It appears that Paul Krugman – Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times – is a Civil War buff and an admirer of Ulysses S. Grant. Readers of this blog will know that I am, too. The occasion for Krugman’s post is the 150th anniversary of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign, which began in late 1862 and would culminate, on July 4, 1863, with the surrender of the garrison of the confederate citadel on the Mississippi River.
The campaign was hugely important for Grant. After signal early victories at Forts Henry and Donelson (February 1862), his army had been surprised by confederates at Shiloh (April 1862), leading to huge public criticism of Grant’s generalship. Union armies under his overall command had prevailed at Corinth (September 1862) and Iuka (October 1862), but the victories had yielded meager strategic advantage.
The initial stages of Grant’s efforts to take Vicksburg were also disappointing. A major effort in December 1862 had featured a two part attack: Grant would take an army overland from Holly Springs, Mississippi; his subordinate, Sherman, would launch a simultaneous amphibious assault on Chickasaw Bayou, just north of Vicksburg. Grant was forced to retreat when his supply line was cut by confederate cavalry; Sherman was repulsed. But Grant – the most tenacious of generals – refused to give up. He moved most of his army south of Vicksburg along the western bank of the Mississippi, which he would cross in late April-early May of 1863. A lightning strike against Jackson, Miss., sent confederates reeling. Then Grant turned backed toward Vicksburg, dealing a sharp defeat to the enemy at Champion Hill before surrounding the city on May 18, 1863. Vicksburg’s surrender, seven weeks later, sealed Grant’s status as the Union’s most successful commander.
The Vicksburg campaign was also, of course, a major victory for the Union. Combined with the capture of Fort Hudson on July 9, the campaign opened the length of the Mississippi River to Northern navigation; it cut off Southern forces west of the river (the so-called “Trans- Mississippi” theater); it released large numbers of veteran troops who would relieve beleaguered Northern forces in Chattanooga, Tenn., at the end of the year, and then push into the southern heartland, under Sherman, in the spring of 1864; and, not least, it made Grant’s selection as commander of all Union armies well-nigh inevitable. The last would prove critical to ultimate Union success: Grant was absolutely committed to victory and willing to exploit — ruthlessly, if need be — the North’s nearly bottomless reserves of men and materiel to achieve it.
Grant the general remains a controversial figure. He could be sloppy (as at Shiloh) and stubborn (as at Cold Harbor) — to fatal effect for the troops under his command. An unassuming man, he can come across as dull, particularly in comparison to more striking characters like the courtly Lee and the corrosive Sherman. There was certainly nothing romantic about him or his attitude toward war. Unable to defeat Lee’s army on the battlefield in 1864, he determined to starve and bleed it to death instead. It was slow, it was costly, it was ugly, and it worked.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.