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Vicksburg
Civil War diaries and memoirs of inhabitants of besieged Vicksburg and soldiers reveal the heroism and sacrifice that marked the Confederate experience.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 28, 2019
I think I purchased this book at the time of my first visit to the Vicksburg battlefield. It's taken me a long time to read all the way through it despite my abiding interest in its subject matter.
Vicksburg: 47 Days of Siege contains critical and useful information obtained from a bevy of primary sources, judging by the bibliography. Although Hoehling asserts that he gives time to both sides, most of the reports appear to me to come from those besieged within the city. I'm perfectly fine with this and indeed would welcome a book which provides a clear picture of life in Vicksburg in those summer days of 1863. But this is not that book.
Hoehling seems to target a lay-audience more interested in human interest stories than in military stories. Again, this would be acceptable to me. A big part of the problem though is his obdurate failure to identify his sources. It's next to impossible, without an inordinate amount of work, to tie in any of his text with the bibliography he provides. Moreover, it's often enough apparent that Hoehling's sources are describing events that they experienced over many days, perhaps which they recalled years later, that maybe were chronicled in letters or diaries or other reminiscences, but Hoehling, possibly arbitrarily, assigns all of these "recollections" to specific dates in the siege as he gives us a running chronology that claims to recount what happened each day between 18 May and 4 July 1863. It's often (or even usually) impossible to confirm that his supposed chronology is accurate, ballpark-accurate, at all plausible, a creative guess-work reconstruction or, most likely, an irregular combination of all of the above. This makes for a most frustrating read and accounts for the several years it took me to get from the first page to the last.
What's more, Hoehling does not quote his sources in a conventional or consistent manner. Sometimes he uses quotation marks, but other long passages are demarcated within enclosing clusters of asterisms. There's no apparent significance to this unruliness. Who is "speaking" and why their words are set off in this way is by turns obscure and baffling.
An index would make some of these problematic structural problems more or less immaterial; unfortunately, there is no index: this book cannot be made to function in any scholarly or reference manner.
The "album" of photos appended is likewise perplexing if not misleading, since none of the images are dated and many do not provide locations where they were taken (some for example are well-known Civil War images taken a year later in Virginia and Georgia; no mention is made of the discrepancies).
I have a few more books about Grant's Vicksburg campaign that I eagerly anticipate reading. There may be a good book about those Mississippian civilians and the rebel soldiers who ended up confined behind the entrenchments that encircled the city. If so, I don't yet know about it.
Vicksburg: 47 Days of Siege contains critical and useful information obtained from a bevy of primary sources, judging by the bibliography. Although Hoehling asserts that he gives time to both sides, most of the reports appear to me to come from those besieged within the city. I'm perfectly fine with this and indeed would welcome a book which provides a clear picture of life in Vicksburg in those summer days of 1863. But this is not that book.
Hoehling seems to target a lay-audience more interested in human interest stories than in military stories. Again, this would be acceptable to me. A big part of the problem though is his obdurate failure to identify his sources. It's next to impossible, without an inordinate amount of work, to tie in any of his text with the bibliography he provides. Moreover, it's often enough apparent that Hoehling's sources are describing events that they experienced over many days, perhaps which they recalled years later, that maybe were chronicled in letters or diaries or other reminiscences, but Hoehling, possibly arbitrarily, assigns all of these "recollections" to specific dates in the siege as he gives us a running chronology that claims to recount what happened each day between 18 May and 4 July 1863. It's often (or even usually) impossible to confirm that his supposed chronology is accurate, ballpark-accurate, at all plausible, a creative guess-work reconstruction or, most likely, an irregular combination of all of the above. This makes for a most frustrating read and accounts for the several years it took me to get from the first page to the last.
What's more, Hoehling does not quote his sources in a conventional or consistent manner. Sometimes he uses quotation marks, but other long passages are demarcated within enclosing clusters of asterisms. There's no apparent significance to this unruliness. Who is "speaking" and why their words are set off in this way is by turns obscure and baffling.
An index would make some of these problematic structural problems more or less immaterial; unfortunately, there is no index: this book cannot be made to function in any scholarly or reference manner.
The "album" of photos appended is likewise perplexing if not misleading, since none of the images are dated and many do not provide locations where they were taken (some for example are well-known Civil War images taken a year later in Virginia and Georgia; no mention is made of the discrepancies).
I have a few more books about Grant's Vicksburg campaign that I eagerly anticipate reading. There may be a good book about those Mississippian civilians and the rebel soldiers who ended up confined behind the entrenchments that encircled the city. If so, I don't yet know about it.
August 29, 2022
While an interesting book because it is composed entirely of the diaries and recollections of the defenders and some of the besieging forces, it is not Waht one can consider an engaging and coherent read.
The author states up front that the book doesn’t have a traditional plot structure.
If you are a history buff, then the book will interest you. From a strictly human perspective, the struggles of the civilians in Vicksburg under constant bombardment are heroic in many ways.
I would say that if you are going to do an historic tour of Vicksburg, that the background the book provides would be very helpful.
The author states up front that the book doesn’t have a traditional plot structure.
If you are a history buff, then the book will interest you. From a strictly human perspective, the struggles of the civilians in Vicksburg under constant bombardment are heroic in many ways.
