THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210500
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JAMES E. PERSON JR.
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
THE BELEAGUERED CITY
The Vicksburg Campaign
SHELBY FOOTE
Modern Library. 347 pp. $14.50.
Shelby Foote, who rose to fame as a novelist and the author of an acclaimed three-volume history of the Civil War, has had but sporadic rest during the five years since PBS first aired his series ``The Civil War.'' It was on that occasion that he entered the national consciousness as not only a scholar and writer but as something of a character and a throwback.
Here was a man who spoke of the Civil War confidently, learnedly, evenhandedly, with a storyteller's flair and with the thick accent of the deep, western South. Given that and Foote's craggy, bearded features, it was as if a retired Confederate cavalryman had been resurrected to comment upon the nation's four most crucial years.
The Beleaguered City: The Vicksburg Campaign is what is known in the publishing world as a ``slice,'' having been previously published as part of volume two of Foote's trilogy, The Civil War, a Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (1963). In this handsome new edition, as in its larger parent volume, the author reconstructs every decision and action related to the federal assault on Vicksburg, Miss., the capture of which would help ensure Union control of the Mississippi River, severing the Southern Confederacy and strangling its river-borne commerce.
The Vicksburg Campaign ended with the city's surrender by Confederate forces on July 4, 1863, after about eight months of false starts, tactical blunders, politically motivated infighting, and a long, wearying siege conducted by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Union forces.
The story of this eight-month ordeal is fascinating, and Foote tells it well, though he writes in a fairly multilayered (but clear) prose style unlike the way he talks, with qualifier building upon qualifier, at times.
What results is an impressive display: Foote gives every indication of knowing key thoughts of the respective generals as well as the terrain over which the contending armies maneuvered. He describes in dispassionate detail seven separate strategies employed by Grant to take the city, each one of which failed - largely because of the formidable geography of the region around Vicksburg and the bull-headedness of Grant's subordinate generals.
Of special interest are Foote's profiles of the personalities involved. The author details Grant's patient maneuvering to rid his army of one troublesome subordinate, the now-forgotten Gen. John McClernand, a former Illinois congressman who had decided that the road to the White House ran through Vicksburg. McClernand overstepped himself at a crucial moment and was relieved of duty by Grant, thus passing into historical oblivion.
Foote effectively sketches the character of William Tecumseh Sherman, another of Grant's lieutenants, who learned that his men could live off the land - and plunder it, too - during the Vicksburg Campaign, a lesson that would serve him well in the 1864 March to the Sea from Atlanta.
There is Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, described by another historian as ``not always lucky in advance, but more dangerous than a running wolf in retreat.'' And finally, of course, there is Grant, the bulldog who grabbed and held on, the man who struggled with binge-drinking and in fact went on a well-documented two-day bender during the final days of the siege - a bender described in vivid detail by Foote.
It is, on the surface, a bit confusing as to why Grant spent the energy he did lying in wait for McClernand to overreach himself, as McClernand (at least as described here) was one of the typical parade-ground popinjays that the Northern high command had in abundance.
Far more troublesome to Grant than the predictable McClernand was Gen. Nathaniel Banks, who, having been embarrassed by Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign of 1862, went west to engage in near-insubordination in 1863. He chose to avoid closing in on Vicksburg from the south, as ordered, instead sending his troops on a time-consuming ramble through the Red River region and finally digging in for a long siege of Port Hudson, La., far to the south of Vicksburg.
The story of the Vicksburg Campaign is carried along effectively by Foote; though the ending is known ahead of time, he imbues it with a sense of suspense. The melding of historical narrative with a storyteller's skill is perhaps Foote's signal contribution to the literature on the War Between the States.
- MEMO: James E. Person Jr., a Virginia native who now lives in Michigan, is the
editor of ``The Unbought Grace of Life: Essays in Honor of Russell
Kirk.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Shelby Foote rose to fame as the author of a three-volume history of
the Civil War, which aired on PBS.
by CNB