Hickman County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,521, making it the third-least populous county in Kentucky. Its county seat is Clinton. The county was formed in 1821. It is the least densely populated county in the state and is a prohibition or dry county.
Columbus is a home rule-class city in Hickman County, Kentucky, in the United States. The population was 170 at the 2010 census, a decline from 229 in 2000. The city lies at the western end of the state, less than a mile from the Mississippi River.
The Arkansas Post, formally the Arkansas Post National Memorial, was the first European settlement in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain and present-day U.S. state of Arkansas. In 1686, Henri de Tonti established it on behalf of Louis XIV of France for the purpose of trading with the Quapaw Nation. The French, Spanish, and Americans, who acquired the territory in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, considered the site of strategic value. It was the capital of Arkansas from 1819 until 1821 when the territorial government relocated to Little Rock.
The Battle of Fort Henry was fought on February 6, 1862, in Stewart County, Tennessee, during the American Civil War. It was the first important victory for the Union and Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Western Theater.
The Battle of Island Number Ten was an engagement at the New Madrid or Kentucky Bend on the Mississippi River during the American Civil War, lasting from February 28 to April 8, 1862. Island Number Ten, a small island at the base of a tight double turn in the river, was held by the Confederates from the early days of the war. It was an excellent site to impede Union efforts to invade the South by the river, as ships had to approach the island bows on and then slow to make the turns. For the defenders, however, it had an innate weakness in that it depended on a single road for supplies and reinforcements. If an enemy force managed to cut that road, the garrison would be isolated and eventually be forced to surrender.
USS Tyler was originally a merchant ship named A. O. Tyler, a commercial side-wheel steamboat with twin stacks and covered paddles positioned aft. Constructed in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1857, it was acquired by the United States Navy, 5 June 1861 for service in the American Civil War and converted into the gunboat USS Tyler on 5 June 1861. She was commissioned in September 1861. She was protected with thick wooden bulwarks.
CSS Oregon was a wooden sidewheel steamer that served as a gunboat in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Built in 1846 for the Mobile Mail Line, she transported mail between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, before the war. In 1861, she was seized by the Governor of Louisiana, Thomas Overton Moore, and served as a blockade runner before being selected for use by the Confederate Army. After transferring men and supplies to Ship Island, she was formally converted into a gunboat and armed with four cannon. Remaining behind on Lake Pontchartrain when many Confederate warships were transferred up the Mississippi River, Oregon served in the Mississippi Sound and Pass Christian areas. She took part in several minor actions involving USS New London, two of which resulted in the Confederates moving into shallow water to avoid close-range action, and the third ending when the Confederate ships abandoned the Pass Christian area. In April 1862, Union pressure confined her and other Confederate ships to Lake Pontchartrain. Later that month, with Union forces closing in on New Orleans, Oregon was sank as a blockship. Her wreck was removed and destroyed in the early 1870s.
The Battle of Belmont was fought on November 7, 1861 in Mississippi County, Missouri. It was the first combat test in the American Civil War for Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the future Union Army general in chief and eventual U.S. president, who was fighting Major General Leonidas Polk. Grant's troops in this battle were the "nucleus" of what would become the Union Army of the Tennessee.
The Battle of Grand Gulf was fought on April 29, 1863, during the American Civil War. As part of Major General Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg campaign, seven Union Navy ironclad warships commanded by Admiral David Dixon Porter bombarded Confederate fortifications at Grand Gulf, Mississippi. One of the Confederate fortifications, named Fort Wade, was silenced, but the other, named Fort Cobun, continued firing. Due to the strong Confederate resistance, Grant and Porter decided it was not feasible to make an amphibious landing at Grand Gulf, but later landed at Bruinsburg, Mississippi, instead. After the Confederates were defeated at the Battle of Port Gibson on May 1, Grand Gulf was rendered indefensible and the fortifications were abandoned. The defenders of Grand Gulf then fought at the Battle of Champion Hill on May 16 and the Battle of Big Black River Bridge on May 17, before the start of the Siege of Vicksburg, which ended with a Confederate surrender on July 4. Today, the battlefield is preserved in Grand Gulf Military State Park, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The Battle of Paducah was fought on March 25, 1864, during the American Civil War. A Confederate cavalry force led by Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest moved into Tennessee and Kentucky to capture Union supplies. Tennessee had been occupied by Union troops since 1862. He launched a successful raid on Paducah, Kentucky, on the Ohio River.
