Bayou Battles for Vicksburg

The Swamp and River Expeditions, January 1-April 30, 1863

Timothy B. Smith

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780700635665
• eBook ISBN: 9780700635672
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The dawn of 1863 brought a new phase of the Union’s Mississippi Valley operations against Vicksburg. For the first four months, Union attempts to reach high and dry ground east of the Mississippi River would be plagued by high water everywhere, and the resulting bayou and river expeditions would test everyone involved, including the defending Confederates.

In Bayou Battles for Vicksburg, the latest volume in his five-volume history of the Vicksburg Campaign of the US Civil War, Timothy B. Smith offers the first book-length examination of Ulysses S. Grant’s winter waterborne attempts to capture the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The accepted strategy up to this point in the war was aligned with the principles of the Swiss theorist Antoine-Henri Jomini, whose work was taught at West Point, where commanders on both sides of the conflict had been educated. But Jomini emphasized secure supply lines and a slow, steady, unified approach to a target such as Vicksburg, and never had much to say about creeks, rivers, and bayous in a subtropical swamp environment. Grant threw out conventional wisdom with a bold, and ultimately successful, plan to avoid a direct approach and rather divide his forces to accomplish multiple goals and to confuse the enemy by cutting levies, flooding whole sections of watersheds, and bypassing strongholds by digging canals far around them.

Bayou Battles for Vicksburg details each of the Union attempts to reach high ground east of the Mississippi River and includes fresh research on the Yazoo Pass and Steele’s Bayou expeditions, Grant’s canal, and the Lake Providence effort. Smith weaves several simultaneous Union initiatives together into a chronological narrative that provides great detail on the Union’s successful final attempt to get to good ground east of the Mississippi.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Prologue: Vicksburg Not by the Book
• 1. “We Were Out-Generaled Some Way”
• 2. “Can the Enemy Intend Another Attempt to Approach Vicksburg?”
• 3. “We Have Disposed of This Tough Little Nut”
• 4. “The Work of Changing the Channel of the Mississippi”
• 5. “But Grant Is on Two Other Projects”
• 6. “The Prospect of Opening the Pass Is Encouraging”
• 7. “The Yankee Boats Are Here”
• 8. “The Enemy Press Me on All Sides”
• 9. “We Intend to Take the Boats”
• 10. “This Is the Only Move I Now See as Practicable”
• 11. “They Are About to Execute Some Plan”
• 12. “Attracting Attention from Grant”
• 13. “We Land the Army in the Morning”
• Epilogue: “But I Was on Dry Ground”
• Appendix A: Union Order of Battle for Arkansas Post, January 11, 1863
• Appendix B: Confederate Order of Battle for Arkansas Post, January 11, 1863
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover