During the Vicksburg Campaign, a Union cavalry raid led by Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson moved from LaGrange, Tennessee, toward the Southern Railroad at Newton Station. On April 22, 1863, the cavalrymen rode into Louisville. It was nearly dark by the time they approached the town. A battalion of the 6th Illinois Cavalry was sent to picket the town and remained until the column had passed. Grierson's exhausted men stopped at the Estes Plantation just north of Noxapater for two or three hours of rest before heading south to Philadelphia.
