In the longest single campaign of the war, the siege of Vicksburg left 19,000 dead and wounded on both sides, gave the Union Army control of the Mississippi, and left the Confederacy cut in half. Waldrep takes a fresh look at how the Vicksburg campaign was fought and remembered.
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In the longest single campaign of the war, the siege of Vicksburg left 19,000 dead and wounded on both sides, gave the Union Army control of the Mississippi, and left the Confederacy cut in half. Waldrep takes a fresh look at how the Vicksburg campaign was fought and remembered.
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On July 4, 1863, Confederate General John Pemberton surrendered the City of Vicksburg and its defending Army to General Ulysses Grant ending a long campaign and siege and giving the Union uncontested control of the Mississippi River. It was a great victory, probably the decisive event of the Civil War; but it has been overshadowed in the memory of most people by the Union Army's simultaneous victory at Gettysburg from July 1 -- July 3, 1863.
The military history of the Vicksburg Campaign has been told many times. In his recent book, "Vicksburg's Long Shadow" (2005), Christopher Waldrep discusses the ways in which Vicksburg has been perceived by successive generations of Americans. The book is part of an ongoing effort by many historians to study history and memory -- to study the way in which the history of an event has been perceived to better understand the event and the culture. There have been a number of studies of history and memory as applied to the Civil War and Reconstruction, but this is the first such book to focus on the siege of Vicksburg in American memory.
Waldrep is Professor of American History at San Francisco State University and he has written extensively on the American South, including a separate study of Vicksburg and Warren County, Mississippi, "Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South. 1817 -- 1880" (1998).
Although Waldrep considers how and why the Battle of Gettysburg was commemorated differently, and on a far larger scale, that Vicksburg, most of his book is given over to different themes. The first of these is the conflict between reunion and racial justice in considering the legacy of the Civil War. A second theme is how the commemoration of Vicksburg was used in the context of changing American values over time -- thus, in the late 19th Century, the creation of the Park was tied to the growth of capitalism as well as to a spirit of nationalism; during WW I, the reunions at Vicksburg were in part a means to secure support for the war effort. In the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps did extensive work at Vicksburg, and with the New Deal the Park again became an important symbol of American patriotism and unity.
The book opens with a brief overview of the Vicksburg campaign, focusing substantial attention on the battle of Milliken's Bend in which African American troops performed heroically under fire. Waldrep gives substantial attention to the Reconstruction Era in Vicksburg, in which the goal of racial equality was frustrated for many years in the name of national unity.
Waldrep discusses the commemoration of the strategic and military aspects of the Civil War in the memoirs written by Grant, Sherman, Joseph Johnston, and many other military leaders. He considers the political efforts that led ultimately to the creation of the Vicksburg National Military Park and to its monumentation. Waldrep describes well the different roles of Northerners and local Vicksburg residents and Southerners in the creation and use of the Park, finding that Vicksburg, unlike Gettysburg, was a Park basically built by the North in a key battleground of the former Confederacy. Unlike the situation at Gettysburg, African Americans in Vicksburg were heavily involved in the use of the Park, making it a focal point for many years for the celebration of Memorial Day. There were two chapters of the Veterans group, the Grand Army of the Republic, in Vicksburg, one for African American soldiers and one for white soldiers.
Throughout his study, Waldrep contrasts two competing views of the Civil War and its aftermath: the first view sees the Civil War as leading to a united America and to the reconciliation of North and South while the second sees it as part of an ongoing effort to achieve racial justice for all Americans. His book shows admirably how these visions competed and interacted in the commemoration of the siege of Vicksburg, and how these themes continue to deserve the attention of Americans today.
