Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site is one acre of park service land on Mississippi 370, six miles west of Baldwyn, with a monument and interpretive panels, surrounded by preserved battlefield land owned by a local commission. The battle was fought here on 10 June 1864. Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis led about 8,100 men out of Memphis to keep Nathan Bedford Forrest in Mississippi and away from William T. Sherman's railroad supply line. Forrest, with about 3,500 cavalry, caught the column on the road, reinforced as he went, and by five in the afternoon had shattered the Union line. An overturned wagon on the bridge over Tishomingo Creek jammed the retreat, and the army lost at least sixteen guns. Forrest's tactics worked that day, yet the victory brought the Confederacy no relief, because Sherman's line held.
The retreat did not become a rout in part because of Black soldiers. Colonel Edward Bouton's Black brigade, the 55th and 59th United States Colored Infantry, waited in reserve and then made several stands that slowed the pursuit. The 55th began as the 1st Alabama Infantry of African Descent, organized at Corinth in 1863 from men who had fled slavery; see the Corinth Contraband Camp.
Read the fight on the ground here: the wooded, narrow ground and the creek explain the result. The town of Baldwyn also has a visitor and interpretive center near U.S. 45.
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