Around the 9th of April, 1863 General John Pemberton who was in charge of all CSA military operations in Mississippi began the process of transfering some of the troops currently located in Mississippi to Tennessee to support operations there. This was a fatal mistake. Pemberton had misread the movements of U.S. Grant and wrongly assumed that the Yankees were pulling back to Memphis.

In fact, the opposite was true. Grant was manuvering down the west side of the Mississippi River in order to flank Vicksburg from the south or east. Pemberton agreed with General Joe Jackson to send around 8,000 troops to Tennessee when in fact he would later wish he had them to avoid the ill fated siege of Vicksburg.

Part of the contingent assigned to move north was a brigade led by Gen. Lloyd Tilgman which was currently moving from Grenada to Jackson. The 15th Mississippi was assigned to this brigade at this time. This is how they ended up going to Tennessee where Fant was shot and captured.

There is a gravestone for R. C. Liston in Bethel Cemetery in Montomery County, Mississippi. He was either my grandfather's (Wiley Liston known as Babbo) father or grandfather. I feel that it was his father. My cousin Lynda confirms that R.C. was our great-grandfather's name. His wife's was Eudora and they had 14 children, most of whom are buried in Bethel cemetery.

Wiley Liston (R.C.'s son) was 78 when he died in 1960. That means he was born in 1882. That would have meant that R. C. was pretty old when Wiley was born (approximately 37-40 assuming he was 18-20 years old and mustered in around early 1863), but Wiley (Babbo) was neither his oldest nor his youngest. My cousin Lynda has been told that R. C. is Wiley's Father, and my Aunt Virginia (Wiley's daughter) in Alabama says she is pretty sure of it. R.C.'s grave stone also has a CSA insignia on it. My Aunt Virginia has told me that R.C.'s first name was Robert.