Big Black River: The Last Door Closes on Vicksburg

The day after Champion Hill, on May seventeenth, eighteen sixty-three, the remnants of Pemberton's battered Confederate army reached the Big Black River, the last significant natural barrier between Grant's pursuing Union forces and the city of Vicksburg itself. What happened at the river crossing took less than an hour, but it removed any lingering hope that Vicksburg might escape a siege.

Pemberton ordered Brigadier General John S. Bowen to hold the east bank of the river with three brigades while the rest of the army crossed to safety. The Confederates threw up earthworks and breastworks behind a loop of the river, a position that looked defensible on the map. But the men inside those works were demoralized, exhausted, and still reeling from the previous day's defeat.

Union General John A. McClernand's corps came up from Edwards Station in the morning and found the Confederates dug in across the river loop. One of his brigade commanders, Brigadier General Michael Lawler, a famously aggressive officer who weighed over two hundred pounds and led from the front, saw an opportunity in a low swale near the river. He formed his brigade in a shallow cut and launched a direct assault across the front of the Confederate position, crashing into the breastworks before the defenders could fully respond. The Confederate line collapsed in minutes. Panicking soldiers fled across the railroad bridge and a steamboat laid crosswise in the river as a makeshift second bridge. Once the last men crossed, they set fire to both.

Grant's army captured almost eighteen hundred prisoners at the Big Black River, men already lost to the Confederate cause before the siege even began. Pemberton retreated into Vicksburg and the city's gates closed around him. The siege would last forty-seven days.