♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story, and on sundays book tv brings yo the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding from c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including wow. >> the world has changed, a fast reliable internet connection is something no one can live without. speed, value and choice, now more than ever, it starts with great internet. wow. >> wow, awant with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> the first time i met tim smith was for the 155th anniversary of the vicksburg campaign and i went to the american battle along with chris white out to do a series

of videos so i meet tim on champion hill on the anniversary of the battle, which, as a civil war nerd i was totally geeking out about. it's worse than that, because i booked a whole suitcase of tim smith books for him to sign. tim smith, would you sign my books? total fan boy going on at the moment and tim was super gracious and very kind about it. since then we have grown to become friends and he is truly the epitome of the gentleman and the scholar, but he's the southern gentleman and the scholar so everything he says is not only kind and polite, but with a really quaint drawl, which is wonderful. and he's so gracious with his time. ... invested in his series about the vicksburg campaign. if you haven't had the opportunity to read those books, they're absolutely essential reading. they will be the definitive

account of vicksburg for decades. but as he's in the midst of that, i'm working on my little book but as is in the midst of that i'm working on my book about the battle ofan jackson, eddie so kd to take time out and look at the manuscript and offerit suggestions. he's very constructive about it. he couldn't have been more gracious in his time even though he was already hard at work at the umpteenth book that is on. and for that i will always be grateful as well to help me out on my quaint little book on mississippi. ten is the first recipient ofer the emerging civil war book award. his book on fort donelson, again just outstanding, and he's been riding his way to the western theater ever since. i suspect when you finally conquers the west, lincoln will bring them to the east, and him start writing out here. [laughing] we can only hope that he will grace us with his him on such

things because his work continues to set the standard for civil war scholarship in the west today. let me give you the official biography.y. timothy smith phd in mississippi state university 2001, is a veteran of the national park service and currently teaches history at the university of tennessee martin. in addition to numerous articles and essays he is the author, editor or coeditor of more than 20 books with several university and commercial presses. his booksks have won numerous bk awards. his trilogy on the american civil war tennessee river campaign, fort henry and donaldson, shiloh and corinth total of nine book awards picky is calmly finishing a five volume study on the vicksburg campaign for the university press in kansas, and a new study of albert sidney johnston for lsu press. he lives with his wife kelly and daughters mary kate and leah

grace in adams hill tennessee and it is my extreme pleasure to welcome him here to the ninth annual emerging civil war symposium at stevenson ranch. tim smith, ladies and gentlemen,. [applause] >> wow, thank you, chris. that my mom tell you to sell that? [laughing] it is a pleasure to be here. voicee heard about the emerging civil war symposium and wow, consider me impressed. this is great. what a wonderful venue. what if wonderful group of folks seeing a lot of folks that i've known for a long time. a lot of folks that have done to was in the past, several people here were just with me last weekend in vicksburg. we did for five days actually vicksburg and there's some that

are going to be next weekend on the grid person to or through mississippi and louisiana. so a lot of folks that are back and forth on these tours and so on, so it's good to see all of you. if i haven't seen you, come up and say hello and we will reacquaint. so thank you for having me. this is wonderful. been looking forward to it for a very long time. bragg on emergiing civil war just a minute. try to help out as much as i can.as it's always a pleasure to help out chris and the folks that run it, help out reading books and writing forwards and so on, and it's a pleasure to be involved in anything like that, to be able to whelp out just a little bit, and so i applaud you what you're doing. keep up the good work. ten, what, ten more years, nine years i think of the symposium by keep up the good work, you're doing great.t. all right let's talk about

vicksburg. how many of you been have o vicksburg? all right. that's good. obviously, i'm not from around here. [laughing] you understand that. you folks talk funny up here for some reason and i don't know why. [laughing] butic vicksburg, very, extremely very important. campaign in the civil war. we could probably get in a pretty good argument up here about which is more important, the east or the west. i don't intend to do that, okay? that's good. argument closed. we're done. [laughing] the comparison between vicksburg and gettysburg, heathrow tullahoma in there, you heard about bragg andce importance of that. that's a pretty good week july, first week of july 1863, a pretty good week for the union,

not so good for the confederacy. i would argue to you that vicksburg is a most complex, largest, and probably the most important campaign in the civil war. i'm not one of these that says you can pick out one date or one bout of onewa campaign and say that's it, the civil war was over, that's when it was decided. in fact, iou was thinking about this and i've come to the conclusion in particularly -- was a war done inbu 1862? but i've come to the conclusion that any baseball pennant, how many of you are baseball fans? how many of you are braves fans? [laughing] i know we got phillies fans back there. sorry. he was, last time i saw he was wearing his phillies jersey during october last year i think, won the world series or played in the world series. but anyway, the idea that you

can't win a pennant in april, and may of a baseball season, right? you can't win it in but you can sure lose it in april or may, right? you can take yourself a a who. president to politics of we are coming up a a presidential election pretty soon. you cannot win an nomination in iowa or new hampshire, but you can sure as heck lose it in iowa or new hampshire. i was telling thisu to somebody and they said that's like all. i don't play golf, but you can't win the tournament on thursday. you can sure lose it on thursday if you don't make the cut. that's tied to my view but if i had to say one particular campaign that was actually probably the most important for a number of different reasons and we'll talk about that, and obviously has ait lot to do with ulysses s. grant, i would go with the vicksburg. of course, argue that point. viso the way i want to do with vicksburg tonight, right, is to

do with ulysses s. grant. will talk a little bit about pemberton, but would deal with ulysses s. grant, and particularly look at his decision-making process and the decisions he makes. a key decisions that ulysses s. grant makes in the vicksburg campaign. and in our day of constant news media and everything coming through a phone and so on, i noticed that the news networks, which everyone you prefer, and other people, sports sites and so on, they are going to this top five takeaways from so-and-so. top eight so-and-so, and it helps us in our fast-paced world to rapper mines around boom, boom, boom different things. we see this little bit in the literature, and this is by no means a pattern but it's something similar to how many of you read georgeid bush is president should know more? at the present rights in memoir,

