The people of Vicksburg certainly did. They were proud of having rebuffed the Union Navy the previous year, and they expected that the North would throw everything at them in 1863. The townspeople were generally confident because of the defenses which nature had provided and because of the manner in which the Confederate forces had augmented them.

The people of Gettysburg almost certainly did not anticipate that 1863 would be the year that their town would become famous. They knew that their town was at a crossroads, that many important turnpikes ran through, but they had lived rather far from the scene of the war to this point.