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World of Ulysses S. Grant
The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign
The Vicksburg Campaign, argues Timothy B. Smith, is the showcase of Ulysses S. Grant’s military genius. From October 1862 to July 1863, for nearly nine months, Grant tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate river city. He maneuvered and adapted numerous times, reacting to events and enemy movements with great skill and finesse as the lengthy campaign played out on a huge chessboard, dwarfing operations in the east. Grant’s final, daring move allowed him to land an army in Mississippi and fight his way to the gates of Vicksburg. He captured the Confederate garrison and city on July 4, 1863, opening the Mississippi River for the Union.
Showing how and why Grant became such a successful general, Smith presents a fast-paced reexamination of the commander and the campaign. His fresh analysis of Grant’s decision-making process during the Vicksburg siege and battle details the process of campaigning on military, political, administrative, and personal levels. The narrative is organized around Grant’s eight key decisions: to begin operations against Vicksburg, to place himself in charge of the campaign, to begin active operations around the city, to sweep toward Vicksburg from the south, to march east of Vicksburg and cut the railroad before attacking, to assault Vicksburg twice in an attempt to end the campaign quickly, to lay siege after the assaults had failed, and to parole the surrendered Confederate garrison rather than send the Southern soldiers to prison camps.
The successful military campaign also required Grant to master political efforts, including handling Lincoln’s impatience and dealing with the troublesome political general John A. McClernand. Further, he had to juggle administrative work with military decision making. Grant was more than a military genius, however; he was also a husband and father, and Smith shows how Grant’s family was a part of everything he did.
Grant’s nontraditional choices went against the accepted theories of war, supply, and operations as well as against the chief thinkers of the day, such as Henry Halleck, Grant’s superior. Yet Grant pulled off the victory in compelling fashion. In the first in-depth examination in decades, Smith shows how Grant’s decisions created and won the Civil War’s most brilliant, complex, decisive, and lengthy campaign.
Showing how and why Grant became such a successful general, Smith presents a fast-paced reexamination of the commander and the campaign. His fresh analysis of Grant’s decision-making process during the Vicksburg siege and battle details the process of campaigning on military, political, administrative, and personal levels. The narrative is organized around Grant’s eight key decisions: to begin operations against Vicksburg, to place himself in charge of the campaign, to begin active operations around the city, to sweep toward Vicksburg from the south, to march east of Vicksburg and cut the railroad before attacking, to assault Vicksburg twice in an attempt to end the campaign quickly, to lay siege after the assaults had failed, and to parole the surrendered Confederate garrison rather than send the Southern soldiers to prison camps.
The successful military campaign also required Grant to master political efforts, including handling Lincoln’s impatience and dealing with the troublesome political general John A. McClernand. Further, he had to juggle administrative work with military decision making. Grant was more than a military genius, however; he was also a husband and father, and Smith shows how Grant’s family was a part of everything he did.
Grant’s nontraditional choices went against the accepted theories of war, supply, and operations as well as against the chief thinkers of the day, such as Henry Halleck, Grant’s superior. Yet Grant pulled off the victory in compelling fashion. In the first in-depth examination in decades, Smith shows how Grant’s decisions created and won the Civil War’s most brilliant, complex, decisive, and lengthy campaign.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published July 13, 2018
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About the author
Timothy B. Smith
37 books21 followersA former NPS ranger at Shiloh, Timothy B. Smith teaches history at the University of Tennessee at Martin.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 5, 2020
This book describes and weighs the consequences of eight of General Ulysses S. Grant’s key decisions during his 1862-63 operations against the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Grant began his first attempt on that riverport in late 1862, advancing overland into northern Mississippi, because moving downriver—as he eventually did—was supposedly too difficult. He relied on the railroads in West Tennessee to supply his force, which was concentrating at Grand Junction. This attempt ended when cavalry raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn smashed Grant’s lines of communication.
Dr. Timothy Smith follows standard Civil War historiography in his unrelenting attacks against Major-General John A. McClernand. The Lincoln administration had decided to place McClernand in charge of an expedition down the Mississippi River to seize Vicksburg. Grant didn’t like that general— McClernand was out for personal glory, like many other officers, and more importantly he out-ranked Grant’s favorite general, William T. Sherman. To counter McClernand, General Grant, and the army’s supportive general-in-chief, Henry Halleck, surreptitiously worked together to give Sherman command of the expedition, even if they were being insubordinate to the President.