Kentucky was a southern border state of key importance in the American Civil War. It officially declared its neutrality at the beginning of the war, but after a failed attempt by Confederate General Leonidas Polk to take the state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, the legislature petitioned the Union Army for assistance. Though the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky early in the war, after early 1862 Kentucky came largely under Union control. In the historiography of the Civil War, Kentucky is treated primarily as a southern border state, with special attention to the social divisions during the secession crisis, invasions and raids, internal violence, sporadic guerrilla warfare, federal-state relations, the ending of slavery, and the return of Confederate veterans.
The Confederate Heartland Offensive, also known as the Kentucky Campaign, was an American Civil War campaign conducted by the Confederate States Army in Tennessee and Kentucky where Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith tried to draw neutral Kentucky into the Confederacy by outflanking Union troops under Major General Don Carlos Buell. Though they scored some successes, notably a tactical win at Perryville, they soon retreated, leaving Kentucky primarily under Union control for the rest of the war.
Randolph is a rural unincorporated community in Tipton County, Tennessee, United States, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. Randolph was founded in the 1820s and in 1827, the Randolph post office was established. In the 1830s, the town became an early center of river commerce in West Tennessee. Randolph shipped more cotton annually than Memphis until 1840. In 1834, the first pastor of the Methodist congregation was appointed. The fortunes of the community began to decline in the late 1840s due to failed railroad development, an unfavorable mail route and other factors. The first Confederate States Army fort in Tennessee was built at Randolph early in the Civil War in 1861, a second fortification at Randolph was constructed later that same year. During the Civil War, the town was burned down twice by Union Army forces.
The Pointe Coupee Artillery was a Confederate Louisiana artillery unit in the American Civil War made up primarily of men from the parishes of Pointe Coupee, East Baton Rouge, Livingston and other surrounding parishes as well as a large number of men from New Orleans.
Fort Wright was constructed in 1861 and located on the second Chickasaw Bluff at Randolph, Tipton County, Tennessee. Fort Wright was a Civil War fortification and the first military training facility of the Confederate Army in Tennessee.
Fort Randolph was a Confederate Army fortification built in 1861 during the Civil War. Fort Randolph was located on the second Chickasaw Bluff at Randolph, Tipton County, Tennessee.
The Battle of Lucas Bend took place on January 11, 1862 near Lucas Bend, four miles north of Columbus on Mississippi River in Kentucky as it lay at the time of the American Civil War. In the network of the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio rivers, the Union river gunboats under Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote and General Ulysses S. Grant sought to infiltrate and attack the Confederate positions in Tennessee. On the day of the battle, the Union ironclads Essex and St Louis, transporting troops down the Mississippi in fog, engaged the Confederate cotton clad warships General Polk, Ivy and Jackson and the gun platform New Orleans at a curve known as Lucas Bend in Kentucky. The Essex, under Commander William D. Porter, and the St Louis forced the Confederate ships to fall back after an hour of skirmishing during which the Union commander was wounded. They retreated to the safety of a nearby Confederate battery at Columbus, where the Union vessels could not follow.
The 21st Louisiana Infantry Regiment, also called the McCown Regiment, was an infantry regiment from Louisiana that served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Six of its companies formed the 5th Louisiana Infantry Battalion organized in September 1861, which fought in the Battle of Belmont as cannoneers. The battalion was brought up to regimental strength, becoming the 21st Louisiana, by the addition of four companies in February 1862. After service at Island Number Ten, Fort Pillow, and the Siege of Corinth, the regiment was disbanded due to its high desertion rate.
CSS Maurepas was a sidewheel steamer that briefly served as a gunboat in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. Built in 1858 in Indiana as Grosse Tete, the vessel was used in commercial trade until 1860 and then delivered mail until 1861, when she was acquired by the Confederate Navy.
CSS Pontchartrain was a gunboat that served in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. Built in 1859 for passenger and cotton trade, she was purchased by the Confederates in October 1862. After seeing action against Union land positions during the campaigns for New Madrid, Missouri, and Island Number Ten, she was transferred to serve on the Arkansas River and the White River. In June 1862, two of her cannons were taken to a land fortification at St. Charles, Arkansas, where part of her crew saw action in the Battle of St. Charles while manning the guns. Her other cannons were then offloaded at Fort Hindman, where more of her crew were captured while fighting on land at the Battle of Arkansas Post in January 1863. Pontchartrain herself remained inactive at Little Rock, Arkansas, and was burned to prevent capture in September 1863 when the Confederates abandoned the city.
