Statue of Gen. U.S. Grant in Vicksburg National Military Park My wife, Linda and I took the Blues Highway to Vicksburg. We followed the self- guided driving tour through the Vicksburg National Military Park, site of the terrible Civil War Siege. To visit such a battlefield is to experience the disaster that befell the Confederacy during the first week of July 1863.

In the east, General Robert E. Lee was turned back by Gen G.G. Meade at Gettysburg and advanced rearward toward Richmond. And in the west, General U.S. Grant trapped the Confederate army under Lt. General John C. Pemberton at Vicksburg. It was the beginning of the end of the American Civil War.

Grant's Army of the Tennessee had worked its way up from New Orleans. The Union troops took Port Gibson, 35 miles south of Vicksburg on May 1. Grant said, "It was too beautiful to burn," and put away his torches.

Gen. Sherman, acting on Grant's orders, destroyed rail lines and industry in Jackson. Pemberton gathered his forces in Vicksburg and suffered terrible losses on Union attackers. Grant lay siege to Vicksburg on May 22.

The Temple Gemiluth Chassed of combined Moorish Byzantine and Romanesque styles was built in 1892 in Port Gibson. Pemberton's 22,000 men dug in. Eventually disease, starvation, and bombardment took their toll. Pemberton surrendered on July 4. The Union had suffered 10,142 casualties, the Confederates 9,091.

The Vicksburg National Military Park contains 1,330 monuments and markers along the 16- mile road. The South Carolina monument was dedicated in 1935 by the S.C. United Daughters of the Confederacy.

South Carolina officers at Vicksburg were Brig. Gen. States Rights Gist, Gen. Stephen D. Lee (who had directed the firing of the first shot of the war at Ft. Sumter), Col. N.G. "Shanks" Evans (later high school principal in Alabama), Lt. B. A. Jeter, Capt. J. F. Culpeper (later physician and member of Florence County Board of Health), Lt. Col. William J. Crawley, Maj. Martin G. Zeigler, Col. James McCullough, Col. F. W. McMaster (later founder of Columbia City Schools and mayor of Columbia), Maj. John R. Culp, Capt. James Beaty, Col. W. H. Wallace (later S.C. judge and legislator), Lt. Col. J. O'Connell, Capt. A. C. Peace, Col. H. L. Benbow, Capt. John M. Kinloch, Col. C. H. Stevens, Lt. Col. Ellison D. Capers (later S.C. Secretary of State, Episcopal bishop, chancellor of Sewanee), and Col. A. D. Smith.

Grant's quote, "Por t Gibson is too beautiful to burn" is now used on T- shirts. A restored Union gunboat (U.S.S. Cairo) and a National Cemetery (over 18,000 graves) are also in the park. The museum has very good explanatory exhibits on the battle from both perspectives, North and South.

We had hoped to eat dinner at the world- famous Sollies Hot Tamales, but it was closed. So after a non- descript pizza at a local joint, we retired to our room at Comfort Inn, tired and weary of battle.

The memorial marker for South Carolina is in the town of Vicksburg.