Battle of Vicksburg

Vicksburg sat on a bluff above a sharp bend in the Mississippi River, bristling with artillery, and the Confederacy had spent two years making it nearly impregnable. Lincoln called it the key: whoever held Vicksburg controlled the river, and whoever controlled the river split the Confederacy in half. Ulysses S. Grant spent the better part of 1862 and early 1863 trying to find a way in. He found one in May 1863, maneuvering a Union army of 45,000 men to the city's rear and laying siege. Forty-seven days later, on July 4, the garrison surrendered.

The siege reduced the city's 3,000 civilian residents to desperate conditions. They dug cave shelters in the hillsides to survive Union bombardment, ran out of food, and eventually ate mules, dogs, and rats. Confederate General John Pemberton surrendered 29,000 soldiers on Independence Day — the largest capture of troops in American military history until World War II. Combined with the Union victory at Gettysburg the day before, July 4, 1863 became the war's true hinge.

Grant's Vicksburg campaign is still studied at military academies as a masterpiece of operational maneuver. He crossed the Mississippi below the city, cut loose from his supply lines, lived off the land, fought and won five engagements in 17 days, and invested Vicksburg before Confederate forces could concentrate against him. Lincoln, who had spent two years tolerating Grant's sometimes reckless methods, declared: "I can't spare this man — he fights."