Vicksburg

Monday 21 February 2011
Why did the Indians build the mounds? The smaller house sized mounds were built as the foundation of the house of the chief. Each new chief built his new house on top of and slightly larger than the old chief's house. But the huge mounds, like the Emerald Mound in the picture yesterday, were ceremonial centers. (Doesn't an archeologiest always say it was for religious reasons?)

Vicksburg, Mississippi was one of the keys to winning the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln gave U.S. Grant the job of capturing it. Until I visited it today I had no idea how difficult an assignment that was. High hills, good fortifications and a large Confederate army made Vicksburg a very tough nut to crack. Grant tried digging canals (to get ships by?) troop movements and lured the Confederates out of their forts when he attached Jackson, Mississippi, and beat them there. But when they ran back to their forts they were still hard to root out. So finally Grant tried good old fashioned siege warfare. The sick and hungry Confederates finally surrendered. We saw the hills each side fought over. We saw nearly countless memorials, statues, plaques, and state-by-state monuments to various state regiments. I was amazed at the large number of cannons scattered around the battlefield. The most interesting exhibit was the remains of the gunboat Cairo. It was the first armored ship sunk by a mine detonated by electricity. Five of these guys were built near St. Louis and they were heavily armored above the water. They had a lot of weaknesses but they were big and their guns were really big. The National Park Service raised the Cairo from the river bottom and put her on display. See the picture.

We drove to Gulfport a few blocks from Jefferson Davis' last home and walked on the beach. It was windy and the sun had set.