The Battle of Egypt Station (December 28, 1864) was an engagement in Mississippi that took place during a successful Union cavalry raid during the American Civil War. A 3,500-man Union cavalry division under Brigadier General Benjamin Grierson defeated Confederate troops led by Franklin Gardner and Samuel J. Gholson. Grierson's raiding cavalry left Memphis, Tennessee on 21 December and first demolished a Confederate supply depot at Verona. Moving south while wrecking bridges and track along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, the Union raiders encountered the Confederate defenders at Egypt Station. After their victory, Grierson's cavalry headed southwest to Vicksburg which it reached on January 5, 1865. The raiders destroyed a large amount of Confederate supplies and also damaged the Mississippi Central Railroad. Some of the men captured by Grierson's raiders proved to be former Union soldiers who volunteered to fight for the Confederacy rather than languish in prison camps. When John Bell Hood's army retreated into northern Mississippi after the Battle of Nashville, it was unable to obtain supplies because Grierson's raiders had damaged the railroad so badly.
The Battle of Nashville ended on December 16, 1864, with Hood's Confederate Army of Tennessee fleeing from the battlefield after being routed by the Union army under George Henry Thomas. The Federal troops inflicted losses of about 2,300 killed and wounded and 4,462 captured on their opponents, while seizing 53 artillery pieces. At Franklin on December 17, the retreating Confederates managed to destroy the bridges, but James H. Wilson's Union cavalrymen forded the Harpeth River to capture 2,000 enemy soldiers too badly wounded to be moved. Later that day, Wilson's troopers overran Douglas's Texas Battery, capturing its three guns. Yet the Confederate rearguard was able to fend off Wilson's pursuit. Meanwhile, a blunder by Thomas sent the pontoon train by the wrong road so that the Federal pursuit was delayed. After bitter rearguard actions conducted by Nathan Bedford Forrest, the survivors of Hood's army crossed the Tennessee River on December 28 and passed out of the reach of Thomas and Wilson.
The commander of the Military Division of West Mississippi, Major General Napoleon J.T. Dana ordered Grierson and 3,300 cavalry to leave Memphis and attempt to break the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Grierson ordered his 1st Brigade under Colonel Joseph Kargé to move northeast on December 19 from Memphis toward Bolivar, Tennessee in a feint, then move south and join the main column near Ripley, Mississippi. Because the 1st Brigade was unable to cross a flooded river, it returned to Memphis without accomplishing this mission. Grierson's expedition left Memphis on December 21, 1864, and headed east along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad in the direction of Corinth, Mississippi. Grierson reported having 3,500 men, including 11 cavalry regiments organized into three brigades led by Colonels Kargé, Edward Francis Winslow, and Embury D. Osband. In addition, there was a 40-man company acting as escort, 50 African-Americans acting as pioneers, and 20 days' rations carried by pack mules. Grierson reported having no artillery and no wagons. However, historian Frederick H. Dyer stated that Battery "K", 2nd Illinois Light Artillery Regiment accompanied the raid and fought at Egypt Station.
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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