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Home – American Heritage News – ‘Unvexed to the Waters’: How a July Fourth Victory Turned the Tide at the Nation’s Darkest Hour

‘Unvexed to the Waters’: How a July Fourth Victory Turned the Tide at the Nation’s Darkest Hour

“Four score and seven years” after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the survival of the American experiment was very much in doubt. 

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln oversaw a divided country mired in a civil war with no end in sight. Without decisive Union victories, a protracted conflict could only further dampen Northern support for the war in the 1864 elections, potentially forcing a negotiated peace. Union forces in the east had suffered a string of humiliating defeats. Confederate rebels in the west held fast to a stronghold on the Mississippi River that thwarted Union attempts to impose a complete blockade. The war was truly “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” Lincoln said later in his immortal Gettysburg Address. 

And then, the weekend of Independence Day, 1863, two decisive Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg dealt a mortal blow to the rebellion. While the Battle of Gettysburg has its rightful place in historic military lore, the fall of Vicksburg on July Fourth was arguably of greater importance to the Union ultimately prevailing in its greatest test yet. 

The fortified city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, sat high on bluffs over the Mississippi River and enabled Confederate control of at least part of the crucial waterway. While the Union had asserted clear naval supremacy in the open seas, the Confederate presence on the........

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