| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Michael B. Ballard. Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi. (Civil War America.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004. Pp. xv, 490. $39.95.
In November 1861, Abraham Lincoln is said to have jabbed at a map and rested his finger on the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Noting the vast amounts of manpower, livestock, and supplies that could be gathered to support the Confederate war effort by way of its river and railroad connections, he exclaimed, "Vicksburg is the key... The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket" (p. 24). The astuteness of Lincoln's analysis can be questioned. The men and supplies that flowed from the trans-Mississippi South were never as important to Confederate fortunes as the region's geographical size would indicate. Nor, for a North with plenty of railroads, was it indispensable to regain full control of the Mississippi as a conduit for goods being sent to market. The military significance of Vicksburg lay primarily in the minds of Lincoln, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and some of their senior commanders. "Vicksburg," writes Michael B. Ballard, "became vital, 'the key,' because both sides ultimately decided it was" (p. 25).	1
This perception, or misperception, led to an extended campaign to secure the town between June 1862 and July 1863. The campaign mattered for several reasons. It was a political gauge of relative Union and Confederate strength. It ultimately resulted in the capture of nearly 30,000 Confederate prisoners, the largest mass surrender until 1865. It marked the emergence of Ulysses S. Grant as the Union's foremost general. And the eventual Union victory showed more unambiguously than the battle of Gettysburg that the North was winning the war. It is not going too far to call Vicksburg the military turning point of the conflict.	. . .

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