Fort Pickering

In June 1861, Confederate supporters in Memphis erected earthworks at Fort Pickering to protect the city on the site of a frontier-era fortified trading post. Capt. William Pickett and his company of sappers and miners supervised the slave and free black laborers who built the stronghold, while local volunteers mounted artillery and built ammunition magazines on the two Indian mounds within the fort. After the fall of Memphis in June 1862, Union forces used Fort Pickering as a major supply depot and staging area, and Gen. William T. Sherman increased its size so that it extended for more than a mile along the river and a third of a mile inland. By 1864, with 102 cannons in place and more than 10,000 soldiers, Fort Pickering was the strongest military installation on the Mississippi River. When Federal troops occupied Memphis, hundreds of slaves from Arkansas and Mississippi fled their plantations to work for the army at Fort Pickering, and the government established Camp Shiloh in 1862 and Camp Fiske in 1863 south of the fort to provide housing, churches, and schools for their families. Many of these former field hands and laborers, known as contrabands, sought to join the Union army, and by December 1863 nearly 1,200 African Americans had enlisted in the 3rd United States Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment. They manned the huge guns that protected the river approaches to Memphis and performed guard detail and other military duties, while Col. Ignatz G. Kappner commanded the predominantly black garrison at Fort Pickering until the end of the war.

Memphis, Tennessee · United States