Battle for the Mississippi: The Vicksburg Campaign

In early April 1863 the Army's adjutant general, Lorenzo Thomas, toured the Union posts along the river with the authority of Lincoln and the War Department to raise Black regiments. On April 8 he spoke to Gen. John Logan's division and said he already had two regiments from the division at Lake Providence. He told the soldiers that people reaching Union lines should be welcomed, fed, clothed and armed, and promised to dismiss anyone who mistreated Black troops. The men would serve in segregated units under white officers. Thomas hoped to raise about twenty regiments.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grant's Canal, Lake Providence — steps away
  About 1,000 feet of the ditch Union troops dug in early 1863 to get Grant's army around Vicksburg, with a boardwalk, a pier and a visitor center in the Byerley House.
• Louisiana State Cotton Museum — 2.2 mi
  A state museum on US 65 north of Lake Providence with a sharecropper's cabin, a commissary and a gin house, in the parish where John H. Scott worked for Black voting rights.
• Poverty Point World Heritage Site — 18 mi
  Louisiana's only World Heritage Site: six C-shaped ridges, a 43-acre plaza and Mound A, raised on Macon Ridge between about 1700 and 1100 BCE.

More markers nearby

• Grant's March Through Louisiana — steps away
• Grant's Canal — steps away
• Parish of Carroll — 0.2 mi
• Soldiers' Rest — 0.5 mi