Civil War With Steamboats
The US Civil War spilled over to the Mississippi with naval sieges and naval war using paddlewheelers. The Battle of Vicksburg involved monitors and ironclad riverboats. The USS Cairo is a wrecked survivor of the Vicksburg battle. Trade on the river was suspended for two years because of a Confederate blockade. The triumph of Eads ironclads, and Farragut's seizure of New Orleans, secured the river for the Union North.
The worst of all steamboat accidents occurred at the end of the Civil War in April 1865, when the steamboat Sultana, carrying an over-capacity load of returning Union soldiers recently freed from Confederate prison camp, blew up, causing more than 1,700 deaths.
Read more about this topic: Steamboats Of The Mississippi
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or steamboats:
“The utter helplessness of a conquered people is perhaps the most tragic feature of a civil war or any other sort of war.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“... though mathematics may teach a man how to build a bridge, it is what the Scotch Universities call the humanities, that teach him to be civil and sweet-tempered.”
—Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)
“Haven’t you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels
And children in the ships and in the towns?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Hast ever ben in Omaha
Where rolls the dark Missouri down,
Where four strong horses scarce can draw
An empty wagon through the town?
Where sand is blown from every mound
To fill your eyes and ears and throat;
Where all the steamboats are aground,
And all the houses are afloat?...
If not, take heed to what I say,
You’ll find it just as I have found it;
And if it lies upon your way
For God’s sake, reader, go around it!”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)