Colonel Benjamin Grierson sets out with 1,700 Federal cavalrymen to divert attention from Ulysses S. Grant’s army landing below Vicksburg.

Exploring the most important 55 months in American history
Colonel Benjamin Grierson sets out with 1,700 Federal cavalrymen to divert attention from Ulysses S. Grant’s army landing below Vicksburg.
Ulysses S. Grant assembles his Federal troops at Milliken’s Bend as David D. Porter prepares to pass the Vicksburg batteries with his Mississippi River Squadron.
Ulysses S. Grant finally concedes the impossibility of capturing the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg from the north and begins to develop another, more daring, plan.
Federal Admiral David D. Porter concedes that yet another effort to reach Vicksburg using the vast network of waterways to the north has failed.
A Federal army-navy expeditionary force struggles to get through Yazoo Pass in an effort to get at the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Ulysses S. Grant initiates several projects designed for the Federals to cut their way toward Vicksburg, Mississippi. The project involving Yazoo Pass becomes the one most likely to succeed.