By Tomomi Ishihara, MA CSUN, PhD Student
contact information:
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[email protected]
During the August of 2006, I took a one day Civil War historic tour to theGrand Gulf Museum, Vicksburg National Park, and the Old Courthouse Museum in Vicksburg revisiting the path of the Vicksburg Campaign surounding one of the prominent economic centers of the antebellum-postebellum period, Natchez, Mississippi. This site is focused on major historic museums I have visited during this one day tour.
Photo by Tomomi Ishihara at Grand Gulf Military Park, August 16, 2006.
Grand Gulf Military Park Museum is located in and around Fort Wade and Fort Cobun in Port Gibson, Mississippi. The museum portion houses numerous historic artifacts and half of the items are from the Civil War. The park includes the Fort Wade and the surrounding area has old abandoned houses and Ft. Cobun. They had a model of Ironclad USS Cairo which was sunk by the Confederacy in 1862. One of the most intriguing artifacts they had was the One Man Submarine used during the prohibition era to bootleg Whiskey. The park also had 75 foot Observation Tower where they could watch the traffic of the river around the Grand Gulf, Old Catholic Church, rifle pits, and old mill were also fascinating.
For further information of these historic sites and museum:
Grand Gulf Military Park
The next destination was Vicksburg National Military Park. The park had several museums as well as the roads for the people do drive around and take pictures of. The park includes union-confederate graves, monuments, tunnels, artillery fields other than various museums. Many of the grave markers said, "unknown soildier."
It was especially interesting to visit their USS Cairo Museum where they have been rebuilding the shipwreck of the USS Cairo sunk by the Confederacy during the Civil War in 1862. On December 12, 1862, before noon, Cairo was patrolling the Yazoo River to search and destroy Conferate torpedoes (1). The Confederates shots from the the river-shore punctured holes and sunk the ironclad (2).
Edwin Bearss, a Vicksburg National Military Park historian, Don Jacks, and Warren Grabau located the shipwreck 94 years later (3). The ironclad wrackage that they recovered had contained many interesting artifacts that the museum now exhibits; Old kitchen wares, firearms, medical equipments, union uniforms and some other various equipments and tools of the 1860s.
The museum also had some exhibits and projects of the process of recovery which was a dounting task. It took several ships to recover the shipwreck from the bottom of the river by several private citizens donated their time and money (4).
The shipwreck was sent to Pensacola, Florida which it stayed there for 13 years. Then it the Vicksburg National Military Park acquired the ship in 1937
(1) Joyner, Elizabeth Hoxie. The USS Cairo: History and Artifacts of a Civil War Gunboat, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers: Jefferson, 2006, p. 7.
(2) ibid, pp. 8-9
(3) ibid, pp. 9-10
(4) ibid, p. 11
For further information of these historic sites and museums:
Vicksburg National Military Park Home Page
My final destination was Vicksburg's Old Courthouse Museum where they housed many historic artifacts since before the colonization of the United States toward WWII. The museum was located inside of the city of Vicksburg near the Vicksburg National Military Park. When I got to the museum, it was almost closing. However, thanks to TK, he had let me in. The museum was extremely fascinating for it had many civil war artifacts just like the Grand Gulf Military Park.
The museum is especially famous for the Confederacy related artifacts. It contained various old firearms and artillery shells, model of the USS Cairo again, uniforms and so on. It is a must visit place especially for those who wants to learn the totality of the Civil War: meaning both the Union and the Confederacy sides. The museum also houses some important documents related to the Confederacy.
For further information of the museum:
Vicksburg's Old Courthouse Museum
