Tallahatchie River Defense Line

Grant meant to supply his army by repairing the Mississippi Central Railroad as he marched south, while Sherman advanced from Memphis to meet him at Oxford. Pemberton's roughly 24,000 Confederates fell back behind the Tallahatchie, and his men built earthworks to defend the railroad bridge near Abbeville. Then a Union force under Alvin Hovey landed near Greenville and moved inland toward the railroad near Grenada, behind him. Hovey did little damage, but the Confederates left the river line without firing a shot and, by early December, stood on the Yalobusha.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oxford Square — 12 mi
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.
• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 12 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Rowan Oak — 12 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum — 16 mi
  The house in Holly Springs where Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862, now a museum of African American history, art and culture.

More markers nearby

• Abbeville Colored School — 4.6 mi
• College Church — 9.1 mi
• Cedar Oaks — 11 mi
• L.Q.C. Lamar House — 12 mi