Origin of The River Defense Fleet
Immediately after the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, the seceded states had to confront the blockade against their ports that was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln. They also had to consider the threat posed by Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott's Anaconda plan, which envisioned a thrust down the Mississippi that would culminate in the conquest of New Orleans. Although the Anaconda was never formally adopted as a basis for Federal strategy (in fact, it was more or less explicitly rejected by Scott's successors), its mere existence reminded Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his government of the importance of the Mississippi River. Many citizens, both in and out of the government, brought forth suggestions for its defense. Among them was the brainchild of a pair of riverboat captains, James E. Montgomery and J. H. Townsend.
The proposal put forth by the two captains was to utilize ships with appropriate characteristics of size and speed, converting them into rams by strengthening their bows with strips of railroad iron. Their machinery was to be protected by internal bulkheads. They would be lightly armed, only one or two guns apiece according to the wishes of their captains, as they would not be expected to slug it out with the armored gunboats then being built for the Union. Instead, they were to rely on ramming, to hit the slow enemy gunboats where they were most vulnerable. The captains would be selected by Montgomery and Townsend from among the experienced rivermen at New Orleans, and each captain would subsequently hire his own crew.
Bypassing the War and Navy Departments in Richmond, Montgomery and Townsend had their scheme endorsed by the entire Mississippi delegation to the Confederate Congress, and also by Major General Leonidas Polk, who was a personal favorite of President Davis. Their political method was proven effective when Congress approved their plan, appropriating $1,000,000 even before Townsend had returned to New Orleans to supervise the conversions.
Read more about this topic: River Defense Fleet
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin, river, defense and/or fleet:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will....”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
—Malcolm X (19251965)
“On the middle of that quiet floor
sits a fleet of small black ships,
square-rigged, sails furled, motionless,
their spars like burned matchsticks.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (19111979)