Strategic Importance of Vicksburg

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Strategic Importance of Vicksburg
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Agenda

• Strategic Situation
• Importance of Vicksburg and the Mississippi River
• Lincolns Assessment
• Scotts Anaconda Plan
• Confederate supply lines
• Two halves of the Confederacy

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Strategic Situation
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Importance of Mississippi River and Vicksburg

• At  the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi
  River was the single most important economic
  feature of the continent
• Confederate forces closed the river to
  navigation, which threatened to strangle northern
  commercial interests.

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Lincolns Assessment

• "See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of
  which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be
  brought to a close until that key is in our
  pocket.... We can take all the northern ports of
  the Confederacy, and they can defy us from
  Vicksburg. I am acquainted with that region and
  know what I am talking about, and as valuable as
  New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg will be more
  so."

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Scotts Anaconda Plan

• Blockade the Southern ports and stop all imports
  and exports.
• The blockade would stop the sale of agriculture
  goods drying up the money supply and the blockade
  would stop the receiving of war martial from
  foreign nations.
• Recapture the Mississippi River. 
• By recapturing the Mississippi River the South
  would be cut in half making communications
  difficult between the two sections.
• After the wearing down of the peoples' resolve to
  make and sustain a war march to and capture the
  Confederate capital.
• Although initially rejected, Scotts plan became
  the de facto Federal strategy in execution

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Trans Mississippi Confederacy as a Supply Source

• Texas led the nation in cattle, with an estimated
  three and a half million head
• Virginia and Georgia, the next largest
  Confederate cattle-producing states, counted
  slightly more than one million each.
• Texas ranked behind only Tennessee in the number
  of horses and mules, fourth in the number of
  sheep, and seventh in the production of swine.
• Texas was a significant source of livestock for
  armies in the west, but that could only remain
  the case so long as those animals could cross the
  river safely.
• Federal success at Vicksburg would deny the
  eastern Confederacy access to these and other
  supplies

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Key Railroad from Monroe, LA through Vicksburg to
Jackson and points east
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Splitting the South in Two

• Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas (as well as the
  Indian Territory) accounted for almost half of
  the Confederacys total land mass
• Federal control of the Mississippi River would
  isolate the western and eastern halves of the
  Confederacy

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Federal Control of the Mississippi Splits the
Confederacy