General Herron's division had embarked. Consequently its destination was changed to the Yazoo River, which it ascended to Yazoo City, where it captured one steamboat and some other property. Twenty-two steamboats had been carried farther up the Yazoo, where they were burned or sunk by the Confederates to save them from capture. Herron captured and brought away 300 prisoners, 6 heavy guns, 250 small-arms, 800 horses, and 2,000 bales of cotton belonging to the Confederate government.
In its consequences the capture of Vicksburg, naturally and imperatively followed by that of Port Hudson, was of the highest importance. The Mississippi River was opened from its mouth to the head of navigation, and "The Father of Waters flowed unvexed to the sea." The Confederacy was split in two, and its western half could no longer send supplies of cattle, salt, provisions, and other needed articles to the armies in the east. The 37,000 prisoners taken in the campaign, together with the 10,000 killed and wounded, were an army which the Confederacy, already heavily overmatched by the Union forces, could sadly afford to lose. It was an army to which the government at Richmond had confided the defence of the Mississippi, and with its surrender was gone the hope of holding any point on the great river.
In a speech at Jackson, Mississippi, in December, 1862, the President of the Confederacy urged the citizens to go to Vicksburg to "assist in preserving the Mississippi River, that great artery of the country, and thus conduce, more than in any other way, to the perpetuation of the Confederacy, and the success of the cause." It is fair to say that this view of the value of the possession of the mighty stream was shared by all the people of the South, and no less by those of the North. Consequently the fall of Vicksburg was an irreparable loss to the one and a gain of immense importance to the other. It was beyond all question one of the most decisive events of the war.
