Clinton Map
Clinton is a town in and the parish seat of East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, United States. The town was named for New York Governor DeWitt Clinton. The population was 1,998 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Several military engagements occurred during the American Civil War about Clinton. Union General Benjamin Grierson occupied Clinton on June 7, 1863, a month before the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grierson found the town deserted, as Confederates had withdrawn ten miles to the north. According to the historian John D. Winters in The Civil War in Louisiana (1863), the Union "burned a railroad depot, a warehouse containing several hundred hides, a small supply of corn, a machine shop, a locomotive, a crude woolen mill, a cartridge factory, a supply of ammunition, and several barrels of Louisiana rum."
On September 5, 1864, Union General Albert L. Lee left from Baton Rouge to make another raid on Clinton and destroyed a tannery at nearby Greensburg containing two thousand sides of leather. On March 5, 1865, with less than a month remaining in the war, Union General Francis J. Herron moved from Baton Rouge3 toward Clinton and defeated a weak Confederate force. The Federal cavalry pushed twenty miles north of Clinton to discourage remaining Confederate activity in the area.
Nearby cities include Jackson, Slaughter, Centreville, Zachary, Wilson.