page_title: Battery "E", 1st Illinois Light Artillery Regiment
section_title: Return to Jackson
hierarchical_section_title: Battery "E", 1st Illinois Light Artillery Regiment / Later operations in Mississippi / Return to Jackson
caption_attribution_description: English: Siege of Jackson, Mississippi, July 10-16, 1863
context_page_description: Battery "E", 1st Regiment Illinois Volunteer Light Artillery was an artillery battery that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It played a minor but noteworthy role in the Battle of Shiloh, and was mentioned in General William T. Sherman's after-action report on the battle. It also served at Vicksburg, Brice's Crossroads, Nashville and in several other engagements in the Western Theater of the war.
context_section_description: Following this event, Battery E returned to Jackson (which had been reoccupied by Confederate forces).  Though harassed during their march by Southern units, Private Rice reported that they "kept out of range of our brass band.  For when we play 'Dixie' on it, it makes them more than dance."  Upon arriving at Jackson they assisted in a nine-day siege, after which Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston evacuated the city.  Jackson was described as a "doomed city" in the battle's aftermath, with Rice affirming that he and his comrades tore up and burned tracks and ties from five different railroads extending twenty miles out from the city in all directions.
  Ordered to return to Vicksburg, Battery E and other units crossed the battlefield at Champion Hill, scene of a Federal victory about two months earlier.  Rice describes how rain had washed away the soil used to cover the corpses of Confederate dead, who had simply been tossed into ditches on the battlefield by Federal troops and covered with a layer of dirt.  He also describes men kicking at skulls, bones and clothing protruding from the half-opened graves.
caption: Siege of Jackson, Mississippi, July 10–16, 1863
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