THE LONG ENCAMPMENT

During this time, the 16th Ohio and Gen. George W. Morgan's corps, remained encamped at Young's Point, Louisiana, on the Mississippi River, opposite the mouth of the Yazoo River and about seven miles above Vicksburg. Gen. Ulysses Grant was staging his army near Vicksburg for a spring assault. Vicksburg had to be taken. The attempt in late December to take the city from the rear, at Chickasaw Bayou, was a failure and now Grant had to come up with a bigger and better plan to take the Rebel stronghold.

Few details are available on the specific activities of the 16th Ohio during these days. Any that can be found for a particular day will be added to the Wherewas Index below this entry. Private Peter Perrine, Company C, summarizes their time in the camp as follows:

We remained at Youngs Point 45 days doing fatigue work, digging a canal and mending the levee that had been broken by high water. We had continual showers of rain making our camps very (?) and disagreeable. Many soldiers died from fever and other diseases contracted during our short stay in the Chickasaw swamps. Our mortar boats occasional shell the city of Vicksburg and the ram Queen of the West run past the batteries at Vicksburg and was shortly afterwards captured by the rebels up Red River. She was subsequently destroyed by our gun boats up the Red River. The gun boat Indianola also run past the rebel batteries and was soon after sunk by two rebel rams. An expedition went through Yazoo Pass to Fort Pemberton on the Yallowbush River but failed to accomplish anything

Pvt. Frank Mason, Company A, 42nd Ohio, tells us:

Morgan's Corps landed at Young's Point on the Louisiana shore seven miles above the city and encamped wherever favorable ground could be selected in the rear of the levee. Sherman's Corps landed at the same point, but marched three miles farther down and encamped at the base of the long, spear-shaped peninsula opposite Vicksburg. Across the neck of this peninsula a shallow canal had been cut during the Previous year, but the water had subsided before it could be finished, and it had been thus far useless. The river was now rapidly rising, and it was the purpose of Gen. Grant to complete this canal, whether with the expectation that it would open a channel of communication past the city, or simply by way of keeping the troops partially employed during a season of enforced inactivity, was a point on which opinions differed.

The landing of the army was slow and irregular, and the men, who had lived mostly on transports for five weeks with little or no opportunity to cook their rations, were impatient to get ashore. While on board the boats they had been obliged to subsist mainly upon raw port and hard bread, with no fresh vegetables of any kind. [Scurvy was present in some of the regiments] With the permanent landing at Young's Point it was hoped that more healthful conditions would prevail, a hope which, as will be seen, was but imperfectly realized.

* Some information and italicized text, above, taken from The Forty-Second Ohio Infantry - A History of the Organization and Services of That Regiment In the War of the Rebellion, 1876 - F. H. Mason, late Private of Company A - Cobb, Andrews & Co., Publishers.

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Modern map of the locations of the 16th Ohio in its winter camp at Young's Point, Louisiana from January 21 to March 8, 1863.

Blue pin - approximate point on the Mississippi River where Gen. Morgan's Corps camped at Young's Point, Louisiana