Since the outbreak of hostilities between the states, Vicksburg was the focal point of military operations in the West. Due to the city’s strategic significance, discussed in last week’s column, the Hill City would become the target of enemy guns and the citizens of Vicksburg were destined to experience war in all its horror in a terrifying quest for survival.

Eager to confront the difficult task of opening the Mississippi River to Northern shipping, early in 1862 Union land and naval forces moved with a vengeance from two directions in a massive converging attack to wrestle the river from Confederate control. Driving south from Cairo, Ill., Federal forces seized Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers respectively and opened the pathway of invasion to the Deep South.

Continuing the drive southward, Union troops gained victory in the bloody battle of Shiloh in April and at Corinth, Miss., in May.

On June 6, in the battle of Memphis, Union gunboats and rams destroyed the Confederate River Defense Fleet and compelled the surrender of the Queen City. Victory at Memphis gave the North naval superiority on the inland rivers for the duration of the war and proved a decisive advantage in the drive against Vicksburg.

At the same time these operations were underway, the ships of the Union’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron, under the command of then Flag-Officer David Glasgow Farragut, entered the Mississippi River. Moving upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, the ocean-going vessels bombarded and passed Confederate Forts Jackson and St. Philip, two powerful masonry bastions below New Orleans, and in late April captured the Crescent City. New Orleans was the largest city in the Confederacy and its loss so early in the war was a blow to Southern morale. With initial success behind him, Farragut ordered his squadrons upriver.

Baton Rouge fell to the Federals on May 8, Natchez four days later and, by mid-month, the warships reached Vicksburg where demand was made for the city’s surrender. In terse words, that demand was refused when Lt. Col. James Autrey, the post commander, replied that, “Mississippians don’t know, and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy.”

Incensed by this response, the Federals opened fire upon the city’s powerful batteries positioned along the bluffs overlooking the river at Vicksburg. From mid-May, all through June, and into late July Union gunners maintained an intermittent bombardment to no avail.

Adding to Farragut’s frustration, in mid-July the formidable Confederate ironclad gunboat Arkansas, completed at the navy yard in Yazoo City, pushed downstream and into the Mississippi. The lone gunboat battled its way through the combined Union fleets and reached the shelter of the Vicksburg batteries. Plagued by rapidly falling waters and widespread sickness among his crews, Farragut realized he could not compel the surrender of Vicksburg based solely on the might of his naval guns and withdrew from Vicksburg. One Vicksburg resident who watched the fleet withdraw noted with jubilation, “What will they say (in the) North now about opening the Mississippi River: huzzah for Vicksburg.”

Although the city withstood its first test under fire, by year’s end Vicksburg would greet a new commander and face even greater threats.

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Terrence J. Winschel is a former historian for the Vicksburg National Military Park.

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Next: A man named Pemberton