the university of nebraska lincoln, watch the encore presentation of books that shaped america weeknights 9:00 eastern on c-span go to stand.org/books that shaped america. learn more about each books feature. ♪♪ every saturday american history tv documents america stories and sundays tv brings the latest and nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 from these television companies and mark included comcast. >> you think it's just the community center? is way more than that. >> 1000 trinity centers to create wi-fi enabled list so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anying. all caps along with these topspin companies support

c-span2 is a public service. >> the first time i met was the university campaign and i went along with rich white series of videos so ontario hill on the anniversary of the battle. civir nerd, i was totally out about. right. but it's not that it's even worse than that because i packed a whole suitcase of tim smith books for him to sign. so i'm like, tim smith, so glad to meet you. sign my books. yeah. total fanboy going on at the moment and tim was super gracious and very kind about it and since then we have grown to become friends and he is truly the epitome me 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 is so gracious with his time. he's been deeply, deeply 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 about the battle of jackson, and he's so kind to take time out and look at the main script and offer 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, you know, the umpteenth book that he's on and for that, i will always be grateful as well to help me out on my my quaint little book on mississippi. tim is the first recipient of the emerging civil war book award. his book, the fort donaldson, again, outstanding. and he's just been writing way through the western theater ever

since. i suspect when he finally conquers the west, lincoln will bring him to the east. and having started writing out here, we can only hope that he will grace us with his pen 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. timothy b smith in mississippi state university 2001, is a veteran of the national park service and currently teaches history at the university of tennessee at 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 books have won numerous book awards. his trilogy on the america civil war tennessee river campaign, fort henry in donelson, shiloh and corinth have won a total of nine and book awards.

he's currently 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 ville, tennessee, and is my extreme pleasure to welcome him here to the ninth annual emerging civil war symposium at stevenson ranch. tim smith ladies in. wow. thank you, chris. did my mama tell you to say all that it is a pleasure to be here. i've always heard about the emerging civil war symposium and wow, i'm i'm consider me impressed. this is great. what a wonderful venue. what a wonderful group of folks seeing a lot of folks that i've

known for a long time. a lot of folks that been on tours and in the past, several people here were just with me last week in a vicksburg. we did four or five days, actually, vicksburg. and there some that are going to be next week in on the grierson drive tour in through mississippi and louisiana. so a lot of folks that are back and forth on these tours, so on. so it's good to see all of you for having senior come up and say hello and and we'll reacquaint. so thank you for having me. this is this is wonderful been looking forward to it for a very long time brag on emerging civil war. just a minute. try to help out as much as i can. it's always a pleasure to help out, chris and the folks that run it helped out. you know, reading books and writing for words and so on. and it's a pleasure to be involved in anything like that,

to be able to to help out just a little bit and so i applaud you what you're doing. keep up the good work. ten, what, ten more years now in nine years, i think of the symposium but keep up the good work you're doing. you're doing great. all right. let's talk about vicksburg. how many have you been to vicksburg? all right. that's good. obviously, i'm not from around here. you understand that? you you folks talk funny up here for some reason. i don't know what, but vicksburg very, extremely, very important campaigning 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. ed okay. that's that's good argument closed. we're. the comparison between vicksburg

and gettysburg. you throw tullahoma in there, we just heard about bragg and the importance of that. you know, that's pretty good week, july the first week of july in 80. 63 is a pretty good week for the for the union. not so good for the confederacy in erie vicksburg. i would argue to you the vicksburg is the most comp lex largest and probably the most important of the civil war. now, i'm not one of these that says you can pick out one date or one battle or one campaign and says that's it. you know, the civil war was over. that's when it was decided. in fact, i was thinking about this and i've come to the conclusion in particularly dealing with adversity, just. johnston early in the war, a lot of people say, was the war done in 1862? but i've come to the conclusion that in a baseball pennant, how many of your baseball how many of you braves fans? oh, what? i know. we'll go one or two. i know.

