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companies and more including media com. >> way out in the middle of anywhere you should have access to fast reliable internet. that's why we are leading the way. >> media com along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> the first time i met tim smith for the 155@the campaign of the vicksburg campaign. i went with chris white to do a series of videos and i meet tim on champion hill on the anniversary of the battle, which i was totally gigging out about but it's not -- it's even worse than that. i t packed a whole suitcase of m smith books for him to sign so i'm like, total fan boy going on

at the moment. tim was super gracious and very kind about it. and since then, we have grown to become friends and he is truly the epitome of the gentleman and s the scholar but he's the southern gentleman and the scholar so everything he says it's not only kind and polite be with a quaint bra which is wonderful and he is so gracious with his time, he's been deep thely, deeply invested in his series about the vickburg 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 in the midst of that i'm working on my book about the action and he's kind to take time out andlo look at the manuscript and offer suggestions, very constructive about it and c he couldn't have been more gracious in his time even though he was already hard

at work at, you know, the book thatth he's on and so for that i will always be grateful as well to help me out on my little book on mississippi. tim is the first recipient of the emerging civil war book, book on fort donaldson just outstanding and he's been writing his way through the western theater ever since and i suspect when he finally conquers the west, lincoln will bring him to the east and having start writing out here. [laughter] >> we can only hope that he was gracious 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, 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's the author, coeditor of more than 20 books with several university and commercial presents. won awards and civil war tennessee campaign for donaldson, shiloh have won a total of 9 book awards, currently finishing the 5 volume study on the vicksburg campaign at the university of kansas and new study of albert sidney johnson for lsu press and lives with wife kelly and father mary kate and leah grace and it's extreme pleasure to welcome him here to the ninth annual emerging civil war symposium at stevenson ridge. tim smith.

[applause] >> wow, thank you, chris, did my momma tell you to say all that? [laughter] >> it is a pleasure to be here. i've always heard about the emerging civil war symposium and, wow, consider me impressed. this is great. what a wonderful venue. g 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 in the past, several people here were just with me last weekend at vicksburg, 4 to 5 days and some next weekend on the tour the and through mississippi and louisiana, so a lot of folks that are back and forth on the tours and so it's good to see you, if i haven't seen you, come up and say hello and we will reacquaint. so thank you for having me this -- 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, always a pleasure to help out chris and the folks that run it, helped 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 help out just a little bit and so i applaud you what you're doing. keep up the good work ten more years. nine years, i think, of the symposium. keep up the good work. you're doing great. let's talk about vicsburg. how many been the vicksburg. all right, that's good. obviously i'm not from around here. you understand that. you folks talk funny up here for some reason, i don't know why. but vicksburg but very extreme,

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.we argument closed. we are done. the comparison between vicksburg and gettysburg, pretty good week july -- first week of july in 1863. pretty good for the union and not good for the confederates. vicksburg, i would argue it's the most complex, largest and probably the most important campaign 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, the civil war was over, that's when it was g decided, in fact, i was thinkg

about this and aye come to the conclusion in particularly dealing with johnston in the war, was the war done in 162 but i've come to the conclusion that in a baseball pennant. how many are baseball fans? how many are braves fans? i know -- one right there. kni know that we have a philly's fan right there. sorry. last time iis saw him he was wearing a philies, october of last year, won the world series or played in the world series. but any way, the -- the idea that you can't win a pennant in april of baseball season, you can't win it but you can't lose it. you can dig yourself a hole. presidential politics. we are coming up on a presidential election pretty soon. you cannot win a nomination in

iowa or new hampshire but you can sure heck it in iowa or new hampshire and i was telling that to somebody, that's like golf. i don't play golf. you can't win the tournament on thursday but you can sure lose it on thursday if you don't make the cut. that's kind of my view. if i had to say one particular campaign that was actually probably the most important for a number of different reasons, you have talked about that. has a lot to do with grant. i would go with vicksburg: i may be argued. i won't argue that point. the way i want to do with vicksburg tonight is to deal withan ulisses grant, we will tk about timberton and look at decision-making process and the decisions he have made. eight key decisions that ulisses grant made in the vicksburg

