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Interview in Civil War Times – August 2020 with Donald L. Miller CWT: This is your first book on the Mississippi. Historians point to how Civil War. Why? Grant captured an entire enemy army DM: While working as a consultant at Vicksburg, opened the Mississippi and writer on the American Experi- River all the way to New Orleans, and ence documentary on Grant, I came to split the Confederacy in two, but he believe that Grant’s Mississippi Valley did a lot more. His army destroyed the Campaign was a decisive turning point plantation oligarchy in Mississippi, not only of the Civil War but of all freed more than 100,000 slaves, and of American history. The campaign put nearly 26,000 African-American changed who we are as a nation. My males in Union Blue. Slaves partici- book isn’t strictly a military history. It’s pated in their own liberation by taking a war history. It deals with the social the enormous risk of running away and political implications of military from their “owners” to the Federal action, and most especially with the army, where they ran into a lot of mis- overthrow of slavery in the Valley. treatment by racist soldiers. But most slaves in the Deep South would not GRANT’S PRIZE A post-capture view of Vicksburg, Miss. Grant’s efforts to capture the CWT: You cite an astonishing array of have been liberated without the pres- town were the first major incursions into a Deep South state, and had major implications. sources and voices. ence of the Union Army. As Frederick DM: I visited 62 archives and uncov- Douglass noted: “the liberty which Mr. ered well over 1,000 letters from Lincoln declared with his pen General Vicksburg. Grant failed repeatedly to to Tennessee, forcing him to withdraw soldiers who were not abolitionists but Grant made effective with his sword.” take the city, made some monumen- from Mississippi. There were calls were eager to liberate slaves in order tal blunders that could have changed for Grant’s removal. But Grant did to destroy the Confederacy’s military CWT: You provide many examples of the course of the war. He had enor- it. And how he did it is one hell of a economy and punish the South for how slaves experienced the campaign. mous resolve, but I honestly believe story. seceding. Historians of the campaign DM: Working from oral histories there were moments when he secretly have largely passed over the social conducted with freedmen after the doubted he could take Vicksburg. CWT: In the end, Vicksburg fell revolution that Grant’s army initi- war and from diaries of plantation because of the siege. ated in the Lower Mississippi Valley. masters and mistresses, I describe how CWT: What did you think of the DM: The great irony is that the lon- Union soldiers began looting and slaves reached the Union Army and recent miniseries on Grant? ger the Confederates held on to the burning plantations and freeing slaves how those who were unable to escape DM: It was absorbing in places, but city, the more they lost. There was in violation of Grant’s orders. Grant revolted against the system by cut- there is little about Grant as a military no army in the immediate vicinity of feared this would lead to a breakdown ting back on their work, and in some emancipator, and almost nothing about Vicksburg to prevent Grant’s legions in army discipline. He was in the instances, negotiating with plantation David Dixon Porter and the Missis- from conducting devastating raids on CA M PAI G N business of fighting a war, not engi- mistresses for a better treatment and sippi gunboat flotilla. You’re asked to Vicksburg’s agricultural hinterland. neering social change. But later in the even for wages. This was the most believe that Grant decided on his own More attention should be focused on campaign, spurred on by President fascinating part of my research. to run past the Vicksburg batteries. this scorched earth campaign. Grant MONUM E NTAL Lincoln, he saw that liberating slaves But he needed the ironclads to do that learned how to defeat the South at was a war-winning policy. CWT: Talk about the challenges in and had to ask for Porter’s cooperation; Vicksburg, and he taught this lesson telling the story of the campaign. he had no authority over him. In his to Sherman. When Grant goes east in CWT: You credit William Faulkner’s DM: The challenge I set for myself memoirs, Grant notes he couldn’t have early 1864 to take on Lee, this is how 1936 novel Absalom, Absalom in shap- was to write an absorbing story that taken Vicksburg without the Navy. he fought, sending Phil Sheridan into IN HIS 10 TH BOOK, Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign ing the scope of your narrative. broke new ground. I try to see the the Shenandoah Valley on annihilating That Broke the Confederacy, Donald L. Miller incor- DM: In that novel, the character Vicksburg Campaign as the partici- CWT: What would you like people to raids of the economy Lee depended porates small details such as the first use of synchro- Thomas Sutpen arrives in the Mis- pants—civilians as well as soldiers— know about Vicksburg: upon to sustain his army, which Grant nized watches in a battle into a sweeping tale of social sissippi wilderness with four slaves did, avoiding what I call “the fallacy DM: That it could have turned out had besieged at Petersburg. Nearly revolution and the challenges Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant and eventually becomes a plantation of hindsight.” Most high school differently. In January 1863, when everything Grant did to subdue Vicks- overcame in his year-long slog to take Vicksburg. grandee. And I thought that is exactly textbooks are filled with this kind Grant moved from Memphis to burg he did to defeat Lee’s Army of When Miller consulted on the campaign with Ed what was happening in the Mississippi of history by hindsight. They open the miasmic swamps directly across Northern Virginia. I’m going to take Bearss, former park historian of Vicksburg National Delta above Vicksburg. That region the discussion of the war with charts the river from Vicksburg, it seemed this story forward in my next book, Military Park, Bearss told him: “You’re gonna write began to grow quickly in the 1830s showing that the Union was more unlikely he would take the city. focusing on the Grant–Lincoln part- the best book on Vicksburg. You know why? ’cause you with Indian Removal and a cotton heavily populated than the Confeder- His and Sherman’s first attempt, in nership that brought the war to a close ✯ don’t know a damn thing about it.” Vicksburg won three boon. And when Sutpen returns after acy, had better railroads, a far stronger December 1862, collapsed when and saved the Union. prestigious awards: New York’s Fletcher Pratt Literary the war, the Yankees have stripped industrial base, etc. Readers are led to Sherman’s army was slaughtered in Award, the Laney Book Prize, and the Army Historical him of everything, and his slaves have believe that the outcome was fore- the swamps north of the city, then Interview conducted by Senior Editor Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award. run away. This happened all over CONGRESS OF LIBRARY CONGRESS OF LIBRARY ordained. It wasn’t, of course. Take Rebel cavalry cut Grant’s supply line Sarah Richardson. 20 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2020 AUGUST 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES 21.
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