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It's July, 1863, within the city of Vicksburg, here on the banks of the Mississippi River.

The ground shakes as yet another mortar shell crashes into the hillside.

Families hunker down in caves carved into the clay bluffs.

They've dragged blankets, cooking pots, even pieces of furniture

underground alongside their frightened children. On the outskirts of town, tens of thousands of

Union and Confederate soldiers crouch in trenches, exchanging fire beneath a merciless Mississippi

Sun. Meanwhile, inside the besieged city, casualties mount, and food supplies dwindle.

Every morning, as citizens wake to another day in the grinding ordeal of war,

it seems only a matter of time before Vicksburg, the Confederacy's great stronghold on the Mississippi River

finally falls.

I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit.

Our guest today is Dr. Lindsay Pervet, Associate Professor of History at Anderson University. She is the

author of The Surgeons Battle, How Medicine won the Vicksburg Campaign and Change the Civil

War.

Lindsay, hello, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Hi, thanks for having me on.

Before we discuss the events of Vicksburg, I want to take note of the fact that you are a Vicksburg native, am I right?

You are. I was born and raised in Vicksburg, so I know the town and it's battlefield well. Our northern equivalent, I suppose, would be Gettysburg.

Does life in Vicksbury, is it so defined by what happened in the Civil War as you're growing up

...