Next month marks the 130th anniversary of an American icon reaching our shores, but without one of the defenders of Vicksburg, it wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

Vicksburg National Military Park probably wouldn’t be here either.

On June 17, 1885, the Statue of Liberty — a gift from France — reached New York City. While assembly of the massive statue began, former Confederate officer Samuel H. Lockett was serving in the Egyptian army with many of his former rebel counterparts.  But when Egypt fell into financial crisis, Lockett returned to American began teaching at engineering at Louisiana State University. After his stint there, he began work on the massive pedestal that Lady Liberty calls home.

Millions of people have gazed hopefully at the statue calling for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” unaware of the long military career of the man who built its base.

While the statue’s pedestal is Lockett’s worldwide claim to fame, locally Vicksburg — sometimes called the City of Engineers — owes this engineer many thanks.

As a Confederate major, the West Point educated Lockett designed the fortifications used to defend Vicksburg from Federal assault in 1863.

“The most prominent points I purposed to occupy with a system of redoubts, redans, lunettes and small field-works, connecting them by rifle-pits so as to give a continuous line of defense,” Lockett wrote of his work in Vicksburg.

Where his commanding officer John C. Pemberton had been a lackluster student and struggled to command an army of such size, Lockett was a master of study and his craft.  He graduated second in his class in 1859, and when the war broke out, he became chief engineer for the army of Tennessee.

His crowning achievement in engineering is considered to be making Vicksburg one of the most heavily fortified places on the continent. He was also responsible for destroying bridges during the battle of Big Black River, that held off the invading Union army for another day.

With a lesser engineer, there likely would have been no Siege of Vicksburg, at least not for 47 days. Grant’s men might have taken Vicksburg by force and never had to outcamp the enemy.