09 Vicksburg National Military Park

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On the 2nd day of a 4 day trip to see the Natchez Trace I spent time at the Vicksburg National Military Park. Because there were so many pictures of the park I decided to have a separate blog for them.

I thought that it might take me an hour or hour and half to go through the park. I am pretty fast at such things. I read all the stuff, but don't usually dwell at any one spot for long. I had over slept on this morning and I wanted to be at Goldies Trail BBQ place I was going to eat at when they opened at 11AM. So when I got to the park at 9AM I wasn't too concerned, I still had a couple hours.

Once I got to the Visitors Center I stamped my national Parks Passport books. I had one passport book for years, way back when Scout (my son) was in high school and we served on staff at the Boy Scout National Jamboree. We had each bought one on the way to VA and had stopped at quite a few national parks on the way. When I bought my Harley I bought a second passport book to record just the parks I visited on the bike. Most parks have a 'movie' that explains the area or the event that park is centered around. Well the Vicksburg movie started at 9:30AM, I decided I wanted to stay for it. Looking around and shopping in the visitors center, I found a patch for my vest and a gift for my boss. The gift? The book Uncle Tom's Cabin. I had to explain to her what it was and meant.

Vicksburg was under siege from Grant and the Union army to end a blockade they had on the Mississippi River. Northern states could not use the river to float their goods down to the ports for trading with the rest of the world. Vicksburg had 4 miles of cannons and mines along the river which pretty much assured that only ships they chose to let pass would. Grant brought an army of 10,000 to MS to deal with this problem. It had taken him months to make it from TN. They had built the road and any bridges that they needed on the way. They had crosses the Mississippi River and gone down road in LA unmolested. Crossing the river again at Port Gibson they quickly began burning towns. Even taking a week off to recooperate they were soon in Jackson MS. After torching Jackson MS they turned toward Vicksburg. Trying an all out assault first the Union army failed. Soon they decided to just lay siege, that is they surrounded the city and would not allow any supplies in. I thought the movie brought home the problem with the Confederacy. They varied significantly from the Union, in that they believed in stronger states rights. It did not work well in unision. Grants army was greatly outnumbered and in Confederate territory, but was successful at each encounter, because the individual units of the CS Army in the area would not come together to fight against Grants army. But the time Grant has made it to Vicksburg he has also been resupplied and joined by even more Union troops. The engagement at Vicksburg started on 29 MAR 1862 and ended on 3 JUL with the surrender of the CS Army.

The park is an auto tour. The visitors center has a little machine that will tell you about the park as you drive through it, but it takes a cigarette lighter to operate and that is one thing I didn't have on the bike. The first half of the tour follows the Union trenches. In the middle of the tour is the second visitors center for the USS Cairo and there is a National Cemetary. The last half of the auto tour is following the Confederate States trench line. The trench lines are marked with metal signs stating what units held that trench. The Union trenchs were marked with blue signs. The CS signs were red. Really awesome tour.

All along the route are hundreds of markers. Some of the markers were for individuals, but most were for units. I was sad to see states that had markers for both sides of the battle. Some of those states were TN, MO, IL. Really brings home the neighbors fighting neighbors and brothers fighting brothers aspect of the civil war.

I used to have a book of letters home from soldiers. Letters were there from each war, including the civil war. One letter was from a young man who talked of the strangeness of that foreign land he was serving in and how he missed home. He was writing of KY. MS would have been a different world for those from WI or IA. I enjoyed my stay there, but I wasn't camping or hoofing it all the way.

The monuments were also awesome, some were buildings some were towers, some were statues, some were the size of gravestones. It was interesting to see the originality of each.

I spent almost an hour at the USS Cairo museum. The Cairo was an armoured ship that was sunk in the MS by a CS mine. It was dug back up in 1964 and is now on display in the park.

I spent a little over 4 hours there and didn't have time to see most of what the park had to offer. It was really awesome.

Inside the park is a National Cemetary, the blog for it is here: 09 Vicksburg National Cemetary
The trip blogs start here: 09 Natchez Trace Day 1A

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Photos

Park Display
Samples of obsticals and cover that was used during the battle.

Row of Cannon in the Park
The CS army ran out of cannon balls early in the siege. The Union army did not have that trouble.

Ohio Monument
This was my favorite of the monuments that were throughout the park.

Comments

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Thanks!
Hi Cindy, Thanks for posting this. I was on my way to ride the Trace last September when something came up and I had to scrap the trip. I am still planning on going, sometime in the fall I will try again. Your travel blog will surely help me in deciding what I want to see and what I may skip. I did get to do a "East Texas Ride" in October, but I think the Trace trip would have been more interesting.