Confederate Gibraltar: The Vicksburg Campaign from the Fall of New Orleans through the Battles in the Bayou

Disasters threatened Vicksburg on both ends of the Mississippi River early in the war. South of the mighty bastion, New Orleans—one of the Confederacy’s most important cities—fell in April 1862. Memphis to the north fell two months later. Vicksburg, Mississippi, stood defiantly between the captured cities atop 300-foot bluffs that dominated the wide mighty river. So long as “the Hill City” remained in Rebel hands, the Confederacy controlled river traffic and maintained a vital connection be...