Mississippi Sidestep

In 1862, Confederate guns on Vicksburg’s high bluffs kept the Mississippi River closed to Federal shipping, leading Union leaders to plan to take the city by land, but General Thomas Williams instead proposed digging a canal across the foot of De Soto Point to bypass the batteries. In the June heat, Union soldiers worked alongside more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people to cut the 1.5 mile canal, while sunstroke, exhaustion, malaria, and dysentery afflicted the workers and hundreds died. Williams stopped the effort after one month. In January 1863, General Ulysses Grant revived the project, but illness among the troops and rising river waters that flooded Union camps also hindered his effort. By March, Grant abandoned the attempt to avoid Vicksburg by canal.

Delta, Louisiana · United States