campaign and the day of constant news media and everything coming through a phone the and so on, i've noticed that the news networks which ever one you prefer and sports sites and so on. they are going to top 5 takeaways from so and so. top 8 so and so and it helps us in our fast-pace world to wrap our minds a around, boom, boom, different thingsgs and we see a little bit in literature and this is by no means pattern but something similar to how many of you read george bush presidential memoir. every president writest a memor and the way george w. bush did it was to take the ten key decisions that he made in his life like stop drinking and i think the surge and so on and so on, he wrapped it up around major decision so we will look at the eight major decisions that ulisses grant makes, these are military decisions, we will

talk about military aspects tonight and actually this is a takeoff from one of the books that i did several years ago and i signed several for people out there. i know some of you have it but john, y'all know john, the sherman biographyer, we edit a series with the southern illinois university press in the world of ulisse grant. the whole idea behind this was to after the 32 volumes that john published of the grant papers the idea was to take that knowledge that we learned and created a new series called ulisses s grant and one in the series. different monograms on aspects of grant's life. his treatment of native americans, of course, there's several -- several civil war

volumes as well. in that volume i dealt with a lot of things going on. military commanders, you just don't concentrate holy on the military aspects, it would be nice if you could but generals have families that they are worried back home, grant had a wife and children, his son fred was with him in the campaign but julia and some of the children were back home. he worried about land sales, 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, quick buck off of -- off of what he was doing and at the same time as we can 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 had to write them both letter, calm down, get along.

i have big things to do here. i need you two to get along while i'm doing this, so the personal aspects very important at the same time that grant is conducting the campaign the political aspect of this grant is always, he keeps politics in mind much better than, than a sherman or somebody like that. and he realizes, in fact, he says later on we were all on probationea anyway and he realis leash is pretty thinker pretty short here andnd if he doesn't produce something quickly politically they are going to be calling for -- for his head. he has political things to worry about that. economic,ic personal, the whole thing about the order expelling the jews in december of 1862 the sew a lot of different things that he as going on in addition to just the military aspects but

the military aspects is what we will concentrate on tonight. let's look aty the eight key decisions that grant -- that's actually a quote of his. he says i didn't call council, he did, he didn't admit it that he did. he would actually make most of his own decisions, we will look at a little bit of that as we go forward. decision number one, if you're takingno notes, i always get tickled at my students when i'm lecturing and going different things and so on and you can tell when they space out a little bit but you always say, all right, number one, every pen goes down, every head goes down. whatever it is, they don't know what they're writing sometimes but they know it's important if i say, all right, number one, right, so number one, what's the first key decision that grant makes in the vicksburg

campaign, that is to go and capture vicksburg. >> okay, i know i'm underwhelming you at this point. may, june, july of 1862 but what we are talking about specifically grants, vicksburg campaign from october, late october 1862 to july the fourth, 1863. so, you know, the fact that grant decides, all right, we are going after vicksburg, that's nothing new but here is the kicker. it should have beenbe done much early and so guarantees actual decision to start doing it is like a breath of fresh air, we w are actually going to do this. in fact, i would argue to you

that the vicksburg campaign should have commenced in june of 1862. who is in command? 1862? henry w and nothing is going to the proceed under henry w especially in the summer of 1962. the united states navy, the brown water navy has moved southward after victory at memphis on june the sixth all the way, new orleans, capture of new orleans there in late april and all of the components are coming together in may, june 1862 and all they need is a large army. view of consolidating what we already have, gaining decisive points, secure supply lines, all

of that by the book stuff, no, we are going to sit tight and we are goingig to consolidate whate have and plus it's too high anyway.t you can't operate in that climate in the summer, in june and july, grant proved him wrong a year later obviously, you can. so this should have been done actually in june of 1862. now it certainly should have been done in july of 1862 because when hallock is called to washington in mid-july he least grant in charge of the district that he's already in charge in west tennessee instead of elevating grant up to the western theater commander, one commander for pretty much the entire western theater which hallock had been harpenned and what he argued, of course, he wanted himself to be the commander obviously.

he doesn't elevate anybody to that position but goes to district commanders. grant is technically under hallok and as a result grant doesn't have the autonomy or the authority to start to vicksburg operations on his own. but he doesn't and as a result the vicksburg campaign start in july. what's critical in mid october, i believe 16th, i have to look back, october 16th grant is promote today that higher authority where he has autonomy to conduct his own operations, he actually takes command, ten days later on october 25th and the very next day what does grant do? he issues orders to move, we are going to take vicksburg. we start the process. everybody knows grant is going to vicksburg.

