Silencing the Vicksburg Guns

About the Book

Silencing the Vicksburg Guns is about the 7th Missouri Infantry Regiment and their part in the great Vicksburg campaign. The book is not long, 132 pages of text, because it stays focused only on the 7th Missouri's actions. The May 12, 1863 Battle of Raymond, Mississippi, for instance, concentrates on the right side of the Union line where the Regiment suffered 73 casualties.

The story is told through the experiences of Private John Davis Evans of Company D. He had been a teamster for supply wagon trains to Salt Lake City, Utah when he was 16 and again at age 17. After three years fighting with the 7th Missouri, limping from a wound, Evans made his third and final trek at age 21

The text is illustrated by 32 maps. Also a 30 page roster of the 1,063 soldiers in the 7th Missouri includes personal information on many. Such listings as: "killed May 1863" or "wounded August 1862" are shown. Also discharges, deaths from disease and even desertions, of which there were many.

The book covers the entire existence of the regiment from June 1861 to June 1864. Their seventeen months directly connected to General Ulysses S. Grant, from May 1862 to October 1863, were a particularly active time. Grant was a man of action and action is what they got.

Poignant in the story is a scorecard kept as the war progressed. From the 1, 063 soldiers at the beginning there were only 588 still standing for the mustering out three years later.

About the Author

Jerry Evan Crouch was born in 1934 in a house near the adobe home of his great grandfather John Evans. He graduated from the University of Utah and practised public accounting in Utah for 38 years. During his working years he also served as president of the Weber County Board of Education, chairman of the Utah State Board of Family Services, chairman of the Weber-Morgan Board of Health and in many other civic and business positions.

History has been of particular interest to him throughout his life. His two children can attest to many visits to important places when they were really just looking at the next pizza parlour.