When Sherman joined Grant in the first week of May, he realized that he would be participating in a war totally different from that up at Milliken’s Bend.

He also found Grant keenly aware that his army of thirty-three thousand was now in danger. For one thing, he was now deep in enemy territory. Not that the people of Memphis and northwest Tennessee had been friendly—far from it. But in that area the population had been subdued; this was territory still dominated by the Confederacy. More threatening than the populace, however, was the danger from Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston, who was known to have assembled about twenty-four thousand men in Alabama and eastern Mississippi and was planning to join the six thousand men in Jackson, Mississippi. If Johnston could join Major General John C. Pemberton’s garrison of thirty thousand men in Vicksburg, Grant would be facing a very powerful force.

Grant had already determined that the way to contend with these various Confederate commands was to defeat them in detail—that is, one at a time. He therefore decided to postpone assaulting Vicksburg and to move against Jackson in hopes of capturing the Confederate force there. Jackson held forth other lures. Besides its political importance as the capital of Mississippi, it was a major railhead. Grant had no intention of occupying the town permanently, but he intended to make it useless to Johnston in a hurry.

Grant’s main vulnerability in this daring enterprise was that of supply. The distance between Port Gibson and Jackson was seventy-two miles, more than he could possibly protect, and he was unsure where Johnston or the roving Confederate cavalry were located. Even before Sherman’s arrival, therefore, Grant had decided to cut his army off from his supply lines. Whatever wagons he could gather were to stay under the protection of the army and carry nothing but ammunition. The men and horses would be required to live off the land, which in that area was rough but fertile. By May he had assembled a large number of wagons of various types loaded with ordnance—“a motley assortment,” he called it.¹

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Fortunately for Grant, that part of the Confederacy was currently in a state of panic over a Union cavalry force of seventeen hundred volunteers that was raiding the area under the command of Colonel Benjamin Grierson, a former music teacher who reportedly hated horses. Johnston himself joined in the general alarm. So concerned was he with the famed Grierson’s raiders that he removed the six thousand men in the city and sent them to join his main force.

Grierson’s troopers had actually reached their destination at Baton Rouge by the time Grant was ready to leave Port Gibson. They had begun their raids at LaGrange, in southern Tennessee, on April 17, the day after Porter and Grant had run the Confederate defenses on the Mississippi, and they had reached their destination on May 2, more than six hundred miles. Along the way, Grierson’s men had torn up railroad tracks, destroyed locomotives, burned storehouses and bridges, and freed slaves. Their greatest contribution to the Union cause, however, was not the matériel destroyed, but the confusion they caused throughout that part of the South. At Vicksburg, Confederate general John Pemberton removed a whole division from his main garrison to secure the Vicksburg–Jackson railroad while Grant had been crossing the Mississippi.²

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Communications in the Vicksburg–Jackson area were difficult. So rough was the ground that each of Grant’s corps had to operate independently. Besides the additional risk, this dispersion meant that each corps would have little by way of intelligence exchange regarding enemy movements. The route of each corps, therefore, had to be laid out in advance. Grant decided to send McPherson along the direct line between the two cities, forty-five miles apart, along which ran a railroad, a highway, and a telegraph line. Along that route, from west to east, starting at Vicksburg, were Champion’s Hill, Bolton’s Depot, and Clinton, all small places.

The bulk of Grant’s army, however, was still located at Port Gibson, to the south. The route from there to Jackson ran through Raymond, which McPherson’s corps had taken on the twelfth of May. These two nearly parallel lines were crossed by the Big Black River, an unfordable stream that flowed from the northeast to the southwest and emptied into the Mississippi some miles below. Since all of Grant’s forces were below the Big Black, it provided some protection for his left flank as he moved eastward to Jackson. It would, however, constitute an obstacle to cross when he returned from Jackson to Vicksburg, as he planned to do later.

Grant’s attack toward Jackson, as mentioned, was to be made by two corps: McPherson on the left along the Vicksburg–Clinton–Jackson road, and Sherman on the right, starting from Raymond, where Sherman had camped, and which was only fifteen miles from Jackson. Grant and his small staff accompanied Sherman. McClernand’s XIII Corps would follow.

The operation was practically unresisted. Grant and Sherman rode into Jackson under a driving rain at about noon on May 14. Many of the inhabitants were totally surprised. Grant later reported that the two generals visited a plant where women, busy weaving blankets, did not bother to look up from their work. Grant soon sent the workers home with what cloth they could carry, and after they were gone he ordered the plant burned to the ground.

While their troops destroyed everything of military value in Jackson, Grant, Sherman, and McPherson gathered at the state courthouse to discuss what to do next. The news they received made the decision simple: Since Johnston was reported to be heading in their direction, Grant needed to get to Vicksburg before Johnston could reach it and combine with Pemberton. But the job of destruction in Jackson had to be completed, so Grant left with McPherson’s corps along the direct road to Vicksburg on the morning of May 15, leaving Sherman to carry out the ruin of the city and then to follow.

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Johnston, in the meantime, had established communications with Pemberton at Vicksburg and had informed him of Grant’s whereabouts. To these conventional thinkers, the line from Port Gibson to Jackson meant one thing: a vulnerable supply line. Pemberton therefore made a sally out of Vicksburg, crossed the Big Black, and attacked what he expected to be a supply line, but it turned out not to be there. In the meantime, Grant was already on his way back from Jackson to Vicksburg.