and the way george w. bush did it was to take those ten key decisions that he made in this life, like stop drinking, and i thinke the surge and so on. so we wrap it around the major decisions. were going to look at the eight major decisions that ulysses s. grant makes, and these are military decisions. we're going to talk about military aspects tonight,li and actually this is a takeoff on one of the books i did sober yyears ago, and i have signed supper for people out there, i know you have it. but johnyo morris lake, biographer, we edit the series with a southern illinois t university press on the world of ulysses s. grant. the whole idea behind this was to come after the 32 volumes that john published of grant papers, the idea was to take that knowledge that we learn from the published papers and

start producing monograph. so we career a new series called the rule of ulysses s. grant, and this is one of the books actually in that series. so it's a different monographs on various aspects of ulysses s. grant life. take a look sometime and you might find something interesting and just diplomacy, his to her, treatment of native americans, of course are several civil war ones as well. so in that volume action i dealt with a lot of different things going on, you know, military commanders and you don't just concentrate wholly on the military aspects. it be nice if you could, but generals have families that the word about back home. grant had a wife and children part of the time his son fred was with him in the campaign. but julia and some of the children were back home. he worried about land sales consultant land, renting out property, different financial

things, just personal things ini terms of the salmon. had to worry about his daddy trying to make a book, you know, a quick buck off of what he was doing. and at the same time and we can all some would associate with this, different people in his family didn't get along. in fact, julia and his father were at each other's throats, and he had to write them both letter and saying call down, get along. i've got big things too do here. i need you two to get along well in doing this. so the personal aspects are very important. at the same time that grant is conducting this campaign, the political aspects of this, you know, grant is always, he's very close with c and in nature. he keeps politics in mind much better than a sherman or somebody like that. and he realizes, in fact, he later on we were all kind of on probation there anyway and he realizes his leash is pretty thin, or pretty short here. and if he doesn't produceod something quickly, politically

there going to be calling for his head. so he's got political things to worry about, economic, personal, the whole thing about the order expelling the jews in december 1862. so a lot of different things that he has going on in addition to just the military aspects. but the military aspects is what we're going to concentrate on today. so let's look at the eight key decisions that u.s. grant will deal with in the vicksburg campaign. and i assume this is what's going to turn my thing here. okay. actual court of his, he said i didn't call councils of war. he did, , he just didn't need i. [laughing] but he would actually make most of his own decisions. we'll get into that as a go for. so let's start out the session number one. if you're taking notes always get tickled that my students when, you know, i'm lecturing and goingon different things and

so on and you can tell when they come to space out a little bit but you always say all right, number one, everything goes than it ever had gustin and a somebody. whatever it t is, they don't knw what the writing sometimes but in a support if i say all right, number one. so number one come what's the first key decision that grant makes in the vicksburg campaign? well, that is to go and capture vicksburg. [laughing] underwhelming at this point. tell me something we didn't already know. right. but it is actually complicated. then than that. grant begins the vicksburg campaign outright. now, obviously there have been been things on back in the summer may, june, july of 1862. but what we're talking specifically was grant's major vicksburg campaign to outright vicksburg campaign from about october, late october 1862 to july the fourth, 1863. so you know, the fact that grant

decides, alright, we're going to have to vicksburg that you know, nothing new. but here's the kicker this should have been done much earlier and so actual decision to start doing it is like a breath of fresh air that actually comes forward and says, all right we're actually going to going to do this fact. i would argue to you that the vicksburg campaign should have commenced in june of 1862. who's in command of the western theater in june of 1862, henry dubya. and nothing's going to proceed. henry halleck especially in the summer 1862, when halleck court the the last day of may, the united states navy, the brown water navy has moved southward after his victory at memphis on june the sixth, all the way to vicksburg admiral farragut flag. officer farragut has moved up the river from new orleans. the capture of new there in late april. so all the components are

together in may, june 1862, and all they need is a large army palace army from court. but halleck doesn't go in this in view of consolidating what we have gaining decisive. secure supply lines. all of that by the book stuff, halleck says, no, we're going to sit tight and we're going to consolidate what we have. and plus, it's too hot anyway. you can't can't operate in that climate in the summer, in june and july, well, grant proved them wrong a year later. you can, but halleck sanogo so this should have done actually in june of 62. now he certainly should have been done in july of 1862, because when halleck is called to washington in mid-july, he leaves grant in charge of the district that he's in, in charge of west tennessee. instead of elevating up to the

western commander and, one commander for pretty much the entire western, which halleck had been harping on, we need a we really need western theater commander out here. what he argued, of course, he wanted himself to be that commander. obviously. but once he goes to washington, he elevate anybody up to that position that he held. he just lets it go back to the various independent district commanders. so grant is technically still under halleck, although halleck is now many miles away and as a result, grant doesn't have the autonomy or the authority to start the operations on his own. had he been booted up to that western theater commander, i have no doubt that grant would have going right on. but he doesn't. and as a result, the vicksburg campaign doesn't start in july either. now, what's critical is that in mid-october before october 16th, i'd have to look back, but october 16th grant is promoted to that higher authority where he has autonomy to conduct his own operations.

