First published 2019
Donald L. Miller chronicles the pivotal Civil War campaign that transformed Ulysses S. Grant into the Union's premier general. Miller examines how Grant and Admiral David Porter coordinated their forces to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Confederacy's final Mississippi River fortress. The author details the military strategies that overcame the city's formidable position on high bluffs overlooking the river. Miller shows how the campaign's success opened crucial shipping routes between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans. The book reveals how tens of thousands of enslaved people escaped to Union lines during the fighting, with over twenty thousand joining the Union army. Miller demonstrates how former slaves seized control of plantations where they had been forced to labor, creating widespread social upheaval across Mississippi. The author argues this campaign represented the war's most decisive moment, effectively determining the Confederacy's ultimate defeat. Miller connects military operations to their broader social consequences, showing how battlefield victories reshaped Southern society.
Genres: biography, american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, military-history, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction
Setting: Vicksburg, Mississippi, New Orleans
Period: Civil War
680 pages · Kindle Edition · Simon & Schuster