Winter Quarters, the country home of Haller and Julia Nutt along Lake Saint Joseph, was the only plantation home there to survive the Vicksburg campaign because the Union-sympathizing Nutts offered hospitality to Union soldiers and received letters of protection from Ulysses S. Grant, though later Union stragglers destroyed many outbuildings. After the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, the United States Colored Troops were formed, and at Milliken's Bend the poorly trained and poorly armed African Brigade defended a Union supply depot against Confederate attack in hand-to-hand combat, helping protect supply bases while other troops continued the siege of Vicksburg. In June 1862, Union troops under Brigadier General Thomas Williams began digging a canal across De Soto Point opposite Vicksburg to bypass Confederate batteries, but disease, heat, and the falling river halted the work, and when Major General Ulysses S. Grant resumed it in January 1863, heavy rains and flood waters broke through the levee, inundated the area, and forced him to abandon the effort and pursue other strategies to capture Vicksburg and control the Mississippi River. In Vicksburg National Military Park, the Louisiana Monument on Confederate Avenue was built as an eighty-one-foot Doric column topped by a granite brazier with an eternal flame, with construction beginning on July 10, 1919, dedication on October 18, 1920, and later transfer to the federal government by Governor John M. Parker. During Union occupation in Louisiana, civilians endured wartime shortages and adjusted daily life, while Governor Thomas Overton Moore urged the destruction of cotton crops to keep this valuable commodity from Union forces, making crop burning both a sacrifice and an act of loyalty to the Confederacy.