When newly promoted Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Cairo, Ill., in September 1861 to take command of the Military District of Southeastern Missouri, he didn’t even have a proper uniform. What he did have was a purpose. As he told acquaintances, the war with the Confederacy could not be won until the Mississippi River and its tributaries had been conquered. “The Rebels must be driven out,” he declared, “The rivers must be opened.”
Less than two years later, Grant achieved that objective by capturing Vicksburg, the last major Confederate bastion contesting Union control of the river all the way from Cairo to the Gulf of Mexico. By May 1, 1863, Grant would have endured repeated political and military setbacks, and watched his soldiers and sailors sicken and die by the thousands in the malarial lower Mississippi Valley, but Union gunboats had finally run the batteries at Vicksburg and ferried the army to the east side of the river.
n Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy (Simon and Schuster, 2019, $35), Donald L. Miller, John Henry McCracken Professor of History Emeritus at Lafayette College, recounts the year-long campaign and explains how Grant’s genius at logistics was a singular factor in his victory.
What was Grant’s primary strategic objective once he had his army on the east side of the Mississippi River at Bruinsburg, Miss.?
The whole point of this campaign was alacrity. The first thing Grant had to do was establish a beachhead so he could get supplies. After a one-day fight at Port Gibson, 12 miles east of Bruinsburg, Grant outflanked and forced the Confederates to abandon a strong point at Grand Gulf, which was an ideal port for supply boats coming down the river from the Union base at Milliken’s Bend, La. Still, Grant decided not to attack Vicksburg directly.
