Grant’s North Mississippi Campaign, Chickasaw Bayou, and the Bottomlands

Abstract

Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s North Mississippi Campaign (November 1862 until January 1863) planted a powerful Federal army only a few miles north of Vicksburg. The most important Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was the key to control of the valley that split the Confederacy in two. Grant failed to capture it, but he opened a two-hundred-mile stretch of the valley from Memphis to Vicksburg for federal exploitation. From January to the end of April 1863, during the Bottomlands phase of Grant’s campaign, his men confiscated food and animals from the region, collected slaves as laborers and soldiers, and cared for Black women and children. Federal agents worked abandoned plantations with refugee Black labor. Temporarily stymied in capturing Vicksburg, the Federals reaped benefits from the fertile Mississippi Delta land they occupied, broke down the institution of slavery, and made effective Lincoln’s new directions in war policy.