[THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG]
Vicksburg, often called "The Gibraltar of the West," is situated on the east bank of the Mississippi River, where the river makes a great bend and the east bank of the same makes up from the river in a bluff about 200 feet.
Here at Vicksburg about 100,000 men and a powerful fleet of many gunboats and ironclads for forty days and nights fought to decide whether the Confederate states should be cut in twain; whether the great river should flow free to the gulf.
The Confederate cannon, situated on the high bluff along the river front at Vicksburg, commanded the waterway for miles in either direction, while the obstacles in the way of a land approach were almost equally insurmountable.
The object of the Federal army was to gain control of the entire course of the river that it might, in the language of President Lincoln, "Roll unvexed to the sea," and to separate the Confederate states so as to hinder them from getting supplies and men for their armies from the southwest.
The great problem of the Federals was how to get control of Vicksburg. This great question was left to General Grant to work out.
In June, 1862, the Confederates, under General Van Dorn, numbering 15,000 men, occupied and fortified Vicksburg. Van Dorn was a man of great energy. In a short time he had hundreds of men at work planting batteries, digging rifle-pits, mounting heavy guns and building bomb-proof magazines. All through the summer the work progressed and by the coming of winter the city was a veritable Gibraltar.
In the last days of June the combined fleet, under Farragut and Porter, arrived below the Confederate stronghold. They had on board about 3,000 troops and a large supply of implements required in digging trenches. The engineers conceived the idea of cutting a new channel for the Mississippi through a neck of land on the Louisiana side opposite Vicksburg and thereby change the course of the river and leave Vicksburg high and dry.