Snyder's Bluff was a Civil War engagement fought in Mississippi, 1863. It was a Confederate victory.
To insure that troops were not withdrawn to Grand Gulf to assist Confederates there, a combined Union army-navy force feigned an attack on Snyder's Bluff, Mississippi. After noon, on April 29th, Lt. Cdr. K. Randolph Breese, with his eight gunboats and ten transports carrying Maj. Gen. Francis Blair's division, inched up the Yazoo River to the mouth of Chickasaw Bayou where they spent the night. At 9:00 am, the next morning, the force, minus one gunboat, continued upriver to Drumgould's Bluff and engaged the enemy batteries. During the fighting, Choctaw suffered more than fifty hits, but no casualties occurred. Around 6:00 pm, the troops disembarked and marched along Blake's Levee toward the guns. As they neared Drumgould's Bluff, a battery opened on them, creating havoc and casualties. The Union advance halted and, after dark, the men reembarked on the transports. The next morning, transports disembarked other troops. The swampy terrain and enemy heavy artillery fire forced them to retire. The gunboats opened fire again, about 3:00 pm on the 1st, causing some damage. Later, the boats' fire slackened and stopped altogether after dark. Sherman had received orders to land his troops at Milliken's Bend, so the gunboats returned to their anchorages at the mouth of the Yazoo.
From April 29 through May 1, 1863, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Snyder's Bluff, one episode within the broader Vicksburg Campaign of the Civil War. Grant, a Federal major general, had settled on a plan to march the bulk of his army along the Mississippi's western shore before crossing to the eastern side south of Vicksburg near Grand Gulf. To mask this intended crossing, he sent Major General William T. Sherman upriver on the Yazoo with Francis P. Blair Jr.'s division from the XV Corps, aiming to stage a diversion against Confederate positions at Snyder's Bluff and nearby Drumgould's Bluff.
Sherman's troops, supported by gunboats under Lieutenant Commander K. Randolph Breese, moved onto the Yazoo on April 29 and drew near the Confederate works the following day. That morning Breese's vessels shelled the enemy fortifications, and in the afternoon Union infantry attempted an assault that gained little ground and did nothing to persuade the Confederates that the expedition was anything beyond a mere diversion. Additional infantry pushes came on May 1, but Grant, responding to developments near Grand Gulf, ordered Sherman to bring his men back to rejoin the main army. That same afternoon, naval guns inflicted heavier damage than they had the day before, yet the overall effort still failed to disguise itself as anything more than a feint.
Any delay in sending reinforcements to Grand Gulf stemmed from other causes, not from Sherman's maneuver on the Yazoo. Earlier, on April 29, Union warships had been unable to suppress Confederate artillery during the Battle of Grand Gulf, prompting Grant to simply shift his crossing point farther down the river. The larger campaign concluded with a Union triumph on July 4, marking one of the pivotal moments of the entire conflict.
In the opening stages of the American Civil War, Union commanders crafted the Anaconda Plan, a broad strategy meant to bring down the Confederate States of America. Seizing control of the Mississippi River stood as one of the plan's central goals. By early 1862, the fall of New Orleans, Louisiana, along with a string of land victories, had brought most of the Mississippi Valley under Union authority. Yet Vicksburg, Mississippi, remained firmly in Confederate hands, a city whose importance lay both in its commanding position over the river and in its role as the vital link joining the Confederacy's two halves.
That May, Federal naval forces pushed upriver from New Orleans in hopes of seizing Vicksburg, but the effort came to nothing. Late June brought a renewed push, this time a combined army and navy campaign aimed at the same objective. Navy commanders concluded, however, that capturing the city would require additional infantry support that never materialized. A separate scheme to dig a canal across a bend in the river, sidestepping Vicksburg entirely, also ended in failure.
As November drew to a close, roughly 40,000 Union foot soldiers under Major General Ulysses S. Grant set out from Tennessee, marching south toward Vicksburg. This advance stalled when Confederate raiders struck at Grant's supply lines, destroying a depot during the Holly Springs Raid alongside damage inflicted by Forrest's West Tennessee Raid, forcing Grant to pull his men back. At the same time, Major General William T. Sherman led a separate column out of Memphis, Tennessee, departing on the very day the Holly Springs Raid occurred, and proceeded down the Mississippi. Turning up the Yazoo River, Sherman's troops soon found themselves trading fire with Confederate defenders posted along high ground overlooking Chickasaw Bayou. When Union forces launched an assault on December 29, they suffered a decisive defeat in what became known as the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, prompting Sherman to withdraw his men on January 1, 1863.
As March drew to a close, repeated efforts to get past Vicksburg by other means had come to nothing. Grant weighed three possible courses of action: pulling back to Memphis and attempting once more the land route through northern Mississippi, marching his forces south along the western bank of the Mississippi River before crossing below Vicksburg and turning toward the city, or launching a direct amphibious strike across the river at Vicksburg itself. The river assault carried the danger of severe losses, while retreating to Memphis threatened political fallout if the public interpreted it as a retreat rather than a maneuver. Weighing these options, Grant settled on the plan to cross downstream. His troops began advancing along the western bank on March 29, with Major General John A. McClernand's men leading the way. To conceal this movement, several diversionary operations were carried out, including Steele's expedition to Greenville, Streight's Raid, and Grierson's Raid. These deceptions worked on Confederate commander John C. Pemberton, who was particularly misled by Grierson's Raid; he lost track of the actual military situation and came to believe that Grant's army was withdrawing altogether.
McClernand's soldiers had completed their march downriver by late April, and McPherson's men were following close behind. Sherman's XV Corps had originally been slated to move later, but on April 27 Grant altered his plans concerning that force. With an assault on Grand Gulf, Mississippi set for April 29, to be followed by McClernand's corps crossing the river by boat, Grant sought a way to pull Confederate attention elsewhere during the crossing. He directed Sherman, along with a portion of the XV Corps, to approach the Confederate fortifications at Snyder's Bluff, located twelve miles northeast of Vicksburg, and stage a feint there if conditions allowed. Grant himself felt uneasy about the feint and left the final call to Sherman's discretion, worried that if the diversion failed it might be seen back home as another defeat along the lines of Chickasaw Bayou. Sherman, however, gave little thought to how newspapers might react and chose to move forward with the plan. Even so, he harbored reservations about Grant's broader strategy, worrying that he might eventually need to bring his entire corps downriver to rescue Grant should the campaign go wrong.
Command of the naval side of these operations fell to Lieutenant Commander K. Randolph Breese, appointed by Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. Breese favored moving forward but preferred to hold off until the ironclad USS Choctaw could join them. This delay meant that on April 28, while awaiting Choctaw, Major General Francis P. Blair Jr.'s division received three days of rations along with 60 rounds of ammunition per man. Choctaw finally showed up around 5:00 pm that day, allowing the force to depart the following morning. Ten troop transports carried the men up the Yazoo River, six of which had improvised protection made from bales of hay stacked on deck. Each of those six vessels also carried two guns pulled from Battery A and Battery B of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery Regiment. Accompanying the transports was a naval contingent of eleven ships: the flagship Black Hawk, Choctaw itself, the ironclad Baron DeKalb, the timberclad Tyler, tinclads Romeo, Linden, Signal, and Petrel, plus three scows equipped with mortars.
By the afternoon of April 29, the flotilla had reached where Chickasaw Bayou meets the Yazoo, and it halted for the night near the site of the earlier fighting at Chickasaw Bayou. The following morning the group pushed onward, though Petrel stayed behind on guard duty to keep Confederate forces from mining the waterway. Shooting commenced close to 10:00 am, with Baron DeKalb and Choctaw targeting Confederate emplacements at Drumgould's Bluff, situated a mile downstream from Snyder's Bluff. Black Hawk and Tyler joined the bombardment, and the mortar scows took up position to add their fire as well. Linden protected the scows while Romeo and Signal held back in a supporting role farther behind. Command of the Confederate defenses in this sector belonged to Brigadier General Louis Hébert, whose forces controlled sixteen heavy guns backed by earthworks. Earlier efforts had placed a raft near Snyder's Bluff meant to obstruct river traffic, though it had washed away on April 26.
Positioning limited the Union ironclads to their broadside guns only, putting them at a disadvantage. Hébert held his fire deliberately, hoping to keep the Federals from quickly discovering where his guns were placed. When the Confederate artillery finally opened up, the heaviest pieces could only bear on Choctaw, though several smaller guns managed to strike other targets. A 12-pounder Whitworth rifle round damaged Tyler badly enough to force its withdrawal, whereas Choctaw absorbed 47 hits without any serious harm resulting. Soldiers from the 3rd Louisiana Infantry Regiment tried to harass Baron DeKalb but were pushed back by a party that landed from the ship. Amid the shelling, Union troops went ashore and tried rounding up cattle, setting off a stampede in the process.
Once the Union gunboats pulled back, Hébert discovered that the bombardment had cost him only two men wounded and had left his defensive works largely intact. That afternoon saw part of Blair's command go ashore, though flooding restricted the infantry to advancing solely along a levee. Confederate artillery together with the 3rd Louisiana halted their progress with heavy fire. This staged Union assault failed to convince the defenders, and the Confederates suspected it might be nothing more than a demonstration.
The following morning, May 1, Sherman put the 8th Missouri Infantry Regiment ashore on the river's west side, but a bayou combined with Confederate cannon fire from the opposite bank compelled a retreat. Meanwhile two additional Union regiments reconnoitered Drumgould's Bluff and discovered the Confederates had reinforced their positions there. After conferring, Sherman and Breese agreed to renew the naval bombardment at 3:00 pm. Before that could happen, Sherman received an urgent dispatch that Grant had penned on April 29, informing him that Union forces had gotten past Grand Gulf and that two of his divis
In his memoirs Sherman later inflated the significance of this operation, yet Bearss notes that his movements along the Yazoo barely registered with the Confederate forces facing him. The delay in reinforcing Grand Gulf by Confederate commanders did occur, but this stemmed mainly from weak leadership on the part of Pemberton and Carter L. Stevenson rather than from anything Sherman did. Officers stationed at the bluff understood the assault to be nothing more than a diversion, though Miller notes that Sherman's continued presence on the Yazoo added to the uncertainty Federal forces created about their true objectives. Historians William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel point to the demonstration at Snyder's Bluff as one instance of Grant's broader strategy of using diversionary maneuvers throughout the Vicksburg campaigns.
On April 29, Porter's gunboats opened fire on Confederate defenses at Grand Gulf during that battle, yet several enemy guns remained active despite the bombardment. Faced with this, Grant simply shifted his crossing point downstream, choosing Bruinsburg, Mississippi instead. By May 1, his forward units had already overcome Confederate resistance at Port Gibson, clearing a path into the Mississippi interior. Following the fighting at Raymond, Grant altered his line of advance toward Vicksburg, turning instead toward Jackson, Mississippi, which his forces went on to seize. On May 16, the defenders of Vicksburg met Grant's army east of the city at Champion Hill, only to suffer defeat there. Two days later, on May 18, Grant initiated the siege of Vicksburg, and by July 4 the Confederate garrison had surrendered the town, an event that stood as one of the war's decisive turning points.
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