I would say that if you are going to do an historic tour of Vicksburg, that the background the book provides would be very helpful.
August 14, 2018
I read Hoehling's book on Vicksburg in order to help prepare for a talk I have to give on the Siege of Vicksburg to a local Civil War group. It provided a lot of valuable information on the impact of the siege upon the civilians in the town and their sufferings and sacrifices as well as their lives in the caves many of them inhabited for safety from the constant shelling. He also gives a real insight into the life of the Rebel soldiers manning the long line of fortifications . Well worth reading!!!
May 1, 2020
War and rumors. A.A. Hoehling's "Vicksburg: 47 Days of Siege" has plenty of both. This valuable, mostly fascinating look from the viewpoints of the noncombatants and soldiery during the Summer 1863 siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, is a nice complement to Edwin Bearss' three-volume Vicksburg Campaign epic, especially considering that Bearss pretty much ignores the citizens caught in the Union encirclement. In fact, I jumped into this right after finishing Bearss' work.
Diaries and other published works from 36 "main characters" form the backbone of this work, though there are entries from a good dozen or so others thrown in. We get to know them through frequent entries. Union and Confederate soldiers, chaplains from both sides, children and adults, men and women; Hoehling presents a good cross-section of people as they try to live their lives amid the bizarre swirl of war. Many of these excerpts are a couple of pages long; therein lies the book's strength and weakness. It's highly valuable and usually very interesting to get these detailed words from the participants. But some people will think it's all too much of a good thing.
Hoehling's approach is almost entirely chronological. The descriptions are day-by-day, though a few of them, I think, are general and are plugged in on various days. This allows us to see the shifting attitudes and see the role of rumor in war. Diary entries time and again repeat information that General Joseph Johnston's army is arriving any time to relieve the Vicksburg Confederates, as well as relating wild talk about Confederate successes in the eastern theater that never happened, many fueled by wildly erroneous newspaper reports. "We may look at any hour for his approach." Johnston, of course, never did come. The writers also state as truth the supposed death of many civilians because of the Union bombardments. Objective history tells us very few civilians actually died; there couldn't have been as many as these writers heard about.
Still, the danger and daily horror these citizens endured comes through loud and clear. Vicksburgians had to dig earthen caves to protect themselves from flying projectiles, and much of the text concerns how they lived in them and how they ran to and from them. And if part of the sadness of war is getting used to it, on the positive side we can admire people's ability to cope with just about anything.
The volume is back-ended with nearly 100 pages of photos of the city, fortifications and participants.
After a few pages of Vicksburg Campaign history to lead off the volume, Hoehling doesn't make his presence felt as much as he should, probably. He ought to be chiming in a bit more about diary entries that aren't factual. But this is quibbling.
"Vicksburg" takes an unusual and compelling approach to the Civil War, bringing it home in ways few books do. If it's long on information and individual narratives, we can endure; the sufferance of participants and bystanders in the Vicksburg siege certainly makes a little effort on readers' parts the least we can do.
Diaries and other published works from 36 "main characters" form the backbone of this work, though there are entries from a good dozen or so others thrown in. We get to know them through frequent entries. Union and Confederate soldiers, chaplains from both sides, children and adults, men and women; Hoehling presents a good cross-section of people as they try to live their lives amid the bizarre swirl of war. Many of these excerpts are a couple of pages long; therein lies the book's strength and weakness. It's highly valuable and usually very interesting to get these detailed words from the participants. But some people will think it's all too much of a good thing.
Hoehling's approach is almost entirely chronological. The descriptions are day-by-day, though a few of them, I think, are general and are plugged in on various days. This allows us to see the shifting attitudes and see the role of rumor in war. Diary entries time and again repeat information that General Joseph Johnston's army is arriving any time to relieve the Vicksburg Confederates, as well as relating wild talk about Confederate successes in the eastern theater that never happened, many fueled by wildly erroneous newspaper reports. "We may look at any hour for his approach." Johnston, of course, never did come. The writers also state as truth the supposed death of many civilians because of the Union bombardments. Objective history tells us very few civilians actually died; there couldn't have been as many as these writers heard about.
Still, the danger and daily horror these citizens endured comes through loud and clear. Vicksburgians had to dig earthen caves to protect themselves from flying projectiles, and much of the text concerns how they lived in them and how they ran to and from them. And if part of the sadness of war is getting used to it, on the positive side we can admire people's ability to cope with just about anything.
The volume is back-ended with nearly 100 pages of photos of the city, fortifications and participants.
After a few pages of Vicksburg Campaign history to lead off the volume, Hoehling doesn't make his presence felt as much as he should, probably. He ought to be chiming in a bit more about diary entries that aren't factual. But this is quibbling.
"Vicksburg" takes an unusual and compelling approach to the Civil War, bringing it home in ways few books do. If it's long on information and individual narratives, we can endure; the sufferance of participants and bystanders in the Vicksburg siege certainly makes a little effort on readers' parts the least we can do.
July 29, 2014
Interesting since I knew very little about the history of the siege of Vicksburg until we toured the battlefield several years ago. This book consists of first person accounts of the siege. The language of the time is quite florid and belies the real horror of the constant 47 day bombardment of the city. The last part of the book is an album of photographs of the city, fortifications and people taken at the time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews