I could get lost in this ten volume set of civil war photography and commentary for days. The Photographic History of the Civil War was published in 1911 by The Review of Reviews Company. If you’re anything like a civil war buff, you know about this set. It’s amazing. I did get lost in Volume 2 when I found the section on The Battle of Champion Hill and The Siege of Vicksburg. It’s part of our civil war display in light of this 150th anniversary and the event we had last week with Jeff Shaara for his second novel in a trilogy, A Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg. For those of you who need to brush up a little bit on what was happening around here 150 years ago, here are few photos and drawings plus some basic history notes. If you want more, we have a great civil war section!
Raising the Stars and Stripes Over the Capitol the State of Mississippi engraving from Harper’s Weekly, 20 June 1863 after the capture of Jackson by Union forces during the American Civil War
The Battle of Jackson, fought on May 14, 1863, in Jackson, Mississippi, was part of the Vicksburg Campaign in the American Civil War. Union commander Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee defeated Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, seizing the city, cutting supply lines, and opening the path to the west and the Siege of Vicksburg. (from Wiki)
Battle of Jackson, Mississippi–Gallant charge of the 17th Iowa, 80th Ohio and 10th Missouri, supported by the first and third brigades of the seventh division / sketched by A.E. Mathews, 31st Reg., O.V.I.
Shirley White’s House at Vicksburg 1863
The Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
When two major assaults (May 19 and May 22, 1863) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. With no reinforcement, supplies nearly gone, and after holding out for more than forty days, the garrison finally surrendered on July 4. This action (combined with the capitulation of Port Hudson on July 9) yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who would hold it for the rest of the conflict.
The Confederate surrender following the siege at Vicksburg is sometimes considered, when combined with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg the previous day, the turning point of the war. It also cut off communication with Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department for the remainder of the war. (from Wiki)
Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.
‘All right, Eudora Welty, what are you going to do about it? Sit down there with your mouth shut?’ asked a stranger over a long distance in one of the midnight calls that I suppose have waked most writers in the South from time to time. It is part of the same question: Are fiction writers on call to be crusaders? For us in the South who are fiction writers, is writing a novel something we can do about it?
Bill Cheng will be signing and reading at Lemuria at 5:00 and 5:30 on Monday, May 20th.
