The Battle of Paris, also known as the Expedition to Paris, was a battle fought on March 11, 1862, in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. The battle took place near modern-day Paris, Tennessee located in Henry County.
The battle although brief, was a bloody engagement for the defending Confederate elements of Colonel Henry Clay King's 1st Kentucky Cavalry Battalion.
With the Union Army's victories at both Battle of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Fort Henry in early February 1862, Union troops began to advance deeper into northwestern Tennessee. On March 11, 1862, Major General Ulysses S. Grant dispatched a small cavalry battalion in the direction of Paris, Tennessee under the command of Captain John Thorn Croft of Company B of the 5th Iowa Cavalry Regiment to perform reconnaissance. Company B was primarily made up of volunteers from Nebraska Territory and had previously been known as "Patrick's 1st Battalion of Nebraska Cavalry" under Captain Matthewson T. Patrick before being combined with several Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska units and dubbed the "5th Iowa". Croft's detachment consisted of the 1st Battalion (companies A, B, C, and D) of the 5th Iowa Cavalry and Battery I (Company I) or "Buel's Independent Battery" of the 1st Missouri Light Artillery Regiment under the command of First Lieutenant Charles H. Thurber. Previous to Croft, the 1st Battalion of the 5th Iowa was commanded by Major William Kelsay, who died of typhoid fever on February 28, 1862, and was buried with military honors at Fort Heiman.
Confederate forces that had been encamped in and around Paris were under the command of Colonel Henry Clay King (1831–1903) of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry Battalion, also called "King's" Kentucky Cavalry Battalion. Other units under King's command were Captain Stack's company of Tennessee Cavalry (unattached) and Captain McCutchan's company of Tennessee Cavalry (unattached).
Confederate forces were massed in and around the city of Paris because Paris was vital to the Confederate communication lines and road networks to other nearby communities such as Dresden and Como. Paris was also a vital transportation and communication link between Confederate Forts Henry and Donelson and the command center located in Columbus, Kentucky. According to Tennessee Civil War Trials when Fort Henry and Fort Donelson fell in quick succession "Federal command sent their main force down the rivers towards Shiloh and Nashville but left a smaller contingent in Paris to save Unionist citizens in the area from Confederate Conscription".
On the morning of March 11, 1862 around 11:00am while the reconnaissance force of the 5th Iowa advanced towards Paris two mounted Confederate pickets were spotted by the battalion several miles near the outskirts of Paris. Captain Bullis of the 1st Missouri Light Artillery arrived with his battery and Captain Croft moved forward without waiting for the arrival of the other two battalions of the 5th Iowa. It was not until 5:00pm that the 1st Battalion under Croft reached Paris and proceeded with an attack on the Confederate pickets.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
This page covers Skirmish at Paris (Morgan's First Raid). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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