Reviewed by: The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23–July 4, 1863 by Timothy B. Smith Steven E. Woodworth The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23–July 4, 1863. By Timothy B. Smith. Modern War Studies. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021. Pp. xxviii, 724. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-7006-3225-1.) Timothy B. Smith, a prolific author of high-quality Civil War campaign and battle histories, has produced this massive and very impressive history of the culminating phase of the yearlong struggle for Vicksburg, Mississippi, and with it control of the Mississippi River. The book begins with a brief overview of the preceding phase of the contest for the river, including Ulysses S. Grant’s maneuver campaign through the interior of Mississippi, and his two assaults against Vicksburg’s landward-facing fortifications. After the failure of those attacks, Grant and his Army of the Tennessee settled down to the methodical process of besieging the Confederate stronghold, and so Smith’s narrative settles down for a detailed account of the six-week investment of the city. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a chronological period of two to five days, and in thirty to thirty-five pages Smith covers every aspect of the siege during that period. These include sharpshooting, artillery bombardment, the digging of saps, the lot of the Confederate soldiers within the fortifications, and the plight of the Vicksburg civilians behind them, as well as the experience of the Union soldiers in their own trenches and steadily advancing siege works. Smith deals with developments within the high command of each side. Confederate Vicksburg commander Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton and his superior in the interior of Mississippi, General Joseph E. Johnston, [End Page 153] enacted an almost farcical comedy of errors. Pemberton passively depended on Johnston for aid, while Johnston, apparently believing all hope was lost from the outset, appeared to be merely going through the motions of trying to relieve Vicksburg. On the Union side, it was Thirteenth Corps commander Major General John A. McClernand, a Democratic politician from Illinois, who provided the drama. Smith is generous in assessing McClernand’s fighting skills but notes the general’s propensity for blunders, posturing, and occasional acts of insubordination. It was a combination of these that finally brought McClernand’s downfall, when he leaked, contrary to standing orders, a grandiose account of his corps’ activities prior to the siege, worded to imply that the rest of the army had contributed very little to the success of the campaign. This move prompted Grant to relieve McClernand of command, but Smith believes that Grant had already made up his mind to do so, and that the publication of the boastful report merely provided the needed pretext. With detail and verve, Smith tells the story of how Union soldiers emplaced and detonated a massive mine under a section of the Confederate fortifications and of the prolonged and bitter struggle to try to break through the rebel lines in the gap the mine had blown. Thereafter the siege continued, until at last, on July 4, 1863, Pemberton formally surrendered the city and its garrison to Grant. Smith’s voluminous research is evident throughout the book. He has consulted a vast array of diaries, letters, and reminiscences by soldiers in both armies and of all ranks, and with those sources he tells the story from the perspective and often in the words of a cloud of witnesses from both sides of the lines, lending it life and authenticity. Those with an interest in Civil War military history will find the book easy to read and hard to put down. It is also hard to imagine that a more thorough and insightful account of the Vicksburg siege will emerge for a generation at least. Steven E. Woodworth Texas Christian University Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association
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