"Old river-men say each bend in the Mississippi River has at least one story to tell. Well Plum Point and Craighead Bends collectively have several hundred. One of those occurred on May 10, 1862.
After the fall of Island No.10 on April 8, 1862, the Federal Mississippi River Squadron moved down stream to the next Confederate bulwark. Roughly thirty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, the river made a series of sharp bends – first west, then east, then west again – as the river flowed around Plum and Craighead Points. Inside these bends were a maze of snags and sandbars. Pilots considered this stretch of the river one of more dangerous sections. Mark Twain described it as "the famous and formidable Plum Point."
If that was not enough, terrain on the Tennessee side of the river made the Confederate defenses even more formidable. After passing around Craighead Point, the river turns west against the foot of the First Chickasaw Bluff. The crest of this rise is about 125 to 150 feet above the river level. And on top of that bluff, the Confederates built Fort Pillow with some forty heavy guns.
For a month and a half during the spring of 1862, these river bends were the front lines of the war along the Mississippi. Federal mortar boats lay on the downstream reach of Plum Point Bend, lobbing shells at Fort Pillow. Federal gunboats covered the bombardment. On the morning of May 10, a flotilla of Confederate rams rounded Craighead Point, aiming to disperse the Federal fleet. And they came close to accomplishing that goal. The USS Mound City and the USS Cincinnati, both ironclad river gunboats, were so seriously damaged they sank along the river banks. Other Federal boats moved into the shallow waters, where the rams could not go. So with a tactical victory, the Confederate rams fell back to the protection of Fort Pillow. The siege continued until the early days of June when the Confederates withdrew to Memphis.
Today, changes to the river's course have drastically altered the terrain over which the siege of Fort Pillow and the naval battle of Plum Point Bend occurred. The map below provides a rough outline of the river channel as it ran during the Civil War (very rough)…"
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