Winston Groom provides interesting little bios about the soldiers and politicians involved in the battle to take Vicksburg. For instance, I didn't know that Jefferson Davis was married to President Zachary Taylor's daughter.

The rest of the book deals with Ulysses S. Grant's frustrating attempts to take the most important river port on the Mississippi. Grant seemed to be the only general in the west who understood that taking Vicksburg would virtually cut the Confederacy in half, denying them food and materials from Texas and the rest of the rebel states. Grant tried to take the port by bombarding it with artillery from the ironclads on the river; he tried to bypass the town by cutting a canal, twice, and he finally floated past the town and attacked from the rear with a little help from defective Confederate artillery fuses.

Much of VICKSBURG 1863 deals with the incompetence of the generals, especially the higher-ups. General Joseph E. Johnston, rebel commander in the west, is delt the most criticism. If he had sent troops to attack Grant's army from the rear he could have decimated Grant's siege force, but Johnston was worried he'd lose Tennessee, which he ultimately did anyway. General Halleck, supreme commander of the Union force, is also portrayed as too timid with a habit of sending conflicting orders. More generals than you would think simply disobeyed orders. One of the worst was a corps commander and political general on Grant's staff, John McClernand. He attacked when he wasn't supposed to and stood his ground when he was supposed to attack. He was finally cashiered when he tried to blame the other corps commanders for Grant's failed frontal attack before the siege.

There are lots of illuminating pictures in the book, including some of rebel civilians who wrote journals about the siege. I would have liked to see one of Freddie Grant, Grant's twelve-year-old son who spent most of the battle at his father's side. Of course part of Grant's bio addresses Grant's drinking problem. According to Winston Groom, it was true but only during down times when Grant was bored, never during an actual battle. When his wife was around he was a veritable teetotaler and his chief of staff, General Rawlins, was not afraid to chastise him when he did fall off the wagon.

Groom provides an epilogue of sorts which tells what happened to the principal characters after the war, something always appreciated by the Civil War addict.

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