The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

388 Chapter 14 The War to Save the Union

a leather goods store. In 1861, approaching age forty,

he seemed well into a life of frustration and mediocrity.

The war gave him a second chance. Back in service,

however, his reputation as a ne’er-do-well and his

unmilitary bearing worked against him, as did the heavy

casualties suffered by his troops at Shiloh. Yet the fact

that he knew how to manage a large army and win bat-

tles did not escape Lincoln. According to tradition,

when a gossip tried to poison the president against

Grant by referring to his drinking, Lincoln retorted that

if he knew what brand Grant favored, he would send a

barrel of it to some of his other generals. Grant never

used alcohol as a substitute for courage. “Old Ulysses,”

one of his soldiers said, “he don’t scare worth a damn.”

Grant’s major aim was to capture Vicksburg, a city

of tremendous strategic importance. Together with Port

Hudson, a bastion north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it

guarded a 150-mile stretch of the Mississippi. The river

between these points was inaccessible to federal gun-

boats. So long as Vicksburg remained in southern

hands, the trans-Mississippi region could send men and

supplies to the rest of the Confederacy.

Vicksburg sits on a bluff overlooking a sharp bend

in the river. When it proved unapproachable from

either the west or the north, Grant devised an auda-

cious scheme for getting at it from the east. He

descended the Mississippi from Memphis to a point a

few miles north of the city. Then, leaving part of his

force behind to create the impression that he planned

to attack from the north, he crossed the west bank and

slipped quickly southward. Recrossing the river below

Arkansas and Texas. Now was the time to strike, while
the morale of the North was at low ebb. With 75,000
soldiers he crossed the Potomac again, a larger Union
force dogging his right flank. By late June his army had
fanned out across southern Pennsylvania in a fifty-mile
arc from Chambersburg to the Susquehanna. Gray-clad
soldiers ranged fifty miles northwest of Baltimore,
within ten miles of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
As Union soldiers had been doing in Virginia,
Lee’s men destroyed property and commandeered
food, horses, and clothing wherever they could find
them. They even seized a number of blacks and sent
them south to be sold as slaves. On July 1 a
Confederate division looking for shoes in the town of
Gettysburg clashed with two brigades of Union cavalry
northwest of the town. Both sides sent out calls for
reinforcements. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet,
the two armies converged. The Confederates won
control of the town, but the Union army, now com-
manded by General George G. Meade, took a strong
position on Cemetery Ridge, a hook-shaped stretch of
high ground just to the south. Lee’s men occupied
Seminary Ridge, a parallel position.
On this field the fate of the Union was probably
decided. For two days the Confederates attacked
Cemetery Ridge, pounding it with the heaviest artillery
barrage ever seen in America and sweeping bravely up
its flanks in repeated assaults. During General George
E. Pickett’s famous charge, a handful of his men actu-
ally reached the Union lines, but reserves drove them
back. By nightfall on July 3 the Confederate army was
spent, the Union lines unbroken.
The following day was the Fourth of July. The
two weary forces rested on their arms. Had the
Union army attacked in force, the Confederates
might have been crushed, but just as McClellan had
hesitated after Antietam, Meade let opportunity pass.
On July 5 Lee retreated to safety. For the first time he
had been clearly bested on the field of battle.

The Civil War, Part I: 1861–1862at
http://www.myhistorylab.com

Lincoln Finds His General: Grant at Vicksburg

On Independence Day, a day after Gettysburg, federal
troops won another great victory far to the west. When
General Halleck was called east in July 1862, Ulysses S.
Grant resumed command of the Union troops. Grant
was one of the most controversial officers in the army.
At West Point he had compiled an indifferent record,
ranking twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine. During the
Mexican War he served well, but when he was later
assigned to a lonely post in the West, he took to drink
and was forced to resign his commission. Thereafter he
was by turns a farmer, a real estate agent, and a clerk in

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Union advance

Confederate advance

Confederate retreat

Union victory

(May 1,1863)Date of victory

Siege of Vicksburg

(May 22–July 4, 1863)

Jackson

(May 14, 1863)

Champion's Hill

(May 16, 1863)

Port Gibson

(May 1, 1863)

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Vicksburg CampaignUnable to seize Vicksburg by direct assualt,

Grant swept to the south, crossed the Mississippi near Port Gibson,

and then took Vicksburg from the east.