Port Gibson: Grant Opens the Door to Vicksburg

On May first, eighteen sixty-three, General Ulysses Grant fought his first land battle of the Vicksburg Campaign right here outside Port Gibson. The day before, he had crossed twenty-three thousand troops over the Mississippi River at Bruinsburg, the largest amphibious operation in American history up to that point, surpassing anything before the Normandy landings eighty years later.

Confederate General John Bowen's defenders met Grant's men at the Shaifer plantation and fought all day in the ravined, brush-choked terrain. By evening the Union line held, and Bowen withdrew. Grant suffered roughly eight hundred seventy-five casualties; the Confederates around seven hundred eighty-seven. It was a grinding fight, but Port Gibson opened the road inland. Within about nine weeks, Vicksburg surrendered on July fourth, splitting the Confederacy in two and giving the Union control of the Mississippi River.