he actually takes command about ten days later, on october 25th and the very next day is branded. he issues orders. move, go to vicksburg. we're going to take vicksburg. so you know, obviously we start the process of going to vicksburg yeah everybody knows grant's going to vicksburg but it's more complicated just what it seems it should have been done much earlier. but finally, in the fall of 1862, grant start southward and he will actually do things by the book this year, meaning book will have supporting columns secure supply lines will will take significant decisive points and it results in basically to attempts to reach vicksburg. and you see that here. we got a point earlier here. yeah, it does point um you can see grant's mississippi central campaign moving southward the mississippi central railroad through holly springs, oxford, down toward waterville valley. the confederates will pull back from these rivers. the cold water, the tallahatchie, the now, uh, back

behind the yellow bush river there. and basically stop. grant will look at that and. just suck it. at the same time, sherman is southward on the mississippi river again supporting columns. they're supposed to support each other. they're too far away to support. but he moves southward along the mississippi river with the intention of landing near vicksburg and taking vicksburg. now, what was the result? obviously, both are failures, as grant himself will be turned back by a couple of calvary raids. nathan bedford forrest will ride around west tennessee breaking railroad bridges on the mobile in ohio when dawn earl van dorn will move northward and hit holly springs on the morning of december the 20th. so grant's big supply base is destroyed. grant's ability to refill that supply base is destroyed. and so grant has to pull out and decide. the mississippi central campaign is done. no more no more of that. at the same time, sherman has met defeat at chickasaw bow in

just north of vicksburg on june or december. the 29th suffers heavy casualties there, and as a result, that attempt is also a failure. so the first two attempts to reach vicksburg, or better yet, really to reach the outskirts of vicksburg, the on the high ground to the east of vicksburg, um, both end in failure. so grant's decision. yes, one number one. let's go to vicksburg. uh, but it doesn't really work out in the first two attempts or unsuccessful so that leads us to the second major decision before we talk about that we have to introduce this whole political thing so it would be military but there are some political aspects this and that is one former congressman named mclaurin it who arrives right in the middle of this to take command of the expedition. vicksburg. well, grant doesn't like mclaurin. he's not a west pointer. he's a, you know, egotistical. and and so on grant thinks and a

result they don't get along grant says i can't leave this is important a job as they see is i can't leave to mcfarland and as a result i'm going to have to take sole command. so what had been two different prongs of the federal advance into mississippi. will now become one grant will make the decision to make this a one prong advance it's in who's going to be the commander that me grant. so in order to supersede mclernon grant makes it. a11 prong basically one one axis of advance movement now mclernon of course and you get into the vicksburg campaign operations in january mclernon had gone off to arkansas post he might have been to arkansas post so that's about what i figure nobody goes to arkansas post. we've got a couple out there that has okay not much out there

right? the fort itself is gone. it is where the river is now. but it's an important political it's pretty important battle. sherman or in mclernon lose like a thousand soldiers killed wounded in missing in arkansas post pretty good a little battle but the political aspects of this are what is so important grant goes bonkers over going on what he calls a wild goose chase is going off on a wild goose chase and grant requests permission to be able to remove. maclaurin and halleck gives information. so if you want to get rid of maclaren and grant, that's fine. you go right ahead. or at least take sole command of the expedition against vicksburg and. that's exactly what grant does. so grant makes the decision to make this a one axis of advance movement. and grant in late due january, will actually move southward along the mississippi down to where he will keep his headquarters at youngs point,

near milligan's. being on the louisiana side, just upriver from vicksburg. so the first decision was go out to vicksburg. number two, let's make it a one axis of advance movement. but the problem is, by this point, we in january entering march, april. 1863 and the whole place is flooded, the mississippi delta, how many have you been in the mississippi delta? okay. if you've been asked, suppose you've been in the arkansas flattest pancake floods easily every year floods. and as a result, most of the operating area that grant has to deal with is pretty much water at this point. and it's not going to recede any time soon. it's going to take months for all water to recede. in fact, i believe as the historian jfc fuller talked about, like noah grant stood and watched, waiting for the waters to subside. you know, so what do you do for

two or three or four months where grant talks a lot about? well, you know, we're going to keep our guys busy. we're just going to do busy work and just, you know, keep them thinking we're actually doing something. but it's not important. i don't you know, we're not going to take vicksburg. we just got to wait. well, nothing could be further from the truth. you know, i'll admit i'm a grant fan. i like grant, but he tells some whoppers in his memoirs. right. don't you? just because somebody writes their memoirs, don't take it is the gospel truth. because obviously what they're doing, they're trying to make themselves look as good as possible. and the people they don't like as bad possible. that's just the way you do with memoirs. so it's a good, good thing to read. good book, good source, but you always got to check it and the best place to check his memoirs is to see what he saying contemporaneously about he was talking about in his memoirs. so go to the 32 volumes of john simons papers of ulysses s grant. and so if he says something that really don't make sense in the memoirs back and see what he was writing about in those letters

at the time and there's several instances when you find that grant's telling a big fat lies what he's doing and what he was saying the time don't really up. so third decision that grant makes is to try to get to vicksburg by other means and that is if everything's flooded, how do you get through a flooded area? mainly by a boat? so as i was talking about the vicksburg campaign, extremely unique, extremely complicated. you've got the naval presence here very, very important in the navy, really comes into here in several of these attempts that you've heard that, you know of. these are called the battle attempts that grant basically to to tread water and to get through by any way that he can have a map that will deal with that here you go. grant's attempts and they're for more major. there are some less major ones,

but four major ones. number one, he tries to a canal across this big hairpin turn at vicksburg here, dig a canal to divert the mississippi river. all that's that's been tried a little bit beforehand. you talk about going against the book. there's nothing in germany about diverting, you know, the largest river on a continent. it doesn't work if the river actually later changes course to the pretty much the area that grant wanted to. but that was in 1876. it was a little bit late to help grant, but he tries to dig this canal and give me a for forever the lake providence operation. they cut a levee to lake, providence, flood lake, providence and several of the bouse and rivers to try to get around vicksburg to the west, the two on the eastern side of the mississippi river are really fascinating. they would cut the river up at moon lake near helena, go through yazoo, pass to the cold

water river, down to the tallahatchie river. now, that's the same tallahatchie river that. billie joe mcallister jumped in to. it is fiercely it is also the same river you may have seen on the news recently. the president biden had declared the emmett till national park or monument or whatever. this the same tallahatchie river that they threw the body of emmett into in in later recovered down to the yellow bushes where it would come the years the river, of course the zoo pass expedition is stopped at greenwood, mississippi, the blue place called for pemberton, and they have to to get out of there. the stills bio expedition goes up bio to black blackmail, over to deer creek, over to rolling fork. they're going through ditches here that are just flooded at the time. but none of these work now. what they actually are, they're small scale attempts that are

