A Night Scout in the Southwest – Surprise of an Outpost, and Survey of the Rebel Guns (from "Harper's Weekly")
Thomas Nast American, born Germany
Publisher Harper's Weekly American
Not on view
Union success on the Civil War’s western front depended upon gaining control of the Mississippi and Ulysses S. Grant waged a series of campaigns to achieve this goal between 1861 and 1863. Published in Harper’s Weekly in April 1863, this wood engraving depicts Union scouts overpowering Confederate lookouts at night on a hill above a river fort. At this time Grant was planning an unorthodox campaign against Vicksburg, a bluff-top city in northern Mississippi that protected a key stretch of the river and had resisted multiple Union assaults. The town finally surrendered on July 4, 1863, a day after the Battle of Gettysburg ended a thousand miles to the northeast. The twenty-three-year-old Nast traveled with the army and sent drawings back to New York for publication. He had accompanied Giuseppe Garibaldi’s unification army in Italy two years before and was well prepared for such work.
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