Grant: Massive Siege of Vicksburg Leads to Union Victory | History

keep these men digging captain let's be done with this by nightfall yes sir ulysses s grant has now gone down the Mississippi River he's in the midst of the Vicksburg campaign in 17 days grants army marched 200 miles and won five battles and now we are talking about a siege when grant first settles in to siege operations he digs a line opposite the Confederate ones so you can cut off the key routes of supply to the city and then in case a Confederate force came from his rear he then dug another series of entrenchments facing the other way and now he's gonna ring Vicksburg with artillery in fact he's even gonna bring naval artillery off naval ships to bombard Vicksburg we want to put them under the maximum pressure so that they recognized this sacrifice is no longer worth it [Music] the primary strategy of any siege is isolating the people you are besieging in something causing them to use up both their military resources but especially their food to force them to capitulate so the consequence of this is Grant's army will grow to over seventy thousand troops over time and it's a ratcheting up of military pressure now the Confederate government in Richmond is rather concerned about the situation at Vicksburg and there is emerged a group that believes that less focus needs to be placed on the East's where things are going well and more focus needs to be put on the West four things are not going well robert e lee's response is even if i send troops to Vicksburg by the time they got there it might be over and Lee decides to go north and try to seek a decisive engagement with the Federals north of Pennsylvania at the same time grant keeps the pressure up at Vicksburg to end the siege by the end of June the Confederate Army of Vicksburg was subsisting on a handful of peas and rice issued once a day per man even their water would be rationed to one cup per man per day so now as the temperature of the summer continues to get hotter and hotter grant will dam up all the creeks that are going in there Confederates are being shelled by Union gunboats as well as Union batteries but also throughout the siege do you have a civilian population trapped in the city estimated about 2,000 and the citizens lived underground in man-made caves to escape the constant bombardment of Union cannon and heavy mortar and about the only time they came out of these caves is when the Union artillery man ate their morning noon and evening meals grant knows full well the suffering of the civilians in Vicksburg he doesn't relish any of it but I think he does believe without breaking the will of the southern people that this war is not gonna come to an end these civilians at Vicksburg who weeks earlier were able to get all the food they needed were clearly starving and they started eating anything that moved rats included and by early July it was clear that the Confederates were near the end of their rope on July 3rd two persons was seen coming towards our lines bearing a white flag it was a glorious sight two soldiers on the line [Music] and on the hot afternoon of July 3rd at the very same time pickets legions were storming over the Stonewall at Gettysburg the Confederate commander John Pemberton when asked grant on what terms you would receive the surrender of the city [Music] you know Pemberton your terms general surprise me I propose no proposals terms won't change unconditional surrender sir listen we need alpha terms no be practical what are we gonna do with 30,000 prisoners benefit terms I think general I'm prepared to accept the parole but only if my men walk away with all of their personal property my personal property do you mean to include slice sidearms horses no slaves no slaves leave with you you have until 10 o'clock tonight and we attack the city [Music] [Music] pretty good [Music] but at this point grants reputation is unconditional surrender grant and yet here he pearls the men that are there and it shows what flexibility of mind he had I think he makes the calculus of what if we send these thirty thousand scarecrows back to their towns what are they going to tell him we just got whipped [Music] general trend contain your sidearms general [Music] and the enemy had been suffering particularly towards the last I saw our men taking bread from their haversacks and giving it to the enemy they had so recently been engaged and starving out [Music] brant doesn't have a hatred of southern people he sees them as Americans that have gone astray he doesn't agree with their cause but he cares for the people themselves that really colors the way he deals with Confederates throughout the Civil War Vicksburg surrenders and the Mississippi is open and as Lincoln says the father of waters flows again unvexed to the sea the great thing is that the news comes to him the same weekend as the news of the victory at Gettysburg my dear general when you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg and I never had any faith except in general hope that the expedition could succeed I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong yours very truly a Lincoln granted Lincoln first meet his correspondence and their correspondence is quite wonderful they are both men of the West and I think they share a certain philosophy and perhaps a certain attitude and I think it really set the terms for their future relationship this victory was a culmination of a very long campaign full of trial and error full of grant figuring out how do I captured what seemed unimpressed [Music] the Vicksburg campaign has been studied by military professionals ever since July of 1863 in fact in the Army's war fighting main it highlights the Vicksburg campaign as the most brilliant campaign ever waged on American soil and so whereas the Civil War is often referred to as the last of the old Wars first to the modern wars grant can be termed the first modern American warrior [Music] you

Channel: HISTORY

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Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, civil war, the civil war, the civil war in color, full episodes, original series, america, united states, tea party, american revolution, Grant s1 clips, Grant s01, Grant s1, Grant season 1 clips, Grant season 1, miniseries event, Lincoln's General, history washington, washington history channel, descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, Grant season 1 history, siege of Vicksburg

Id: qnq-df4MQzI

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020