Claiborne County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,135. Its county seat is Port Gibson. The county is named after William Claiborne, the second governor of the Mississippi Territory.
Port Gibson is a city in Claiborne County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,567 at the 2010 census. Port Gibson is the county seat of Claiborne County, which is bordered on the west by the Mississippi River. It is the site of the Claiborne County Courthouse.
The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. The Union Army of the Tennessee under Major General Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the river by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The USS Queen of the West was a sidewheel steamer ram ship and the flagship of the United States Ram Fleet and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. It was built at Cincinnati, Ohio in 1854. It served as a commercial steamer until purchased by Colonel Charles Ellet Jr. in 1862 and converted for use as a ram ship. The ship operated in conjunction with the Mississippi River Squadron during the Union brown-water navy battle against the Confederate River Defense Fleet for control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the American Civil War.
The Battle of Champion Hill of May 16, 1863, was the pivotal battle in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Union Army commander Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee pursued the retreating Confederate States Army under Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton and defeated it twenty miles to the east of Vicksburg, Mississippi, leading inevitably to the siege of Vicksburg and surrender. The battle is also known as Baker's Creek.
The Battle of Big Black River Bridge was fought on May 17, 1863, as part of the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. After a Union army commanded by Major General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's Confederate army at the Battle of Champion Hill on May 16, Pemberton ordered Brigadier General John S. Bowen to hold a rear guard at the crossing of the Big Black River to buy time for the Confederate army to regroup. Union troops commanded by Major General John McClernand pursued the Confederates, and encountered Bowen's rear guard. A Union charge quickly broke the Confederate position, and during the retreat and river crossing, a rout ensued.
Grand Gulf Nuclear Station is a nuclear power station with one operational GE BWR reactor. It lies on a 2,100 acres (850 ha) site near Port Gibson, Mississippi. The site is wooded and contains two lakes. The plant has a 520-foot natural draft cooling tower. As of January 2023, the plant employs 675 people.
The history of the state of Mississippi extends back to thousands of years of indigenous peoples. Evidence of their cultures has been found largely through archeological excavations, as well as existing remains of earthwork mounds built thousands of years ago. Native American traditions were kept through oral histories; with Europeans recording the accounts of historic peoples they encountered. Since the late 20th century, there have been increased studies of the Native American tribes and reliance on their oral histories to document their cultures. Their accounts have been correlated with evidence of natural events.
The Battle of Port Gibson was fought between a Union Army commanded by Major General Ulysses S. Grant and a reinforced Confederate States Army division led by Major General John S. Bowen. Though the outnumbered Confederate soldiers fought stubbornly, they were steadily pressed back during the day by Major General John A. McClernand's troops. Bowen eventually conceded the field by withdrawing north toward Vicksburg, Mississippi. The battle occurred near Port Gibson, Mississippi, during the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War.
The Battle of Grand Gulf was fought on April 29, 1863, during the American Civil War. During Major General Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg campaign, Union Army forces had failed in attempts to bypass the strategic city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grant decided move his army south, cross the Mississippi River, and then advance on Vicksburg. Seven Union Navy ironclad warships commanded by Admiral David Dixon Porter bombarded Confederate fortifications at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, in preparation for a crossing of the river. Union fire was able to silence one of the two Confederate fortifications at Grand Gulf, but the position was still strong enough that Grant decided to cross the river elsewhere.
Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.
Warrenton is an unincorporated community in Warren County, Mississippi. It is located approximately 5 miles south of Vicksburg on U.S. Route 61.
The Port Gibson Battlefield is the site near Port Gibson, Mississippi where the 1863 Battle of Port Gibson was fought during the American Civil War. The battlefield covers about 3,400 acres (1,400 ha) of land west of the city, astride Rodney Road, where Union Army forces were establishing a beachhead after crossing the Mississippi River in a bid to take the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg. The Union victory secured that beachhead and paved the way for the eventual fall of Vicksburg. A 2,080-acre (840 ha) area surrounding part of the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and a larger area was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005. In 2009, the battlefield was designated by the Civil War Preservation Trust as one of its Top 10 most endangered Civil War battlefields. In 2011, the Civil War Preservation Trust was renamed the Civil War Trust, which in 2018 became a division of the American Battlefield Trust. The Trust and its partners have acquired and preserved 644 acres (2.61 km2) of the Port Gibson battlefield.
Grand Gulf Military State Park is a Mississippi state park located 10 miles northwest of Port Gibson in an unincorporated area, now the ghost town of Grand Gulf, in Claiborne County. The park includes the remnants of two batteries that fired on and repelled Ulysses S. Grant's forces during the Battle of Grand Gulf. After the Battle of Port Gibson, Grant made Grand Gulf his base of operations. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Mississippi Landmark.
The Grand Gulf Mound (22CB522) is an Early Marksville culture archaeological site located near Port Gibson in Claiborne County, Mississippi, on a bluff 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the Mississippi River, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the mouth of the Big Black River. The site has an extant burial mound, and may have possibly had two others in the past. The site is believed to have been occupied from 50 to 200 CE. Copper objects, Marksville culture ceramics and a stone platform pipe were found in excavations at the site. The site is believed to be the only site in the Natchez Bluffs region to have been actively involved in the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. It is one of four mounds in the area believed to date to the Early Marksville period, the other three being the Marskville Mound 4 and Crooks Mounds A and B, all located in nearby Louisiana. The mound itself was built in several stages over many years, very similar to the Crooks Mound A in La Salle Parish, Louisiana. Unlike some other Hopewell sites, such as the Tremper Mound in Scioto County, Ohio, the site showed no evidence of a mortuary or communal structure previous to the construction of the mound. The beginning stage is believed to have been a rectangular earthen platform .5 feet (0.15 m) in height, 20 feet (6.1 m) wide on its east–west axis and 3.5 feet (1.1 m) long on its north–south axis. After a period of use, this platform was covered with a mantle of earth 5.5 feet (1.7 m) in height and 26.5 feet (8.1 m) wide along its east–west axis, with an extremely hard cap of earth 0.2 feet (0.061 m) covering the mound. During a third stage another mantle of earth was added to the mound, bringing it to a height of 10 feet (3.0 m) and to approximately 32 feet (9.8 m) in width on its east–west axis.
Bruinsburg is a ghost town in Claiborne County, Mississippi, United States.
Peter Aaron Van Dorn (1773–1837) was an American lawyer, judge and cotton planter in Mississippi. Born and raised in New Jersey, with a law degree from Princeton, as a young man he migrated to the Mississippi Territory, where he made his career and fortune. He became a major planter with a plantation on the Yazoo River, a law practice in Port Gibson, and a seat as a judge on the Orphan's Court. He was one of the founders of Jackson, Mississippi, designated as the capital when it became a state.
The 3rd Missouri Infantry Regiment served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. The infantry regiment was officially mustered into service on January 17, 1862. It fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas in March before being transferred across the Mississippi River. While stationed at Corinth, Mississippi, the regiment played a minor role in the Battle of Farmington before the evacuation of the town. In September, the unit saw light action at the Battle of Iuka before being heavily engaged during the Second Battle of Corinth as the Confederates attempted to retake the town in October. In early 1863, the regiment was transferred to Grand Gulf, Mississippi, in order to strengthen the defenses of the Mississippi River at that point. At the Battle of Grand Gulf on April 29, the unit helped repulse a Union Navy attack against the Confederate defensive works. After elements of the Union Army of the Tennessee landed below Grand Gulf, the regiment fought in a delaying action at the Battle of Port Gibson on May 1.
The Mississippi was an important military highway that bordered ten states, roughly equally divided between Union and Confederate loyalties.
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