Siege of Port Hudson
Battle of the American Civil War

The siege of Port Hudson was the final engagement in the Union campaign to recapture the Mississippi River in the American Civil War. While Union General Ulysses Grant was besieging Vicksburg upriver, General Nathaniel Banks was ordered to capture the lower Mississippi Confederate stronghold of Port Hudson, Louisiana, then to go to Grant's aid. When his assault failed, Banks settled into a 48-day siege, the longest in US military history up to that point. A second attack also failed, and it was only after the fall of Vicksburg that the Confederate commander, General Franklin Gardner, surrendered the port. The Union gained control of the river and navigation from the Gulf of Mexico through the Deep South and to the river's upper reaches.
“Siege of Port Hudson” enters the record as battle of the American Civil War. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Siege, Port and Hudson can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Siege of Port Hudson” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Siege, Port and Hudson provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Siege of Port Hudson”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Siege of Port Hudson primary sources, Siege of Port Hudson archive and Siege research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Siege of Port Hudson”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Siege of Port Hudson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.