Gettysburg was disquieting; Vicksburg, peace and reconciliation. 

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865

I had not expected to visit Vicksburg, and driving through Jackson, MS, when I could still turn back, I questioned whether this was just a flyer. The day was getting warm. Would I need to leave Wilson in the car for my experience? I had not prepared for Vicksburg as much as for Gettysburg, which I had thought I had known, or Shiloh, which was so new I previewed the tour and the maps, and because of the government shut down, the National Park Service sites for possible ramifications that would affect a visit. 

Vicksburg was fortune on the road. 

Vicksburg was a siege. Who would outlast whom? There were no daring cavalry charges, no sweeping flanking maneuvers, no sudden changes in the battle space so that we can later laud daring, boldness, or charismatic leaders. Instead, Orion Perseus Howe, a drummer boy, age 13, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. More importantly, one of the earliest engagements of the US Colored Troops at Milliken’s Bend repulsed the attacks by the Confederate forces. 

The battlefield is hills and hollows. No flat ground. Rifled artillery and rifles as individual weapons increase both accuracy and range. The Confederate city and forces are surrounded and river traffic is controlled by the Union Navy with its ironclads. The state monuments on either side honor their dead.

Vicksburg broke the back of the Confederacy just as Gettysburg broke the heart, and both happened on the same day, July 4, 1863.