18621776 Club
Memphis falls by noon; Union rams wreck the Confederate river fleet in under two hours
Citizens watch from the bluff as all but one Confederate cottonclad is sunk or captured, and the sole Union casualty is a colonel with a pistol ball in his knee.
By the spring of 1862, the Union's grip on the Mississippi River was tightening from both ends, and Memphis — the South's fifth-largest city — sat exposed on its bluff. On June 6, 1862, a Union flotilla of five armored gunboats and four rams met the Confederate River Defense Fleet just north of the city as Memphis citizens watched from the shore. The battle lasted less than two hours: all but one of the Confederate cottonclads were destroyed or captured, and the sole Union casualty was Colonel Charles Ellet Jr., wounded by a pistol shot to the knee. By noon, Memphis had surrendered to federal authority…