low risk, but provide really high rewards. the low risk, high reward. so you can kind of see what would grant's doing here. now, the ironic thing is that grant almost loses the fleet in the stills bio expedition when he gets in there and they start, you know, the start cutting trees behind them in all of that, they managed to get the fleet out. but these are low risk, high reward efforts that. grant really put a lot of stock into you read those letters at the time. grant's talking like, okay, yeah, yazoo pass, this is going to be our ticket to vicksburg or at least to the position where we can get to the point where we're going to attack vicksburg. that high ground east of east vicksburg stills by you know forget yazoo pass still we've another route we're going to make the route stills but he was very high on each of these things until they proved to be failures so this idea that, you know, grant in his memoirs, i never really put stock into it. we're just doing busy work, keeping the guys busy, keeping

their muscles up. and in all that, uh, not really. not really. the truth. had one of these succeeded, grant would have been as static. but none of them do so. third season is to basically tread water for a little while, try anything we can to be able to get to vicksburg. but none of them work. okay. when we go to what are we on number four? i have ask my students all time, what are we on number four? and yeah, that's right. okay. now here within the eight seasons, this is the big decision and really in terms of the entire civil war, this is one of the biggies. this is one of the big decisions. in fact, bruce catton, anybody ever heard of bruce catton? okay. i saw several of his books here. bruce catton labeled this as one of the two or three really big decisions in civil war. is that and that is the decision

to quit piddling around up here north of vicksburg with yazoo pass and steele's bound lake, providence and canal, all kind of stuff. plus jigsaw bond, we're up to six failed attempts now. and what grain is going to do is to shift his army southward through a series of bios and and roadways? now that the water is starting to recede a little bit in april and he will move his way southward this looping wilderness down there to a point south of vicksburg that he can actually cross the river and move on much more favorable up to this high ground east vicksburg he's after. so this very risk this is an extremely risky decision that he is making and again goes completely against the because

number there's no supporting columns. number two there's no real decisive to take number. three you're putting the whole enemy army between yourself and your base of supplies literally is back in memphis. so don't have a secure supply line by any means. this is going totally against book, but grant says. what have we got to lose? we're going to right now. the key thing here is this is not the low risk, high reward risks before this is do or die. there is no backing up from this. once you start this, there's no coming back. you know, we had been through plan and a, b, c, d, if this is playing g, there is no plan. abc, d, h, this there is no plan

h. if this doesn't work. grant probably in the political atmosphere loses is may lose his army. there's a good possibility he could lose his life or spend the rest of it in a confederate prison camp somewhere. there is no going back on this. just an example of how critical this is. the navy is going to be very, very involved when you get to the side of the mississippi river, you have to cross over to the east side. well, you can't build a pontoon broke boat bridge across the mississippi river. you have to have the navy there and as a result, when he talks the flag officer porter about this, porter's like, really you want to do this? okay, i'll do it. but you have to understand it. and he tells grant, this, this, this, this, this very critical, uh, in fact, porter tells grant that if we go south of vicksburg, going to have to run these batteries and there's no

guarantee that our boats are even going to get past these big, huge guns. vicksburg if we do get past porter says, i'm going to send the best boats that i have to knock out. for instance, grand gulf the guns there. i'm not going to send just the weakest vessels i have, almost in the best i've got, which doesn't leave a lot north vicksburg. the big thing here, though, is that porter says, all right, grant, if we go south of vicksburg, there is no hope whatsoever of getting the vessels back up north of vicksburg if this option doesn't work, you may be able pull your army out. you know get it out. but we can't get the vessels back up north of vicksburg. and here's the reason. what's the current of the mississippi. five or six knots. how many does the average civil city class ironclad make for? five or so. so if you add that together, or if you're going with the current you to make good speed southward

past. but if you have to turn around, try to come back up against the current, you'll be making it based may be one or two knots, which means what you will be sitting ducks for the confederate artillery there vicksburg supporters says once we go below, there is no getting back. so be careful what you wish for. if you really want to do this, i'll do it. i'll risk my vessels. but just know that there's no going back. so this plan h. this is the final one. succeed or fail? well, grant says, okay, nothing else to do. let's go do it. not really? that's i'm paraphrasing here, but grant says in actuality there is no other choice. this is what we have to do. so as grant marches his army southward on the western side of the mississippi river, porter moves southward with his vessels. on the night of april, the 16th moor transports fall on the night of april the 22nd, and

eventually they cannot reduce the guns at grant gulf on the 29th. and so grant will have to move a little farther down the river to a place called this maroons plantation. and there the army embarks on the gunboats and the transports and the barges and every anything that'll float and they are moved across the river to land in mississippi to place called brewin spur. from there grant marches inland, of course, and he will fight the battle that day may the first the very next day in the morning, the battle of port gibson and the new move crossbow appear and kind of sit and wait and gather his thoughts there. so one of the key, two or three big decision in civil war grant makes right here and. there's no going back success or fail, do or die, conquer or perish is albert? sidney johnston said prior to shiloh now. so this is dangerous supply issues.

naval issues but it is successful grant actually gets across the river. brownsburg there is opposition. in fact the confederates don't meet him until near port. gibson itself. now the reason for this are many diverse issues that grant has going on of frederick steele's entire division is gone up to up the river to greenville and operating along the deer creek area. sherman himself has going back to chickasaw bow out there where he had been defeated several months ago. and he's showing himself there, you know, with the gunboats and the army and so on, to make the confederates think going to land there. the biggest diversion, of course garrison's raid that rod slammed through the whole part of mississippi and causes just all kind of ruckus takes pemberton's views you know grant where they should have been and his attention is solely on owen grierson almost. in fact, with all this going on, so many different diversions and freight and everything, all of them to the northeast of

vicksburg, where grant is moving to the south west of vicksburg, poor old john c pemberton. and we could do a whole talk on pemberton, guess, you know. well, this is not about pemberton anyway. well, i'll tell you my thinking on pemberton. if somebody would create a john c pemberton bobblehead doll that perfectly encapsulate what's going on with pemberton because he has is literally, you know, it's bubbling because he's got so much going on every different direction. and in the process grant is crossing the river easily in the decision works okay so that's decision number five right number six. no was number four. number five. see i get mixed up this, i was testing you to see if you were paying attention. some of you're notes. very good. you get away for the class tonight. all right.

