President Abraham Lincoln Bronze Statue - Kentucky Monument
NPS Photo
The importance of the city of Vicksburg was not lost on President Abraham Lincoln, who had often traveled the Mississippi River as a young man. In early 1862, he remarked on the strategic advantage held by the Confederates in the west,
"Here is the Red River, which will supply the Confederates with cattle and corn to feed their armies. There are the Arkansas and White Rivers, which can supply cattle and hogs by the thousand. From Vicksburg these supplies can be distributed by rail all over the Confederacy.
"Valuable as New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg will be even more so. We may take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can still defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference."
