As a major Cumberland River port with three landings, Carthage was strategically important to both Confederate and Union forces. The Upper Ferry and landing stood near the present Corps of Engineer boat ramp near Upper Ferry Road. During Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s 1862 Kentucky invasion, part of his army crossed the Cumberland River at Carthage. Early in 1863, Union commanders ordered a naval excursion to destroy every ferry-boat, barge, or other means of crossing as high up as Carthage. Late in December, General Ulysses S. Grant sent a naval convoy up the river from Nashville to Creelsboro, Kentucky, on a reconnaissance and supply mission. U.S. gunboats Reindeer and Silver Lake No. 2, under U.S. Navy Lieutenant Henry A. Glassford, accompanied three transports carrying 140 sharpshooters from the 129th Illinois Infantry under Colonel Andrew J. Cropsey. After securing control of the river and the ferry crossing, Federal forces turned Carthage into a major depot. From 1863 to the end of the war, Federal boats arrived from Nashville to unload supplies at Upper Ferry, and some supplies moved overland by way of Eastland Heights and through Carthage to the Federal fort on Battery Hill to provision the troops guarding the town. The grave of Colonel William Walton, founder of Carthage, is located near the Upper Ferry; he surveyed the land for the town and constructed the old Walton Road connecting West and Middle Tennessee.