According to Vicksburg resident Emma Balfour, the siege was a “grand and awful spectacle. The darkness was lit up by burning houses all along our line. They were burnt that our firing (upon the Union Army) would not be obscured. It was so sad to see…but the stern necessity of war had caused their destruction.”

As Confederate General John Pemberton waited in Vicksburg, President Jefferson Davis dispatched General Joseph Johnston to the city for support. This move proved futile. Vicksburg finally surrendered on July 4, the day after the Confederate’s bloody defeat at Gettysburg.

Mort Künstler painted this dramatic scene, a detail from Dilger at Gettysburg, which typifies what took place during the siege of Vicksburg.