Under Siege!: Three Children at the Civil War Battle for Vicksburg (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Under Siege!: Three Children at the Civil War Battle for Vicksburg Elizabeth Bush Warren, Andrea . Under Siege!: Three Children at the Civil War Battle for Vicksburg. Kroupa/Farrar, 2009166 p. illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-374-31255-8$21.95 R Gr. 5-8 While much literary attention is paid to Civil War battles in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the struggle to control the Mississippi River by securing Vicksburg, Mississippi receives less attention. Here Warren recounts the Union's futile attempts to take the city, which was cunningly protected by both armaments and nature, by force; General Grant's strategy of starving out the populace while shelling the periphery; and the Confederate city's heroic effort to hold out for General Joe [End Page 44] Johnston and his relief troops, a force that never arrived. Although Warren purports to view the events through the eyes of children who lived the battle—General Grant's son Frederick, a Vicksburg minister's son named Willie Lord, and a Vicksburg merchant's daughter, Lucy McRae—their witness is handily overpowered by a third-person account of the battle, and it is taken from memoirs written by the three in adulthood. The eyewitness comments do, however, infuse the history lesson with a sense of personal danger and privation the filter of memory doesn't blur. An abundance of maps, photographs, and period engravings supplement the text, and quote citations, a bibliography, and an index are also included, making this a strong choice for report writers as well as armchair historians. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois