Combat· American Civil War
Warrenton engagements below Vicksburg
Minor naval actions against the Confederate batteries below the besieged city.
In May 1863, as Grant closed his grip on Vicksburg, Marine detachments aboard Farragut's squadron, including a party under Captain John Broome, engaged the Confederate positions at Warrenton, on the river just below Vicksburg, where batteries on the bank still contested the passage. The actions were part of the broader campaign that was steadily tightening around the fortress, the ships keeping up pressure on the works guarding the river while Grant's army pressed the siege on the landward side. No Marine casualties are recorded. These were small affairs, ship-against-battery exchanges of the kind that filled the river war around Vicksburg, individually inconclusive but part of the relentless combined pressure that would force the city's surrender on 4 July 1863, the stroke that, with the fall of Port Hudson days later, gave the Union the whole Mississippi.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 451