On Wednesday, April 29, 1863 in the West Union gunboats engaged Confederate gun emplacements at Grand Gulf on the Mississippi River, attempting to clear the way for Ulysses Grant’s army to cross.
However, after six hours of firing the Confederate gun emplacements were not silenced, and during the night Grant’s leading force marched southward along the Louisiana shore to a new landing opposite Bruinsburg, Mississippi. The Union fleet, prepared to transport the army across the river, followed the army downstream.
North of Vicksburg General Sherman’s troops demonstrated against Confederate defenders near Snyder’s Mill to draw attention from Grant’s main attack. The following day 17,000 Union troops would cross the Mississippi at Bruinsburg in the largest amphibious operation in American military history until the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II.