so number five, what do we do now? grant has a couple options. once he kind of sits in and gathers his thoughts and gathers some supplies and gathers other corps, sherman's corps, that's been flung off up to to chicks over down in greenville. sherman corps will move in enjoying grant here near willow springs. so then he has a couple of choices. what do we do then? well, obvious choice would be to cross some of ferries like thompson's ferry or hankins very or hauls ferry and just move straight up toward vicksburg. he doesn't want to do that, though, mainly because he doesn't want to get caught in this triangle, basically, that is the mississippi river on the the big black river on the right and the railroad in the in the north there the confederate army can basically defend from the mississippi river to the big black river and as a result, get grant him end to this triangular area here where grant cannot

maneuver. grant wants to be able to maneuver. and as a result if you get him into a restricted, that's going to be problematic so the better idea would be to move northeastward on. the west side of the big black river and reach the railroad, the single railroad that is feeding vicksburg, literally feeding vicksburg maybe is important. more important to the transportation of supplies and ammunition. and that is important. but by this point in may probably the communication that the railroad provides both to telegraph and so on. but outside of vicksburg, that is extremely critical as well. and as a result, grant will decide. all right, let's just move up using the the big black river as a shield on our left. let's move north and let's cut that railroad somewhere between clinton, bolton, edwards, right in this this area. cut that railroad.

get a stride of the railroad. no more trains going to come through the more telegraphic messages are going to move through. we will vicksburg cut off similar to the pacific in world war two. we're japanese islands and installations were basically cut off and allowed to wither on the vine, if you will. the island hopping campaign. so grant is going isolate vicksburg as he northward in the middle part of may. in doing so, he will fight five battles in 17 days. we've already talked about port gibson on may the first, he will meet a confederate brigade or one corps will meet a confederate brigade at raymond on may the 12th, and then jackson on may the 14th. i hear there's a good book on jackson that just came out recently. you know, what's guy's name that wrote that i can't remember mac something. anyway, it is a good book. jackson on may the 14th, grant makes decision to turn from the

railroad here because of the resistance that he made it raymond on his right flank and he will decide. all right. we've got to take care of jackson here and whatever's out there. we don't know what's there. so we're going to turn and we might as well cut the railroad or jackson is bolton. so kill two birds with one stone. so we'll move to jackson. take jackson, deprive the enemy of here is is a concentration area. then he will turn westward and he will finally the confederate army under pemberton, who by this point and again this is not old pemberton, but i have definite thoughts about his. the fact that he came out from behind big black river, the shield of the big black river is very important but even more so than that, he comes from behind baker's creek and he gets totally caught out of position. pemberton gets totally caught out of position. and as a result, he is hit on may the 16th, a champion. he'll and retreating across not

only baker's creek he loses a whole division william loring division in retreat in cross baker's creek. but then the next day on may the 17th, the big black river bridge, he nearly loses a whole other division there. when john bones division to defend and it's it's a major debacle there so in 17 days grant fights five battles manages outnumber the enemy each time and manages to defeat the enemy each time. now you know that may not be saying much when you're talking this is john pemberton we're we're we're fighting against had this been robert e lee in command of i'm not sure that grant would have been able to do this but i'm not sure would have attempted it like this. you know, we're getting in a little bit of what ifs there, but by may 17th, grant has cracked the shield. that is the big river shielding vicksburg. and he will continue to move on westward, invest vicksburg. now, the key thing here is grant

reaching the yazoo river to the north vicksburg. all of these confederates that are fanning hundreds bluff and haynes bluff, they fall back vicksburg, of course. and so by the 17th, 18th, grant and sherman both and several lot of the troops have reached the a river, which is critical in rms of supplies. where was grant supplies coming from all during the inland campaign here may, either from the land they're gathering, you know, bread and and bacon and not a lot of bread. bacon and poultry and all of that off the land. so he does somewhat live off the land, but you can't go out into a farmer's field and pick many. i have yet to see a mini bald bush. where where you can can pick those. also, the critical need is bread, not a lot of bread stuffs are available in in the plantation area here in the farming area. and as a result, what grant is

basically moving in wagon trains up to the army are the things that he can't acquire cannot acquire by living off the land and that's mainly bread and ammunition so it's critical that grant reach the yazzie river where supplies will come through and start flowing unhampered because the federal navy has proven that you can go down the mississippi and a few miles up the air zoo here until the big guns at snyder's bluff stop your your movement. so in this area back at the chickasaw bow battlefield where sherman had landed and been defeated back in december and, then landed again in late april and early may. you can certainly supplies here and that's but that becomes the the big major depot for the union army vicksburg. now this ends basically what is the first what i call the first real phase of vicksburg campaign. if if you want to divide the

vicksburg campaign into just simply two different phases, you can do that by saying, okay, number one, the federal span, seven months, just getting into a position because of geography and the delta up here in the mississippi river and just the way it's all laid out, they spent about seven months just getting a position where they can then start the second phase of taking vicksburg. now, normally great action right about this. he says, you know, normally in battle i just to fight the enemy but in campaign i've had to maneuver to get into a position just fight the enemy. so really two different phases and all of these attempts in this final attempt is simply to get into a position. and i'll give you an example of why i think this when grant sherman in grant talks about this in his sherman admitted when grant and sherman finally ride to the point overlooking chick's mobile where had been

