The Battle of Milliken's Bend was fought on June 7, 1863, as part of the Vicksburg Campaign during the American Civil War. Major General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army placed the strategic Mississippi River city of Vicksburg, Mississippi under siege in mid-1863. Confederate leadership erroneously believed that Grant's supply line still ran through Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, and Major General Richard Taylor was tasked with disrupting it to aid the defense of Vicksburg. Taylor sent Brigadier General Henry E. McCulloch with a brigade of Texans to attack Milliken's Bend, which was held by a brigade of newly-recruited African American soldiers. McCulloch's attack struck early on the morning of June 7, and was initially successful in close-quarters fighting. Fire from the Union gunboat USS Choctaw halted the Confederate attack, and McCulloch later withdrew after the arrival of a second gunboat. The attempt to relieve Vicksburg was unsuccessful. One of the first actions in which African American soldiers fought, Milliken's Bend demonstrated the value of African American soldiers as part of the Union Army.
In the spring of 1863, Major General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army began a campaign against the strategic Confederate-held city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grant's troops crossed the Mississippi River from the Louisiana side into Mississippi at a point south of Vicksburg in late April. By May 18, the Union army had fought its way to Vicksburg, surrounded it, and initiated the Siege of Vicksburg. During the campaign, Grant had kept a supply base at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana
as part of his supply line. Soldiers had been housed at the site before being deployed in the campaign, and a number of hospitals had been established there. During the siege, however, Grant had a different supply line opened: the Union Navy took control of part of the Yazoo River in the Chickasaw Bayou vicinity and established a point from which supplies could be sent overland behind the Union lines. While a position at Milliken's Bend was still held, its importance was greatly reduced, since the Yazoo River position had become Grant's primary supply depot.
Meanwhile, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was pressuring General E. K. Smith, commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, to attempt to relieve Vicksburg's garrison. Smith was unaware that Grant had moved his supply line to the Yazoo River, and still believed that Milliken's Bend was a primary Union supply depot. Immediate command of the offensive fell to Major General Richard Taylor, who was given a division of Texans known as Walker's Greyhounds. Taylor moved the 5,000-man force to Richmond, Louisiana, but did not believe that the coming expedition had any real chance of disrupting Grant's siege of Vicksburg. On June 5, Taylor learned that Milliken's Bend was no longer a significant supply point, but the planned offensive continued, with hopes of retaking control of the west bank of the Mississippi River and gaining the ability to send food across the river into Vicksburg. At Richmond, on June 6, Taylor detached the 13th Louisiana Cavalry Battalion on a raid against Lake Providence, Louisiana, while Walker's Greyhounds continued to the site of Oak Grove Plantation, where there was a road junction. One Confederate brigade split off to move against a Union position at Young's Point, while Brigadier General Henry E. McCulloch's brigade advanced against Milliken's Bend. A third brigade was held in reserve at Oak Grove.
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.
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