Can I be excused? My head is full.

This afternoon we arrived in New Orleans.  However, our previous location in Mississippi was a "no Verizon bars" place, so I'm posting this and two other stories to catch up. 


Tuesday we went to the Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  Besides the fact that it’s huge -- 1,700 acres -- I should have known there was way too much to absorb in one afternoon when I found out our admission ticket was good for 8 days.

First we saw the obligatory (and in this case, good) visitor’s center movie.  Then we bought a CD of tour we could listen to as we drove, and set off on the 15-stop, 16-mile drive  By stop 8 our brains had reached full saturation.  The park has something like 1,300 memorials, monuments, statues, bronze busts, markers, cannons, plus markers that show the locations of the Union and Confederate troops.

Abraham Lincoln believed Vicksburg was the “key” to the Civil War, and that the Union could not win until Lincoln had the key in his pocket.  Once the Union had Vicksburg, they would own the Mississippi River, be able to more easily transport troops and supplies, and cut the Confederacy in two.  And that’s what happened.


The people of Vicksburg were under siege for 46 days; without supplies they were reduced to eating rats and mules.  Once the Confederacy surrendered Vicksburg, civil liberties were suspended, plantations confiscated, and Vicksburg was made  a regional base for Union troops.  In fact, federal troops occupied Vicksburg until President Rutherford B. Hayes removed them in 1877.

There were monuments, cannons, and signs indicating the positions of the troops all over the park.

This is the only surviving wartime structure in the park.  It was the home of union supporters, James and Adeline Shirley, and their three children.  The Shirleys owed 25 slaves and were Union supporters.  When the Vicksburg siege started, the Shirleys hid in a nearby cave and then in abandoned slave cabins. 

Soldiers from Fort Hood were taking a tour at about the same time we were, and Jim took this photo of them behind one of the probably dozens of monuments to various Ohio fighting units.   The soldiers had a tour guide and we listened in for the first few stops.   

The USS Cairo was sunk in the Yazoo River in 1862 and is believed to be the first ship sunk by an electronically detonated mine.  The ship was recovered and is on display at the park.  Another ship story:  In 1865,  2,300 union prisoners left Vicksburg on their way north in the SS Sultana.  Three days later the overloaded boat exploded and 1800 troops died.  That’s still the biggest maritime disaster in US history.

 17,000 Union soldiers are buried here; 13,000 are unknowns.  Graves of unknown soldiers are marked with shorter gravestones.  The Confederates who died during the siege of Vicksburg are buried in a a different cemetery.

Bev on the steps of a memorial.  I'm sure I knew what it commemorated at the time, but like I said my brain got full.