Hawkeye Soldiers in the Trenches at Vicksburg

Union gunboats at Vicksburg

The Mississippi rolled past Vicksburg in a brown, patient curve, carrying supplies, rumors, and the quiet certainty that whoever held this bend held the West. Vicksburg sat high on its bluffs, ringed with earthworks and guns, daring the Union army to try. An Iowa soldier said it looked “like a city nailed to the sky.” Another felt as though “the river itself had taken sides.”

Iowa troops had been circling Vicksburg for months before they ever fired a serious shot at it.

 

The winter of 1862–63 had been one long frustration. Grant tried canals, bayous, and backwater marches. Men waded through swamps waist-deep, slept in mud, and ate rations that tasted of mold and dirt. A private in the Twenty-second Iowa said they were “marching in circles through water and mosquitoes,” while another thought the campaign felt like “a lesson in how not to get anywhere.”

Iowa newspapers followed every false start. The Davenport Democrat complained the army was “fighting the country more than the enemy.” The Burlington Hawk-Eye warned readers that the Vicksburg effort was becoming “a test of endurance rather than genius,” but added that Iowa soldiers were “showing no sign of quitting.”

 

Escaped slaves digging the trenches 
outside Vicksburg

Grant didn’t quit either. In the spring of 1863, he marched south of Vicksburg, cut loose from his supply line, crossed the Mississippi, and lived off the land. “I was now ready to make the final effort,” he said. It was a gamble, and the Iowa men were all in.

Iowa regiments crossed the river with the rest of the Army of the Tennessee. The Eleventh, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, Twenty-eighth, and Thirty-first Iowa Infantry all played roles in the campaign. They moved fast, light, and hungry.

 

The first big test came at Port Gibson on May 1. Iowa troops were in the thick of it as Union columns pushed inland. Colonel Samuel Merrill of the Twenty-first Iowa said his men went forward “with the confidence of soldiers who had waited long enough.” A private in the Thirteenth Iowa said the fight came on “like a sudden storm, loud and close.”

 

The Dubuque Herald said the Iowa regiments “behaved with a steadiness worthy of veterans,” noting that Port Gibson proved the army could fight without a safety net.

 

Next came Raymond on May 12. The Twenty-third Iowa, under Colonel William Kinsman, ran headlong into a sharp Confederate defense. The fighting was fierce and confused. Kinsman was killed while leading his men forward, shouting encouragement until a bullet struck him down. One soldier said Kinsman, “fell facing the enemy, just as he had lived.”

 

The Iowa State Register called Kinsman’s death “a loss that cannot be measured,” adding that his regiment “paid dearly but did not flinch.” The paper said Iowa had given Vicksburg “another name written in blood.”

 

At Jackson on May 14, Iowa troops helped drive Confederate forces out of the Mississippi capital. Rain poured down, turning streets into rivers. A soldier in the Fifteenth Iowa said they fought “through water and smoke together.” The city “looked whipped before we were done with it.”

 

Then came Champion Hill on May 16. It was a turning point of the campaign.

 

Iowa regiments were everywhere. The Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Iowa were heavily engaged as the Confederate line bent and nearly broke. The fighting surged back and forth across ridges and fields. A private in the Twenty-second Iowa said the noise was “like tearing the world apart.”

 

Colonel Samuel Merrill was wounded but refused to leave the field. He said his men “stood longer than I had any right to ask.” The Muscatine Journal praised the Twenty-first Iowa for “holding ground that decided the day.”

 

An Iowa soldier summed it up more simply: “We whipped them because we would not stop.”

 

General Ulysses S. Grant

At the Big Black River on May 17, Iowa troops again pressed the retreating Confederates. The Thirteenth and Twenty-first Iowa helped smash through the defenses guarding the crossing. A soldier said the enemy “broke and ran like men who had reached the end of their road.”

By May 18, Vicksburg was surrounded. What followed was a forty-seven-day siege that tested Iowa men in ways marching and battle never had.

 

The heat was brutal. They crawled closer to the Confederate works day by day. Men dug at night, slept in shallow holes, and learned to live under constant fire. A soldier in the Seventeenth Iowa said the earth “shook like a living thing” when the guns opened. Another said a man could “lose his nerve quicker to waiting than to fighting.”

 

Iowa regiments took turns in the trenches. The Twenty-second Iowa, commanded by Colonel William M. Stone, played a key role in the assault on the Railroad Redoubt on May 22. They charged under heavy fire, reached the works, and held on when retreat would have been easier.

 

Stone said his men “clung to the enemy’s parapet through a fire that swept it from end to end.” A private later said, “We stayed because there was nowhere else to belong.”

 

The assault failed, and Grant settled into a siege. Life in the trenches blurred into routine misery. Sharpshooters cracked all day. Artillery thundered. Rations dwindled. Iowa soldiers wrote about hunger constantly. One said he dreamed of bread. Another said bacon had become “a memory, not a thing.”

 

The Keokuk Gate City reported that Iowa men were “living like moles beneath the sun,” while the Davenport Democrat warned Vicksburg was being taken “inch by inch and life by life.”

 

Inside the city, Confederates suffered just as badly. Iowa soldiers could hear civilians crying during bombardments. A private in the Thirteenth Iowa said the sound “took the taste out of victory,” even before it came.

 

On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg surrendered. White flags appeared along the works. Confederate soldiers stacked arms. Iowa men climbed out of the trenches they had lived in for weeks and stared at the city they had taken by patience more than fury.

 

Grant said Vicksburg was “the most complete victory of the war.” Iowa newspapers agreed. The Burlington Hawk-Eye said Mississippi was now “free from its source to the sea.” The Iowa State Register said the fall of Vicksburg had “cut the rebellion in two like a cleaver.”

 

The cost had been high. Iowa regiments lost hundreds killed and wounded across the campaign. Disease took almost as many as bullets. Letters home mixed relief with exhaustion. One Iowa soldier said, “We are alive, and that seems victory enough for now.”

 

The Dubuque Herald said Iowa troops had shown “a kind of endurance that wins wars even when glory grows tired.” Another editor said Vicksburg proved that Iowa men could “march, fight, dig, and wait longer than the enemy believed human.”

 

Grant never forgot the Western soldiers who made it possible. “The men were veterans,” he said, “and they knew what victory costs.”

 

Vicksburg changed the war. It opened the Mississippi, split the Confederacy, and confirmed Grant as the Union’s most relentless commander. For Iowa, it marked a coming of age. These were no longer volunteers learning under fire. They were soldiers who had marched without supplies, fought without rest, and waited without breaking.

 

The Iowa City Republican expressed the belief held by many Iowans, “Vicksburg was not taken by chance or brilliance alone, but by men who would not be worn out.”