Civil War lectures are free with Museum admission, but reserving a seat is suggested as seating is limited. Reserve seats below.

This siege was the final action associated with the Union’s effort to control the Mississippi River. Port Hudson was commanded by Gen. Franklin Gardner, where his gun emplacements overlooking the river defeated a portion of Adm. David Glasgow Farragut’s fleet on March 13, 1863. Union General Nathaniel Banks did not formally begin his operations until May 22, 1863. Banks’s first two assaults against the Confederate entrenchments failed, resulting in a siege that lasted until July 9, 1863, when Port Hudson surrendered. President Lincoln then said, the “Father of all rivers now flows unvexed into the sea.”