Vicksburg, Mississippi River

Ironclads, the Civil War, a brutal 47-day siege — those are the big, weighty things Vicksburg is usually tied to. I could feel it the moment I arrived. But then there’s a wonderfully unexpected lighter footnote to it as well, because it is here that Joseph A. Biedenharn, a confectioner, first bottled Coca-Cola back in 1894, turning a soda fountain drink into something that could travel the world. To this day, Coca-Cola remains the top favourite soda in the United States.

Long before that fizzy invention, the city had already been shaping history. When French colonists arrived in the early 1700s, followed later by the Spanish, the river quickly became a trading artery for furs, timber, and cotton. Vicksburg, named after its founder, Reverend Newitt Vicks, grew into a natural stopping point. With its high bluffs overlooking a sharp bend in the Mississippi, it didn’t take long for steamboats to make this a key hub, and for military minds to realise just how important this spot really was.

By the time the Civil War rolled in, Vicksburg wasn’t just important — it was everything. Abraham Lincoln famously said that controlling Vicksburg meant controlling the Mississippi, and with it, splitting the Confederacy in two. Standing here now, looking out over the river, it’s easy to see why. Whoever held these bluffs held the water below.

One of the boldest moments of the Vicksburg Campaign came on the night of 16 April 1863. Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the Union Army commander determined to take the city, was working hand in hand with Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, who led the Union naval forces on the Mississippi. Together, they hatched a daring plan. Under the cover of darkness, Porter guided a small fleet of ironclad gunboats and transport ships past the Confederate guns perched high on the bluffs. Engines were muffled, lights extinguished, and cotton bales stacked along the sides for protection. Among the ironclads were the USS Benton (the fleet’s flagship, with Porter on board), USS Lafayette (an ironclad ram), plus five other reliable boats designed for riverine warfare. The fleet crept silently downstream until, suddenly, fire lit the riverbanks, and the bluff batteries opened up. For more than two hours, the ships endured relentless fire, the river flashing with cannon bursts and burning cotton, yet most made it through.

That risky manoeuvre gave Grant the support he needed to cross the river south of Vicksburg and attack from an unexpected direction. What followed was the infamous 47-day Siege of Vicksburg. This gruelling struggle tested both armies and the civilian population trapped inside the city. Constant bombardment, dwindling supplies, and starvation wore down the Confederate defenders until their surrender on 4 July 1863. The fall of Vicksburg gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy, and marked a major turning point in the Civil War.

Walking along the levee today, though, the story takes another turn. The long floodwall is covered in murals that tell the city’s history through scenes of steamboats, local life, and even the 1953 tornado's aftermath. However, one story stopped me in my tracks. It is of the SS Sultana, visibly packed to the rails with soldiers desperate to get home. After the war ended, thousands of freed Union prisoners were gathered here, waiting for transport north. Greed and corruption took over. The Sultana, built for a few hundred, carried more than 2,000 soldiers and 400 regular passengers and crew. A faulty boiler was hastily patched in Vicksburg, and days later, it exploded upriver, killing more people than the Titanic. Yet most people have never heard of it, the tragedy swallowed by the noise of Lincoln’s assassination and the war’s end.

Standing there, taking in the rest of the murals, I see the Mississippi laden with stories – triumphs and tragedies, victories, adventures, disasters – yet it keeps flowing, steady and unyielding. And so shall I.