The Guide to the Vicksburg Campaign (U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles, Vol 6)

In the same week that Union forces triumphed at Gettysburg, they also captured the river fortress at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Although much less memorialized than Gettysburg, the fall of Vicksburg was every bit as crucial to the Union cause.

Pitting Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman against John Pemberton and Joseph Johnston, the victorious Vicksburg Campaign helped revive a war-weary North, gave it absolute control of the Mississippi River, severed the western Confederacy from the East, and further constricted the South's ability to wage war as the Union drove ever deeper into its heartland. It also gave Grant-the campaign's chief architect-a dramatic venue for demonstrating his maturing skills and intelligence as a strategist and field commander.

Unlike other volumes in the U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles series, this one examines an entire campaign, looking at many interlinked battles and joint Army-Navy operations as they played out over seven months and thousands of square miles of rivers, streams, swamps, lakes, forests, hills, and plains surrounding Vicksburg. In addition to detailed coverage of the actual Siege of Vicksburg, the book also chronicles the battles at Jackson, Port Gibson, Raymond, Champions Hill, and Big Black Ridge.

Like the other volumes in the series, this one combines eyewitness accounts with maps, illustrations, and tour directions to illuminate the events for both tourists and arm-chair travellers. For anyone interested in learning more about this relatively neglected but pivotal Civil War campaign, the Guide to the Vicksburg Campaign is must reading.

• Guide to the Battle of Shiloh
• Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi (Civil War America)
• Vicksburg Is the Key: The Struggle for the Mississippi River (Great Campaigns of the Civil War)
• Guide to the Atlanta Campaign: Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain (U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles)
• Guide to the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign (The U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles)
• Vicksburg National Military Park (Images of America)
• Vicksburg, 1863 (Vintage Civil War Library)
• Guide to the Battles of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg
• Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (This Hallowed Ground: Guides to Civil War Battlefields)
• Guide to the Battle of Gettysburg: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles)