Union Battery Position

Sherman did not want to assault Jackson's works, so on the night of July 10, 1863, he ordered his corps commanders to build artillery positions. His guns were short of ammunition. On July 12 a heavy bombardment lasted under an hour to conserve shells, and firing picked up only after part of a supply arrived on July 14. Confederate cavalry tried to find the wagon train and were turned back by two infantry brigades Sherman sent to guard it. When that effort failed on July 16, Johnston ordered the city evacuated that night.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum — 2.1 mi
  A state museum in downtown Jackson, opened in 2017 beside the Museum of Mississippi History, that tells the movement from 1945 to 1970 through the people who made it.
• Farish Street Historic District — 2.2 mi
  Jackson's Black business and cultural center, where Medgar Evers kept the NAACP office and furniture-store owners recorded the blues, now a quiet National Register district.
• Old Capitol Museum — 2.3 mi
  Mississippi's Greek Revival statehouse of 1839, where the legislature voted to secede, Hiram Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate and the 1890 constitution was written, now a free state museum.
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 2.7 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.

More markers nearby

• Belhaven University — 0.9 mi
• Eudora Welty House — 0.9 mi
• Millsaps College — 1.0 mi
• The Jackson Volcano — 1.1 mi