Reviews for Port Hudson, Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi

The average rating for Port Hudson, Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-13 00:00:00 Eric Rever This an odd book. Hewitt does a good job discussing the creation of the stronghold at Port Hudson and situating it within the strategic context. His account of Farragut running the guns is a first class piece of historical prose. However, he does not go into much detail at all after the May 27 assault. He plays this off as "the outcome was inevitable" but it makes for a rather shocking ending to a campaign, where much of the fighting and dying is covered in only a few pages. This is all the more galling as he threw shade on the accounts written by Cunningham and Edmonds, but as far I can tell they did discuss things after May 27. I get the feeling Hewitt may have just given up and lost interest. It at any rate hobbles what might have been a great book.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-28 00:00:00 Matthew Sutton The book focuses more on the role Port Hudson played in the Confederate control of the Mississippi River and the early Union attempts to capture the post. Only the last third of the book covers the siege of Port Hudson itself, mostly focusing on the May 27th assault. After devoting two chapters to this single day, the author covers the remaining six weeks of the siege in only five pages (a period of time which includes another major assault on June 14th). The maps also leave much to be desired; there were only two in the entire book, a general area map of southeast Louisiana and southwest Mississippi, and a second map showing the location of Confederate fortifications around Port Hudson. These two aspects of the book would have pushed the rating down to three and a half stars, if it was possible.