In contrast, the author does offer the rarely heard conclusion that the Vicksburg “area was purposefully left in no man’s land between Grant and the commander to the south, Nathaniel P. Banks.” Yet, McClernand is often attacked for trying to operate independently within Grant’s jurisdiction. This book ignores the import of Halleck’s own directive that “[i]t is the wish of the President” that McClernand “shall have the immediate command” of the river expedition under Grant’s direction. Despite Lincoln’s expressed desire, Grant then placed himself in personal charge of the campaign, even though McClernand had just won a well-timed victory at Arkansas Post.
The author offers a cursory review of the ensuing operations that the Union commander initiated in order to get past the city via canals on the west bank or to reach high ground on the east bank through various convoluted routes. Smith correctly notes Grant’s error in claiming “I, myself, never felt great confidence that any of the experiments resorted to would prove successful.” Actually, Grant had placed great faith in these attempts. That general even thought about attacking at Chickasaw Bayou, where Sherman had earlier come to grief.
In the end, circumstances forced Grant to march his army past Vicksburg on the opposite bank, board them on transports that had passed the city’s batteries, and cross the Mississippi below. McClernand, however, had suggested a similar crossing to Lincoln mid-November 1862, more than five months earlier.
Dr. Smith discusses elements of Grant’s personal life throughout this examination of the Vicksburg campaign. In this, he relies heavily on the recollections of Grant’s son, Fred, such as their watching the gunboats passing the Vicksburg batteries. Fred wrote how the “scene is as vivid in my mind to-night as it was then to my eyes, and will remain with me always.” Unfortunately, Fred told much the same story at another time, but with him and his father actually on the gunboats. With his inability to remember, Fred should not have been relied upon for accurate history.
Grant finally began his campaign on the east bank by heading Northeast to Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, where he cut the railroads. He then turned west to march toward Vicksburg. After defeating the Confederate force commanded by John Pemberton at Champion Hill, the Union army began to invest Vicksburg. Grant decided to assault Vicksburg twice, trying to end the campaign without a siege, but failed. The subsequent siege eventually forced the city’s surrender.
After Vicksburg’s capitulation, Grant made the choice of paroling the surrendered Confederate garrison of twenty thousand effective soldiers, along with ten thousand sick, wounded, and non-combatants, rather than sending these Southerners to northern prison camps, which would have consumed much of the Union’s transport capacity. Unfortunately, the decision wasn’t Grant’s own. Smith details how Grant let his own opinion be overruled by a council of war. Too late, Halleck informed Grant that “your paroling the garrison at Vicksburg without actual delivery to a proper agent, as required by the seventh article of the cartel, may by construed into an absolute release, and that these men will be immediately placed in the ranks of the enemy.” The U.S. administration had attempted to embarrass Robert E. Lee with federal prisoners taken during the Gettysburg campaign, and now the invalidly paroled soldiers at Vicksburg soon became a much-needed reinforcement for General Braxton Bragg, in his battle against William Rosecrans at Chickamauga. Grant’s misstep nullified much of the benefit gained by his victory and helped cause Rosecrans’ defeat.
Grant began his first attempt on that riverport in late 1862, advancing overland into northern Mississippi, because moving downriver—as he eventually did—was supposedly too difficult. He relied on the railroads in West Tennessee to supply his force, which was concentrating at Grand Junction. This attempt ended when cavalry raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn smashed Grant’s lines of communication.
Dr. Timothy Smith follows standard Civil War historiography in his unrelenting attacks against Major-General John A. McClernand. The Lincoln administration had decided to place McClernand in charge of an expedition down the Mississippi River to seize Vicksburg. Grant didn’t like that general— McClernand was out for personal glory, like many other officers, and more importantly he out-ranked Grant’s favorite general, William T. Sherman. To counter McClernand, General Grant, and the army’s supportive general-in-chief, Henry Halleck, surreptitiously worked together to give Sherman command of the expedition, even if they were being insubordinate to the President.
In contrast, the author does offer the rarely heard conclusion that the Vicksburg “area was purposefully left in no man’s land between Grant and the commander to the south, Nathaniel P. Banks.” Yet, McClernand is often attacked for trying to operate independently within Grant’s jurisdiction. This book ignores the import of Halleck’s own directive that “[i]t is the wish of the President” that McClernand “shall have the immediate command” of the river expedition under Grant’s direction. Despite Lincoln’s expressed desire, Grant then placed himself in personal charge of the campaign, even though McClernand had just won a well-timed victory at Arkansas Post.
