Campaign Climax - Battle of Vicksburg, 1863

It is six months since we played a trial version of the Vicksburg campaign at the club with Lawrence and Dennis.  Since then we have started (back in July for an initial face-to-face meeting, followed by play-by-mail for a few months) the campaign proper.  I intend to give a full account of the campaign in a separate post, but suffice it for now to say that the Union managed to invest Vicksburg on turn 5, and as the Confederate operational commander, Gordon realised that unless he could break that siege, the campaign was going to very quickly wind up as a Union victory.  Accordingly, he scratched together several divisions of the Army of the Mississippi in a rapid concentration, and persuated Ross, as Grant, to accept battle in the field just south of Vicksburg.  Here is the operational situation as the battle opens (the battlefield is the red rectangle):