VICE-PRESIDENT 



6076 



VICKSBURG 



square, Piazza de'Signori, contains a campanile 

 feet high. The Duomo, a fine Gothic 

 church dating from the thirteenth century, is 

 enriched by many paintings of ancient mas- 

 The leading educational institutions in- 

 clude an academy of sciences and arts, a tech- 

 nological school, a municipal museum and a 

 library of 200,000 volumes. Silk, velvet, linen, 

 earthenware and paper are tin* important arti- 

 cles of manufacture. The province of Yuvn/a. 

 which extends to the Alpine ridges, dividing 

 Italy from the Austrian Trentino in Tyrol, 

 contains seven communes. Population of Vi- 

 cenza (commune) in 1915, 57,016. 



VICE-PRESIDENT, in the government of 

 the United States, the person who succeeds 

 the President, in case the latter, for any Con- 

 stitutional reason, is permanently unable to 

 fulfil the duties of his office; the prefix vice 

 is from a Latin word meaning in the place of. 



It is customary, outside of the American 

 republic, to give a Vice-President power sec- 

 ond only to that of the President, because his 

 experience will be valuable if he is called on 

 to assume the higher office. In the United States 

 government, however, this condition does not 

 exist. The Vice-President is elected at the 

 same time and in the same manner as the 

 President; he must have the same qualifica- 

 tions must be a natural-born citizen, thirty- 

 five years of age, and a resident of the United 

 States for at least fourteen years; and he takes 

 the oath of office in the Senate chamber on 

 the same day and immediately after the in- 

 auguration of the President. But here the par- 

 allel ends, for the President wields great execu- 

 tive power and is the responsible head of the 

 government; the Vice-President, instead of 

 sharing his responsibilities and lightening his 

 burden, has no duties except to preside over 

 the sessions of the Senate. Not being a mem- 

 ber of the Senate, he is not allowed to vote, 

 except in case of a tie. His salary is $12,000 a 

 year, whereas the President receives $75,000. 



If there is a serious defect in the Executive 

 Department of the United States government, 

 many observers deem it to be the unimpor- 

 tance with which the office of Vice-President 

 is viewed. He succeeds to the office of Presi- 

 dent if the latter dies, is removed from office 

 or is permanently incapacitated from perform- 

 ing his duties. Yet the Vice-President has oc- 

 casionally been a man whose succession to the 

 Presidency would have been a calamity; very 

 often his selection is due to political expedi- 

 ency, and not sufficient emphasis is laid upon 



lit ness. Five Presidents Tyler, Fillmore, John- 

 son, Arthur and Roosevelt were elected Vice- 

 Presidents and succeeded to the highest office 

 in the United States through the death of the 

 incumbent. W.F.Z. 



VICEROY, vysc'roy, an official who rul< 

 province or colony in the name of a sovereign. 

 The name means, literally, vice-knit/. The ot- 

 ficial title of the chief executive of British 

 India is governor-general, but he is usually 

 called viceroy. This title is also frequently 

 applied to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 



VICKSBURG, viks'burg, Miss., the county 

 seat of Warren County, was the third largest 

 city in the state in 1910, but second in 1916, 

 ranking next to Jackson. It is a busy port of 

 the Mississippi River, the western state bound- 

 ary, and is 236 miles north by west of New 

 Orleans and forty-one miles west of Jackson. 

 Vicksburg is located on high bluffs near the 

 mouth of the Yazoo River, whose natural 

 course was diverted through an old channel 

 of the Mississippi in order to give the city its 

 original water front. Steamboats make regu- 

 lar sailings to all of the important river towns, 

 and railroad transportation is provided by the. 

 Alabama & Vicksburg, the Vicksburg, Shreve- 

 port & Pacific and the Yazoo & Mississippi 

 Valley roads. The population was 20,814 in 

 1910 and 22,816 in 1916 (Federal estimate). 



Vicksburg occupies a site seven square miles 

 in extent, in the Walnut Hills. In 1862, when 

 the city had been strongly fortified and garri- 

 soned, it served as a fortress by which the 

 Confederates were able to control the Mis- 

 sissippi River. Its surrender, after numerous 

 sieges, on July 4, 1863, was one of the decisive 

 defeats of the Confederacy in the War of 

 Secession. North of the city is the National 

 Cemetery, where lie buried 16,727 Federal sol- 

 diers, over twelve thousand of whom are un- 

 known dead. The old battle ground is now the 

 National Military Park, containing more than 

 1,200 acres. It is continuous with the ceme- 

 tery and has many fine monuments and memo- 

 rials. 



Prominent features of the city are the Fed- 

 eral building, courthouse, city hall, public li- 

 brary and a number of fine old structures 

 which survived the war. The leading institu- 

 tions include Saint Aloysius Commercial Col- 

 lege, Saint Francis Xavier's Academy, King's 

 Daughters' Home, the State Charity Hospital, 

 a sanitarium and an infirmary. Vicksburg is 

 the commercial center of a richly productive 

 cotton section, and has an extensive trade in 



