num_pages: 354
description: Of all events of the Civil War none was of greater significance than the fall of Vicksburg. Though the defeat at Gettysburg halted Lee's invasion of the North and the loss of Atlanta crushed the South's hopes for a military victory it was at Vicksburg that the Confederacy suffered a mortal wound from which there was no recovery.The Final Fortress is the first comprehensive story of the prodigious struggle from 1861 when the city was initially singled out by Lincoln as the key target for a major Union victory through the grueling two-year effort to take it both by sea and by land. The great battle is examined from the strategic military standpoint offered by the Official Records of the War published by the Federal government and through the intimate recollection of soldiers and civilians Yankees and Rebels alike.The author vividly recounts the stories of a Union inventor creating a unique war machine; a Confederate engineer whose ships bests the Union Navy; a young Southern woman trapped within the was of Vicksburg; a courier carrying his dispatches down the Mississippi on a floating log; Ulysses S. Grant in his private struggle with boredom and alcoholism; President Jefferson Davis's futile efforts to come to the rescue of the city of Vicksburg and countless other human dramas.The Final Fortress is as readable as a novel and as compelling as the best of stories of men at war. No other book has dealt with the subject in such depth or so eloquently woven the public and private histories of the critical Civil War site into a coherent whole. Samuel Carter's animation and literary skill make The Final Fortress an indispensable addition to the libraries of Civil War buffs in particular and historians in general.
language: English
title: The Final Fortress: The Campaign for Vicksburg 1862-1863
publisher: St. Martin's Press