but finally, in the fall of 1862, grant does start southward and he will do things by the book. supporting columns and secure supply lines and take significant decisive points and results in basically two attempts to reach vicksburg, you can see that here. mississippi central campaign moving southward through springs and oxford, water valley, confederates will pull back from the rivers, the cold water, the river there and will basically and we will look at this in just a second.

he moves southward and what was thesl result, obviously both are failures, grant himself will be turned back by a couple of cavalry and will ride around west tennessee breaking railroad bridges on the -- move knot warr and hit highly springs. grant big supply days is destroyed. guarantees ability to refill that supply base is destroyed and so grant has to pull out and decide the campaign is done. no more of that. at the same time sherman has met defeat at chickasaw north of vicksburg on december the 29th. suffers heavy casualties there and as a result that attempt is also a failure so the first two attempts to reachch vicksburg ae really to reach the outskirts on the high ground to vicksburg.

guarantees decision, yes, god one. so that leads us to the second major decision but before we talk the about that, we have to introduce this whole political, military but there are some political aspects of this and that is one former congressman who arrives in the middle of this to take command of the sbexpedition against vicksburg. grant doesn't like, he's not a west pointer, and grant thinks and as a result they don't get along. grantt says i can't leave this s important job as this is, i can't leave it to mcclernan and as a result i will take sole command. what had been two different prongs of the federal advance in the mississippi will now become

one. make the decision to make this the a one-prong advance and who is going to be the commander of that. me, grant. so in order to supercede grant makes it a one prong basically, onee axis of advance movement. you get into the vicksburg campaign operation. that's about what i figured. nobody goes to arkansas. we have a couple, not much out there, right, that's where the river is now but it's an important political, pretty important battle sherman lose like a thousand soldiers, killed, wounded and missing. pretty good little battle but the political aspects of this is what isan so important.

grant just goes bunkers over wild goose chase. grant request permission to be able to remove and gives him permission. that's fine, youth go right ahe. at least take sole command of expedition against vicksburg and grant makes the decision to make a one axis of advance movement in late, january will move southward along the mississippi river down to where he would keep his headquarters at young'd point just up river from vicksburg so the first decision, number 2, let's make it a one axis of advance movement but the problem is by this point we are in january, entering february, march, april, 1863 and the whole

place is flooded. the mississippi delta. have you been to the mississippi delta. you've been to the arkansas delta. flat as pancake, floods easily every year it floods and as a result most of the operating area that grant has to deal with is pretty much under water at this point and it's not going to recede any time soon. it's going to take months for all this water to the recede, in fact, i believe it's fuller talked about like noah grant stood and watched waiting for the waters to subside. so what do you do for 2, 3, 4 months. grant talks about we will keep our guys busy so we will do busy work and keep them thinking we are actually doing something but it's not important. we are not going to take vicksbug, we just have to wait. i will admit i'm a grant fan. i like grant.

he tells in his memoirs, just because somebody writes the memoirs, don't take it as the gospel truth because obviously what they are doing, they are trying to make themselves look as good as possible. that's just the way you do with memoirs. it's a good, good thing to read, good book, good source but you also have to check it and the best place to check is memoirs is to see what he was saying contemporaneously about whatever he was talking about in he is memoir. go back to the 32 volumes of john simone's papers of ulisses grant. go back to see what he was writing about in the letters and several instances where you will find that grant is telling a big-fat lie is what he's doing and what he was saying at the time don't really add up. so third decision that grant makes is to try to get to vicksburg by other meansns and that is if everything is flooded

how do you get t through a flood area? mainly by boat, right. extremely unique, extremely complicated, you've got the naval presence here, very, very important and the navy really comes into play here in several of these attempts that you have heard of, that you know of, these are called the bio attempt that is grant basically tries to trade water and to get through by anyro way that he can. a map that will deal with that, here you go grant attempts and four more major ones, four major ones, number one he tries to dig a canal across the turn the at vicksburg here. digs a canal to divert the mississippi river. it's been tried a little bit beforehand. you talk about going against the book.

