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Story Archives: Hogs, hominy & Vicksburg; freedom songs at Grand Gulf
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Hogs, hominy & Vicksburg; freedom songs at Grand Gulf
 (17th in a series)
In 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in a bloody war with the rebelling South, was planning strategy in a meeting with Admiral David Porter on how to capture Vicksburg. By the middle of 1863, the Union Navy had secured the Mississippi River from Vicksburg north to its headwaters and from Port Hudson southward through Baton Rouge and New Orleans to its mouth.
In his book on the war, Porter recalled how eloquently Lincoln expressed the value of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg to the South. Pointing at a map, the President said:
"See, what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key. Here is Red River, which will supply the Confederates with cattle and corn to feed their armies. There are the Arkansas and White Rivers, which can supply cattle and hogs by the thousand. From Vicksburg these supplies can be distributed by rail all over the Confederacy. Then there is that great depot of supplies on the Yazoo.
"Let us get Vicksburg and all that country is ours. The war can never be brought to a close until the key is in our pocket. I am acquainted with that region and know what I am talking about, and valuable as New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg will be more so. We may take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can still defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the States of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference."
By early 1863, Union plans to capture Vicksburg and Port Hudson -- 130 miles apart -- were underway. All throughout this region local governments began defensive preparations for the anticipated invasion of federal troops.
In Catahoula Parish in early 1863, planters were forced to provide slaves to work on the fortifications in Harrisonburg on Fort Beauregard, located atop the high hill above town on the Ouachita River. The Police Jury complained in a resolution on January 6, 1863 to Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor that "military authorities have done a great injustice" to citizens along the Tensas River who were entirely unprotected by the works at Harrisonburg.
At the same meeting, the Police Jury agreed to appropriate $10,000 to block Union gunboats by "putting a raft or other obstruction in Black River or Red River below the mouth of Black River, provided that the parishes of Concordia, Rapides and Avoyelles shall appropriate a like sum for the same purpose..."
Union Gen. U.S. Grant's eventual victory at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, is considered one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history. With a population of 5,000, Vicksburg was built atop a 200-foot bluff on the eastern bank of the Mighty Miss. Union gunboats were able to pass that hairpin turn at Vicksburg in 1863 despite fierce Rebel cannon fire. This passage enabled the Union Navy to transport part of Grant's army to the south from the Louisiana shore across the river to Bruinsburg on the Mississippi side below Grand Gulf.For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
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