After the battle of Iuka, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Confederate Army of the West joined Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn’s Army of West Tennessee, Gen Van Dorn was the senior officer took command of the combination of the two armies, now designated the Army of Tennessee, and with 22,000 troops advanced on the Union army located at Corinth, Maj. Gen. William Rosecran’s Army of the Mississippi.

Van Dorn’s forces approached from the northwest along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to attack the Army of the Mississippi, which was located in old Confederate rifle pits(the Beauregard Line) and six redans built by the Union Army which were north and northwest of town. Maj. Gen. Mansfield Lovell commanded the First Division of the District of Mississippi that advanced(to the right of the rail tracks) to begin the battle with an attack on skirmishers from a division on loan from the Army of the Tennessee commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas McKean, whose division was the Federal left flank.

Gen. Lovell's Division pushed Gen. McKean's Division to the inner line of defense west of town: this redan was designated Battery F and the only extant battery of six built by Union troops as continuation of the Confederate Beauregard Line.

Brig. Gen. Dabney Maury commanded one of two divisions in what was now Gen. Price’s Corps and was the center of the Confederate line of battle and advanced on the Union center, another division on loan from the Army of the Tennessee commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas Davies. The Confederates pushed Davies’s Division several miles south, past the distant radio tower.