This Week in the Civil War - 471

Dec 27, 2012

In the days after Christmas 1862 fighting continued on many fronts.  In Arkansas, the Union Army of the Frontier, commanded by James Blount, attacked Confederate forces at Dripping Springs, Arkansas, and drove them through the town of Van Buren, capturing approximately forty wagons, four steamers, and miscellaneous supplies. 

In Mississippi, Sherman’s Fifteenth Corps, advancing through swamps and bayous, approached the Vicksburg bluffs near the Yazoo River despite increasing numbers of Confederate defenders.  In Kentucky, elements of John Hunt Morgan’s Confederates captured a Union garrison at Elizabethtown and destroyed a bridge at Muldraugh’s Hill near Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. In Tennessee, Rosecrans’ Union forces continued their slow advance at Murfreesboro. Both sides continued to push in the closing days of 1862.