Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi (Hardcover)

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Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi 

by Donald S. Frazier

Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi takes a well-known story, the struggle for the 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 into the Union lines and direction their labor to benefit of the Union fell to the Federal army and navy.

This book, by examining the campaigns from west of the river, shows how the campaign to reduce these rebel forts also involved the creation of a black army of occupation and a remaking of the social and political landscape of Louisiana and the nation.

Challenging many commonly held notions of the Vicksburg and Port Hudson campaigns, Blood on the Bayou reveals small unit actions and big government policies in the Trans-Mississippi did as much to shape the outcome of the war as did the great armies and famous captains of legend and lore

Scholars of Vicksburg and Port Hudson will find their studies incomplete without a thorough examination of this work.