The Civil War in Mississippi: Major Campaigns and Battles by Michael B. Ballard (review)

Michael B. Ballard’s new book on military activities in Mississippi during the Civil War gives readers an overview of one of the conflict’s most active and important theaters of operation. The book is part of the University Press of Mississippi’s excellent Heritage of Mississippi series and serves as a companion volume to a fine book by Timothy B. Smith on the state’s Civil War home front. Ballard’s familiarity with Mississippi’s battles and battlefields is beyond question as he previously authored a popular tourist guidebook of Mississippi Civil War sites. Using a host of primary and secondary sources, Ballard tells Mississippi’s Civil War history in chronological order, beginning with a brief overview of the conflict’s roots. In so doing, he accomplishes in general terms his stated goal, which is “to explain the evolution of military actions, how campaigns developed and were carried out, and what factors influenced strategy and tactics” (xiii).

After a brief introduction relating background material on the secession movement in Mississippi and early mobilization of Confederate forces, Ballard’s book is organized chronologically, discussing campaigns and battles as well as the military conduct of leaders involved in the struggle. He begins his discussion with the fallout from the exceedingly bloody Battle of Shiloh, which was fought in April 1862 in Tennessee, just north of the Mississippi state line. Shiloh was fought by Union troops on a campaign to capture Corinth, an important northeast Mississippi railroad center, and Confederate troops attempted to fend off the invasion. While Shiloh stopped the Union advance temporarily, the Federals eventually moved on Corinth, forcing the Confederates to abandon the town. Ballard highlights the military significance attached to the loss of Corinth and also takes the opportunity to criticize Confederate president and Mississippi native Jefferson Davis, who, after Shiloh, second-guessed his generals in the field as being out of touch with events going on at the time in his home state. The author moves on to cover the Union army’s unsuccessful first attempt to capture the well-fortified Mississippi River port of Vicksburg. This is perhaps the book’s most captivating chapter, as the Federals’ first attempt to capture the city in 1862 is often overshadowed by the more dramatic story of the fall of Vicksburg the following year. One of the reasons this chapter is of interest is that it gives readers a glimpse into the nature of naval action on the Mississippi River and also tells the story of the CSS Arkansas, a Confederate ironclad that at one point took on an entire Federal fleet and inflicted significant damage.

Ballard surveys the Battle of Iuka in northeast Mississippi and the Confederates’ unsuccessful attempt to retake Corinth soon afterward and then moves on to a discussion of U. S. Grant’s famous Vicksburg campaign of 1863. Readers can move with Grant through the Mississippi countryside as Ballard gives brief accounts of the battles that took place leading up to the fall of the Confederate stronghold. Curiously, although the book is a military history, it offers only a sparse account—limited to about three pages, including a map—of the Battle of Champion Hill, the most important battle of Vicksburg campaign and one that some argue was the most important ever fought in Mississippi. Another interesting chapter in the book is Ballard’s treatment of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Meridian campaign of 1864. Often overshadowed by the general’s later, more famous March to the Sea, the Meridian campaign was effectively a dress rehearsal for the “total war” strategy Sherman used in Georgia. Moving across much of central Mississippi, Sherman’s men destroyed railroad tracks and anything else they believed might be helpful to the Confederate war effort while facing only limited resistance. During the latter stages of the war, Mississippi was no longer a focal point of Union military strategy...