(NPS Photo)

Site of Battery Robinett

During the siege and battle of Corinth, Union and Confederate troops constructed miles of earthworks guarding the approaches to Corinth from the north, east, and west. In the late summer and early autumn of 1862, Union soldiers erected a line of redoubts on commanding ground within one-half to three-quarters of a mile of the railroad crossover.

The Union advance on and partial investment of Corinth--April 28-May 30, 1862--by Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck's powerful "Army Group" has been described as the "most extraordinary display of entrenchment under offensive conditions witnessed in the entire war." After a cautious march from Pittsburg Landing and Hamburg, Tennessee, Halleck's Army Group, having by May 2 closed to within 12 miles of Corinth, felt its way forward from one line of entrenchments to another. The Confederates had constructed a defensive line of earthworks anchored on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to the west, continuing around to the north of Corinth, crossing the Mobile and Ohio Railroad and Purdy Road, then turning south following the high ground commanding Bridge Creek and crossing the Memphis and Charleston Railroad well east of the crossover, and anchoring on the Danville Road, one-half mile east of the Mobile and Ohio. These earthworks guarded the eastern and northern approaches to Corinth. Several miles of these earthworks are extant. Of the existing earthworks, all except Batteries F and Robinett are from this period of construction.

Battery F and Battery Robinett belong to a series of earthworks commenced by Union forces under General Halleck after the Confederates withdrew from Corinth on the night of May 29-30, 1862. Work on these defenses was expedited by troops under Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, laboring under supervision of Capt. Frederick E. Prime, in the days following the September 19, 1862 battle of Iuka. Batteries F and Robinett are the only earthworks extant from these fortifications.