Research Project Idea

I visited the Vicksburg National Military Park several years ago, and I was automatically intrigued by the geography and history of the area. Vicksburg was a key city during the Civil War; because of its location on the Mississippi River, whoever occupied the city determined whether or not the Confederacy was a geographically unified or divided nation. Further, the Mississippi River remained a fundamental mode of transportation and trade during the 1860s–especially for moving forces and supplies through the South.

Military tacticians of the time understood the significance of Vicksburg to the war effort, but capturing the city was easier said than done. The city sat in a unique location on the Mississippi that provided strong defenses. General Ulysses S. Grant made several attempts to take the city–including a failed attempt to effectively reroute the Mississippi River via construction of canals that ran through Tallulah, Louisiana–before he successfully captured the city. The siege of Vicksburg lasted from May 18 to July 4, 1863. Grant’s successful strategy ultimately combined intense shelling and starving the city–both of which left Vicksburg in ruins for decades. After the defeat in 1863, Vicksburg did not celebrate the Fourth of July for eighty-one years.

During the Antebellum period preceding the Civil War, Vicksburg and a vast part of the southern United States flourished. Despite Reconstruction efforts after the war, in the one hundred and fifty-two years since the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, arguments have been made that “‘Reconstruction’ never really ended.” For the research project, I aim to test this claim; did the Civil War leave lasting effects on the South that are apparent in the twenty-first century? Can spatial analysis provide additional insight on the relationship between modern socioeconomic conditions in Vicksburg and the neighborhoods decimated by the Civil War?

For the project itself, my idea is to do a sort of case study. Right now, I plan to find two neighborhoods within Vicksburg that were socioeconomically similar before the Civil War but were affected differently during the siege. (One was hit harder than the other.) I will then compare these two neighborhoods with data from the twenty-first century. I am interested to discover whether or not these neighborhoods diverged in socioeconomic status.

For my data, I will investigate a variety of sources (because specific records are more difficult to find before 1880). There might be some data from the 1850 census, the state archives of Mississippi, or property appraisal records for Warren County. This data will help me determine which two neighborhoods in Vicksburg I will map and compare. In addition, I will also need to know which neighborhoods in the city were affected more than others. For this aspect of the research project, I will likely refer to several primary accounts of citizens (might provide insight into which areas were safer during the siege), as well as military records/maps of troop movements (by researching the capabilities of their weaponry, I can employ the ArcGIS buffer feature to further determine how far into the city Grant’s forces could hit). For the modern maps of the Vicksburg neighborhoods, I will likely refer to the same sources of socioeconomic data (state, county, local tax/property records). I will also likely contact the Vicksburg National Park; they likely have rangers and/or specialists that are familiar with the area and its history.

Even before I begin collecting data for my project, I recognize that there are some inherent limitations. Primarily, there are several outside factors that influence neighborhood/regional socioeconomic development that I cannot take into map with my project. In the century-and-a-half since the Civil War, there have been several developments in the United States. First, technological development means that the Mississippi is no longer as important in interstate trade. Corporations increasingly rely on the interstate highway system and airplanes. Second, industrialization may have shifted manufacturing to different regions of the United States (if not internationally). Third, there have been several economic recessions and depressions since the Civil War which may have impacted the city’s population and economy. Fourth, cultural changes (after the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, etc.) may have impacted the social and cultural structure of the city. My spatial analysis can search for a correlation between the Siege of Vicksburg and the modern socioeconomic conditions of the city, but it cannot determine whether or not the Civil War caused these twenty-first century phenomena.