Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25–December 31, 1862 by Timothy B. Smith (review)

2023; Southern Historical Association; Volume: 89; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/soh.2023.a903209

2325-6893

G. David Schieffler,

American History and Culture

Reviewed by: Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25–December 31, 1862 by Timothy B. Smith G. David Schieffler Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25–December 31, 1862. By Timothy B. Smith. Modern War Studies. ( Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022. Pp. xxviii, 576. $44.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-3324-1.) For nearly forty years, Edwin C. Bearss's three-volume The Vicksburg Campaign (Dayton, Ohio, 1985) has been the standard multivolume history of the Union's complex campaign to capture the most important Confederate bastion on the Mississippi River. Though he does not aspire to replace Bearss's work, Timothy B. Smith seems poised to do just that. Smith's Early Struggles for Vicksburg: The Mississippi Central Campaign and Chickasaw Bayou, October 25–December 31, 1862, which is dedicated to Bearss's memory, covers the earliest chronological period in a five-volume history of the Vicksburg campaign. Smith has already published the fourth and fifth volumes, which detail the Federals' May 1863 assaults and the subsequent siege. His decision to cover the campaign in five volumes instead of the customary three stemmed from his (and the late Michael B. Ballard's) belief that the Union's operations in the fall and winter of 1862, the subject of this book, merit a stand-alone treatment. Smith contends that this "first phase" in the struggle for Vicksburg involved "perhaps the most wide-ranging and complex series of efforts" of the entire campaign (p. xv). Even more significant, he claims that Ulysses S. Grant's failure to capture Vicksburg in 1862 convinced the general to jettison the established "by-the-book" approach to warfare associated with Swiss military theorist Antoine-Henri Jomini (and most leading American military thinkers of the day) and instead adopt Carl von Clausewitz's more aggressive "antiestablishment" theories (p. xiv). Smith concedes that Grant may not have read Jomini's work and acknowledges that the general was almost certainly unaware of Clausewitz, whose seminal work On War (1831) was not translated into English until the 1870s. Nevertheless, Grant was familiar with Jomini's basic tenets, which were a part of the West Point curriculum. Moreover, Henry W. Halleck—who served as Grant's commanding officer first in the western theater and then in Washington, D.C.—was a Jominian thinker who had authored one of the leading military texts of his day. According to Smith, Halleck expected Grant to "do things by his book," and Grant, "still learning, gaining more responsibility, and discovering how to wield it," understandably wished to assuage his superior in his first solo campaign (pp. xxiv, xv). Consequently, from late October to the end of December 1862, Grant waged what Smith calls a "textbook Jominian campaign" that stressed maneuvering to capture territory, controlling key geographic points, and securing supply lines on the Mississippi Central Railroad and the Mississippi River (p. 41). [End Page 568] Grant's two-pronged advance, which also included William T. Sherman's move down the Mississippi, ultimately failed because, Smith argues, Confederate general John C. Pemberton adeptly used the same Jominian/Halleckian principles (including interior lines) to parry the Union's thrusts. Pemberton was aided by some fortuitous timing and a number of able subordinates, including Stephen D. Lee, whose outnumbered defenders also used favorable terrain to repulse Sherman's assault at Chickasaw Bayou. Finally, rebel cavalry raids led by Earl Van Dorn and Nathan Bedford Forrest disrupted Grant's supply line and turned back the Federals' "by the book" advance. During their retreat, one U.S. soldier anticipated Smith's analysis when he wrote that the Federals "have been beat at our own game" (p. 425). Grant's decision to change that "game" by discarding the proverbial rulebook and embracing Clausewitzian principles will be further explained in Smith's forthcoming second volume, which promises to describe the Union's various bayou operations and eventual crossing of the Mississippi below Vicksburg. But the strength of Smith's Vicksburg series goes beyond the author's framing of Grant's strategic transformation. Early Struggles for Vicksburg is, at its core, a comprehensive, entertainingly written campaign study that, in...