Gen. Ulysses S. Grant never gave up Mississippi and capturing Jackson, the captial, and Vicksburg. At the end of November, he headed south from the Memphis area. This generated a frenzy of activity for the Confederate army scattered across North Mississippi.
Grant's first march to Vicksburg followed the Mississippi Central Railroad out of southwest Tennessee. On December 1st, resisting Mississippi Confederates, close by the railroad north of Abbeville, pulled out of south-bank entrenchments along the Tallahatchie River and moved south. Union XIII Corps' cavalry commander, Col. T. Lyle Dickey, ordered to pursue, gathered his troops near Abbeville on the 2nd and skirmished with Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn's rear guard through town, down the railroad, and through Oxford.
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