Camp Cromwell takes Vicksburg

Our attempt to get to Grand Gulf where Grant's navy failed to silence the batteries, or the spot downstream where he did cross due the Mississippi being in flood.

The first land battle of the Campaign was at Port Gibson.  The Rebs were heavily outnumbered by Grant's advance guard, but the terrain was all wooded ridges with lots of steep gullies.  There's not much to see or features to identify, but we sure got the vibe of the terrain.  The woods usually look passable without a lot of close undergrowth but the trees are close together & visibility usually less than 50m.  Finding the way & coordination must have been a nightmare.  Nevertheless the Rebs couldn't hold the position.

We then followed Grant's route NE towards Jackson along the Natchez Trace - originally an Indian trail, then a rough trade route, now a good road.  Grant advanced with no supply train living off the land - which once you are away from the Mississippi swamps became more & productive & less wooded.  At Raymond a Reb brigade attacked the advance guard thinking it was smaller than them.  They got a nasty shock when they found they had picked a fight with a whole division. 

This battlefield was easy to find with a row of replica cannon deployed on a field beside the road where the Feds deployed it prior to driving the Rebs away.

Here there are still a lot of wooded areas making recon difficult, but also a lot of cleared farmland ground giving fields of fire as well as lots of supplies for the Union army.

After the battle deployed one division covering his rear towards Vicksburg Grant & pursued the Rebs back to Jackson a few miles further east with most of his army.  The large Confederate force there couldn't stop him & withdrew.  He took the town, destroyed the infrastructure & turned back west towards Vicksburg.

The Vicksburg garrison came out to meet Grant, making a stand at Champion Hill.  Grant advanced in 3 columns on wide front.  His right attacked Champion Hill, his front extended several miles to the south.  Champions Hill isn't much of a hill but it is & was heavily wooded.  To the south there are, & presumably were, areas of cleared ground. 

So on the hill the Feds had the difficulty of coordinating attacks in heavily wooded ground & in the south the Rebs had positions with good fields of fire.

 The Rebs put up a good fight, but numbers won.  The Rebs had more men in the area, but Grant's strategy ensured that every battle was fought with the numbers on his side.

The Rebs retreated to Vicksburg & their inevitable doom.

We too advanced to Vicksburg where a large part of the area of the fortifications has been preserved with a drive-thu road and loads of interpretive signs.  The trenches are heavily eroded by the years before any care was taken to preserve them & woods have sprung up obstructing the fields of fire, but enough remains to get the vibe.  The resemblance to WWI is striking. 

12 lb parrot guns were monsters compared with the 6pdr Napoleons.

A feature of the Park was the remains of the USS Cairo.

The Cairo was sunk by mines in the Yazoo in one of the naval actions.  It was raised in the 1960's ina botched salvage operation that damaged much of what remained.  But she has been reconstrcuted on a glulam wood frame with the slavaged original components complimented by new bits to give you a real feel for the size & workings of a Union gunboat.