After six failed attempts to reach Vicksburg, General Ulysses S. Grant developed a plan. The Yazoo Pass Expedition was a Union army/navy operation meant to bypass Vicksburg by using the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta. Operations began on February 3, 1863, with a levee breach on the Mississippi River. The expedition was delayed as a result of natural obstacles and Confederate resistance, which allowed the Confederate army under Lieutenant General John Pemberton to block passage of the Federal fleet. The Confederates continued to rebuff the fleet and finally defeated it in the spring. Larry McCluney examines the expedition from start to finish in never-before-seen detail.
Larry McCluney has been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for twenty-five years. He currently serves as a national officer of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; is a combined boards chairman of the nonprofit that oversees Beauvoir, Last Home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis; is a former member of the Golden Triangle Civil War Round Table; and is a Civil War Living Historian. He received his master's degree in history from Mississippi State University. Larry has taught history at the high-school level in the Mississippi public school system for twenty-four years and is an instructor at Mississippi Delta Community College. He has won numerous awards from the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans for historical preservation. He lives in Greenwood, Mississippi, with his wife, Julia.