Booknotes: "The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender"

New Arrival:

• The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender by Chris Mackowski (Casemate, 2025).

This is Mackowski's second installment of his two-volume Vicksburg Campaign entry in the Casemate Illustrated series, the first one (see here) taking the reader through the campaign's inception through the gunboat fleet's downriver passing of the Vicksburg river batteries.

The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863: The Inland Battles, Siege and Surrender "examines the movements of the Union and Confederate armies from March 1863 through July 1863, the joint-operational cooperation between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, the delayed and indecisive Confederate operations to stop the Federal initiative, and how the individual soldiers conducted the one of the greatest campaigns in American military history: to control the “The Father of Waters”—the Mississippi River."

The book begins with the bombardment of Grand Gulf and the massive amphibious landing to the south at Bruinsburg. From there, summaries of the battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River advance the narrative to the ramparts of Vicksburg. The failed assaults of May 19 and May 22 are then recounted, as is the siege operation that ultimately forced the surrender of the city on July 4, 1863.

In addition to the volume's five original maps, there are a number of archival maps interspersed throughout. Nearly every page includes at least one illustration of some kind, be it new or old photography, color artwork, or contemporary newspaper drawings. Frequent sidebars, which are mostly personality or biographically focused, are another series constant.