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With Lee and his army in full retreat on July 4, it was obvious that the armies of the South would never be able to conquer their Northern opposition in the “War of Northern Aggression.” It did not, however, mean that the rebel cause was lost and, in fact, the Army of Northern Virginia would continue to fight for nearly two more years. It was the events taking place the very same day 1,000 miles in Vicksburg to the west that doomed the Confederacy and insured their defeat.

[[File:ShirleysWhiteHouseVicksburg1863.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Shirley's White House during the seige of Vickburg, 1863]]

Newitt Vick was an ambitious Virginia minister who arrived on the Mississippi River in 1814 and split his time acquiring Methodist converts and productive farmland. He especially favored the thick, black soils of the bottomlands where the Yazoo River flowed into the Mississippi. He bought as much as he could afford and envisioned a great cotton-shipping port city rising on his land but Vick contracted yellow fever and died in 1819 before his dreams could be realized. <ref>”The Founding of Vicksburg and Methodism: The Legacy of Tobias Gibson and Newitt Vick,” Vicksburg Downtown Murals, Historic Downtown Vicksburg, 2008</ref>