Mississippi and Alabama

March 6 through 10, 2000

Vicksburg, MS

One of my chief goals in Vicksburg was to visit the Vicksburg National Military Park. We wound up spending both Monday and Tuesday mornings at the park, taking a self-guided car tour. I was a little disappointed with the lack of interpretive material at the park, but when I though about it, it is not as though there were a lot of battles there. In fact, the battle of Vicksburg was basically a textbook application of siege tactics. What can one say about a siege other than both sides waited, and one side got hungrier and hungrier.

The town of Vicksburg was important to the Union army because it was essentially the last point at which the Confederacy prevented complete Union freedom on the Mississippi River. Although the river has changed course some now, during the Civil War, the guns at Fort Hill on the bluff at Vicksburg commanded a long stretch of the river through a tight horseshoe bend. Unless the Union could capture that fort, they could not safely move supplies up and down the river. Unfortunately for the Union Army, Vicksburg is situated in a very good defensive position, and when U. S. Grant tried a couple of direct attacks, the Union army was readily repulsed. At that point, Grant switched to a siege strategy, and after 6 weeks, on July 4, 1863, the Confederates under General Pemberton surrendered.

Most of the park is now a road that drives along the Union lines and then the Confederate lines. Along the way, there are literally hundreds of monuments to the various units that manned the lines at different places. Most of the monuments are relatively simple stele types of markers, but some, like the Illinois monument are very impressive. (The tallest monument in the park was obelisk for some of the Louisiana troops. Unfortunately, on Memorial Day of last year, a bolt of lightning struck it, and it is currently on the ground awaiting a restoration process.)

In many places, there are guns in the emplacements as they were during the war. Unfortunately, there are also pretty heavy woods between the two lines. According to one plaque that we saw along the way, these woods were planted by the CCC in the 1930’s to prevent erosion damage. With the advent of some new erosion prevention technologies, the National Park Service is restoring the vegetation to be similar to what was there during the war. The area around Fort Garrott has been restored, and it is now possible to experience how the opposing soldiers were able to see each other.

The terrain was much hillier and more steeply ravined than I had expected. The fact that the Union ever tried to storm the defenses at all amazes me. I have a hard time imagining going up some of those hills on a nice spring morning, to say nothing of doing it on a hot summer day with hostile troops firing at me. They were a tougher breed than I.

In addition to the battle field park, we also took in the Old County Courthouse Museum. This is a nice museum, with a lot of Civil War artifacts as well as others of local interest. Apparently Jefferson Davis’ home was just south of Vicksburg, and the local people take a lot of pride in his accomplishments. The people seem to be very proud of the Confederacy accomplishments during the Civil War. I keep thinking that they are a very proud and good people, but then I keep coming back to the fact that they were basically fighting to preserve slavery and the advantages of the few landed aristocracy. At that point I have trouble justifying what they did.

As a somewhat related issue, this time that we are spending in the deep south is allowing me to address some of my prejudices. Having never been in this area before, I think that my image of the southerners has been locked into what I saw on news broadcasts 45 years ago. (We did see the North Little Rock High School, and it certainly looked like the news images.) I need to keep reminding myself that stereotyping of any group of people is an act of prejudice. Each person needs to be treated as the individual that he or she is. For the most part, the people we have encountered here are very friendly, even to us northerners. They are also generally hard working and accepting people. From what I have seen, a liberal Democrat would have a seemingly impossible task getting elected, but then Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. Mostly, however, my view of the people has to change to be that of individuals rather than of classes.

(As an aside, we did see a news item on TV in Hot Springs, AR that was interesting. I don’t remember what the point of the item was, but it highlighted some archive footage from a few years ago of a man who had the appearance and actions of what I would call a stereotypical “Hillbilly.” He was tall and skinny, wore overalls and a tattered felt hat, was 70 some years old, missing most of his teeth, and carried a shotgun over one arm and some small game traps in the other. He had 19 children – at the time, aged infant to 40 – by two wives, and one of the children that was referenced by name was “Snowdrop.” Yet at the end of the news item I was left with the feeling that he was just acting the part. For one thing, of the 19 children, 11 of them had college degrees – although nothing was said about it, I suspect that the other 8 were still too young. That doesn’t fit the stereotype at all.)