First Battle of Memphis

On the morning of June sixth, eighteen sixty-two, the residents of Memphis woke up, walked down to the bluffs above the Mississippi River, and watched their city lose the Civil War in about ninety minutes.

The First Battle of Memphis was a river battle, fought between a Confederate flotilla and a Union fleet under Flag Officer Charles Davis, assisted by a controversial private ram squadron commanded by Colonel Charles Ellet Jr. The Confederate River Defense Fleet had been assembled hastily, converting commercial steamboats into warships with cotton bales for armor and iron prows for ramming. It looked formidable on paper. It was not.

The Union fleet opened fire at dawn. Within the first exchanges, the Confederate gunboat Colonel Lovell was rammed and sunk. Then the Beauregard. Then the Price. The battle was chaos, river mud, smoke, and the sound of iron tearing through wood. By the time it was over, seven of the eight Confederate vessels had been sunk, disabled, or captured. The eighth ran south. Union casualties were minimal: Ellet was the only man hurt on the Union side. Confederate casualties numbered roughly one hundred, with many drowned.

Charles Ellet Jr. was the sole Union officer killed. He was struck by a pistol shot during the melee, the only serious Union loss, and he died from the wound two weeks later. His son, Charles Rivers Ellet, was nineteen years old and present on the deck when his father fell.

Memphis fell the same morning. City officials rowed out to surrender before noon. Crowds of civilians watched from the bluffs, some weeping, some jeering the Confederate commanders for the debacle. A few reportedly cheered the Union, a reminder that Unionist sentiment was alive even in occupied Memphis. The city would remain under Union control for the rest of the war, and its position on the river made it a crucial supply and hospital base for Ulysses Grant's Vicksburg campaign the following year.