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.
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“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
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And the girl who played the piano?
Where are you, Walt?
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979)
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—Amanda Theodosia Jones, U.S. beauty contest winner, Miss U.S.A., 1973. As quoted under the pseudonym “Emma Wright” in American Dreams, Prologue, by Studs Terkel (1980)
“The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
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Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
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Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heav’n, and by success untaught,
His proud imaginations”
—John Milton (1608–1674)