On June 6, 1862, the Union fleet defeated the Confederate naval forces in the Battle of Memphis and Union troops occupied Memphis. In 1863, General Ulysses Grant designated the City of Memphis as the Union Army’s Hospital and Supply Base to support his planned attack on the City of Vicksburg. However, none of these supplies were of benefit to the citizens of Memphis or the children at the Orphanage. Also, as a result of the war, the City’s churchwomen could no longer contribute to the Home’s support or pay Miss Ward’s salary. Nonetheless, Miss Ward stuck to her post and provided for the children by what she could raise on the Orphanage’s twenty-nine acres of land. During this period, the Orphanage had to endure the confiscation of their poultry and most of their livestock and finally foraging Union soldiers took the last one of the Orphanage’s milk cows. Furious at this outrageous act, Miss Ward rode to the Union military headquarters, either at what is now known as the Hunt-Phelan House on Beale Street or the Gayoso Hotel on the river bluff, in Memphis and proclaimed to the Union commander, “I do not propose that my children shall go without milk. I am coming back here until our cow is returned, or another cow given us.” Eventually, even the Union Army gave in and Miss Ward got her cow.