* Confederate President Jefferson Davis referred to it as the nail that held the Confederacy together, as Vicksburg and the land around it provided the avenue through which vital men and supplies, especially horses, were brought from Texas and Arkansas for the use of Lee’s armies in Virginia. Lincoln, using another metaphor, called Vicksburg the key to the war. “We cannot win the war,” Lincoln is quoted as having said, “until we have that key in our pocket.” Lewis, pp. 224–48.