Movement through Vicksburg

[SouthernRebel772]

I have always heard many say that with the fall of Vicksburg the west was cut from the east and much in the way of supplies was kept from the theaters of operations further east.

I am wondering if anyone may have any information on the amounts of supplies and goods that moved through Vicksburg before its fall in July 1863.

 

[whitworth]

An historian never made any money writing of supplies during the Civil War. Besides, the study of logistics, railroads, and steamboats would only convince you that secession was not a very good idea. By late 1862 getting any supplies from the west was getting near impossible. The Union controlled steamboat traffic on the Mississippi River for the most part, having taken the lower Mississippi River, New Orleans, and Memphis, north of Vicksburg, in 1862.
After the loss of Corinth, Miss., after the Confederate loss at nearby Shiloh, Tenn., it is little noted in history that supplies from the east, west to Vicksburg, were severely cut. Any supplies from the east and Atlanta had to go on railroad to Montgomery Ala. then by steamboat to Selma on the Alabama river for some fifty miles, then on the only Confederate railroad connection to Vicksburg, after 1862. (Just try to find that in the battle book histories)

The Confederacy fought bravely but lost the war. Historians are not prone to write about logistics and pour salt in their wounds.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I've wondered about this item myself. Some books say that there were a lot of raw materials out in the Trans-Mississippi that the eastern half of the Confederacy needed; some say there wasn't much that flowed between the two sections; and some say that the Trans-Mississippi was mostly important to holding the Mississippi (which seems sort of circular reasoning to me, as it implies that if you don't need the Trans-Mississippi, then you don't need to defend the Mississippi).

I think, when you come down to it, it's more about what they thought was important at the time. Certainly both Lincoln and Davis thought that control of the Mississippi Valley was important. They may both have been wrong, but they seemed to agree on that point.

 

[Dave Wilma]

It seems to me that for bulk supplies like foodstuffs the routes from west to east are not so much by rail and across the Mississippi as much as down and then up the tributaries by steamboat. As pointed out above there was no neat, clean east-west railroad or even a good series of lines. And transshipping cargos from train to wagon to train is cumbersome and expensive. Shipping as far as you can by steamer makes the most sense. In that case domination of the Mississippi makes sense not so much from cutting the artery, but blocking it.

Books about logistics do not sell.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Books about logistics do not sell.

I've picked up a few. But no, I don't expect to see any on the best-seller lists. Titles like Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War, The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military Industrial Complex, 1847-1883, Tariffs, Blockades and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War, or Blockade Running During The Civil War and the Effect of Land and Water Transportation on the Confederacy don't seem to have the cachet of things like "Twilight" or "50 Shades of Gray" for some reason.

 

[Dave Wilma]

I just listened to a podcast by an author who wrote about the Battle of the Marne in 1914 (I have mentioned this in another thread). He points out that the German General Staff ignored the lessons of the ACW because they were "militia armies." What the Germans missed was the lesson of logistics. As a consequence, according to the author, the Germans failed in their invasion of France. And they failed in their calculation of the economics of sustaining a major war.

 

[Blessmag]

I know during the war, the only railroad from Arkansas ran from Little Rock east to DeVall's Bluff and then to Memphis. So that is one state that would have to use water ways, which is what they did with the White river and Arkansas. My ancestor's regiment got to ride and guard supplies for the Union on that railroad. Also defended the water way being stationed at the mouth of the White river.

Based on the title of the thread, one could reply 'the black eyed pea flower they ate kept the men in Vicksburg flowing quite well, from an intestinal perspective!'

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Based on the title of the thread, one could reply 'the black eyed pea flower they ate kept the men in Vicksburg flowing quite well, from an intestinal perspective!'

Ewwww!

 

[Sid J.]

The Red River was a significant commercial route, with several navigable tributaries and bayous, so keeping it open, in part or in full, was significant to the Confederacy. Another route was the rail from Monroe LA to DeSoto, directly opposite Vicksburg.

But as to amounts of goods shipped eastward across the river, I've not seen any real data on that. And as stated earlier, different authors have issued different opinions as to how large it was.

And even after the fall of Vicksburg, the confederacy was able to, anecdotally, move back and forth across the river in small boats. These numbers, if available, would probably turn out to be miniscule.

Many discussions here hinge on "perception vs. reality" and this may well be another area where perception trumps reality.

Nonetheless, naval supremacy on the Mississippi also gave the Union a degree of control on all the navigable tributaries, bayous etc. and this suppressed movement of supplies to the Confederates over a vast geographical area.

