Battle of Booneville

The Battle of Booneville was small, and its payoff was time. On July 1, 1862, Sheridan's roughly 800 cavalrymen faced about 4,700 Confederates under James Chalmers. Colt revolving rifles helped the line hold at the Tupelo and Saltillo road crossing before it fell back two miles toward Corinth. Detached companies of the 2nd Michigan and 2nd Iowa slipped to Chalmers's rear and charged with sabers and pistols. Union losses were one killed, 24 wounded and 16 missing; Sheridan estimated 65 Confederate dead. Bragg delayed his offensive against Corinth.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site — 13 mi
  The crossroads where Nathan Bedford Forrest routed a larger Union force in June 1864, and where Black regiments, many raised at Corinth, held the bridge that let most of the army escape.
• Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center — 20 mi
  A Park Service center at Battery Robinett telling why two railroads made Corinth a prize, from the siege of 1862 to the battle of October, and what happened to the people who sought freedom there.
• Corinth Contraband Camp — 20 mi
  The site of a Union-run town of freedom seekers in 1862 and 1863, with a quarter-mile walkway of life-size bronze figures and the origin of a Black regiment that fought at Brices Cross Roads.
• Tishomingo State Park — 22 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park around Bear Creek's sandstone canyon at milepost 304 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, with a swinging bridge and cliffs found nowhere else in Mississippi.

More markers nearby

• Council of War — 1.0 mi
• Capture of Booneville — 1.2 mi
• Booneville Armory — 1.4 mi
• Booneville — 1.7 mi