we've got a phillies fan back there. sorry. is he was the last time i saw him. he was wearing his phillies jersey during the october of last year. i think won the world series or played in the world series. but anyway, the the idea that you can't win a pennant in april, in may of a baseball season. right. you can't win it then. but you can sure lose it in april or may, right? you can dig yourself a hole. presidential politics, you know, we're coming up on a presidential election. pretty soon you cannot win a nomination in iowa or new hampshire, but you can sure as heck lose it in iowa or new hampshire. and i was doing this to somebody and they said, you know, that's like golf. i don't play golf, but you can't win the tournament on thursday, but you can sure lose it on thursday if you don't make the cut. and so that's kind of my view. but if you 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, it has a lot to do with ulysses s grant. i would go with vicksburg. of course, i be biased. i won't. i won't argue that point. so the way i want do with vicksburg tonight, right, is to deal with ulysses s grant. and we'll talk a little about pemberton, but we'll deal with ulysses s grant and particularly look at his decision making process and the decisions he makes. eight key decisions that ulysses s grant makes in the vicksburg campaign. and, you know, we're in our day of constant news media and everything coming through a and so on. notice that the news networks, you know, whichever one you prefer and other people, you know sports sites and so on, they're going to, you know, top five takeaways from so on. so top eight, so and so that and it helps us in our fast paced

world to wrap our minds around, you know, boom, boom, boom, different things. and we see this a little bit in literature and this is by no means patterned, but it's something similar to how many of you read george bush's presidential memoir. you know, every president writes a memoir in the way george w bush did. it was to take those ten key decisions that he made in his life, like, you know, stop drinking. and and i think the surge and so on. so he wrapped it around, you know, the major decision. so we're 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. and actually, this is a takeoff on one of the books that i did several years ago. and i've seen several for people out there. i know you some of you have it, but john was like, you all know john mars, like the the sherman biographer, halleck biographer. we edit a series with the southern illinois press on the world of ulysses s grant.

the whole idea behind this was to after the 32 volumes that john was summoned, published of the grant papers, the idea was to take that knowledge that learned from the published papers and start producing monographs. so we created a new series called the world of ulysses s grant, and this is one of the books actually in that series. so it's different monographs on various aspects of ulysses s grant's life. take a peek, a look. sometimes you might find something you're you're interested in his diplomacy his worldwide tours, his treatment of native americans. and, of course, there's several several civil war volumes as well. so in that volume, actually, i dealt with a lot of different things going on. you know, great military commanders. you don't just concentrate wholly on the military aspects. it'd be nice if you could, but they you know, generals have families that they're worried about back home. grant had a wife and children

part of the time. his son fred was with him in the in the campaign. but julia and some of the children were were back home. he worried about land sale selling land renting out property different financial things just personal things in terms of his family and worry about his daddy trying to make a book. you know a quick book off of of what he was doing and at the same time and we can all you know somewhat 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 read wrote them both the letters and calm down, get along. you know, i've got big things to do here. i need you to really get along while i'm doing this. so the personal aspects are very important. at the same time that grant's conducting this campaign, the political aspects of this, you know, grant is always he's very clausewitz in in nature. he keeps politics in mind much better than than, you know, a

sherman or somebody like that. and he realizes, in fact, he says later on, you know, we were all kind of on probation there anyway. and he realizes his leash is pretty thin. are pretty short here. and if he doesn't doesn't produce something quickly politically, they're going to be calling for for his head. so he's got political things to to worry about that their economic, personal, the whole thing about the order expelling the -- in december of 1862. so a lot of different things that he has going on in addition to just the military aspects but the military aspects what we're going to concentrate on tonight. so let's look at eight key decisions that us grant will deal with in the vicksburg campaign and i assume this is what's going to turn my thing here. okay. this issue always known as actual, quote, affairs, he says, i didn't call a council of councils of war. he did. he just didn't. immediately he did. but he he would actually make

most of own, own decisions. we'll look at a little bit of that as we go forward. all right. so let's start out decision number one. if you're taking note, i always get tickled at my students when, you know, i'm lecturing and going things and so on and you can tell when they kind of space a little bit, you know, but you always say. all right, number one, ever goes down. every head goes down. they start right. whatever it is, they don't know what they're writing sometimes, but they know it's important if i say, ari, number one. so all right. so number one, what's the first key decision that grant makes in the vicksburg campaign? well, that is to go capture vicksburg. okay. i know i'm 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 terms of supplies. where was grant supplies coming from all during the inland campaign here in 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 get the entire army up. let's get supplies distributed, and let's do this thing right. and so he he says, ah, may the 22nd is when we're going to do this thing. right. and everybody, mark, your watch is put your watches together, set your watch my time. we're all going at 10:00 and at 10 a.m. on the morning of may, the 22nd, the entire army of the will assault vicksburg, which see here and everything will fail. mclernon will say, you made a little progress and it doesn't much, but by the end of the day, on may 22nd, vicksburg still holds fast. now, why does he make this decision? there's several different that grant and i you know, i've discussed this with others and there's some that are of the opinion that grant should not

