If you're asking about the siege of Vicksburg who won, the short answer is easy: Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Tennessee. But honestly, just saying "the North won" is like saying a hurricane "just moved some dirt." It was a brutal, grinding, 47-day nightmare that fundamentally broke the back of the Confederacy. On July 4, 1863—yes, Independence Day—Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton surrendered the "Gibraltar of the Confederacy" to Grant.
It was a total mess for the South.
Vicksburg sits on a high bluff overlooking a hairpin turn in the Mississippi River. Back then, if you held those heights, you held the river. If you held the river, you held the pulse of American commerce and military logistics. Abraham Lincoln famously said, "Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket." He wasn't exaggerating. Without Vicksburg, the Union couldn't use the river to move troops or supplies, and the Confederacy could keep pulling cattle, horses, and grain from Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
The General Who Wouldn't Quit
Ulysses S. Grant was basically a bulldog in a dusty coat. Before the siege even started, he tried a dozen crazy ideas to bypass the city. He tried digging canals. He tried moving ships through bayous filled with trees. Everything failed. People in Washington were calling for him to be fired, saying he was a drunk and a loser.
Grant didn't care.
In May 1863, he did something incredibly ballsy. He cut himself off from his own supply lines, crossed the Mississippi south of the city, and swung around to attack Vicksburg from the rear. He fought five battles in eighteen days, took the state capital of Jackson, and then shoved Pemberton’s army back into the Vicksburg trenches. After two massive, bloody frontal assaults failed on May 19 and 22, Grant realized he couldn't take the city by force.
So, he decided to starve them out.
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"I now determined upon a regular siege, to 'out-camp the enemy,' as it were, and to incur no more losses," Grant later wrote in his memoirs. He dug miles of trenches that pinned the Confederates against the river. There was no way out. No food was getting in. No mail. Nothing.
Life Inside the "City of Caves"
You have to imagine what this was like for the people living there. Vicksburg wasn't just a military base; it was a town full of women, children, and elderly folks. When the Union started shelling the city—day and night, from both the land and the ironclad gunboats on the river—the citizens realized their houses were deathtraps.
So they dug.
The soil in Vicksburg is a weird, crumbly clay called loess. It’s easy to shovel but stays firm. People dug hundreds of caves into the hillsides. Some were just holes; others were "suites" with multiple rooms, rugs, and furniture. It sounds cozy until you realize they were sharing those damp holes with snakes, mosquitoes, and the constant fear of the ceiling collapsing from a nearby shell blast.
Food became the real enemy. By June, the Confederate soldiers were on quarter-rations. They started eating "pea bread," which was basically ground-up dried peas mixed with cornmeal. It was disgusting and barely edible. Eventually, the menu got even worse. People started eating horses. Then mules. There are even documented accounts of people eating dogs and cats, though some historians debate how widespread that actually was.
The soldiers were dying of scurvy and dysentery faster than they were dying of bullets. Pemberton was stuck. He was waiting for General Joseph E. Johnston to come save him with a relief army, but Johnston was cautious—some say too cautious—and never made the move.
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The Moment the Key Turned
By early July, the Confederate troops were done. They were literal skeletons in rags. A famous anonymous letter was sent to Pemberton from his own men, basically saying, "If you can’t feed us, surrender us." They didn't want to die of starvation for a lost cause.
Pemberton met Grant under a stunted oak tree on July 3. He actually hoped that surrendering on the Fourth of July would get him better terms from the North. He thought Grant might feel "patriotic" and go easy on them. Grant, ever the "Unconditional Surrender" guy, eventually agreed to parole the Confederate prisoners rather than shipping them all to Northern prison camps. He didn't do it out of kindness; he did it because he didn't want to feed 30,000 prisoners and use up his own transport ships to move them. He figured most of them would just go home and quit fighting anyway.
When the Union flag finally went up over the Vicksburg courthouse, the Confederacy was sliced in half. Texas and Arkansas were effectively cut off. The Mississippi River was now a Union highway.
Why the Siege of Vicksburg Who Won Matters Today
It's easy to look at Vicksburg as just another dot on a map, but the victory there changed the entire trajectory of the Civil War. It happened almost simultaneously with the Battle of Gettysburg. While Lee was retreating from Pennsylvania, Pemberton was surrendering in Mississippi. It was a one-two punch that the South never truly recovered from.
- The River was Freed: Within days of Vicksburg's fall, the last Confederate stronghold on the river at Port Hudson also surrendered. Lincoln famously wrote, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."
- Grant’s Ascension: This victory solidified Grant as the premier general of the North. It paved his way to becoming General-in-Chief and, eventually, President.
- Total War: Vicksburg was a precursor to the "total war" tactics seen later in Sherman's March to the Sea. It proved that if you destroy an army's ability to eat and communicate, you don't necessarily have to kill every soldier to win.
The psychological blow to the South was massive. Vicksburg was so bitter about the surrender that the city didn't officially celebrate the Fourth of July for another 81 years. It wasn't until the aftermath of World War II that the holiday was fully embraced again.
Deep Dive: The Mining of the Third Louisiana Redan
One of the craziest parts of the siege happened underground. Union soldiers, many of whom were coal miners from places like Illinois and Pennsylvania, dug a tunnel right under the Confederate fortifications. They packed it with 2,200 pounds of gunpowder.
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On June 25, they blew it.
The explosion created a massive crater and sent Confederate soldiers flying into the air. One Black man named Abraham, who was working for the Confederates, was reportedly blown over the Union lines and landed, miraculously alive, behind Northern ranks. When asked how high he’d gone, he supposedly said, "About three miles."
Despite the massive hole in the line, the Union troops who rushed in were slaughtered in the "crater" because the Confederates had prepared a second line of defense. It was a tactical failure but showed the lengths both sides were willing to go to.
Essential Takeaways for History Buffs
If you're visiting the Vicksburg National Military Park today, you can see the sheer scale of the lines. The park has over 1,300 monuments, making it one of the most densely memorialized battlefields in the world.
To truly understand the siege of Vicksburg who won, you have to look past the surrender date. You have to look at the logistics. The Union won because they had a navy that could run the batteries, an army that could live off the land, and a commander who understood that modern war is about exhaustion, not just glory.
- Study the Terrain: Check out the topography of the bluffs; you’ll see why it was called a "natural fortress."
- Read the Diaries: Look for the writings of Mary Loughborough, who lived in the caves. Her book, My Cave Life in Vicksburg, is a wild first-hand account.
- Compare to Gettysburg: Notice how Gettysburg gets all the movies and fame, but many military historians argue Vicksburg was strategically much more important.
To dig deeper into the tactical movements, start by mapping out Grant's "Cercleville" approach. Look specifically at the Battle of Champion Hill—often called the most decisive engagement of the entire campaign—which forced Pemberton back into the city limits. Understanding that battle is the real secret to knowing why the siege was inevitable. For a modern perspective, visit the U.S.S. Cairo Museum at the park to see a salvaged Union ironclad, which provides a physical connection to the river war that ultimately decided the fate of the American South.