 

[Red Harvest]

I've been wondering this question of late as well. How much and what was being sent back and forth in the Vicksburg region, all the way to Port Hudson? I didn't find any satisfying answers in the way of statistics in a quick check of Ballard or Smith.

What I do gather is that the area between Port Hudson and Vicksburg provided the last real link of the Trans-Mississippi with the rest of the Confederacy. So severing the link would reduce the operational and logistical flexibility of the CSA. And of course, opening the Mississippi to the Union would be a larger benefit to the Northern war effort. The transfer of a good veteran army from the Trans-Mississippi to the Western theater is an example of the value of keeping the river crossings open for the CSA.

Vicksburg did have at least one cannon foundry, A.B. Reading, and a shop that did finishing for other Western founders, Paxton. This must have been important for the Trans-Mississippi theater as the region had lost its access to other cannon foundries with the fall of Memphis and New Orleans (Quinby & Robinson, Leeds & Co., John Clark & Co., Bujac & Bennett, Bennett & Lurges, S. Wolff & Co.)

When Banks was preparing to march on Port Hudson the 11,000 or so Confederates in the area were receiving regular rations of "Texas beef."

Perhaps another way of considering the question is how much could the CSA have moved men, materiel, food, cattle, and horses across the Mississippi if there had not been coordinated pressure to open the Mississippi? Unmolested, would there have been a heavy traffic of beef and horses from Texas to the Western armies? Would rail links have been improved enough to ship corn to some areas east of the Mississippi? And would the Trans-Mississippi army also have received better arms and ammunition from the east of the river? This is what Lincoln and other Union strategists feared and what Davis hoped.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I know that I just read in Donald S. Frazier's Thunder Across the Swamp: The Fight for the Lower Mississippi, February-May 1863 that Farragut's blocking of the Red River in March 1863 directly prevented the shipping of 10,000 head of cattle to Port Hudson, a not-inconsiderable amount. However, that doesn't do much to answer the basic question (how much did the remainder of the Confederacy depend on raw materials from the Trans-Mississippi?) since that was going directly to support a position being held to keep the link open.

I don't have the data available and don't know if it's available anywhere, but it seems to me that in order to answer the question, we'd have to know some values of interstate trade in commodities across the Mississippi both pre-war and in 1861-2.

 

[TerryB]

I'd like to know the answer to this one, too. It sounds like a good topic for a grad school thesis.

A bit off the topic, but I learned more about Wheeler's cavalry from a grad thesis that I found in the stacks at Vandy. It was by J.P. Dyer and was far , far, more detailed than his popular works or anything other Wheeler biographers wrote. I often wish I had a copy.

 

[NedBaldwin]

After Vicksburg surrendered, Us forces captured 5,000 cattle and a million rounds of ammmunition near Natchez. These supplies had recently crossed the river. Seems to me that there was a steady flow of food from the west. Military goods were also being brought up from factories in Texas or imported through Mexico.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Yeah, I don't doubt that the Trans-Mississippi was an 'exporter' of goods to the "Core Confederacy." I'm just not sure how great an impact the severing of the T-M had in that regard... say, if the decision had been made to basically abandon the T-M to its fate and concentrate on holding (say) Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, would that area be able to sustain itself in raw materials? But maybe that's a moot question-- a Confederacy that didn't pledge to defend each of its States would likely see a number of those States go off on their own, so the Richmond government was basically forced to try to defend the T-M and Mississippi Valley.

 

[NedBaldwin]

... say, if the decision had been made to basically abandon the T-M to its fate and concentrate on holding (say) Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, would that area be able to sustain itself in raw materials?

I think the late war situation shows that the answer is no.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

As it happened, no, it couldn't... but suppose in early 1862, the Confederacy had abandoned its attempts to defend all the states and the Mississippi, and concentrated to defend the "core" area. Would that core area then have the wherewithal to sustain itself until (say) 1866?

 

[SouthernRebel772]

I'd like to know the answer to this one, too. It sounds like a good topic for a grad school thesis.

A bit off the topic, but I learned more about Wheeler's cavalry from a grad thesis that I found in the stacks at Vandy. It was by J.P. Dyer and was far , far, more detailed than his popular works or anything other Wheeler biographers wrote. I often wish I had a copy.

