The Mississippi campaign was an economic problem created by the Union during the American Civil War in which Union Army troops, helped by gunboats and river ironclads took control over the Mississippi River, therefore virtually splitting the Confederate territory in two while also controlling the South's main artery of transport.
The campaign was planned from the outset of the war as an integral part of the Anaconda Plan for economic 'strangulation' of the South. It started in February 1862 with Union forces pushing down from Cairo, Illinois into Confederate territory and ended with the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. Although an important role in the Mississippi campaign was played by armored paddle steamers, the campaign was a pure US Army undertaking, as the ships used were under Army command and were used as army transports and floating gun stations rather than independent battleships. The only exception was the siege of Vicksburg where the army, marching downstream met up with the US Navy under admiral Farragut sailing upstream and the two combined their forces for an all-out land-and-sea shelling of the town.
The Army expedition was commanded by Henry W. Halleck, Ulysses S. Grant, and Nathaniel P. Banks, while Andrew H. Foote and David D. Porter commanded the Mississippi River Squadron. Foote and Porter were Navy admirals, but were under direct command of the US army and most of their boats were either converted paddle steamers or purpose-built gunboats that had never seen the sea. Because of this, the Mississippi River Squadron quickly became known as the Brown-water navy. (A reference to the brown, muddy water of the Mississippi, as compared to the deep blue commonly associated with the sea).
The campaign saw the first practical use of river gunboats and river ironclads, in particular the Cairo class ironclad paddle steamers built by James B. Eads in St. Louis and Cairo, Illinois. It also saw the use of sea mines (At that time called torpedoes, the term being applied to the self-propelled warheads only later), torpedo rams and a brief Confederate experiment in deploying a casemate ironclad, the Arkansas, in a river defense role.
Important battles in the Mississippi campaign were the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the Island No. 10 and the battles of Memphis Vicksburg and Port Hudson.
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, mississippi, river, campaigns, american, civil and/or war:
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
““Where is the Mississippi panorama
And the girl who played the piano?
Where are you, Walt?
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“the folk-lore
Of each of the senses; call it, again and again,
The river that flows nowhere, like a sea.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979)
“In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)