GRANT’S VICKSBURG GAME CHANGER
The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi
By Timothy B. Smith
Savas Beatie, 2018, $32.95
Early in 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant faced a problem: He was at risk of losing the Civil War. Vicksburg was the key. The longer that city remained in Confederate hands, the more likely the war would be prolonged and a Northern peace party might assume power in the 1864 elections. The sooner Union forces captured it, however, the better the chances Abraham Lincoln would get reelected. Grant had already failed to secure Vicksburg a half-dozen times and was likely down to his last chance before being removed from command. As history would show, the loss of Grant might well have been fatal to the Union cause.
Grant’s desperation led him to devise what was probably the single boldest major invasion to be launched by either side during the war. He would cross west of the Mississippi River and lead two of his corps on a march through Louisiana before recrossing the river and then attacking Vicksburg from the south. Major General William T. Sherman would remain upriver with a third corps while the last of the four corps in Grant’s army would be posted along the Mississippi–Tennessee border, protecting Tennessee from reinvasion and letting it serve as a base for a series of cavalry raids that would be deemed critical to Grant’s overall game plan. One of those raids is the subject of Timothy B. Smith’s comprehensive and enjoyable new book, The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi.
Like Grant, Colonel Benjamin Grierson had been born in Ohio, struggled as a
