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  • Occupied Vicksburg by Bradley R. Clampitt
  • Thomas W. Robinson
Occupied Vicksburg. Bradley R. Clampitt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8071-6338-2. 304 pp., cloth, $48.00.

Many people know the age-old Civil War trivia that, after the fall of the city on July 4, 1863, the residents of Vicksburg did not formally celebrate Independence Day again until the early twentieth century. Much like many other stories related to the war, there is still debate as to how true the tale is. Regardless, when many people think of Vicksburg, they conjure up images of the city on the bluff falling, in tandem with Gettysburg, turning the tide of the war, and the tales of unrepentant Rebels refusing to completely accept the Confederate loss. Bradley Clampitt's book breaks new ground in seeking to understand what happened once the city was under Union control. In this fascinating work, Clampitt shows how Union occupation from the city's capture until the war's end laid the groundwork for the hostility toward "Yankees" but also how the city and surrounding area became an incubator for testing out policies regarding treatment of former slaves, former combatants, and southern civilians.

Clampitt begins by discussing the Confederate surrender, but most of the ground he covers is well trodden and there is not much new here, other than the author pointing out where Union and Confederate leaders may have been self-serving in later accounts. The book really begins to tread new ground in chapter 2, in which Clampitt focuses on the first week of occupation. The officers and men of both sides intermingled, and Ulysses S. Grant spent the week feeding the Confederate army and Vicksburg's civilians while also grappling with what to do with the POWs and the influx of slaves arriving inside Union lines. Grant emerges as a man who [End Page 395] attempted to blend compassion with pragmatism in dealing with all parties. Once Grant moved on, four other Union commanders took turns setting local occupation policy, blending hard war with conciliation, and Clampitt deftly compares the strategy of each.

The most intriguing portion of the book is the final two chapters, which cover Union policy toward African Americans and Confederate resistance to Union occupation. Not surprisingly, what to do with the large numbers of freedpeople occupied the thoughts of both the army and the federal government. Concurrently, Clampitt points out that the army and government were also struggling with what role the newly formed African American troops should take. In works on this era, the two issues are often dealt with separately, and yet I think Clampitt is wise to discuss them in tandem, because it is obvious that with both the former slaves and the black troops, neither the commanders in Vicksburg nor the leaders in Washington, DC, knew what to do with either group. Clampitt mines Union letters and diaries to show that the white soldiers in Vicksburg were equally unsure of what to make of their African American comrades and the refugees. The author does an admirable job of blending the stories of both the high and on-the-ground views. Sadly, though, and perhaps due to a dearth of sources, there are not that many African American voices to discuss their response to Union policies or attitudes. Confederate resistance to the Union occupation came in two forms. First, within Vicksburg, the white citizens detested the constant presence of Union troops and they did not accept emancipation or African American soldiers. White civilians reacted with disdain and incredulity when forced to comply with the orders of black soldiers.

Unsurprisingly, though, Clampitt finds that in order to survive Union occupation, even the most ardent Confederates were not often openly defiant, afraid of the threat of punishment. The second form of resistance was open and flagrant as southern guerillas constantly harassed freedmen and whites who attempted to work abandoned plantations outside the city. Clampitt finds that these guerillas were the main cause of the general failure of the US Treasury Department's scheme to lease plantations. Unfortunately, Clampitt is not able to devote many pages to discuss the guerilla actions, and that...

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