have wasted lives and should not have attempted to take vicksburg and some of these are military folks who might argue with military folks about, you know, wasted lives. i'm certainly not going to do that. but i happen to think grant some pretty good reasons for doing this. first and foremost, 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 or may, the 16th to champion hill and may the 17th, the big black river bridge, confederate army has taken a thumping, and they're very discouraged. the problem is grant doesn't realize that the troops that his army will encounter in their assaults on both them may the 19th and the 22nd are the two fresh divisions that had been guarding snyder's bluff and haynes bluff and those that had not been involved in the debacles at champion hill and big black river. so they meet fresh troops as a

result are or turn back grant logically thinks we've got him on the run why not add a little more pressure and they'll fold. i can see his thinking there. grant also thinks okay, it's may. if we go ahead and handle this thing today, then we've got some more good weather before it really hot and it really gets hot. mississippi and in july and august, those of you on a tour last you figured that out anyway it was hot the the idea is we can do more in you know the cooler days of may and early june and so on. so there's other things that we can do if we go ahead and take care of this, they will have to send us reinforcements, which later during the siege, of course, their numerous reinforcements are sent to grant. he says those could be used somewhere else. they wouldn't have to send them to us. if we can go ahead and take care of this. he also says that his he didn't think they would conduct siege operations if they had not had a

chance to assault, you know, if they had a chance, take care of it today. they needed to be proven wrong in order for them to really put their into siege warfare, which it takes, you know, time and patience. if i was a soldier, i would probably said, let's do it the easier way. you know, i got plenty of patience. let's listen. you know, i got patience than i do, you know, blood going to run out if i get shot or something, you know, so. but anyway grants for a number of different reasons, including what he's confronting him the rear and here's just a little bit of the idea joseph johnston is lurking out there he he reoccupied jackson after grant leaves in his building an army of relief a very bullet grant he's worried about it. he's almost paranoid about it. so he will create if we get it in the siege warfare here in actually the next decision

number seven is to lay siege to vicksburg is really the only option that got there. so number six is to assault. and i can understand why grant did it, but in tandem, number seven, no other option, less lay siege. so when you lay siege there, very definite terms are used. the line that goes in to actually in the confederates, vicksburg or any place under siege is called a line of circumnavigation. nobody ever heard that term. we're getting real technical. okay. i don't see a single hand out there. and this to a may have been to vicksburg so okay that's much better we'll we'll last all right make sure you still awake the the line of circumnavigation will basically encircle vicksburg and cut them off. now this is not actually done mid-june everybody thinks, oh, well they just marched up and they cut vicksburg off. it's not sealed off until a lot of those reinforcements actually

come in. and it's mid-june with the arrival of lonmin's division division from missouri. that great actually pretty seals off vicksburg. now, behind that out here will be what's called a line of counter violation or sometimes called contra violation. and the two are almost interchangeable. some will use some, some other. but what that is that's a rearward facing line that will defend your rear while you are besieging. and by the end of the siege will actually send sherman out to this rearward line here. so sherman there with about a third or more of his army, about 33,000 troops are on this rear ward line here while grant and the rest of this the what's left of the 77,000 will try to continue their approaches. and in ups and so on toward vicksburg. so we've got two different lines

facing opposite directions. but grant is very concerned about his rear, but he is conducting these siege operation, which in civil war history has long been titled 47 days of siege. there's even a book, you know, 47 days of siege or something like that if you include assaults it. yes. is 47 days. and this is really little, you know, splitting hairs almost. but the assaults were not actually part of the siege. the the siege operations don't really commence may the 23rd in. they're not by grant. grant don't send out formal orders to start siege operations. absolutely. until may the 25th. and so if you take out the four or five days of assaults when grant literally thinks we're going to end this right now, it cuts the siege down to like 43 days or something like that. so that book should have been nine, 43 days of siege at vicksburg. that is one of the reasons, though, that there are two distinct operations.

