Booknotes: Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign

New Arrival:

• Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign: The Eighteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation by Larry Peterson (U Tenn Press, 2024).

From the description: "Vicksburg, nicknamed the Gibraltar of the Confederacy, was vital to Confederate supply lines, troop movements, and access to port cities on the Gulf of Mexico. The fortified city had been under constant attack since 1862 as Admiral Farragut assaulted Vicksburg after capturing New Orleans, and Major General Halleck enlisted then Major General Grant to devise an overland campaign to support a naval engagement. As Vicksburg was heavily garrisoned and resupplied regularly, Federal plans came up short again and again. But the pugnacious Grant would eventually devise a bold plan to cross the Mississippi River and advance along the western bank, use a feint by General Sherman’s forces and a raid by Colonel Grierson’s cavalry to draw out Confederate troops, then recross the river and capture Vicksburg."

Larry Peterson's Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign is the latest volume in UT Press's Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series. For those unfamiliar with the series format, the volume "explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Federal commanders during the battle and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Larry Peterson hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest to provide a blueprint of the battles for Vicksburg at their tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battles to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events unfolded as they did."

The book takes into the account the entire length the 1862-63 campaign. Organized into six time frames each consisting of 2-4 critical decisions, the first set of decisions involves top-level strategy and command, the second the late '62 Central Mississippi phase of the campaign, the third the maneuvers down the Louisiana side of the Mississippi (and the navy's run past the river batteries), the fourth the army's crossing below Vicksburg, the fifth the whirlwind series of battles that captured Jackson and hemmed Pemberton's army inside the Vicksburg fortifications, and the last section covers the siege and surrender. The bulk of the decisions types are operational and tactical in nature, with Grant, the far more aggressive of the two opposing commanders, having the most.

There are fourteen maps, an extended driving tour of the volume's critical decision analysis (similar in format to the classic War College guides), and orders of battle. Placed at the end of the book is an appendix discussing the Davis administration's summer 1863 options (one of which was to reinforce Pemberton in Mississippi rather than support the proposed offensive movement north into Pennsylvania). It is not included in the main part of the book because the author feels it is a Gettysburg Campaign decision and not a Vicksburg Campaign one. In the end, given the state of Confederate railroads, the author does not feel that reinforcements, even if dispatched immediately after the momentous mid-May strategy conference in Richmond, could have arrived in time to make a difference (especially with the passive Joseph E. Johnston in overall theater command).