The author offers a cursory review of the ensuing operations that the Union commander initiated in order to get past the city via canals on the west bank or to reach high ground on the east bank through various convoluted routes. Smith correctly notes Grant’s error in claiming “I, myself, never felt great confidence that any of the experiments resorted to would prove successful.” Actually, Grant had placed great faith in these attempts. That general even thought about attacking at Chickasaw Bayou, where Sherman had earlier come to grief.
In the end, circumstances forced Grant to march his army past Vicksburg on the opposite bank, board them on transports that had passed the city’s batteries, and cross the Mississippi below. McClernand, however, had suggested a similar crossing to Lincoln mid-November 1862, more than five months earlier.
Dr. Smith discusses elements of Grant’s personal life throughout this examination of the Vicksburg campaign. In this, he relies heavily on the recollections of Grant’s son, Fred, such as their watching the gunboats passing the Vicksburg batteries. Fred wrote how the “scene is as vivid in my mind to-night as it was then to my eyes, and will remain with me always.” Unfortunately, Fred told much the same story at another time, but with him and his father actually on the gunboats. With his inability to remember, Fred should not have been relied upon for accurate history.
Grant finally began his campaign on the east bank by heading Northeast to Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, where he cut the railroads. He then turned west to march toward Vicksburg. After defeating the Confederate force commanded by John Pemberton at Champion Hill, the Union army began to invest Vicksburg. Grant decided to assault Vicksburg twice, trying to end the campaign without a siege, but failed. The subsequent siege eventually forced the city’s surrender.
After Vicksburg’s capitulation, Grant made the choice of paroling the surrendered Confederate garrison of twenty thousand effective soldiers, along with ten thousand sick, wounded, and non-combatants, rather than sending these Southerners to northern prison camps, which would have consumed much of the Union’s transport capacity. Unfortunately, the decision wasn’t Grant’s own. Smith details how Grant let his own opinion be overruled by a council of war. Too late, Halleck informed Grant that “your paroling the garrison at Vicksburg without actual delivery to a proper agent, as required by the seventh article of the cartel, may by construed into an absolute release, and that these men will be immediately placed in the ranks of the enemy.” The U.S. administration had attempted to embarrass Robert E. Lee with federal prisoners taken during the Gettysburg campaign, and now the invalidly paroled soldiers at Vicksburg soon became a much-needed reinforcement for General Braxton Bragg, in his battle against William Rosecrans at Chickamauga. Grant’s misstep nullified much of the benefit gained by his victory and helped cause Rosecrans’ defeat.
January 29, 2020
A good, concise overview of the campaign.
Smith focuses on the key decisions made by Grant during the campaign (especially operational and tactical), and a lot of the book deals with Grant’s thinking throughout, and on Grant’s own evolution as a leader. Smith is pretty critical of McClernand, and a lot of the book deals with Gant’s difficulties with him. He does a good job showing Grant’s contributions to army administration and his productive relationships with the navy, with his military superiors, and with the Lincoln administration.
The story is told entirely from the Union side, and if you’re familiar with the campaign, you won’t find anything new here. There also could have been more elaboration on exactly what McClernand’s contributions were; Smith’s coverage of him focuses almost entirely on his shortcomings.
The narrative is readable and well-organized, and moves along at a good pace. The maps are good. A solid summary of the campaign overall.
Smith focuses on the key decisions made by Grant during the campaign (especially operational and tactical), and a lot of the book deals with Grant’s thinking throughout, and on Grant’s own evolution as a leader. Smith is pretty critical of McClernand, and a lot of the book deals with Gant’s difficulties with him. He does a good job showing Grant’s contributions to army administration and his productive relationships with the navy, with his military superiors, and with the Lincoln administration.
The story is told entirely from the Union side, and if you’re familiar with the campaign, you won’t find anything new here. There also could have been more elaboration on exactly what McClernand’s contributions were; Smith’s coverage of him focuses almost entirely on his shortcomings.
The narrative is readable and well-organized, and moves along at a good pace. The maps are good. A solid summary of the campaign overall.
July 7, 2025
Concise, review of basic Vicksburg Campaign. Essential details, but not lost in the weeds
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews