Following the Battle at Corinth, Mississippi comprising 45,000 Union and Confederate troops, General Ulysses S. Grant's Union army began their move into Western Tennessee. Grant hoped to secure control of the Mississippi River for the Union to split the Confederacy in two and control an important north and south route to move men and supplies.
For next 76 days from October 5 through December 20, 1862, Calvin and his company marched through the Tennessee towns of Shiloh and Grand Junction and the Mississippi towns of Corinth, Holly Springs, Waterford, and Oxford before traveling by train to the Tennessee towns of Bolivar and Jackson, a distance of nearly 300 miles.