and i wanted a volume on each. so this five volume series that we did, there's a volume on the assaults themselves. and then one 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 will, will slow down. the food supplies will start to run out. we've heard them, you know, eating mules and rats. and in all that, it gets pretty bad inside vicksburg ultimately pemberton will surrender. he starts the negotiations on july the third. they carry over to the next day on july the fourth. this is the same july 3rd and fourth. that up at gettysburg, you know, pickett's charge all that in middle tennessee, tullahoma bragg is getting checkmated almost at least in terms of the middle tennessee part. so a lot going on those couple of days. now, this leads to the last

decision and that is what to do with all these confederate prisoners. well, here's big booboo in grant's memoirs, grant later says, well, you know, everybody wanted to send him up to prison camps. we got 30,000 confederates. all of a sudden we'll send them to prison camps. but i said no less parole because we want all of them to go home and maybe they'll never come up, come back. in truth, if you look at the correspondence from the time everybody was saying parole him except grant and grant and one of the division commanders, actually, frederick steele, had been booted up to 15th corps command when sherman went to take of the railroad line back there. but grant, frederick steele were the ones saying no less cinema, prison camps grant still has this. he like this unconditional surrender thing you know that he got it for donald. so we a whole army, three major armies captured in the civil war if you include appomattox i guess for donelson vicksburg

appomattox. you see a pattern here? you know, we grant involved in every one of them. you got bunch of other smaller ones as well. but everybody else is telling no parole and that way you don't have to tie up the entire navy in the transport vessels and in all of that, they literally will, especially the mississippians, will probably just go home and a lot of them will never come back in. grant says, yeah, yes, pretty good idea. so we'll just we'll just do that. so the eighth decision is to parole the vicksburg army. and i think the common consensus now is that the vast majority of, the vicksburg garrison, does go home and never back. there are some that that do their exchange and rejoin the army. some are captured again as soon as november admission rage which makes you wonder if they really agreed to you know their exchange and paroles and all that, many of them went on to fight in the in the atlanta campaign is corps. but a lot of them just simply did not come back and that's

kind of what grant actually actually wanted. so the agencies to parole the vicksburg garrison about thousand i'm 29,000 in chains so eight major decisions and in looking at these decisions i think it illustrates well it illustrates a lot of things the the capability of who grant's operating against that's always you know key and sometimes we joke about you know we've you know robert e lee was he really that good or was it just because he was against mcclellan in pope and, you know, burnside and hooker and the rest of the stooges there in in the east, they're more three stooges in the eastern theater. i don't do eastern theater. forget i said it in right. i'll leave it to some of these others that know a lot more about it than i do. but there's no doubt that if if grant been facing lee here, that things might have been a little bit different. um, there's no doubt that had

grant faced or lee faced grant earlier in the eastern teen or here, things probably might have have looked a little different as well. but it is what it is and we have grant facing pemberton and it says you know a lot about pemberton but it says more grant and just you know if you take away grant's i think genius too to play in a campaign like this and then to follow it through, even if it's do or die, take those chances, you know, that's the stuff of that. and clausewitz both talk about coup de and the the the genius the military genius we see his bulldog never give up mentality. you know, if something happens we'll just go a different route. we'll we'll do it another way. it shows his adaptable city how many times in one of these campaign in this campaign, do we see grant hit a brick wall and say, okay, i can't go through that brick wall. we'll go around a different way? he adapts. he continually adapts.

and that's the stuff of life. you know, those who adapt in life, you know, don't make it very successfully. and certainly in and in grant certainly does that. so that's just the military aspect. and i don't know, have i used up all my time we've got time for some questions or i've got no time for questions. you know, in the in the larger context here, we're talking just military. but if you add in his personal family stuff that he's dealing with at the same time if you add in his the the economic trade issues, then expelling the -- and all that. if you add in the political overtones of all this, grant's got a lot on his plate, a lot of 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 again, in probably the most complex, the most unique,

longest, probably important campaign in civil war. i think we see grant's genius come out very, very well. thank you very much. if you have any questions. 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 grant is very appreciative of what is doing, even though sherman outranks grant at that point, you know. but sherman is willing to put that aside and to to help grant. so the friendship probably goes back to that. and so when we get to this point, you know grant i think has figured out sherman and he knows that sherman is just the bombastic type and all probably know people like this you know sherman is the type he walked in that room he had come that door mouth first and he's going to talk and you know, breed everybody and be the social grant comes in that door. he's going hunt the first corner he can go go get it so different different ways. but grant knows sherman by this point. and so when sherman flies with one of these bombastic this is not to work, this is dumb. all that kind of stuff. grant just kind of like, oh yeah, well, okay, i've heard it before and paid no attention to sherman. does write a letter and verbally

he tells grant as well. and he basically makes the argument that any confederate general would gladly maneuver a year he says to put grant in a position that he was willingly assuming. you know with one foot on each side of mississippi river, a straight out of the mississippi. but grant says, well, there's no real other choice. so we're going to do it. you know, you're you're worries. duly 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.