The Battle of Port Gibson (May 1, 1863) was fought between a Union Army commanded by Major General Ulysses S. Grant and a reinforced Confederate States Army division led by Major General John S. Bowen. Though the outnumbered Confederate soldiers fought stubbornly, they were steadily pressed back during the day by Major General John A. McClernand's troops. Bowen eventually conceded the field by withdrawing north toward Vicksburg, Mississippi. The battle occurred near Port Gibson, Mississippi, during the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War.
Starting in November 1862, Grant tried various strategies in order to attack Vicksburg, and in each case, his army was unsuccessful. Finally, Grant ordered his army to march through swampy terrain on the west bank of the Mississippi River in an attempt to get south of Vicksburg. The Union commander gambled that the Union Navy under Acting Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter could safely pass the Vicksburg batteries. The operation was successful, and Porter's gunboats and river transports carried the first two army corps of Grant's army to the east bank. Meanwhile, Grant's third corps threatened Vicksburg from the northwest. The Confederate commander Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton was caught with his army scattered and could only oppose Grant with inferior forces at Port Gibson. This was the first of several Union victories in May 1863 that would result in the Siege of Vicksburg.
Grant assumed command of the Army of the Tennessee on October 25, 1862, and started the Vicksburg campaign a week later. Grant's first foray with 40,000 soldiers came to grief when Major General Earl Van Dorn's cavalry wrecked his supply base in the Holly Springs Raid on December 20. At the same time, a 32,000-man riverine expedition led by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman was repulsed at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou on December 27–29. When McClernand arrived to assume command, Sherman suggested a thrust up the Arkansas River supported by Porter's Mississippi River Squadron. The result was a Union victory at the Battle of Arkansas Post on January 11, 1863. For a Federal loss of 1,061 casualties, about 4,900 Confederates were captured. When Grant learned about the divergent expedition, he ordered the troops back to the Mississippi River.
These events were followed by the unsuccessful Yazoo Pass and Steele's Bayou expeditions in March 1863. Grant also tried to dig several canals to create a water-borne route west of the Mississippi River that would avoid the Vicksburg batteries; all were eventually abandoned. When newspaper editors and politicians demanded Grant's removal from command, President Abraham Lincoln replied, "I can't spare this man, he fights". Earlier in the campaign, Lieutenant Colonel James H. Wilson of Grant's staff suggested having Porter's fleet run past the Vicksburg batteries at night. After this, the army would march downstream from Vicksburg on the west bank of the Mississippi River and be ferried across to the east bank. All of Grant's subordinate commanders were against it. Having tried every other approach, Grant determined to execute this plan. He gambled that Porter's squadron could accomplish its part.
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 Battle of Port Gibson (Grant's Campaign). 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:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Wikipedia source.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.