160 A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI PHOTOS COURTESY OF SANDERSON FARMS, INC. Mississippi was first stationed at Pass Christian, Mississippi, in the fall of 1861 before being ordered north to Jackson, Tennessee. Bass saw his first major battle at Shiloh in April 1862. On July 28, 1864, Bass suffered a wound at the Battle of Ezra Church during the Atlanta Campaign. He was sent to a hospital in Macon, Georgia, and eventually furloughed home. Weary from travel, he stopped at the home of a good friend of his father’s in Marion County only to find that the man refused to have a Confederate soldier sleep under his roof. This incident is illustrative of the divided loyalties in the Piney Woods as the war ground on into its third bloody year. Bass served out the war with various Confederate units on the home front and was paroled on May 14, 1865. Bass, like the majority of the men in the Piney Woods, remained loyal to the Confederacy throughout the war. Most of the military action took place in north, central, and western Mississippi. Major encounters seldom penetrated the Piney Woods. An exception was Grierson’s Raid, which took place in late April and early May 1863 in support of Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign. The raid began on April 17, 1863, when Union Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson left LaGrange, Tennessee, with a force of 1,700 men. He proceeded southward through northeast Mississippi on a path that took him near Corinth, New Albany, Pontotoc, Starkville, and Philadelphia. Arriving at Newton in Newton County, he destroyed two railroad bridges and over four miles of track and captured thirty-eight wagons of supplies. He then moved southwestward through Smith, Simpson, and Copiah counties, arriving at Hazlehurst on April 28, 1863. There Grierson’s men disrupted traffic on the New