VICKSBURG: Poor City In The Poorest State (Mississippi) Has Amazing, Rich History

[Music] [Music] i'm on the banks of the mississippi river i love the mississippi river i guess uh i fell in love with it as a kid reading huckleberry finn and i had always wanted to explore the mississippi the cities and towns along it myself anyway i am in vicksburg mississippi you can see that bridge over there which leads into louisiana so you're looking at louisiana right now and in this direction is vicksburg one of the key cities of the civil war uh its loss for the confederacy was one of the turning points of the end of the war because of its proximity to the mississippi river vicksburg was a key supply point so ulysses s grant laid siege to the city because it was very difficult to take the way it was built on a ridge and i think it's about five or six weeks of the siege and john c pemberton the confederate general surrendered and that happened the day after the battle of gettysburg so the fall of vicksburg and the fall of gettysburg basically signaled the end of the civil war anyway i'm going to take a look at the city some of the historical places i'm really looking forward to it okay so i'm driving into downtown vicksburg now a little bit more to it than i thought there would be definitely old but it looks really interesting i'm heading towards an offshoot of the mississippi called the yazoo should be right over this hill here yeah you can see it right there you can see that vicksburg is laid out on hills and that is the reason it was such a hard city for the union army to attack let's give you some shots of either direction of vicksburg hmm wow you can see the road though like a lot of these cities here in the south especially in the deep south infrastructure is just something that's not thought of i guess because these roads are awful i mean you saw it in montgomery and birmingham and especially jackson mississippi and here as well they just don't spend money on roads here in this uh part of the country [Music] yeah you can really see the poverty somebody lives there i think i mean wow [Music] all right i'm entering the vicksburg national military park it says uh entering union lines see what we got here in 1863 ulysses s grant laid siege to vicksburg which is that way it was a critical city for the confederacy uh it being on the mississippi it was one of the main supply lines or it was a hub for the supply lines and it was very tough to defeat so ulysses grant instead of attacking the city surrounded it and uh here's one of the main siege lines you can see all the cannons laid out here these are some of the original cannons from the battle according to this this is one of the few battlegrounds still intact today and the confederacy was dug in on the other side there you can imagine these guys fighting it out here can't you it's credible this is the illinois state memorial built in 1906. you can't miss it here on the grounds i'm gonna go inside it in a second but from the stairs here you can see that battlefield it's one of the principal battlefields during the civil war some more cannons over there looking at that you can just picture these soldiers from the middle 1800s battling it out fighting to the death so calm and serene now it's incredible anyway i'm going to go up to this building here and take a look at the inside wow can you hear me echo [Music] it's incredible there's the illinois state seal [Music] a place of reverence and when you talk the echo just adds to that probably on purpose one more look up there see the sun shining in an incredible building another view of the battlefield now this is the confederate line so on this side the confederate soldiers were entrenched along this tablet and then on this side is where the union soldiers had laid sieged and were attacking periodically had to spit that out took me a minute so this would be a difficult area to attack because soldiers could be really entrenched down there i wouldn't want to attack here i can see why the union laid the siege instead probably prevented a lot of loss of life now i'm still on the confederate line and from here you can see vicksburg nice view up here though all right this is the uss cairo it was what they called an iron-clad ship and i walk in here a little bit closer this particular ship was tasked with clearing the mississippi leading up to vicksburg and it was sunk not a whole lot left got the cannons in place [Music] when the ship was sunk everybody escaped no one died and in time the ship was raised from the river and is now on display here in vicksburg here's a description of the ship it had a steam driven engine armor plating 13 cannon and a top speed of 9 miles an hour that must have looked pretty scary in the 1860s now as i said earlier this was steam driven these huge see what they're called steam drum this is a steam drum there's five of them one two three four five they used coal to create steam the steam then pushed this engine uh and that oscillating arm right there and it was basically a paddle boat yeah so the steam was created push through the uh oscillating arm and turn the paddles [Music] as you can see them down there [Music] in 1862 when this was built this was state of the art technology [Music] cairo's 15 foot wide paddle wheel is made up of four 22-foot diameter spiders the web like iron arms and circles that form the spokes so there's a little pitcher and then the actual ship itself from the back you can see the rudders that one and that one you can tell the wood is really old get a tighter shot and then there's the paddle wheels this is the unfortunate result of war the death of soldiers and the cemetery here is the final resting place for 17 000 union soldiers all right we are at the old courthouse museum here in vicksburg supposed to be uh a great museum and i had read that in the men's restroom which is outside the building there is a sink that mississippi soldiers stole from saddam hussein's palace so i came in here and sure enough here it is [Laughter] that's awesome here we go this sink removed from the palace of saddam hussein donated by a unit of mississippi soldiers