BGuthrie Photos: LA -- Vicksburg Natl Military Park -- Grant's Canal

LA -- Vicksburg Natl Military Park -- Grant's Canal:

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[1] GRANTC_130523_002_STITCH.JPG

[2] GRANTC_130523_003_STITCH.JPG

[3] GRANTC_130523_004.JPG	[4] GRANTC_130523_010.JPG	[5] GRANTC_130523_017.JPG
[6] GRANTC_130523_029.JPG	[7] GRANTC_130523_034.JPG	[8] GRANTC_130523_041.JPG
[9] GRANTC_130523_047.JPG	[10] GRANTC_130523_054.JPG	[11] GRANTC_130523_066.JPG
[12] GRANTC_130523_070.JPG	[13] GRANTC_130523_076.JPG	[14] GRANTC_130523_090.JPG
[15] GRANTC_130523_104.JPG	[16] GRANTC_130523_111.JPG	[17] GRANTC_130523_118.JPG
[18] GRANTC_130523_123.JPG	[19] GRANTC_130523_135.JPG	[20] GRANTC_130523_141.JPG
[21] GRANTC_130523_147.JPG	[22] GRANTC_130523_151.JPG	[23] GRANTC_130523_157.JPG
[24] GRANTC_130523_168.JPG	[25] GRANTC_130523_173.JPG	[26] GRANTC_130523_177.JPG
[27] GRANTC_130523_186.JPG	[28] GRANTC_130523_193.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GRANTC_130523_004.JPG: Grant's Canal: During the summer of 1862, the Federals' first attempt to bypass Vicksburg by digging a canal across DeSoto Peninsula failed. By January, 1863, the Federals had reoccupied the Louisiana shore opposite Vicksburg. Gen. U.S. Grant ordered work on the canal resumed. The canal was to be 60 feet wide, one and one-half miles long, and deep enough to float any vessel on the river. Ground was broken on January 30. Negro work gangs assisted by fatigue details from the Union Army began the work. Later, steam pumps and dredge boats were employed. To stop the work, the Confederates emplaced several big guns on the shore opposite the canal's exit but the work progressed. On March 7, the upper dam gave way, flooding the entire peninsula. "Grant's Canal" had failed.
2. GRANTC_130523_010.JPG: Mississippi Sidestep: In 1862, powerful Confederate guns along Vicksburg's high bluffs kept the Mississippi River closed to Federal shipping. Union leaders decided the army should take the city by land to gain control of the river. But General Thomas Williams had a different idea -- dig a canal across the foot of De Soto Point to bypass the batteries together. In the June heat, Union soldiers labored alongside more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people to carve the 1.5-mile canal. Sunstroke, exhaustion, malaria, and dysentery plagued the workers. Hundreds lost their lives. After just one month, Williams halted the project. In January 1863, General Ulysses Grant took up the project once again. His plans were also hindered by widespread illness among the troops -- and rising river waters that flooded Union camps. By March, Grant abandoned this dream of avoiding Vicksburg.
3. GRANTC_130523_034.JPG: Grant's Canal: This canal was the third attempt by the Union Armies to route gunboats around Vicksburg. Excavation was begun in January 1863, by order of General Grant with two regiments and 1,200 Negro laborers. Two dredge boats were used in February but were driven from work by Confederate shell fire. High water damaged the canal in March and further work was suspended. The canal was thereafter abandoned.
4. GRANTC_130523_041.JPG: Williams' Canal - 1862: Rather than attack Vicksburg directly, the Federals at first tried to engineer their way around the Confederate stronghold. In June 1862, Union troops started digging a canal across the foot of DeSoto Point. The theory: the river would adopt the new channel, and Union shipping would be able to bypass Vicksburg. The "Gibraltar of the South" would become just another inland town. Work on the 1.5 mile canal began on June 27. To speed the digging, the Federals pressed more than 1,200 blacks from area plantations into service alongside the soldiers. For a month the laborers and soldiers toiled, reduced by sickness and hampered by falling water levels. On July 24, with more than half the work force incapacitated, Williams abandoned the project. Most of the canal lay just beyond the effective range of the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg. The Confederates, however, constructed new batteries to fire on the mouth of the canal below Vicksburg. Even if the canal had been finished, Confederated artillery fire would have made its use extremely hazardous. Brig. Gen. Thomas Williams, architect of the first Union effort to bypass Vicksburg with a canal. Williams would die at the battle of Baton Rouge (August 5, 1862), just weeks after he abandoned the canal project. Black laborers working on "Williams' Canal." Laborers and soldiers suffered alike from sun stroke, diarrhea, and malaria. Hundreds died.
5. GRANTC_130523_054.JPG: Grant's Canal -- 1863: The remains of the canal you see here today are the result of the second Union effort to bypass Vicksburg. In January 1863, laborers and troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant resumed work on the canal begun in June 1862. They worked to create a ditch 60 feet wide and six feet deep -- large enough to accommodate most Union boats. Their efforts failed when high water flooded Union camps and illness afflicted both soldiers and laborers. When Confederate guns at Vicksburg eventually drove away the Union dredges, work on the canal ended. More than 500 blacks labored on the Union excavation -- far fewer than has been pressed into service here the previous year. At Grant's approach, area planters fled with their families and the strongest of their slaves. "Only the old and sickly (blacks) with the house servants are left here," recorded a local diarist. Still, the work of blacks on the canal signaled their increasing important to the Union war effort. The Federals used two steam digger dredges to speed work on the canal. But the big machines were ready targets for Vicksburg's long-range batteries. After only a few weeks' work, the dredges were forced to withdraw. The Federals hoped the canal would force the river to change channels and bypass Vicksburg. Though the canal filled with water, it did not catch the scouring effect of the current and began to fill with sediments. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman admitted the canal "don't amount to much."
