Firing on the A.O. Tyler

The A. O. Tyler outlived the insult. After Vicksburg's militia fired on her in January 1861, four days after Mississippi seceded, the steamboat entered the Union's western flotilla. She supported Grant at Forts Henry and Donelson, fired into the Confederate flank at Shiloh, and on July 15, 1862 fought the CSS Arkansas. On April 27, 1865 she helped rescue survivors of the Sultana, which had left Vicksburg days earlier. She was sold at auction at Mound City, Illinois, that August.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — 0.3 mi
  Vicksburg's Greek Revival courthouse of 1860, raised on a hilltop with the labor of enslaved artisans and now a private local-history museum heavy on Confederate relics.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 1.9 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.
• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 1.9 mi
  The raised hull of a Union river ironclad sunk by a mine in the Yazoo in 1862, displayed at Vicksburg National Military Park with the artifacts the river mud preserved.

More markers nearby

• The Vicksburg & Queen of the West — steps away
• The Steamer Sultana — steps away
• C.S.S. Arkansas — steps away
• Red Tops — steps away