Corinth's Confederate Siege Line: The Beauregard Line

Address: between 3101 and 3015 North Polk Street, Corinth, Mississippi. Open: sunset to sunrise, daily.

Building the line

Work on the Confederate earthworks known as the "Beauregard Line" began in the weeks before the Battle of Shiloh (April 6–7, 1862). It sped up when the defeated Confederate army fell back to Corinth to defend it against the U.S. Army, which now had the initiative.

• Layout: Captain Samuel Lockett, a West Point–trained engineer, sited the line, helped by Private Thomas Duncan, a teenage Corinth resident who had "learned the faces of these hills and woods as one comes to know the kindly countenances of loving friends." General P. G. T. Beauregard placed several positions on the northern part himself.
• Shape: a seven-mile semicircle from the northwest of town to the southeast, facing the Union camps along the Tennessee River — two miles from town on the north, just one mile from the vital railroad crossroads on the east.
• Labor: at first, enslaved workers taken from nearby plantations, supervised by army officers; later, the soldiers also took up picks and shovels.
• Camps: set well back, where units rotated between digging, picket duty and standing in reserve.

Never tested — then turned around

The line saw no fighting during the Siege of Corinth. On May 29–30, 1862, the Confederates abandoned the town without the expected showdown, and a twenty-month Union occupation began. The earthworks fell into disrepair while the Federals built their own defenses.

The test came four months later. On the first day of the Battle of Corinth, October 3, 1862, Union troops used the old Beauregard Line — but there were too few of them. After a spirited defense, Confederates found an undefended gap and drove the Federals back to a line closer to town.

Part of the series What Is There to See in Corinth, Mississippi? · next: Corinth Contraband Camp

Sources

Based on "Corinth's Confederate Siege Line," Shiloh National Military Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.