North and west of this location, the Battle of Belmont was fought on November 7, 1861, the first battle in which Ulysses S. Grant commanded an army after his recent promotion to brigadier general and assignment to command the federal District of Southeast Missouri from headquarters at Cairo, Illinois. Opposing him was Major General Leonidas Polk, an Episcopal bishop turned soldier who commanded the Confederate fortifications at Columbus, Kentucky, overlooking the Mississippi River, with the small hamlet and landing of Belmont directly opposite on the Missouri side. The bluffs at Columbus offered an ideal artillery position below Cairo and were strategically important to control of the Mississippi, though occupying them violated Kentucky's declared neutrality in the Civil War; Polk's army nevertheless occupied the heights above Columbus on September 3, 1861, and Grant responded three days later by seizing Paducah, Kentucky, whose position near the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers opened a Union invasion route into the western Confederacy. By the time of Belmont, the Columbus defenses held 140 artillery pieces, including the 128-pounder Whitworth rifle nicknamed Lady Polk, a garrison of 19,000 soldiers, and a mile-long chain stretched across the river to Belmont to block Union gunboats, though the chain soon broke under its own weight. By November 1861, the Confederates had established Camp Johnston at Belmont as an observation post, and Grant decided to attack it based on faulty information that Polk might detach troops to reinforce pro-Southern forces under General Sterling Price in southwest Missouri and might also cut off a Union detachment pursuing the partisan commander M. Jeff Thompson. On the morning of November 7, a federal flotilla of four transports and two gunboats landed Grant's force of 3,114 men at Hunter's Point, two miles above Belmont, while General C.F. Smith at Paducah was to demonstrate against Columbus from the Kentucky side to discourage Polk from reinforcing the camp. After a mile march through woods and brush, Grant's two brigades met four Confederate infantry regiments under Brigadier General Gideon Pillow in a cornfield; after more than an hour of hard fighting, the Confederates, poorly deployed and short of ammunition, were scattered. Federal troops then converged on Camp Johnston, drove its defenders toward the river embankment, and entered the camp, where Grant lost control of his men as they stopped to loot and celebrate. Polk, watching from Columbus while his artillery kept Union gunboats at a distance, sent two steamers across with additional regiments under Brigadier General Benjamin Cheatham to strike Grant's flank and block his retreat. Grant rallied his men, insisting that the force that had cut its way in could cut its way out, and after fierce fighting and heavy Union losses he brought most of his army back to the transports, leaving the field himself last by guiding his horse down the steep riverbank and across a narrow gangplank. The battle lasted six hours and cost the Union 607 casualties and the Confederates 641. Grant later acknowledged Northern criticism that the battle was unnecessary and barren of results, but maintained that he had prevented troops from being detached from Columbus and had given his soldiers needed combat experience and confidence. Polk won at Belmont, but the success proved temporary: four months later Grant attacked Forts Henry and Donelson from Paducah, and their surrender flanked Polk at Columbus and forced him to abandon the great fortifications there without a shot being fired.
