Vicksburg, Donald L. Miller
Vicksburg, Donald L. Miller
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Vicksburg
Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy

Author: Donald L. Miller

Narrator: Rick Adamson

Unabridged: 21 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/29/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Winner of the Civil War Round Table of New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award
Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize
Winner of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award

“A superb account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. It took Grant’s army and Admiral David Porter’s navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender.

In this “elegant…enlightening…well-researched and well-told” (Publishers Weekly) work, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city “with probing intelligence and irresistible passion” (Booklist). He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution. With Vicksburg “Miller has produced a model work that ties together military and social history” (Civil War Times).

Vicksburg solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but ultimately he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war—the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.

About Donald L. Miller

Donald L. Miller is the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History Emeritus at Lafayette College and author of ten books, including Vicksburg, and Masters of the Air, currently being made into a television series by Tom Hanks. He has hosted, coproduced, or served as historical consultant for more than thirty television documentaries and has written for The New York TimesThe Washington Post, and other publications.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mary

This book is more about Cory and Lucille. We also get to experience the days leading to and the days of the siege of Vicksburg. The series continues to hold me. I am glad I came upon the series at the time that I did so I can read all of them and won't have to wait for the next to be published.......more

This is a battle that many of the history books ignore. You read about the importance of the Gettysburg campaign, and all of the other eastern campaigns... but you never really find much about the struggles of the western campaigns. Usually, you hear/read about the Union army moving down the Mississ......more

Goodreads review by Chris

I enjoyed the 5th book in the Civil War series and really do like the characters of Cory and Lucille. Vicksburg is one of the turning points in the Civil War and I thought that the author spent a little too much time on the love story between the two main characters and a not enough time on the actu......more

Goodreads review by Levi

Reasoner again delivers an amazing story. But, contrary to the other books in this serie so far, Vicksburg has a quite unecessary side-story between Lucille and Palmer Kincaid. The last 2 chapters are the conclusion of this sub-plot that honestly, was very unneeded. The book would be better without......more


Quotes

"Miller makes a strong case for the capture of Vicksburg being the turning point of the Civil War—more important than the almost simultaneous Battle of Gettysburg. . . . Narrator Rick Adamson keeps track of quotations with subtle shifts in tone and avoids a confusing multiplicity of accents. He gives us a saga of military brilliance and incompetence linked to the struggle of emancipation."