Listener Call 1

ED AYERS: As we were putting together today’s show, a list in Connecticut named Matt got in touch with us with a question about the river’s role in the Civil War. He wanted to know how much control of the river actually mattered.

MATT: So about the Mississippi River, I know it’s very important to the geography and landscape. And during the Civil War, if it had changed hands more times, would that have affected the outcome of the war either way? I actually am a big alternate history buff. So those little questions, those what-ifs have always fascinated me.

PETER ONUF: I think, Ed, the question that Matt is asking, what if Vicksburg had not fallen, and the Union Navy hadn’t established control of the entire Mississippi?

ED AYERS: You know, that’s a big counterfactual. So what would it mean if one of the most important things that happened in the Civil War had not happened?

PETER ONUF: Didn’t happen.

BRIAN BALOGH: Hey, guys, just help a 20th century guy out and tell me where Vicksburg is.

ED AYERS: It’s Mississippi, Brian. And so it’s on the Lower Mississippi River. So what you’ve got, Brian, is the Confederacy extends, you may recall, to Texas and Arkansas, Louisiana. So part of the very strength of the Confederacy is its vast scale. And the whole idea that you’re going to conquer this area the size of continental Europe is one of the great defenses of the South. That would be impossible.

But from the very beginning, the plan is to drive a stake through the heart of the Confederacy to divide the east from the west by controlling the Mississippi River. And it starts off great, with New Orleans following all too easily from the viewpoint the Confederates. But what remains is the Gibraltar of the Confederacy, high on the bless of the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, Mississippi– the capacity to fire down on any of the arrogant Yankee ships and boats that want to try to use the Mississippi to go all the way from the Gulf to the upper South and into the North and the Ohio. So it’s so strategic.

PETER ONUF: So Ed?

ED AYERS: Yes.

PETER ONUF: The significance of the Mississippi is the North-South connection for the Yankees– that is, for the Union. They could split the Confederacy if the controlled that route. The Confederates need to go East-West to keep the two parts of Confederacy together.

ED AYERS: That’s exactly right. And it’s also the case that a lot of first southern slave holders were taking their slaves to Texas and Arkansas, places on the other side of the Mississippi River. So it’s crucial that they had this.

MATT: Right. Because what I just thought of is if the Confederates had the Mississippi, they could have conceivably sailed up the Mississippi and come into the North from coming from behind our lines, if we didn’t take control so early.

ED AYERS: Well, I’m glad you have a completely nonpartisan view of this. It’s your lines, huh? And of course, it is the United States’ lines. So I think collectively we can say ours. But nevertheless, yeah, I think that the Union Army and Navy has control over the rest of the river, too.

So I don’t think it’s too much of a threat that the Confederates are actually going to be able to go up passed Memphis or Saint Louis, say. I think this is more of the defensive position rather than offensive position.

BRIAN BALOGH: OK, guys. Let me ask another question, since I obviously don’t know anything about this. What was the reaction to the fall of Vicksburg? Was there some kind of big symbolism implicated here?

ED AYERS: What people tend to forget is that Vicksburg had been a dickens for the United States to take. They’d been working for months and months. In some ways, it’s not unlike the situations of the war that we find ourselves in today, Brian. People know where we are. We know what we’re trying to accomplish. We just don’t seem to be able to accomplish it, because it really is the Gibraltar. It’s on these high bluffs. How are you going to take it from below?

And so Grant is there trying to do all this. So everybody’s watching this. But what people are not expecting is some battle in a completely irrelevant place that takes place at exactly the same time called Gettysburg. So if you’d ask anybody in June, what’s going to be the turning point in the war, it’s going to be what happens in Vicksburg.

PETER ONUF: I think there’s a dimension of this that’s really important. That is that Southern expansionists– and Confederates did believe that they had an expansive future, they had a kind of manifest destiny– saw the Mississippi as the great avenue toward drawing in the upper Midwest into the orbit of the Confederacy. That is, the Mississippi was going to enable the Confederacy to control the heartland, that whole river system, because of the natural affinity of Northern grain producers for Southern slave owners and consumers.

This was going to be the grand future of the Confederacy. And by the time we hit Vicksburg in 1863, the Confederacy in that original sense hardly exists, because it’s on the defensive. It’s not expanding. In fact, it’s on the verge of contraction. And maybe people fear collapse.

ED AYERS: That’s great, Peter. And I think if you look at how people voted in 1860, you’ll see a lot of people who are trading with the South along the rivers of the Ohio and along the Mississippi are actually sympathetic to the South, because their market is the South. So I think that Peter’s exactly right, Matt, that the symbolic value of Vicksburg is probably more important, frankly, than the strategic value of it by the time that it falls in 1863.

MATT: No, I would agree with that.

ED AYERS: And it finally falls when they try an outrageous strategy of not trying to take it from the river anymore, but this incredible engineering feat led by Grant and his troops, to come around the back of Vicksburg and take it over land, through the swamps and bayous. So to answer your question directly, I think the Civil War would have turned out the same way regardless. But that doesn’t mean that the battle for the final control of the Mississippi wasn’t of enormous symbolic value to both the North and the South.

It took us a while. That was kind of like Grant’s attempt to take Vicksburg. It took us a while to circle around the topic.

BRIAN BALOGH: We went through swamp route. We went through the swamp route. So Matt, say hello to the Housatonic for me, speaking of rivers.

MATT: All right. I will do that the next time I see it.

PETER ONUF: Thanks a lot for calling.

MATT: All right, thanks a lot.

ED AYERS: Bye-bye.

PETER ONUF: If you’d like to be a caller on an upcoming show, have a look at our website to see the topics we’re working on. That’s all at backstoryradio.org.

BRIAN BALOGH: It’s time for another break. When we come back, we’ll hear from survivors of the largest flood in the history of the Mississippi, the flood of 1927.

ED AYERS: You’re listening to BackStory. We’ll be back in a minute.