Vicksburg

We have made it to Vicksburg but we made a decision about backroads.  They are beautiful and the driving is much easier and quieter but the driving is very slow. We are never in a hurry but we do have to set up the camper and then try to make it to the battlefield before it closes at 5:00 pm.  There was no nearby National Forest so we had to pull into RiverTown which is a very big RV park for the big campers.  With our pop-up camper, they gave us a spot on the group W bench.  It wasn't too noisy and the temp over night was okay.

Vicksburg was not conventional battlefield.  General Grant tried to attack the city but was beaten back twice.  He realized that a siege was necessary to capture the city. Union soldiers entirely surrounded the city and on the west bank of the Mississippi River and the cannons began firing into the city.  The barrage became so intense that many residents of Vicksburg took refuge in caves in the river bank.  Seven weeks later on July 4th, Vicksburg surrended, and President Lincoln received two gifts: a significant victory on Independence Day and the Union Army finally had a general that would fight and win.  Vicksburg would not celebrate the 4th of July until 1964.

A Union artillery battery just east of Vicksburg.

This is the USS Cairo, a Union gunboat used on the Mississippi for the seige of Vicksburg.  It sank and was raised and partially restored.  It made me think of a massive great white shark, low in the water and deadly.

The Cairo had 13 cannons capable of firing a 24 pound cannonball.