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Hand-drawn map by William T. Sherman outlining the Union plan of attack for the Siege of Vicksburg, the decisive 1863 campaign that secured control of the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy in two, and is widely regarded as one of the war’s great turning points. The map, accomplished by Sherman in pencil on a blue 7.25 x 4.25 sheet, shows the Mississippi River bend, the town of Vicksburg, and Union trenches indicated west of the city. Lettered positions A through G are penned in a contemporary hand and explained in the lower section: “AB river Mississippi / CD point where it was attempted by canal to direct the river from the town / E and F positions of the attacking army as they advanced before invading the town / G point where Admiral Porters gun boats became blocked in by Southerners and were relieved by Sherman." The upper section is inscribed by a contemporary witness: “Plan of the attack of Vicksburg drawn by Genl. Sherman himself in the W. R. Office, Mullin, March 8th/72.” Affixed to a slightly larger backing sheet annotated in the right border: “Found amongst General Shutworth Ralors papers by his son in law, C. A. Croble, 1 June 1912.” In fine condition.
The Vicksburg Campaign was essentially the Union's strategic penetration of the south down the Mississippi, and in this map with its notes, Sherman documents some points of attack: ‘Admiral Porter with 11 vessels pushed his way through the heavily obstructed waterways while Sherman followed with foot troops. The Confederates, however, stopped the boats at Rolling Fork and almost succeeded in bottling up and destroying Porter's fleet. Word of Porter's danger reached Sherman late in the day…Undertaking a daring night march, lighted by candles stuck in their rifle barrels, Sherman's men arrived in time to save Porter.’ [Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary]
Major General Ulysses S. Grant began the Vicksburg campaign in late 1862 and captured the city on July 4, 1863, the same day Major General George G. Meade’s army held at Gettysburg — the twin turning points of the war. Major General William T. Sherman commanded the XV Corps throughout the campaign, personally leading the relief of Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter’s gunboat flotilla when Confederate forces bottled it up in the Yazoo Delta bayous in February 1863. Sherman’s men marched through the night with candles stuck in their rifle barrels for light, arriving in time to prevent the destruction of Porter’s fleet. The canal at point CD was Grant’s failed attempt to divert the Mississippi around the Vicksburg batteries, one of four approaches abandoned before his decisive overland move south of the city. Sherman drew this map in 1872 at what a contemporary inscription identifies as the “W.R. Office,” almost certainly the War Records Office in Washington, where he was then serving as General of the Army and Commanding General of the United States Army, and where the official records of the war were being compiled. The map is thus both a battle document and an act of historical witness: Sherman reconstructing on paper, for the record, what he and Grant had fought nine years before.
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