there's nothing about diverting the largest river, doesn't work, the river actually later changes course pretty much area that grant wanted it to. that was 1876. that was late to help grant. give him an a for effort. the lake providence. several of the o bios and rivers to get to vicksburg to the west. the two on the eastern side of the mississippi are fascinating and cut the river up in moon lake and go through the cold water river down to the tallahassee river. seriously, it is also the same river you may have seen on the news recently that president biden had declared emmet teal,

same river that they threw the body of emmet teal and later recovered. they have to get out of there. expedition, goes up still, black boi or deer creek and they are going through ditches here that are just flooded at the time but none of these work. now what they actually are, they are, small scale attempts that are low risk but could provide really highut rewards, low risk high rewards. you can see what grant is doing here. now the ironic thing that grant almost loses the fleet in the expedition when he gets in there and the confederate start cutting trees behind them and all of that. they manage to get the fleet out but these are low risk, high

reward efforts that grant really put a lot of stock into. if you read those letters at the time the, grant talking like, okay, yeah. this is going to be our ticket to vicksburg or at least the position where you can get to the point where we will attack vicksburg or high ground. we have another route, we are going the make the route. he was very high on each of these things until he proved to be failures so this idea that grant in his memoir, i never really put stock intove it, we e doing busy work, keeping the guys busy and keeping muscles up and all of that, not really, not really the truth. had one of these succeeds, grant would have been static but not all of them do. so third decision is to basically trade water for a little while, try anything we can to the be able to get to

vicksburg but none of them work. when we get to, what are we on, number 4, i have to ask my students what are we on number 4. okay, here within the decisions, this is the big decision and really in term of the entire civil war, this is one of the biggies, this is one of the big decisions. bruce, anybody heard of bruce, several books back there. bruce labeled this as one of the two or three really big major decisions in the civil war. it's that big and that is the decision to quit peeling around here north of vicksburg, lake providence and canal, we are up to 6 failed attempts now and what grant is going to do is to shift his army southward through

a series of bios and roadways now that the water is starting to recede a little bit in april and move southward through the wilderness to a point south of icpittsburgh that he can cross e river and move on much more favor thible land up to this the high ground east to vicksburg that he's after. this is an extremely risky decision that he is making and again goes completely against the book because number one there's no supporting columns, number two there's no real decisive points to take, number 3, you're putting the whole enemy army between yourself and your base of supplies which plliterally is back at memphis o you don't have a secure supply line by any means. this is goingan totally against the book but grant says what do

we have to lose, we are going the try it. the key thing here is this is not like the low risk high reward risks before. this is do or die. there is no backing up from this the. once you start this, there's no coming back, you know, we had beennd through plan a, b, c, d,, f. there is plan g. there is no plan -- ab, c, d, e -- h. [laughter] >> there is noer plan h. there's no going back on this.

you have to have the navy there and as a result when he talks to officer porter about this, porter is like, really, you want to do this? okay. ly do it but you have to the understand and he tells grant, this, this, this. this is very critical. porter tells grant that if we go south of vicksburg, we will have to run batteries and there's no guaranty that our boats will get passed. porter says i'm going to send the best boatth that i have to knock out, for instance, guns there. i'm not goingng to send just the weakest vessels i have, i'm going to send the best i've got

which doesn't leave a lot north of vicksburg. the big thing that porter says all right, grant, if we go south, there's no hope whatsoever of getting vessels back up north of vicksburg. if this option doesn't work, you may be able to pull your army out but we can't get the vessels back up north of vicksburg. 4, 5 or so. if you add that together, if you're going with the current, you will make good speed southward past pittsburgh. but if you try to go up against the current, maybe two knots, you will be sitting ducks. once we go below, there ain't no getting back. be careful what you wish for, if

you want to do this, i will do it, i will risk my vessels. but just know that there'st no aigoing back. succeed or fail. grant says, okay, nothing else to do, let's go do it. not really, that's paraphrasing here.sa grant says in actuality there's no other choice. c this is what we have to do. so as grant marchs his army southward on the western side of the mississippi river, porter moves southward with his vessels on the night of april the 16th, more transports follow on the night of april the 22nd and eventually they can not reduce the guns in grant gulf. the army embarks on the gun boats and the transports and anything that will float and they are moved across the river

to land in mississippi to a place called brewensburg and he will fight the battle that day, may the first, the very next day, that morning, the battle of port gibson and then move to pier and sit and wait and gatt e his thoughts there. wasn't of the key decisions and there's no going back, success or fail, due or die naval issuess 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 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.

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