The Siege of Vicksburg is well known among the students of the American Civil War. The siege of this Confederate city by the Union forces became necessary due to two failed assaults by Ulysses S. Grant’s three corps between May 19th and 22nd, 1863. Of the three corps, the XV Corps constituted the principal attacking force. The present monograph based on a plethora of archival sources by the American Civil War expert Earl J. Hess focuses on the four days battle in which Grant’s XV Corps’ commander Maj.-Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s assaults were defeated by the Confederate commander Lieutenant-General John C. Pemberton’s numerically inferior forces. Hess focuses on command, training, tactics and experiences of the Union and to a lesser extent the Confederate forces.

After defeating Pemberton’s Army of Mississippi at Champion Hill on May 16th and then again at Black River the next day, both the soldiers and commanders of Grant’s Army of the Tennessee were in high spirit. With their morale soaring and confidence at peak, Grant and his commanders assumed that a final push would result in Vicksburg the “Gibraltar of the Confederacy” falling into their lap like a ripe fruit. Hess analyzes in detail the limited attack by Grant on May 19th and then a more elaborate assault on May 22nd. Both the assaults failed. Was the failure of the Union assault inevitable? If not, what are the reasons for the Confederacy’s defensive victory?

Hess pushes the broader argument that not superior technology, but organizational and geographical factors shaped the course of these two battles. The traditional argument is that the Confederate troops armed with rifled muskets shielded behind earthworks were bound to devastate the Union assault. In other words, technology had given a distinct advantage to the defense over offense (reference Clausewitz). Hess argues, as in his other publications, that rifling was not a decisive factor in the victory of the Confederacy’s defending troops against the attacking Union soldiers during the two battles for Vicksburg. The rifled musket’s superiority lay in its longer range. But the soldiers of the American Civil War rarely used the rifled muskets for longer range firing. They rightly understood that short range fire was more effective in rugged terrain. Hence, they continued to use their rifled musket in the traditional manner.

Rather, Grant’s corps commanders during the May 22nd assault did not coordinate their actions. They failed to attack simultaneously all along Pemberton’s defensive line. Even when Grant ordered Sherman to focus on one particular point in the Confederate defensive line, the various corps, division, and brigade commanders failed to act in unison. In fact, the different corps attacked one after another in a disjointed manner. For this command fiasco, though Hess does not say so, Sherman and Grant should also bear some responsibility. At the tactical level, the rugged terrain broke up the line and column assaults of the Union troops. Also, terrain somewhat obstructed the divisional commanders’ command and control over their regiments.

Then, Pemberton performed well in the two defensive battles of May 19th and 22nd. His success raised the sagging morale of the Confederate troops who had been defeated earlier in two battles by Grant’s soldiers. Lastly, the Confederate’s Chief Engineer Major Samuel H. Lockett’s defensive earthworks proved handy in stopping the advancing Union soldiers.

Though Hess does not say it, one gets the impression that the behavior of the Union soldiers was somewhat similar to the behavior of the Allied soldiers at Normandy in the summer of 1944. The soldiers of the democracies, who were civilians in uniform for a temporary period, did not display the do or die attitudes of the ideologically indoctrinated troops of the totalitarian states. This does not mean that the soldiers of the Union and the Allied armies were not brave. The Union soldiers before Vicksburg, however, did not display suicidal motivation to conduct attacks relentlessly and fight and die to the last man, last bullet. In fact, during the May 22nd attack, the Union troops ran directly at the Confederate earthworks. But, when bullets started flying and Union soldiers’ bodies started dropping, the latter stopped and took cover to survive and fight another day. Grant, displaying statesmanlike attitude, understood this. So, instead of carrying on further fruitless assaults which would result in useless waste of the lives of his soldiers, Grant prepared for the siege. Vicksburg finally surrendering to him on July 4,1863.

Overall, this thoroughly researched book is one of the best representatives of ‘traditional’ military history written in a linear style. The evolution of combat at the micro level and without losing the macro-picture is praiseworthy. Hess deserves credit for deft handling of voluminous details for portraying the contours of the two battles. Storming Vicksburg must definitely be rated as one of the best ‘battle’ books of the American Civil War.

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Our Reviewer: Dr. Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor, Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He is the author of numerous works in military history, such as Battle for Malaya: The Indian Army in Defeat, 1941–1942, The Army in British India: From Colonial Warfare to Total War 1857 - 1947, The Indian Army in the Two World Wars, Sepoys against the Rising Sun: The Indian Army in Far East and South-East Asia, 1941–45, and many more. He previously reviewed Civil War Infantry Tactics, The Clausewitz Myth, General George S. Patton and the Art of Leadership, The Russian-Ukrainian War, 2023, AI, Automation, and War, Moshe Dayan: The Making of a Strategist, and Airpower and the Normandy Campaign. 

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Note: Storming Vicksburg is also available in hard cover, audio, & e-editions.

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