defeated back in december, sherman turns to grant and says, all right, grant, i really wasn't interested in this. i didn't think it would succeed and read between the lines basically sherman is saying, i thought you were an idiot for ordering this, but you don't tell your commanding general, you know he was idiot, but the the idea here is that sherman tells grant that, i can see it now with the supplies open, we have vicksburg him. then there's no doubt what's going to be the result of this thing. and so this is the end, this campaign. in fact, sherman, you need to make a report to washington. this campaign. we haven't even taken vicksburg. you don't know what's to happen in the future. but this campaign is ended and it's brilliant. and you did a good job, grant. you're not an idiot. like i thought you were. and grant says, well, okay, thanks so end of the first phase

of this is getting into a position to actually take vicksburg and. that's the first five major decisions. now that leads us to decision number six. when grant approaches vicksburg on the 17th and 18th of may, what do you do now? what's next? well. we could just sit here and, you know, wait for them to to come and surrender or starve. you. we can starve them out. that includes siege. right. and there's a whole that opens up a whole new can of worms of how you do siege operations. it's lengthy. it it takes a lot of effort. it takes a lot of patience. and grant says and i don't that what's the other option. listen, this today by doing what an attack assault so let's assault vicksburg. so grant marches up to vicksburg he tells his entire army that

we're going to assault. and on may 19th, he'll everybody go, but only one division actually goes on may the 19th. it's a hurried operation. in fact, the assault is supposed to take place at 2 p.m. on may the 19th. grant's headquarters. and this is one of the few messages, the official records that actually has a time on it. but the time stamp on grant's orders to attack at 2 p.m. is 11:16 a.m. so you have an hour, 44 minutes to get prepared here. that's not forward thinking too much. you know, that's rushing it up a little bit. and as a result, the assault fails. it's blair's division along the graveyard road against the stockade renay. and grant says, okay, well, i'm you understand, you know, we rushed it up a little bit. let's take our time. let's consolidate the army. let's let's consolidate the army. let's get the entire army up.

let's get supplies distributed, and let's do this thing right. and m so he says, all right, may 22 is when we're going to do this thing right. everybody march or watches, put your watches together, set your watch by my time. we are all going at 10:00. at 10 a.m. on the morning of maf the tennessee will assault vicksburg, which you see here, and everything will fail. mclaurin will say i made a little progress, and he doesn't much. by the end of the day may 22 vicksburg still holds fast. now, why does he make this decision? their somewhat different reasons grant, and i've discussed this with others and their son that are of the opinion grant should not have wasted lives and should not have attempted to take vicksburg, and some of these are military folks who am i to argue with military folks about wasting lives? i'm certainly not going to do that. but happen to think grant had

some reasons for doing this. he thinks the confederate army is dejected and will basically just roll over and play dead at the first force that is shown against it. remember, in the last two or three days on may 16 to champion helen may 17 of the big black river bridge. the confederate army has taken a thumping and they are very discouraged. the problem is grant doesn't realize the troops that his army will encounter innc their assaus on both may 19 and the 22nd are the two fresh divisions that have been guarding snyders bluff and haines bluffed and those that is not been involved in the debacles at champion hill and big black river bridge. so they meet fresh troops, and as a result are turned back. grant logically thinks we've got them on thehe run, why not add a little more pressure and they will fold? i can seehe his thinking there. rent also thinks okay, it's may. if we go ahead and have this

thinghe today then we got some more good weather before it really gets hot, and it really gets hot in mississippi in july and august. thosee of you on a tour last wk and you figured that out, then you? it was hot. we can do more in the colder days and nights of may and early june and so on. so there's other things we can do. if we go ahead and take of this now they will not have to send us reinforcements which later during the siege of course there are numerous reinforcements are sent to grant. he says those can be use somewhere else. they wouldn't have to send them to us if we can go ahead and take care of this. hedn also says his troops he didn't think they would conduct siege operations if they had not had a a chance to assault. if they had a chance to take care of it today, they needed to be proven wrongng in order for them to really put their hearts into siege warfare, which it takes time and patience.

if i was a soldier i would have probably said let's do the easier way. i get plenty of patience. [laughing] i got more patience of that i do, you know, blood that's going to run up if i get shot for something, you know. but anyway, for a number of different reasons, including what he's got confronting him in the rear, and here's just a little bit of an idea johnston is lurking out there. he reoccupied jackson after grant leads and he is building an army of relief, very misnamed, but grant is worried about. he's almost paranoid about its we will create, if we get into the siege warfare here, and actually the next decision number seven is too lazy to vicksburg. it's really the only option you've got there. so number six is to assault and i can understand by grant did it. but in tandem, number seven, no other option was lay siege.

so you lay siege the very definite terms that are used, the line that goes in to actually him in the confederates in vicksburg, or any place under siege, is called a line of circumpolar nation. any but her at that termte will technical. how many have been to pick? >> okay, that's much better. [laughing] all right. make sure you're still awake. the line of circumpolar galatian basically encircle vicksburg and cut them off. this is not accident until mid-june. by thanks they just march up and they cut vicksburg all. it's not see a ball into a lot of reinforcement axa come in and it is mid-june with the arrival of divisions from missouri to grant actually pretty much seals off vicksburg behind that out here would be what's called a

line of counter volition or called contra volition. what that is, that's a rearward facing line that will defend your rear of why you are over seeking vicksburg. by the end of the time he will send sherman out with about a third or more of his army, about 33,000 troops are on this rearward of mine here while grant and the rest of what's left of the 77,000 will try to continue their approaches towards vicksburg. we've got two different line facing opposite directions, but grant is verys concerned about his rear, but he's conducting these siege operations which in civil war history has long been titled 47 days of siege. there's even a book, 40 devon

daysys -- 47 days a seizure something like that. if you include the assaults it is 47 days and this is really a little splitting has almost, but the assaults were not actual part of the siege. the siege operations don't want to commence until may 23 and they are not ordered by grant. grant doesn't send a formal orders until may the 25th. so if you take out the for five days of assaults when grant literally thinks are going to end this right now, i catch the siege down to like 43 days or something like that. so the book should've been named 43 days of siege at vicksburg. that is one of the reasons though there are two distinct operations and wanted a volume on each. so this by volume series we did there's the volume of the assaults themselves and then went on the siege. so for six weeks or so grant will lay siege to vicksburg.

