to his line to defer to to talk with his corps commanders. I think at one point he says that it's the closest he ever comes to having a council of war. You know, what exactly should surrender conditions look like? And then they hammer, they hammer out surrender conditions and Pimemberton surrenders the city on the fourth I'm surprised Given the importance of Vicksburg But there wasn't a plan to come down, I mean, they had a month and a half, basically, forty seven days to react to this You would have thought that that the conveettors would have sent this, but for the fact that at this moment What's happening on the East Coast? It's Lee marching into Gettysburg. this huge movement up north is is what's happening back on the for the the Army of Northern Virginia So in between, I guess the resources are slim Yeah, And I think when we talk about Pittsburgh, we often talk about all the ways the Union Army is successful But Vicksburgh is also lost because of bad decisions that are made for the Confederacy. And part of that is a major disagreement within leadership. You actually mentioned on the East Coast after Chancellorville Brant is making moves in out westn Mississippi. Everyone knows it.. Jefferson Davis actually tries to get Robert E. Lee to send a detachment of men. to Mississippi in order to help Pimberton. And Lee doesn't want to do it. Lee essentially says that whatever operations grant has going on, if they make it to June The environment, the diseases will take care of the army on its own And so Lee pushes back against Davis and actively makes the decision to take all of his men into Pennsylvania with him. And then the same thing, Joe Johnston's stance is that Piverton should abandon Vicksburg. And then they can always come back and reclaim Vicksburg So there's considerable disagreement between these these high leaders as to to what should actually be done. and Pimperton ends up kind of being left to just fend for himself. It's a remarkable thing that I have learned, you know, covering this for this series. How much the strategy for the for the Confederors at that point was based on the success back East as Lee is driving towards this idea of pin them down And then we can negotiate our way out of this thing That seems to have been in the in the mid eighteen sixty three period what was going on for them And it was a good idea given the success that they'd had one after another. in the Virginia campaign there And so not paying attention to the West at that point had to have had something to do with that mindset. And I think that, you know, it was understandable given where they how much success they had had Little do they know onn july fourth Two things would happen There would be the surrender of Vicksburg And here would be the surrender at Gettysburg When we come back, we'll talk about how all this works in the aftermath Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseseum Find out on the Ancient podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago from the Babylonians to the Celts, to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were That's the ancients from History Hit. Welcome back. We're talking about the siege of Vicksburg nearing its end. forty seven days of. Awful battle has happened You have to say for both sides in these kinds of conditions in the in the heat of summer now we're in July The Union is very close to capturing this strategically vital position. What are the final steps in this campaign, Lindsey So as we begin to move from June into July, Pimemberton is beginning to look at food storage He's beginning to look at the health, the physical ability of his soldiers to actually sustain. And then we also have this mental question, right? This question of mutiny. army functions on its stomach. So when you start to have starving soldiers, how much longer are they going to be willing to be in that position So Pimemberton kind of begins to eye that july fourth. A a date and the symbolism that he has a pretty strong feeling that Grant would enjoy having Vicksburg on the fourth of July, the anniversary of the nation's independence. And he kind of offers the city up. When Pimemberton first meets Grant, Grant's notorious for having an unconditional surrender, if you will So Grant wants to initially take everyone prisoner of war. thirty three thousand prisoners of war. and Pimemberton proposes that they be paroled and allowed to leave with clothes and a sidearm and they can't quite come to an agreement there Grant breaks negotiations says that he will write back his answer. the next day and he goes and confers with his corps commanders. and David Dixon Porter, who is the admiral on the river. And the resounding feedback that he kind of gets is transporting thirty three thousand soldiers outside of Picksburg would just be too much. It's going to bog down the transportation lines. You can imagine like what a prisoner of war camps in the North would be like. And so that's ultimately where the idea of parooling everybody came from So when he meets with Pememberton and they decide to surrender the city, essentially what they do is they keep everyone together in camp The Union army immediately begins to feed the soldiers off of their stores. In fact, Union soldiers walking through talk about pulling bread and food stuff out of their haversacks as they're moving into the city and giving it to Confederate soldiers, giving it to civilians. And then they make out parole papers Elisted men are allowed to keep their clothes, whatever clothes they have, everything else they surrender. Commanding officers are allowed to keep a horse. They're allowed to keep a a small side arm as they' paroled and then dispatched In many cases east, they're going to head toward East Mississippi, Alabama. That's the direction that they're they're going to take Was it ever tracked how many of those soldiers? return to battle? I mean, was it seems counterproductive to me that you would that you would do this because they're going to go right back into into the fighting Yes, And I think that's a really fair question. I imagine quite a few, I haven't seen numbers where someone has like tracked every single person You're going to have a question of whether they're physically fit So they're going to have time to have to get up their energy and to recover from whatever diseases or ailments they were having. But I imagine that quite a few of them up their arms and returned to the fighting before the war was out It only makes sense I mean, the psychological factor is that Grant, I suppose is hoping that this whole surrender h is it just Whars on the Confederate morale. I mean, in general beyond Vicksburg as they see these guys returning from this battle and telling the stories. Nonetheless, the surrender of Vicksburg is finalized on Independence Day, july fourth, eighteen sixty three. At that point, the West is won. as far as the Un union is concerned, they have the whole river. U and that's a big deal I want to mention the casualty numbers here Just under five thousand for the union over this month and a half eightight hundred six of them are dead Confederate casualties, you know we really haven't talked about and nor do we have time to, but there's so many skirmishes. There's so many different kind of battles going on within the siege. It's not purely, you know, bombard, bomb, b that's the big story, but there's a lot of other kind of fighting. Confederate casualties are thirty two thousand versus five thousand for the union thirty two thousand for Confederates. The vast majority of those are the surrendered with eight hundred and five killed We've made This story more about the civilians. and I want to I want to finish with that How does the population react when the siege is lifted? mean Massive relief So you have massive relief, but you do have that the horror, right? Because Vicksburg' now an occupied city The Union Army will not leave Vicksburg from here on out. In the immediate months afterward, I would argue that Vicksburg kind of becomes a humanitarian crisis city The emancipation proclamation has been has gone into effect in January. So Vicksburg now is is your closest city under union control that enslaved people will flock to to seek their freedom. And the city is all but destroyed So we have rebuilding efforts, We have questions about what's going to happen in terms of public health with stagnant pools of water and malaria, dead animals in the streets And then we have really a lot of social tensions. So what they ultimately end up deciding to do with Vicksburg is take USCT units United States color troops are outfits of soldiers, black soldiers. and in different areas they'll either be freed men, but they can also be enslaved men who kind of ran for Union lines, sought their freedom and sought enlistment in the Union Army. And it's those USCT soldiers that are actually going to be the occupying army many of those men were enslaved men on the surrounding plantations. So we have a complete social inversion in the city of Vicksburg coming out of the siege. and that's going to really also alter