PORT GIBSON

city, seat (1817) of Claiborne county, southwestern Mississippi, U.S. It lies 28 miles (45 km) south of Vicksburg, near the Mississippi River on a curve of the Bayou Pierre. It was founded in 1788 by Samuel Gibson, whose cotton plantation became a meeting place for early river travelers. The town (inc. 1842) has many antebellum buildings whose survival lends credence to General Ulysses S. Grant's remark "it is too beautiful to burn," said as he marched his Union troops through to Vicksburg after his victory (known as the Battle of Port Gibson) on May 1, 1863, over the Confederates at nearby Magnolia Church. The local Ruins of Windsor (22 Gothic columns) are all that remain of what was considered to be the state's most extravagant Greek Revival mansion (completed 1860; burned 1890). The Grand Gulf Military Park (8 miles northwest), occupying the townsite of the former Grand Gulf on the banks of the Mississippi, was the site of Confederate forts Cobun and Wade and the scene of several American Civil War engagements. Port Gibson's modern economy is based on cotton and lumber. Alcorn State University (founded in 1871) is a few miles southwest at Lorman. Pop. (1990) 1,810.