Note the Washington Gallery Banner upstairs over William Tillman’s Saddle Shop – it was one of many photographic establishments operating in Vicksburg during the Union occupation of the city. The rugged hills of Vicksburg made the city a natural defensive point on the Mississippi River. One Union soldier on seeing the terrain for the first time wrote his sister, “Tis the opinion of all that Vicksburg is the strongest fortified place in the Confederacy.” Corner of Washington & Clay Streets, Circa 1864
This photograph is one of the earliest known views of the Hill City.įounded by the Reverend Newit Vick in 1819 and incorporated in 1825, by 1860 Vicksburg was a major transportation hub that catered to steamboats and the railroad. Boats left daily providing connections to the major towns in the Mississippi River Valley, and rail service linked the city with Monroe, Louisiana to the west and Jackson, Mississippi to the east. In 1860 Vicksburg had a population of 4600 and was the second largest city in the state after Natchez. Jefferson Davis remarked after the fall of Vicksburg “The clouds are truly dark over us,” and I believe this is a most apt description of the impact the fall of Vicksburg had on the war. Through the photographs that follow I will try to transport the viewer to that “Spirit land of Shadows” and walk the streets of wartime Vicksburg. All of the photographs in this tour are from the collections of the Old Court House Museum.
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