6. GRANTC_130523_066.JPG: Freedmen Fight at Milliken's Bend: On June 7, 1863, black troops fought a vicious battle to defend the Union supply base at Milliken's Bend, 15 miles northwest of here. Their victory proved black troops could fight well and helped ensure that the siege at Vicksburg would end in Union victory four weeks later. At Milliken's Bend, the Confederates met black troops who had been in the service only days or weeks. In brutal hand-to-hand combat, the Confederates drove the Federals back. But the black troops, aided by the white 23rd Iowa, held on long enough for Union gunboats to arrive; a naval bombardment in turn drove the Southerners off. Nearly forty percent of the black troops were killed or wounded -- many of them by bayonets or clubbed muskets. More than 100,000 black troops -- most of them under the command of white officers -- fought for the Union. Milliken's Bend was the second engagement of the war in which United States Colored Troops fought. The Confederate plan: relieve Vicksburg by crippling Union supply facilities in Louisiana. Southern brigades attacked both Milliken's Bend and Young's Point. At both places, they were defeated.
7. GRANTC_130523_076.JPG: U.S. African Brigade District Northeast Louisiana Army of the Tennessee Col. Isaac F. Shepard Post of Milliken's Bend Louisiana Col. Hiram Scofield 8th Louisiana Col. Hiram Scofield Col. Hermann Lieb 9th Louisiana Maj. Erastus N. Owen Lieut. Col. Charles L. Paige 11th Louisiana Col. Edwin W. Chamberlain Lieut. Col. Cyrus Sears 13th Louisiana, Lieut. Herman Knoll 1st Mississippi, Lieut. Col. A. Watson Webber 3rd Mississippi, Col. Richard H. Ballinger Casualties in the attack on Milliken's Bend Louisiana June 7, 1863 Killed 78 wounded 246 missing 265 total 589 Post of Goodrich's Landing Louisiana Col. William F. Wood 1st Arkansas Lieut Col. James Campbell 10th Louisiana, Col. Frederick M. Crandal Two companies numbering 144 officers and men of the 1st Arkansas were captured, June 29, 1863 at Mounds, near Goodrich's Landing.
8. GRANTC_130523_090.JPG: Connecticut Memorial The Connecticut State Memorial is located at the Grant's Canal Site, and represents the contributions of the 9th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers. 153 Connecticut Soldiers gave their lives in attempting to build a canal to go around the Vicksburg Confederate defenses. The Memorial was dedicated October 14, 2008.
9. GRANTC_130523_118.JPG: Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers Known as Connecticut's Irish Regiment, due to its predominant makeup of soldiers born in Ireland, the Ninth was mustered in at New Haven in September 1861. In December, the 845-man regiment arrived at Ship Island, Mississippi, and was among the first Union troops to enter New Orleans after the city surrendered in April 1862. Two months later, the Ninth was part of the expeditionary force led by Gen. Thomas Williams that steamed up the Mississippi River in the first Union campaign to capture Vicksburg. Lacking sufficient numbers for an assault or siege, the troops were put to work excavating William's Canal in an attempt to bypass Vicksburg and restore unfettered navigation of the Mississippi.
10. GRANTC_130523_123.JPG: Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers The Ninth Connecticut arrived at De Soto Point, opposite Vicksburg, on June 25, 1862, and began felling trees, cutting roots, and turning dirt. Supply problems, lack of drinking water, and temperatures that reached above 100 degrees took a heavy toll as malaria, dysentery, and heatstroke spread throughout the command. With the river level dropping and troops incapacitated by heat and disease, the canal project was abandoned on July 24, far short of completion. Some 153 men of the Ninth died within a four-month period following their arrival at the canal. While the Ninth saw no further action at Vicksburg, it participated in the Battle of Baton Rouge in August and was then assigned to defenses in the New Orleans area.
Wikipedia Description: Vicksburg National Military Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...

Grant's Canal:

The remnants of Grant's Canal, a detached section of the military park, are located across from Vicksburg near Delta, Louisiana. Union Army Major General Ulysses S. Grant ordered the project, started on June 27, 1862, as part of his Vicksburg Campaign with two goals in mind. The first was to alter the course of the Mississippi River in order to bypass the Confederate guns at Vicksburg. For various technical reasons the project failed to meet this goal. The river did change course by itself on April 26, 1876. The project met its second goal, keeping troops occupied during the laborious maneuvering required to begin the Battle of Vicksburg.
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