On April 16, 1863, Admiral David Dixon Porter’s fleet successfully fought its way past Vicksburg’s Confederate batteries toward a rendezvous with Grant’s troops south of the city, a key event in the eventual Union capture of this pivotal Confederate bastion. The nearly simultaneous Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. After Gettysburg, Lee’s forces never regained enough strength to seriously threaten the North. The fall of Vicksburg re-opened the Midwest to trade with the outside world and allowed the Union forces of General Ulysses S. Grant to operate virtually unopposed in the deep South.