I agree with the thesis statement. In fact I though just before I read your post that if I went for a degree in military history it would make a good subject. Figure how much in goods could be transported by steamer, or ferry. How many of these were available etc...

My main point with this post was to know if the loss of Vicksburg, the city, aside from its army, truly halted any flow of goods between the east and west, and truly affected the war effort. To me, the Confederacy wasn't really split in two with the cities fall, more like a quarter, in terms of resources and men.

 

[Red Harvest]

As it happened, no, it couldn't... but suppose in early 1862, the Confederacy had abandoned its attempts to defend all the states and the Mississippi, and concentrated to defend the "core" area. Would that core area then have the wherewithal to sustain itself until (say) 1866?

I guess it depends on when in 1862. I'll propose after Shiloh. While the fall of Donelson had broken the defensive position, the failure at Shiloh seemed to guarrantee that the rail hub of Corinth would fall. Van Dorn strips Arkansas/Missouri of troops just as before. Curtis is on the prowl after winning at Pea Ridge. Memphis is lost. New Orleans and Baton Rouge are in Federal hands.

The problem in defending a core and in allowing the other places to fall is that the regions given up at the outset are now a springboard for the next Federal move. That moves up the timetable for operations against various Confederate ports along the Gulf Coast, particularly Mobile. The Union could push control deeper into Arkansas much sooner as well, relieving some of the pressure of disruptive raids into Missouri from northern Arkansas.

The positive for the CSA is that it now has larger mobile forces with which to resist Union initiatives for 1863 and that gives it advantages if it can concentrate against one or another Union initiative. But this also means that the Union timetable has moved up by the better part of a year and the Union has more forces available for offensives as well (not likely proportionately larger, which would allow shifts of CSA forces to obtain local advantages.) The problem for the CSA is that it's interior is more threatened, and its infrastructure no better so that it would be hard taxed to move the extra men for dynamic defense. That might not be critical though. Perhaps a Federal army would be routed somewhere in the West in late 1862.

Jackson, MS, and Little Rock, AR would likely fall before the end of 1862. Jackson is another rail hub, so that will hurt. I would expect Mobile Bay's forts to fall in 1863. This would put increased pressure on Wilmington and Charleston.

I suspect the impact of morale in the T-M would be awful, damaging the ability to field an effective army in the theater. It isn't clear that it would necessarily reduce guerrilla operations in Missouri, but cavalry raids would be harder to conduct with the CS forces backed into Southern Arkansas, so the guerrillas would have less direct CS support. The Missouri State Militia cavalry formed in early 1862 might handle the load in Summer of 1862 and not require the call up of statewide EMM militia that fed CSA recruiting in the state. In Arkansas and Texas the Camden and Red River expeditions respectively would be possible a year earlier (not that those went well for the Union...)

So it really depends on what the CSA can accomplish in the West in 1863 with a more dynamic defense/open position and more heavy pieces on the board as we like to say in chess. To compensate for the other losses it would need to hold Chattanooga throughout and probably rout/capture the better part of a large Federal army in the theater, perhaps two armies. That's a tall order.

 

[NedBaldwin]

As it happened, no, it couldn't... but suppose in early 1862, the Confederacy had abandoned its attempts to defend all the states and the Mississippi, and concentrated to defend the "core" area. Would that core area then have the wherewithal to sustain itself until (say) 1866?

I still say no. Shortages of meat, salt, and other things in the "core" was already a concern to the Commissary-General by mid of the Confederacy in mid 1862.

 

[Red Harvest]

About those cattle. I still can't find a number shipped across the river. But at the time there were estimated to be about 3.5 million head in Texas compared to a million each in Georgia and another state that I neglected to write down. Florida had about 650,000 and efforts to move its herds north were partially in response to the loss of Vicksburg.

According to some info on the war in Fort Worth the fall of Vicksburg resulted in the price per head of cattle dropping from $50 to $5 in Fort Worth.

I found an estimate that after the fall of Vicksburg about 200,000 head were sent north to Kansas through the Indian Territory. This is from an online text from 1960 "Wild, Woolly, and Wicked" about Kansas cow towns. This seems high but is somewhat supported in McCoy's book on the cattle trade (he's the one that built the trade through Abilene) which recounts 260,000 passing through Abilene in 1866 alone. At that time prices were still in the $3-6 per head range.

My guess based on the above is that Texas was sending a minimum of 100,000 plus cattle per year across the Mississippi during the war, perhaps several times that. It should be enough to keep a moderate to large sized field army in beef year around.