The Battle of Plains Store was fought on May 21, 1863, in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, during the campaign to capture Port Hudson in the American Civil War. Union troops advancing from Baton Rouge, Louisiana clashed with 600 Confederates at a road junction. The initial Confederate force withdrew, but 400 more Confederates arrived from Port Hudson. Some of the Confederate reinforcement overran Union artillery and routed a Union regiment, but were unable to capture the guns. Union reinforcements advanced to the front, attacked part of the Confederate force and drove them from the field. The Confederates withdrew to Port Hudson, which was almost entirely surrounded by Union troops the next day. Port Hudson was under siege until the defenders surrendered on July 9.
By 1863, during the American Civil War, the Confederate strongholds at Port Hudson, Louisiana, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, allowed for Confederate control of the Mississippi River between the two points. Supplies could cross the river from one half of the Confederacy to the other. Union forces placed Vicksburg under siege in May 1863. Other Union troops commanded by Major General Nathaniel Banks had been moving towards Shreveport, Louisiana, but instead turned towards Port Hudson to capture it. Banks's goal was to defeat the Confederate force there led by Major General Franklin Gardner and then drive north to aid the attack on Vicksburg. In support of Banks, a Union division led by Major General Christopher C. Augur left Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and moved north towards Port Hudson on May 20 with 3,500 men. Like much of Banks' army, Augur's troops were relatively inexperienced and Plains Store would be the first time his regiments saw combat.
On the morning of May 21, Augur's leading forces, commanded by Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson, met Confederate troops near the junction of the Plains Store and Bayou Sara roads. Plains Store itself was located here. Taking the junction would secure a landing point for Banks and allow the two Union forces to join. The crossroads was defended by 600 men commanded by Colonel Frank P. Powers; Powers's force consisted of part of the 14th Arkansas Infantry Regiment (Powers'), a cavalry force, and Abbay's Mississippi Battery. Skirmishing continued while the main Union force arrived. As Confederate artillery fire prevented a Union advance, Union artillery was brought up at around 10:00 am and an artillery duel began. The Union artillery, consisting of the 5th U.S. Artillery, Battery G and part of the 18th New York Battery, were initially unable to suppress the Confederate fire. Colonel N. A. M. Dudley then ordered the New York battery to withdraw, and replaced it with the 2nd Vermont Battery. Dudley also sent infantrymen forward to skirmish with the Confederates. Powers was outnumbered by the Union force. Around noon, Gardner sent Colonel William R. Miles with 400 infantrymen (known as Miles' Legion) and Boone's Louisiana Battery to support Powers.
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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