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The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. After two assaults (May 19 and May 22) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant besieged the city from May 25 to July 4, 1863, until it surrendered, yielding command of the Mississippi River to the Union. The Confederate surrender at Vicksburg is sometimes considered, when combined with Robert E. Lee's defeat at Gettysburg the previous day, the turning point of the war. After crossing the Mississippi south of Vicksburg at Bruinsburg and driving northeast, Grant had won battles at Port Gibson and Raymond and captured Jackson, the Mississippi state capital, in mid-May 1863, forcing Pemberton to withdraw westward. Attempts to stop the Union advance at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge were unsuccessful. Pemberton knew that the corps under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was preparing to flank him from the north; he had no choice but to withdraw or be outflanked. Pemberton burned the bridges over the Big Black River and took everything edible in his path, animal and plant, as he retreated to the well-fortified city of Vicksburg.[4] The Confederates evacuated Hayne's Bluff, which was occupied by Sherman's cavalry on May 19, and Union steamboats no longer had to run the guns of Vicksburg, now being able to dock by the dozens up the Yazoo River. Grant could now receive supplies more directly than the previous route through Louisiana, over the river crossing at Grand Gulf and Bruinsburg, then back up north.[4] Over three quarters of Pemberton's army had been lost in the two preceding battles and many in Vicksburg expected General Joseph E. Johnston, in command of the Confederate Department of the West, to relieve the city—which he never did. Large masses of Union troops were on the march to invest the city, repairing the burnt bridges over the Big Black River; Grant's forces crossed on May 18. Johnston sent a note to his general, Pemberton, asking him to sacrifice the city and save his troops, something Pemberton would not do. (Pemberton, a Northerner by birth, was probably influenced by his fear of public condemnation if he abandoned Vicksburg.)[5]
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