The Crossroads at Corinth

Address: 215 N Fillmore St. (This address is for Visit Corinth’s office; the rail crossover is a short walk from the parking area.)

Hours of Operation: Never closed

In the mid-1800s, as railroads began crisscrossing the country and connecting major cities, two railways intersected one another in an uninhabited portion of Tishomingo County in northeastern Mississippi. Where these two railroads crossed, a town sprang forth.

Originally called Cross City, Corinth would rise to occupy a place of prominence in the early years of the Civil War because of the strategic value the railroads offered to whichever side's armed forces controlled it. The railroad that ran from west to east through Corinth, the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, was the South's only railroad to connect the riches of the Mississippi River Valley directly with the ports on the Atlantic Seaboard. This vital piece of southern infrastructure made it easy for southern leaders to move goods and soldiers from east to west across the Deep South.

The other railroad in Corinth, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio River Valley. When Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston's defensive line across northern Tennessee was broken in February 1862, the Mobile & Ohio allowed the Confederacy to rapidly concentrate soldiers from further south in Corinth to meet the threat posed by United States soldiers advancing up the Tennessee River.

Knowing how important maintaining control over these railroads was for the Confederacy, United States Army commanders sought to seize control over the junction. Capitalizing on their success at Forts Henry and Donelson, US Army soldiers pushed further up the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing, and began preparing for a 22-mile drive overland to take Corinth. While waiting for additional men and supplies to arrive at Pittsburg Landing, the Federal army was vulnerable to attack. In order to defend the crossroads, Johnston launched a surprise attack on April 6, 1862, which resulted in the two-day Battle of Shiloh, and a crushing Confederate defeat.

From April 29 to May 30, 1862, 120,000 Federal soldiers under the command of Major General Henry W. Halleck would lay siege to the town of Corinth. Disease, poor water, and a failure to break the siege meant that the Confederate Army, now under the command of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, had very few options left. Rather than risk his soldiers' lives in what he saw as a fruitless attempt to hold the crossroads, Beauregard withdrew his 70,000 soldiers from Corinth under the cover of darkness by using the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.

A garrison of United States soldiers would be maintained in Corinth from June 1862 to January 1864, depriving the Confederacy of fully utilizing these two railroads. In January 1864, the town of Corinth was no longer vital to the United States' war effort, and the Federal soldiers pulled out of town.

Visitors to Corinth today can visit the crossroads. The rail crossover that created the town and put it on the map during the Civil War is still there, located right where it was first laid out in the 1850s. Trains still frequently pass through Corinth, but they carry coal, oil, and lumber, not military rations, ammunition, and soldiers.