the confederates inside will slowly dwindle away. their muscles will slow down. food supplies will start to run out. we've heard them eating mules and rats and all that. it gets pretty bad inside vicksburg. ultimately pemberton will surrender. he starts the negotiations on july 3. they carry over to the next day on july 4. this is a sane july 3 and 4th up at gettysburg pickett's charge all that in middle tennessee, tullahoma, bragg is getting checkmated almost at least in terms of the middle tennessee part. so lotsno going on those couplef days. now, this leads to the last decision, and that is what to do with all these confederate prisoners. well, here's another big boo-boo in grants memoirs. grant later says well, you know, everybody wanted to send about to prison kempster we got 30,000

confederates all of a sudden. send them to prison camps but i said no, let's parole them because what all of them to go home and maybe they will never come back. interest,en if a look at the correspondent of the time, everybody was saying the role of them except grant, and grant and one of the division commanders, actually frederick steele, has been booted up to 15th corps command when sean went to take command of the rearward linebackerre but grant and frederick were still the one thing that send themm up to prison camps. grant, he liked this unconditional surrender thing, you know, that it got, three major army's captured in the civil war, if you include appomattox i guess, fort donelson,g vicksburg, appomatto, you see a pattern here, you know. we got grant involved in the one of the. you got a bunch of other smaller ones as well. but everybody else is telling the grant no, parole of them and that we don't have to tie up the entire navy and the transport vessels and all of that.

they literally will, especially mississippians, were probably just go home and a lot of them will never come back. grant says that's aus pretty god idea. so we'll just do that. so the eighth decision is to parole the vicksburg army at a think the common consensus that is that the vast majority of the vicksburg gerson does gall and never comes back. there are some that do. their exchange and rejoin the army. some are captured again as soon as november, at missionary ridge was make you wonder if they really agreed to their exchange an paroles and all that. many of them would on to fight in the atlanta campaign, but a lot of them just simply did not come back. that's kind of what grant actually wanted. so the agencies -- so the decision to parole the vicksburg gerson about 30,000, tour 9000. so eight major decisions, and if we get these decisions it

illustrates, , well, it illustrates a lot of things. the capability of you grant is operating against, that's always key, and sometimes we joke about robert e. lee was he really that good or was it just because he was against mcclellan and pope and burnside hug her and the rest of there in east? [laughing] there are more than three stooges in eastern theater. i don't do eastern theater forget i said that. anyway i will live to some of these others who know a lot more about it than i do. but there's no doubt that if grant hadac been facing lee her, that things might a been a little bit different. there's no doubt that had grant faced, or the face grant earlier in the eastern theater things probably might have looked a little different as well. but it is what it is, and we have grant facingd pemberton. and it says a lot about pemberton but it says more about grant, and just if you take away

grant's i think a genius, to plan a campaign like this and to follow it through, even if it's do or die, take those chances, you know, that's the stuff that is talked about, the today and the genius, the military genius. we see his bulldog never give up mentality. if something happens will just go a a different route. we will do it another way. it shows his adaptability. how many times in one of these campaigns, in this campaign to b. c. grant hit a brick wall and say okay, can't go through that brick wall. we will go around a different way. he adapts. hef continually adapts. that's the stuffpt of life. those who don't adapt in life, you know, don't make it very successfully. and certainly in military. grant certainly does that.

that's just the military aspects. i don't know, have used up all my time? have got time for questions? got time set up for questions. in the larger context year we we talking just military. but if you add in his personal family stuff that that is g with at the same time, if you add in the economic trade issues and expelling the jews and all that, if you add in the political overtones of all this, grant has got a lot on his plate, about the different things going on, and i think he handles it pretty doggone well, right? pretty doggone well. it shows the genius of ulysses s. grant and get an probably the most complex, the most unique, longest, probably most important campaign in civil war, iin think we see grant's genius, very, very well. thank you very much. if you have any questions -- [applause] .. i'm not sure how long we have,

but you take over chris and tim me start with a question myself because grant proposes crossing the river and striking into the heart of mississippi, sherman does agree with the plan. he tells grant he doesn't. he still does. his duties. grant it doesn't seem to affect grant sherman's relationship, even though saying, oh, this is a terrible idea. can you speak to that a little bit? yeah. you know, we hear a lot about the grant sherman relationship going back to shiloh. everybody says it starts at shiloh, probably starts little bit before that when grant is going after 14 hearing fort donelson, sherman is actually back at paducah funneling goods and supplies cars and man up to grant and grid is very appreciative of what he's doing even though he's willing to put that aside the

friendship probably goes back to that so when we get to this program i think has figured out sherman and he knows sherman is the bombastic type we all know people like this, he walked in the room and was come in the door my first and he's going to talk. [laughter] be the social butterfly. as soon asif he comes to the do, he's going to go to the first corner but grant knows sherman so when he flies off with this, this is not going to work, he's just like yeah well, okay, i've heard of before. sherman does write a letter and tells grant makes the argument in any considerate general maneuver year to put grant in a position he was assuming.

