White House Ridge stop on the Brices Crossroads Battlefield Tour
BRICES CROSSROADS BATTLEFIELD TOUR STOP 12
The final stop on the Brices Crossroads Battlefield Tour is located on Highway 167. Continue down Highway 168 from the Jourdan Grave (Tour Stop 11) and take a left when it dead ends into 167. A parking area is a short ways down on the left. You can also walk from the Jourdan Grave along a .3-mile trail.
White House Ridge is the site of the home of Enoch Agnew and his son Samuel, the pastor of the Bethany Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and the writer of a diary from which you have by now read countless entries on the wayside exhibits along the battlefield tour route. In fact, a wayside exhibit devoted to Agnew is at this stop. His diary is one of the main sources of knowledge about the Battle of Brices Crossroads. The name White House Ridge comes from the Agnew’s large, white house that once stood on the ridge at this site.
It was also here that troops from Union Colonel Alexander Wilkin’s First Infantry Brigade and Colonel Edward Bouton’s U. S. Colored Infantry Brigade turned to fight in an attempt to halt, or at least slow down, Captain Morton’s Confederate forces so that other Union soldiers could escape. However, when more Confederate troops arrived, all remaining Union soldiers turned and continued the panicked retreat back to Memphis. An amusing quote is on one of the four information panels at this stop.
It took General Sturgis’s army ten days to march from Memphis to Brice’s Cross Roads, and only one day and two nights to return to Memphis.
Allow no more than ten minutes for this stop. There is nothing here to see other than the wayside exhibits.
With a few exceptions, use of any photograph on the National Park Planner website requires a paid Royalty Free Editorial Use License or Commercial Use License. See the Photo Usage page for details.
Last updated on February 4, 2024