so there you go from the middle east a sink from saddam hussein's palace and it's leaking water so there's that anyway we are going to head into this museum it's supposed to be pretty fantastic there's the wife waiting on me so hopefully it is that old courthouse warren county registered national historic landmark and another plaque underneath it old warren county courthouse built in 1858 by the weldon brothers who use skilled slave labor so there you go well they did a good job it's pretty awesome looking building in it look at these pillars [Music] it's pretty awesome anyway let's go inside see what they got going on in here if you can get the door open unintended children giving a free kitten well that'll uh keep parents yeah that'll keep the people the parents in line won't it so this is a painting of john c pemberton the general of the confederate army on his way to surrender to grant and that is this building behind him this old courthouse confederate seal check this out army regulations let's zoom in on that army of the confederate states 1861. i wonder where they found this it's hard to believe one of those are still in existence this is a picture of a confederate second lieutenant and his body servant taken at petersburg virginia 1864. so this is a bit of a stretch black confederate patriotism took many forms slaves devoted to their masters free blacks who donated money and labor blacks who joined the confederate army and slaves who loyally supervised plantations of absentee owners you buying any of that not really no no i don't know if that's accurate it doesn't seem i think that's what some people wanted to tell themselves most likely that is what it is here is a model of the uss cairo which i was at earlier this is a print from 1862 showing the bombardment of vicksburg this is a picture of grant's supporters outside this building in 1864 after pemberton surrendered the confederate battle flag from 1862. mississippi in 1902 by president roosevelt resulted in the creation of america's favorite toy the teddy bear and this is the bear that was given to him oh it's named after teddy roosevelt yeah that's a picture of hitler i wonder how they got ahold of that pictures like that have to be hard to come by yeah i don't think so yeah this is a bathtub for women from the mid-1800s she would sit right there and put her feet in there and hot water would be poured over her from this picture well this is a courthouse and up here on the second floor the actual court has been kept the way it was the same as it was in the mid 1800s that's pretty cool so this is where the judge sat the judge presided from this iron diaz built in 1859 so i'm climbing up here from where the judge sat looking out over the courtroom honoring president mrs jefferson davis of course jeff davis was the president of the confederate states of america every colored man he ever owned loved him said william sanford former davis slave special relationship between jefferson davis and his slaves he was not only their master but their friend his slaves enjoyed good housing clothing food and were given time to earn money no one was ever sold families kept together [Music] i wonder if that's the way they really remember it well that was interesting i liked it yeah you liked it i liked it a lot yeah it was a really interesting museum packed with a ton of stuff i didn't even begin to show you everything just tried to keep it to the most interesting things but yeah this building has seen a lot of history anyway we're gonna head back to the hotel and get ready for our next destination okay our time in uh vicksburg mississippi is done and uh it's time to review the hotel we stayed at a uh what is this a holiday inn express holiday inn express sometimes they're good sometimes they're not no consistency but how was this one this one's pretty good though yeah i mean the room was a little bit smaller than you thought it was going to be but to me it was fine um at least everything was clean uh you know another a nice shower because that's something we haven't had consistently especially over the last like month so nice shower nice water pressure i don't feel like i'm freezing even though i'm in the shower which sucks and um the gym was sufficient except for the weird guy bugging me it was the gym was fine yeah and um you said the breakfast was really good yeah you didn't have breakfast i did i know i said you said yeah and you brought me a cinnamon roll brought her cinnamon roll yeah the hotel is fairly new clean modern uh you know good hot water pressure good wi-fi you know it's checking off all the boxes the breakfast surprisingly was good i was thinking it wouldn't be but um you know it did have those microwave omelets which are so so but it had fresh cooked bacon fresh cooked sausage biscuits and gravy and this cool pancake machine that i've never seen before you're so impressed by that you're looking at the video look at it yeah well i did a shot a video of it they're watching it now yeah you just push a button and one minute later hot pancakes come out and they tasted good i mean it's one of the greatest machines i've ever seen so i had fresh pancakes as well really good orange juice and their signature um cinnamon rolls which are the best they're yummy of any hotel chain they're really good we're gonna have to steal a few yeah we're gonna just want to steal some more but anyway so uh you can't argue with it i mean the pool was closed for the season we can't really hold them hold that against them but otherwise it's a decent hotel in a decent part of town so which there isn't a lot of here anyway so uh what's your rating 4.3 if she's going 4-3 i'm gonna go 4-5 it was it was actually a decent hotel so anyway that's it uh we're going to dallas for a couple days check on the kids and then we will be heading out west we're going to go to roswell new mexico first lots of aliens yep so be looking for that video see you there you

Channel: Joe & Nic's Road Trip

Views: 455,182

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Id: URP4vmVrXlI

Length: 23min 48sec (1428 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 30 2022