DK - The American Civil War

V

icksburg remains the classic

example of a Civil War siege. On

May 25, 1863, General Ulysses S.

Grant, looking up the bluff at fortified

Vicksburg, released his Special Order

140: “Corps Commanders will

immediately commence the work

of reducing the enemy by regular

approaches.” Every officer knew what

“regular approaches” entailed: It

meant digging their way up the

hill. Its aim was a kind of slow,

subterranean strangulation, the

attacker taking every advantage of

terrain to move his forces, with small

loss of life, close enough to smash a

defender’s fortifications with artillery.

Improvised attack

When Grant attacked Vicksburg, his

army had just fought its way through

the Mississippi swamps. He had no siege

equipment, no engineering troops, and

no siege train. As his soldiers dug their

way up the bluff, they improvised

building materials and made serviceable

mortars from wooden cylinders wrapped

in iron bands. A 12-mile (19-km) coil of

Wooden quadrant

This simple quadrant was used by gunners

to check the elevation of a cannon

in order to give the shell

the correct angle of

trajectory to hit

its target.

Siege Artillery and Siege Warfare

Throughout history, armies have laid siege to cities and citadels. The Civil War sieges combined established

techniques of siegecraft, including the choking off of supply routes and the undermining of fortifications,

with the deployment of more modern and powerful heavy artillery.

GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864

siege works tightened

around Vicksburg. A second

line of works was built around the

first but facing outward to repel any

Confederate attempt to lift the siege.

At Vicksburg, Grant also used mining

techniques. He laid several kinds of

mine, including one resembling a

smaller version of the densely packed

mine that triggered the Battle of the

Crater at Petersburg. Finally, Grant

won the artillery duel with only his

field artillery and some heavy ordnance

loaned to him by Union gunboats.

Heavy artillery old and new

Siege artillery was often dwarfed by

coastal artillery: large-caliber Columbiads

and similar monsters fired from fixed

platforms. By the

time of the Civil

War, however,

these great

smoothbores and

their enclosing forts were becoming

obsolete, as new artillery with rifled—

or grooved—barrels came into use.

These weapons were faster to fire,

more accurate, and had a greater range.

The thick masonry walls of Fort Pulaski

outside Savannah were reduced to

rubble in two days in April 1862 by the

new rifled ordnance of the Union fleet.

Earth forts fared better, however, as

they absorbed the blow and shock of an

exploding shell. Battery Wagner outside

Charleston, made of packed dirt, sand,

and palmetto logs, withstood weeks of

bombardment before the Confederates

abandoned it and its 14 coast guns. These

included a 10-in (250-mm) Columbiad

that fired a 128-lb (58-kg) shell.

BEFORE

After the War of 1812, the United States
began constructing a series of masonry
forts to protect its harbors and coastal
cities from invasion.

AMERICAN COASTAL ARTILLERY
Because they constituted the nation’s first line
of defense, the heavy guns in the forts had
received most of government spending on
ordnance (weapons and ammunition), much
more than had the field artillery ❮❮ 128–29.
Most of the guns were 8- and 10-in (200- and
250-mm) smoothbore Columbiads, muzzle-
loading cannons invented in 1811.

CONFEDERATE COASTAL ARTILLERY
By 1861, more than 60 forts and batteries
ringed the U.S. coast. Some were so lightly
manned, however, that the Confederate
states were able to seize them and their
guns intact, thus gaining a wide range of
heavy artillery at the start of the war.
Augmented by imports from Britain and
guns made by the few cannon foundries in
the South, this artillery would defend not
only the forts of the Confederacy, but also
such besieged cities as Vicksburg
❮❮ 190–95 and Petersburg ❮❮ 274–75.

Many of these huge guns eventually

blew up, because of flaws in casting

technology. On average the South’s

ordnance and munitions proved the

more unstable, but Union guns often

exploded, too. During the 1863–64

siege of Charleston, the “Swamp

Angel,” a 24,000-lb (10,890 kg), 8-in

(200-mm) Parrott gun, had the dubious

distinction of shooting the first

incendiary shells into the city; but it

blew up after only 36 rounds.

Civil War sieges

In the 1862 Peninsula Campaign,

General George B. McClellan dragged a

massive siege train through the Virginia

swamps. No fewer than 101 guns—

with 20-, 30-, and even 100-pounder

(9-, 14-, and 45-kg)

Parrott guns and

huge mortars—

were erected on

platforms before

Yorktown, itself “protected” by a few

fake cannons, or “Quaker guns,” named

for the pacifist Quakers.

In the Civil War, the term “siege” was

often applied to any grinding struggle

involving fortified positions—Atlanta

and Petersburg among them. These

battles borrowed many elements of

traditional sieges, including mining,

countermining, labyrinths of enclosed

entrenchments, and the often

commanding use of heavy artillery.

Sherman had been at Vicksburg, but

he once declared, “I’m too impatient for

a siege.” In 1864, when he attacked

Atlanta, the city was ringed with

fortifications, but most of the fighting

took the form of battles of maneuver

“The sky was lit up by the broad

flame of mortars and by the

twinkling and shooting stars ...”

A. S. TWITCHELL, 7 MAINE LIGHT BATTERY, AT PETERSBURG, MARCH 29, 1865

Deceptive defenses

Short of real guns, the Confederacy turned to “Quaker

guns,” logs set in embrasures and painted to look like

cannon barrels, to intimidate the enemy. Here a

“gunner” pretends to fire the weapon.

Rule

Quadrant,

marked in

degrees

Plumb bob

Estimated number

of mortar shells fired

during the ten-month siege of Petersburg.

80,000