{"id":1617,"date":"2010-06-04T20:07:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T01:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2010-06-04T20:16:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T01:16:19","slug":"siege-of-vicksburg-mississippi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2010\/06\/04\/siege-of-vicksburg-mississippi\/","title":{"rendered":"Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Within twenty four hours of the Union\u2019s victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania<\/a> in July 1863, Confederate General John C. Pemberton<\/a> surrendered <\/a>his forces at Vicksburg, Mississippi<\/a> on July, 4, 1863 to General Ulysses S. Grant<\/a> after a long siege. Vicksburg is a city located along the Mississippi River and the Confederacy\u2019s loss of such an important port was a serious loss. Teachers should check out the great resources on National Park Service\u2019s page<\/a> and in their online exhibit<\/a>, which are described in an\u00a0earlier post<\/a>. House Divided has several interesting documents that offer a variety of perspectives on Vicksburg, including a Confederate private<\/a> who told his wife what he believed\u00a0was responsible for the defeat. General Pemberton\u2019s forces surrendered \u201con the account of provisions,\u201d as Private William Stoker<\/a> explained<\/a>. Stoker, who was with General John Walker\u2019s<\/a> Texas Division in Louisiana when he heard about Vicksburg, argued that \u201c[the Union] could [never] of whipped us there if we\u2026of had [enough]\u00a0provisions.\u201d General William T. Sherman<\/a>, who also participated in the Vicksburg Campaign, reflected after the war on some\u00a0negative consequences<\/a> of the Union\u2019s victory:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our success at Vicksburg produced other results not so favorable to our cause a general relaxation of effort, and desire to escape the hard drudgery of camp: officers sought leaves of absence to visit their homes, and soldiers obtained furloughs and discharges on the most slender pretexts; even the General Government seemed to relax in its efforts to replenish our ranks with new men, or to enforce the draft, and the politicians were pressing their schemes to reorganize or patch up some form of civil government, as fast as the armies gained partial possession of the States.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, this short newspaper<\/a> article from the Vicksburg Whig<\/em> provides a nice example of the way southern editors portrayed Union soldiers\u2019 conduct during the campaign. You can find other primary sources in the Vicksburg Campaign major topic<\/a> at House Divided as well as in volume 15<\/a> of the Official Records<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within twenty four hours of the Union\u2019s victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in July 1863, Confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered his forces at Vicksburg, Mississippi on July, 4, 1863 to General Ulysses S. Grant after a long siege. Vicksburg is a city located along the Mississippi River and the Confederacy\u2019s loss of such an important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,171,156,172,12,47],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-historic-periodicals","category-images","category-letters-diaries","category-maps","category-places-to-visit","tag-battles-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1623,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/1623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}