Grant's Canal

In June 1862 Brigadier General Thomas Williams put about 1,500 soldiers to digging a canal across De Soto Point, opposite Vicksburg. The labor that counted was forced: armed parties gathered enslaved people from neighboring plantations, and Williams reported 1,100 to 1,200 Black workers cutting trees, clearing roots and digging. Heat, malaria, dysentery and smallpox struck workers and soldiers alike, and a falling river ended the work by late July. Grant restarted it in January 1863, then gave it up when a rising river flooded and silted the cut. The Mississippi, not the Confederate army, beat the canal.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  Nearly 80,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and oxbow lakes, with the state's largest population of Louisiana black bears and Theodore Roosevelt's 1907 hunt nearby.

More markers nearby

• Freedmen Fight at Milliken's Bend — steps away
• U.S. African Brigade — steps away
• Crescent Plantation — 14 mi
• Scottland Plantation House — 16 mi