Besieged!

Vicksburg, Mississippi

One of our last stops as we travelled back to Texas was Vicksburg, a city on the banks of the Mississippi River in western Mississippi. This was the site of the siege of Vicksburg, in which the Union forces successfully attempted to capture the city in order to gain control of the traffic along the river. Once this was accomplished, it was a great victory for the North, and an awful defeat for the Confederates.

Vicksburg today is, of course, much different than it was back in those days, but besides the changes that men have wrought, the river has changed position as well. It is perhaps well known that the Mississippi changes its course over the years, and here it has actually moved farther away from Vicksburg.

Our destination in this place was Vicksburg National Military Park, which we found to be very interesting. Unlike the small monuments we saw in Georgia (see "Southern Monuments") at Vicksburg we found very large monuments for states on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. One of these worthy of mention was that of Illinois, which was modelled after the Parthenon in Greece. Illinois's claim to fame, of course, is that it was the home of the U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, and around the building one can read that famous quote from him, viz: "With malice towards none, with charity for all: Let us have peace." I don't believe Mr. Lincoln's character was quite as pristine as people make it out to be when they use that quote, but that's beside the point. The Illinois monument was very masterfully carved, and above the door was a golden eagle. Upon walking up the steps to the monument, one may walk inside and view the inscriptions within. It is fashioned as a dome, with a hole in the top. Altogether it was very interesting looking and majestic.

All the monuments were very large, and some bore interesting inscriptions. I have already posted the text of the Texas monument (see "Remembering Our Soldiers") and I found the text from the Arkansas monument to be interesting as well: "To the Arkansas Confederate soldiers, a part of a nation divided by the sword, and reunited at the altar of faith."

Besides the many great monoliths erected in memory of the soldiers who fell upon the battlefield, there is also a museum there which showcases an actual Union ironclad ship that was sunk in the waters of the Mississippi and pulled out years later. During the siege, several of these ironclad warships were sent past Vicksburg during the night, trying to sneak past the Confederates who were guarding the river. All but one of these made it, the U.S.S. Cairo being sunk by a mine.

Outside the museum we saw the ship itself, and although much of its wood has rotted away, some still remains to complement the iron armour, cannons, and engine. Inside the museum one may see all the different artefacts that were found in the ship when they pulled it up, and it all gives a sense for what life was like in those not so long ago days.

As we left the park, I photographed one last monument which gave a list of the states which fought for the Southern cause:

Confederate Army

Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
Louisiana
Missouri
Maryland
Mississippi
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia

"That's All, Folks"

This is the last of my thirteen blog posts about our trip to North Carolina! I hope you enjoyed reading them. However, now that I've gotten into this routine of blogging every Friday, I'm starting to think, "why not keep it up?" So, I will keep on posting every week on into 2007. I may post stories, poems, or songs that I've written, pictures I've drawn, narrations for school, interesting thoughts, and whatever else I think would make a good blog post.
Hope you have a wonderful new year, and please continue to read BenjaBlog!

(Not sure when the new millennium started? Read "The Y2K Bug".)