Boston Athenæum

March 10, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi takes a well-known story of the struggle for control of the Mississippi River in the American Civil War, and recasts it as a contest for control of African-American populations. The Emancipation Proclamation may have freed the slaves, but the task of actually moving these liberated people within Union borders and directing their labor to the benefit of the Union fell to the Federal army and navy. This book shows how the campaign to reduce Rebel forts west of the river also involved the creation of a black army of occupation and a remaking of the social and political landscape of Louisiana and the nation. The longer the military campaigns in the Mississippi Valley dragged on, the more Federal officials could feed liberated slaves into the system. No matter the outcome of the war, the Federal government set out to break slavery—forever.