The 17 May 1863 Battle of Big Black River Bridge, part of the Vicksburg Campaign, resulted from a Confederate Army attempt to slow Union pursuit as the Southerners retreated following their defeat at the Battle of Champion Hill. A division of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s Southern army had become separated from the main body. Pemberton ordered the units headed by Maj. Gen. John S. Bowen and Brig. Gen. John Vaughn to hold the bridge over the Big Black River, less than twenty miles from Vicksburg, to allow time for the missing division to reunite with the army. Unbeknownst to Pemberton, however, the troops he was waiting for had been cut off by the enemy and were headed away from the river.
The Confederate line of entrenchments at the Big Black River Bridge was about a mile long and ran north to south inside a horseshoe-shaped curve on the east side of the river. Flanked by swampy terrain, it was fronted by relatively flat, open ground. Confederate manpower along the line was estimated at about four thousand, with nearly twenty pieces of artillery. To the rear of the fortifications were two bridges over the river: the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad bridge, and a makeshift bridge formed by mooring the steamer Dot crossways in the river and removing its machinery.
