Fight for Hankinson's Ferry

Once Union troops held Grindstone Ford on Big Bayou Pierre, every Confederate unit between that creek and the Big Black River risked being cut off. General John Bowen, whose division had defended Grand Gulf against Porter's gunboats on April 29 and then lost 787 men at Port Gibson, evacuated Grand Gulf and pushed his column with all speed toward Hankinson's Ferry on the Big Black. He barely escaped. Grant had meant to advance north over the same road, but scouts reported Vicksburg's southern approaches well defended, and the army turned east toward the railroad.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Windsor Ruins — 16 mi
  Twenty-three standing Corinthian columns left by an 1890 fire, the largest antebellum mansion in Mississippi, built with enslaved labor on a 2,600-acre cotton plantation.
• Alcorn State University and Oakland Memorial Chapel — 18 mi
  The 1871 Reconstruction college on the old Oakland College campus, first led by Hiram Revels, with the 1838 chapel built by Black craftsmen.
• Lake Bruin State Park — 19 mi
  A state park on a Mississippi River oxbow near St. Joseph, named for a territorial judge who owned a plantation beside it, on a former fish hatchery site.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 21 mi
  A 16-mile tour road through the trenches of the 47-day siege of 1863, with a national cemetery and the story of the thousands of enslaved people who reached freedom behind Union lines.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Hermitage — 4.2 mi
• Federals Occupy Rocky Springs — 5.7 mi
• First Baptist M.B. Church — 7.6 mi
• Claiborne County — 7.6 mi