Vicksburg National Military Park

Vicksburg's importance came from its geography. The city sat on high bluffs commanding a bend of the Mississippi River, and its guns could control the passage of boats up and down the great waterway that was the lifeline of the continent. President Abraham Lincoln understood this well, reportedly saying that Vicksburg was the key and that the war could never be brought to a close until that key was in the Union's pocket.

For the Confederacy, holding Vicksburg kept the Mississippi open between its eastern and western halves and closed the river to Union shipping. For the Union, taking it meant splitting the South in two and reopening the river to the Gulf. That is why so much effort and so much blood were spent on this one city, and why the campaign to capture it became one of the decisive struggles of the entire war.

After a series of battles and marches through the Mississippi countryside, Union forces under General Grant pushed the Confederate army under General John C. Pemberton back into the defenses of Vicksburg in May 1863. Unable to take the strong fortifications by direct assault, Grant settled in for a siege, ringing the city and cutting it off from supply and escape. For forty-seven days the soldiers and civilians of Vicksburg endured constant bombardment and dwindling food.

Residents dug caves into the loess bluffs to shelter from the shelling, and hunger grew severe as the siege wore on. Finally, on July 4, 1863, the city surrendered. The fall of Vicksburg, coming the day after the Union victory at Gettysburg, was a turning point of the war: it gave the Union full control of the Mississippi River, cut the Confederacy in two, and marked the beginning of the end for the Southern cause.

The park preserves the siege lines across the hills around Vicksburg, and a winding tour road carries visitors past the key positions, the trenches, the artillery, and hundreds of monuments and state memorials raised by the states whose sons fought here. Some of these memorials are grand as small temples, and together they make the battlefield a landscape of remembrance as much as a record of the fighting. Overlooks give sweeping views of the rolling terrain where the armies faced one another.

A special highlight is the USS Cairo, a Union ironclad gunboat sunk in a nearby river in 1862 and raised from the mud a century later. The recovered vessel, along with the artifacts found aboard, is displayed at the park with its own museum, offering a rare and vivid look at the naval side of the war on the western rivers. It is one of the few surviving ironclads of its kind anywhere.

The region around Vicksburg lies in the ancestral homeland of the Choctaw people, whose towns and trails covered this part of Mississippi before European settlement. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians remains a federally recognized tribe in the state today, centered to the east near Philadelphia. The city itself grew up on the bluffs as a river port, its fortunes tied to the great commerce of the Mississippi.

A visit to the battlefield pairs naturally with the city below it. Historic downtown Vicksburg, its riverfront, and its museums lie close by, and the Mississippi River, the reason for both the city and the battle, still rolls past the bluffs. Together the park, the town, and the river tell the story of a place whose control once shaped the fate of a divided nation.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.