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An obstacle in Grant’s path was Champion’s Hill, where a battle was fought on May 16. It did not involve Sherman, but Grant delivered a near-rout of Pemberton’s field army. At first Pemberton had the advantage, since Grant had on the scene only McClernand’s corps plus another brigade. For a while it looked as if Grant might be defeated, especially since McClernand was so excruciatingly slow in coming up. As it was, Grant pulled through by sheer doggedness. He refused to give in and made full use of his small reserve. Eventually, Pemberton lost his nerve and retreated across the Big Black. It was not a large battle, but the Confederate losses were disproportionately heavy. By that time Sherman, but not his corps, had joined Grant, and the two sat together on a log during the evening of May 17, watching the construction of the three bridges by which Grant’s army would cross the Big Black. By May 20, Grant’s whole army was facing Vicksburg north of the Big Black. Sherman’s corps was on the right, McPherson’s in the center, and McClernand’s some distance to the left.

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At this time Grant made an error based on inaccurate information or excessive aggressiveness. On May 20 he ordered Sherman and McPherson to attack the Confederate parapets some seven miles east of Vicksburg. Expecting Confederate morale to be low, he believed that the attack would go easily. It did not; resistance was strong and determined, and both corps fell back with heavy losses. Two days later he ordered a second attack, hoping to take Vicksburg before Johnston could attack him from his rear. Again the attack failed.

Grant and Sherman witnessed this second failure together. At that time Grant received a handwritten note from McClernand, whose XIII Corps was holding the left flank. The wording was flowery. As Sherman recalled the note, McClernand claimed “his troops had captured the rebel parapet in his front,” and “the flag of the Union waved over the stronghold of Vicksburg,”³ and he requested reinforcement, as well as urging stronger action by McPherson and Sherman.

Grant read the note carefully. Based on McClernand’s actions at Champion’s Hill and other places, he had no faith in his XIII Corps commander. “I don’t believe it,” he said angrily. Sherman, who was with him, calmed him down. Sherman detested McClernand more than did Grant—“dirty dog,” he once called him. But here was an official request for troops from a senior commander; Grant had a moral obligation to respect the request.

Grant gave in—partly. He went to a position where he believed he could see McClernand’s front as well as McClernand could, and there he saw nothing to substantiate the claim. Nevertheless Grant agreed with Sherman that he had to send at least a token force, so he sent Brigadier General Isaac Quinby’s division of the XVII Corps. To no avail. Grant soon realized that his instinctive assessment of McClernand’s message had been spot on. McClernand’s troops were nowhere near the point he claimed he had taken, and he himself was nowhere near the area. Always reluctant to make enemies with those in his own command, and acutely aware of McClernand’s powerful political connections (McClernand was a pro-Union Democrat), Grant had always hesitated to reprimand him. But Grant had reached a boiling point. Not only had Grant sacrificed troops in a futile attempt to take fortifications around Vicksburg on McClernand’s word, but McClernand proceeded to issue (and publish) a laudatory note to the men of his corps—strictly against the orders of his superiors. So on June 18, he formally removed McClernand from command, and put Major General Edward O. C. Ord in control of the XIII Corps.⁴

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Grant now realized that Vicksburg’s fortifications could not be taken by storm. He therefore began preparing a siege, using entrenchments similar to those of Pemberton—and sometimes as close as fifty yards away—and settled down. He might not be able to carry the Confederate works, but he could seal the city off. Without supplies Vicksburg could not hold off forever. His situation, however, still entailed some risk. Pemberton had a substantial force in the city and Johnston was known to be somewhere to the east of the Big Black River. But Union reinforcements were coming in from a worried Halleck in Washington, and by the fourteenth of June Grant’s army had grown to the respectable strength of seventy-one thousand.⁵

The threat from Johnston was still there, however, and by June 22, Grant decided that he had enough troops on hand that he could afford to split his force again; he could send nearly half his army to a position facing eastward to protect his rear. As was customary, he selected Sherman for the task. Sherman was to hold a line all the way between Haynes Bluff on the north and the Big Black, facing eastward. At the same time Grant began tunneling operations beneath the Confederate lines and blew at least one large crater.

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By early July, the Confederate situation in Vicksburg had become desperate, and Pemberton began making overtures for terms of surrender. He met no more luck in negotiating with the determined Grant than had Simon Buckner at Fort Donelson: “unconditional surrender.” Pemberton’s offer of a parley reached Grant’s headquarters during the evening of July 3, 1863, the same day as Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Though Pemberton was anxious to avoid surrendering on the symbolic day of July 4, Grant refused to accommodate him. He ignored requests to appoint a commission until the witching hour of midnight had passed. Vicksburg was formally surrendered at ten a.m., July 4. The fighting over, the rebel and Yankee soldiers mingled together in friendship as if they had been fighting on the same side.

On hearing the news, Sherman began preparations for an attack on Johnston.

The end of the Vicksburg campaign found Grant’s command arrangement similar to that with which it had begun: in both instances with Sherman commanding nearly half of Grant’s army in a semi-independent status. The result was a team similar to others in military history: Lee and Jackson, Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The team served Lincoln and the Union well. With the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederacy was split. Future sacrifices in blood and money lay ahead, but Union victory in the Civil War was now a virtual certainty.