USS Vicksburg (CG-69)

USS Vicksburg (CG-69): The Key to the River

Commissioned on 14 November 1992, USS Vicksburg was named for the Siege of Vicksburg, which lasted from 19 May to 4 July 1863, the forty-seven days that Grant spent reducing the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. When Vicksburg surrendered on 4 July 1863, the day after Gettysburg ended on the other side of the Confederacy, the Mississippi River was open to Union commerce from source to sea. Lincoln said the Father of Waters would roll "unvexed to the sea." The Confederacy was cut in two. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were isolated. The war in the west was effectively decided.

Grant's Vicksburg campaign is studied in military academies for its operational art: the decision to cut loose from his supply line, live off the land, and move faster than the Confederate high command expected. He lost nothing by being bold. He gained the river.

USS Vicksburg served in the Atlantic Fleet with sustained Middle East deployments through the 2000s and 2010s, operating regularly in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea as part of carrier strike groups and independent surface action groups. Her deployment record placed her among the most operationally active Atlantic Fleet Ticonderoga-class ships of her era.

Named for the siege that split the Confederacy, serving in the waters where American naval power maintained the freedom of navigation that the Mississippi's opening had once symbolized domestically. The mission scales. The principle doesn't change.

Tactically Acquired's USS Vicksburg (CG-69) collection honors Grant's forty-seven-day campaign and the crew who kept the Vicksburg name in American naval service.