grant says well, no other choice so we are going to do it. noted. that's fine. but we're going to do it anyway. and but now the key to that i is that sherman is so by this point in grant's career that even though he didn't like it, he still says, i will do all i can. you know, he writes his subordinates, i don't like plan. i don't like this roundabout plan. but we've got to support grant and do our best and sherman, you know, to his credit later says, i didn't like but you're right that you know, we did it your way and it worked by the way, president lincoln also sends grant a message after the vicksburg campaign and says, i've been watching and when you turn northward on the west, east side of the big black river, i thought you were making a mistake. i thought you should have done this and so on. but lincoln stayed out of it. and at the bottom of the letter, he says, i want to make the public assertion or the public

admission that you were right and i was wrong. how many other presidents would write a letter like, you know, i don't i don't know many that would. so the relationship there is is is key. but grant doesn't let it stop. you know, when he doesn't agree, grant's in charge. so grant makes decisions. that decision was all my own. says, all right, i just remind you, please stand and introduce yourself and where you're from. i'll hold the mic. and as you ask your question, danny. you talk about grant during the planning here, most of us who've been in the military know that staffs do planning. you know, the doesn't whip out a cocktail napkin and, draw up a plan like this. who are the supporting staff officers here? and you been able to delve into the research enough to know that, yes, that's is very much

an issue. grant one of the problems with grant is that he is a very poor judge of character, whether it be his staff during the civil war. it's a lot of cronyism. he knew somebody from the lane or he knew somebody from saying, oh, you'd make a good staff officer when they wound up a bunch of drunks and didn't know what they were doing. but grant is loyal to them. you see this later on in his administration when there's just bunch of crooks that are his cabinet officials, you know, don't serve him very well at all. so there are a few good ones rolling. burns and there's a book on this, and i don't remember the name of it, but the argument is that the father in the war that grant goes, his staff becomes much more proficient and professional. but early on, up the vicksburg campaign, they were just bunch of friends and cronies that really we don't serve him very

well. and as a result, i think grant knew a little bit of this and he actually says this whole roundabout thing south of vicksburg he says i didn't even mention it to any of my staff until it was time to do it because we couldn't do anything now with all water and so on. so it's all been in the back of my mind for all these months, but i didn't even mention it to my staff and so it's quite clear that grant is the one doing the planning not to staff because they they are probably at this point not capable that which adds even more to the genius of grant question back here. dale robertson wins the virginia my question as you've said a couple of times that had lee been in command grant may not have made that move. seth and thing and i might be paraphrasing here that lee said once that his greatest fear was lincoln would appoint a commander in the army of the potomac that he didn't

understand. did grant know pemberton? and if he did, how much would that have factored into his decision to put a confederate army between him, the supply base and take that risk, right? yes. grant does no. pemberton they served in the mexican war together. same division actually. and in fact that is a kind of a training ground for a lot of these these officers. in fact, there's a new book that's coming out, and i don't think i'm, you know, say anything i shouldn't i won't tell names, publishers or anything. but actually, cecily and i have written an article about it. megan grant in her own right, of course, but it deals with the lessons learned in mexico when they knew each other and learned each other, and in how they put that to to use in the civil war and grant most famously of course when he's when he's approaching fort donelson and there's no opposition whatsoever

after fort donaldson falls, buckner tells him, grant, if i was in in command, which he was at floyd and pearl in pillow or in command, he said, if i had been in command, you wouldn't have been able to just march opt for donaldson like that. and grant actually tells buckner if you had been in command i wouldn't have tried it that so kind of the same thing here he does know pemberton he knows he's passive. he knows these administrative in in nature. pemberton is a born administrator pencil pusher who has no business whatsoever or out command and an army has no experience in it. and so grant definitely uses to his advantage because he knows he knows that. time for one last question right here is not self you could you speak a little bit to the relationship between porter and grant and the navy and grant and how really unusual and critical was?

absolutely. you know, you have a lot of different campaigns, middle tennessee, perryville, even in in the shenandoah valley up here in the east, gettysburg campaign, the navy's not involved because there's no water and maybe a few little rivers and or whatnot. but with the mississippi river being right smack in middle of this whole campaign, the navy becomes extremely important and this complicated a little bit by the fact the brown water navy, as it's called, the blue water navy being the big ocean going ships, but the river ironclad, the gunboats tend in clouds and in timber clouds and so on. they will initially be under the army's. so at fort henry for donaldson, the army could command flag. officer foote, we need you to do this go do this and and could balk a little bit but he ultimately had to do it in the fall of 62, the navy those

vessels to the navy or, lincoln transfers the vessels to the navy. and so they're no longer under army command. and so that relationship between grant and porter is absolutely critical because grant wins. porter over almost, almost immediately. and so porter do not everything there's some example elsewhere where he won't you know, do some things grant won't. but by and large, like, you know, passing the vicksburg batteries, by and large, grant porter will do pretty much anything grant wants because porter can see is pretty good idea. and this is what we've got left. and so the inner working there, grant and porter is just absolutely critical and you know, you can't turn it the other way around and say if if porter had to work with another army officer. well, you can't say that, i guess. but for instance, if if it had

not been grant and it had been mclernon as lincoln, i suppose, you know, when he gave him this order to go take vicksburg i don't think we would have got the cooperation between porter and mclernon that we got between porter and grant. so what i'm saying, if you turn around, if there was a different naval commander, if it had been grant, it may not have been the same relationship back and forth with with grant in a different naval commander. so they're almost soulmates, you know, a navy and a army that get along so well, work together so well in tandem. and we see the results of it in this very unique and in a very, very important campaign against vicksburg tim smith, thank you very much.

weeknights 9:00 eastern, see spends encore presentation of our ten part series, books the shift america. c-span partner for the library congress is for key pieces of literature and profound impact on our literature. tonight, 1980 novels it addresses the and women's issues of the time. english professor in lincoln. watch encore presentation of books that shaped america weeknights o'clock eastern on c-span for c •-middle-dot four/you consider the firm more. new mexico different from a play c-span radio and listen to washington internal daily 7:00

o'clock eastern, terms of events throughout the day. washington today the stories of the day, listen anytime, play c-span radio, c-span, power by cable. ♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual piece. every time, american history tv documents america store and tv is the latest and nonfiction books and authors. funding comes from these television companies and more including media concord remark believe whether you live here or here or anywhere, who should have access to fast, reliable internet. ♪♪