They are upon us: May 17 -- On the war-path for Vicksburg: May 18 -- A long dreadful day: Fifteenth Corps, May 19 -- I hope every man will follow me: Seventeenth and Thirteenth Corps, May 19 -- This will be a hard place to take: May 20-21 -- Dismay and bewilderment: Blair, May 22 -- Now, boys, you must do your duty: McPherson, May 22 -- The horror of the thing bore me down like an avalanche: McClernand and Osterhaus, May 22 -- Boys, you have just fifteen minutes to live: 2nd Texas Lunette, May 22 -- A thousand bayonets glistened in the sunlight: railroad redoubt, May 22 -- I don't believe a word of it: Grant, Sherman, and McClernand, May 22 -- Am holding position but suffering awfully: Blair, Ransom, and Tuttle, May 22 -- It made the tears come to my eyes: Steele, May 22 -- Boys, don't charge those works: Logan and Quinby, May 22 -- It is absolutely necessary that they be dislodged: reclaiming railroad redoubt, May 22 -- An ardent desire to participate in the capture of Vicksburg: Grant, Pemberton, Porter, and McArthur, May 22 -- I feel sad but not discouraged: making sense of May 22 -- I am surfeited, sick, and tired of witnessing bloodshed: casualties, wounded, prisoners -- No one would have supposed that we were mortal enemies: burial, mourning -- They ought to be remembered: honors, infamy, life stories -- Eventful on the page of history: commemoration.
Summary:
"Here Earl J. Hess offers an in-depth military history of a critical phase of the long federal campaign to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Civil War. Hess focuses on the period from May 18-23, 1863, comprising the end of Ulysses S. Grant's overland march to the rear of the city and the beginning of his siege. These five days were a watershed in the development of Grant's eight months-long campaign to capture the Gibraltar of the Confederacy. His hope of ending the campaign quickly by assaulting the city's fortifications on May 19 and 22 were crushed by the failure of those attacks. The only recourse was a siege that extended federal operations against Vicksburg another six weeks"-- Provided by publisher.
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