Being a veteran of the notorious siege of Khe Sanh within the Vietnam Battle in 1968, I might relate considerably to the siege that occurred at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1862 throughout America’s Civil Battle, when the Accomplice defenders of the hilly Mississippi River city got here below siege by Union forces led by Common Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was born 203 years in the past this week, April 27, 1822.
To keep away from the fixed shelling by the North’s ironclads floating on the river beneath the steep bluffs of Vicksburg, the Accomplice troopers, together with civilians, had been compelled to go underground. To maintain from ravenous to demise they resorted to consuming skinned rats and mule meat as a result of the ironclads prevented them from being resupplied with common meals.
Abraham Lincoln thought-about the marketing campaign in opposition to Vicksburg to be important in stopping the movement of Accomplice struggle materiel down the river from Cairo, Illinois, the place the Ohio River poured into the Mississippi, to New Orleans, one other insurgent stronghold that served as an anchor for the Confederacy’s struggle effort within the deep South. Lincoln referred to as upon Grant, who was residing in Galena, Illinois, on the time, to guide the Bluecoats of their siege of the Accomplice bastion. The siege was profitable, thanks partly to Admiral David Porter’s Union Navy, whose ironclads bombarded Vicksburg relentlessly till the Rebels surrendered.
After the resounding victory, Grant’s military seized the momentum and marched eastward via Dixie with the purpose of capturing Richmond, Virginia, the South’s capital metropolis, earlier than Common Robert E. Lee’s forces acquired there first to defend it.
Alongside the way in which, Grant and Lee clashed repeatedly in operating battles, starting with the one at Chilly Harbor the place Grant’s males had been soundly defeated by Lee’s. Out of 25,000 Union troops that attacked the well-entrenched Rebels, practically 7,000 had been killed or wounded. They clashed once more within the horrific Battle of the Wilderness the place Grant’s bolstered military of 120,000 males mounted an assault in opposition to Lee’s military via the foreboding terrain of dense briars and thick, foot-tangling vines. They had been additionally hampered by a spring thunderstorm whose lightning began fast-moving brush fires. However the storm proved to be a double-edged sword. Not solely did its rain put the fires out, nevertheless it turned the battlefield into mud, bogging down the troopers on either side, stopping them from mounting assaults.
The next afternoon the solar shone brightly, drying the mud simply sufficient for the combatants to regain their footing and mount assaults. Grant took the initiative and attacked first with 20,000 males who shortly overcame the Confederates, killing or capturing hundreds of them as Lee defiantly rode his horse into the midst of the melee to rally his males to maintain combating, though they had been getting ready to defeat. Ultimately Grant’s costs prevailed, and the Southerners retreated whereas the Northerners proceeded towards Richmond.
The struggle turned a race between the Rebels and the Yankees to find out the destiny of Richmond. For six months the inconclusive operating battles between the 2 had taken place within the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and within the fields north of Richmond, all of which resulted in great casualties on either side.
In the meantime, Common Sherman’s troops, who had been recent from a rampage via the South that included the devastation of Atlanta, marched as much as Richmond the place they rendezvoused with Grant’s troops, who had surrounded the capital earlier than Lee’s might get there in time to save lots of town.
Symbolically, whereas the Union’s President Lincoln was visiting Grant’s military to congratulate them on their victory, Accomplice president Jefferson Davis fled town to keep away from being arrested for rebel and treason in opposition to america, leaving Lincoln to be the undisputed president of those reunited states.
With Davis gone it was left as much as Lee to formally give up the Confederacy, which he did on the Appomattox Courtroom Home, to his archrival Grant, who accepted it graciously, “with malice towards none and charity for all,” as Lincoln would later say in 1865 in his Second Inaugural Deal with a mere month or so earlier than his assassination.
Years later, in 1869, Grant turned a U.S. president like his former Commander-in-Chief Lincoln had performed, setting a precedent for Common Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had commanded all Allied forces in Europe throughout World Battle II, to comply with when he was elected president after the struggle that ended with the give up of the Nazis in 1945.
So why, pray inform, is not there a statue of Grant on the Illinois Statehouse garden, along with Lincoln’s, just like the late Judy Barr Topinka, former state treasurer, had proposed way back? In any case, each had lived in Illinois, turned American presidents, and each had been instrumental in successful the Civil Battle.
Mike Shepherd, who lives within the nation close to Springfield, is a contract author who served as a radio information reporter for seventh Air Power Data and Armed Forces Radio within the Vietnam Battle. He is the creator of a not too long ago printed ebook entitled Vietnam Battle Tales that is about a few of his experiences there.
