Vicksburg has been the home of several of the State’s ablest men, who have proved large factors in making history. S. S. Prentiss was an orator of national reputation and an eminent lawyer. Others worthy of mention are: Judge W. L. Sharkey, one of the most learned jurists of the Southwest; Governor John J. Guion; Governor McNutt; Walter Brooks; United States Senator George Yerger; a great lawyer, Joseph Holt, in later life Attorney-General of the United States. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, Senator in Congress and a gallant and distinguished soldier, lived the greater part of his life in Warren County, a few miles south of the city. We now come to that period in the history of Vicksburg, when, during the Civil War, for a time the even current of commercial and business life gave place to a series of events, perhaps the most notable and far-reaching in influence on the shifting fortunes and results of the great conflict. The bluffs at Vicksburg are of pre-eminent importance as a strategic point to the complete control of the great river which almost divides the continent from south to north, penetrates the upper valley nearly to the great chain of lakes, and with its affluents affords about fifteen thousand miles of navigation. No object contributing to the final issue of the war could have presented itself to the great leaders on both sides of the conflict as of more urgent need than the possession and control of the Mississippi. In 1862, movements were begun against the fortifications which the Confederates had placed on the Cumberland and Tennessee and the upper Mississippi. So important and urgent did this appear as a necessary means to a speedy and successful close of the war that operations were begun very early to drive the Confederates from the river, and were conducted both from above and from its mouth. The close of the year 1862 found the Federal naval and military forces dominating the river from the north as far south as Vicksburg, and from the south as far north as Port Hudson. A campaign, supported by the fleet, was undertaken on the east side of the river. The Federal forces moved from the Yazoo River along the banks of the Chickasaw Bayou with a view of gaining a foothold on the bluffs above the city. A battle, stubbornly contested, was fought, and resulted in the defeat and repulse of the Union forces. It demonstrated the impracticability of capturing the city by attacking the army entrenched on the bluffs. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GENERAL U. S. GRANT.]