Grant Wins the War

by James R. Arnold

Historian James R. Arnold powerfully and persuasively argues that the Union victory at Vicksburg in 1863 was in fact the actual turning point of the war. Grant was unlike Lincoln's other generals. He had won a great victory at Fort Donelson, but that was more than a year earlier. His subsequent command at the battle of Shiloh became a bloodbath, and most people attributed the eventual Union victory not to Grant, but to the leadership of the reinforcing army's commander, Major General Don Carlos Buell. As he began his drive into Mississippi, Grant was on trial, both as a man and as a leader. After repeated failures, Grant outflanked Vicksburg and won a dramatic victory at the battle of Port Gibson, securing a bridgehead over the Mississippi River below Vicksburg. He now occupied a position situated between the two fortified Confederate citadels of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, with his back to the continent's greatest river and his army dependent upon a precarious line of supply. The conve