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The Ironclads: Gunboats Deliver The Mississippi And The Civil War

The Mississippi River system was the highway of the western part of the Confederate and United States. At the beginning of the war, the South controlled the Mississippi from the meeting of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers at Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana. There were several important rebel strongholds along the Mississippi, including Memphis, Island Number Ten, on the Tennessee-Kentucky border, and Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Union realized that controlling the Mississippi River was essential to their strategy because doing so would divide the South and constrain the movement of troops and supplies from western states.
Having realized the importance of controlling the western rivers, the Union then realized that it needed an inland navy to do this successfully. Samuel M. Pook designed the original river-based ironclads for the Department of War, which intended for construction in Cincinnati. These ships were paddle boats with most of their armor and heavy guns in the front, and thinner iron plating and smaller guns on the sides. After much convincing, the construction site was moved further south to avoid the shallows of the Ohio River. The Department of War commissioned James B. Eads, who had made a fortune before the war raising sunken ships from the Mississippi, to build ironclads specially designed for rivers. Eads built the first seven such ironclads for the Union on the St Louis banks of the Mississippi River in just over 100 days. Although it was not the first launched, St. Louis was the first of the gunboats to be outfitted and commissioned. Therefore, to the St. Louis goes the honor of being the first gunboat in the service of the United States.
The first task of this fleet of ironclads was to take Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers respectively. General Ulysses S. Grant, and Commodore Andrew H. Foote, where in command of the western front of the war at the time and planned for the group of river-based...