NEW MADRID AND ISLAND NUMBER 10
While the battle of Shiloh was in progress another strategically
important struggle was fought out.
By way of defending the Mississippi and holding it within Confederate
control the Southern generals had strongly fortified New Madrid Bend
and Island Number 10.
Let us explain. The Mississippi river is exceedingly tortuous in its
course. Some miles above New Madrid in Missouri, it suddenly turns
northwardly and makes a great bend. At or near the northerly curve
of that bend lies the village of New Madrid, Missouri. There the
Confederates had fortified themselves and there General Pope with his
army in Missouri was threatening them.
In the course of that vast bend lay Island Number 10, and here the
Confederates had still more determinedly fortified themselves with
a view of holding the great river. They had a strong force at Fort
Pillow, on the Tennessee bank farther down the stream. They held
Memphis on the Chickasaw bluffs 240 miles below Cairo. They had
possession of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, but those positions had not
yet been made strongholds by elaborate fortifications. They still held
New Orleans and the defenses below that city, though they were destined
soon to lose them. Thus they commanded the river and made of it a
Confederate highway. It was the obvious policy of the Confederates
to retain possession of that great river. It was the equally obvious
policy of their adversaries to conquer control of it.
When Beauregard wisely, and indeed under strategic compulsion, withdrew
the forces from Columbus, Kentucky, he sent some of the troops
constituting the garrison and most of the guns that bristled from the
useless fortifications of that town to New Madrid and Island Number 10,
where they were needed.
Early in March General Pope moved down the Mississippi on its western
side, and began operations for the reduction of New Madrid. When he had
got his siege guns into position and opened a serious bombardment, the
works there were quickly abandoned.
Then began the assault upon Island Number 10, the one great northern
stronghold of the Confederates in the Mississippi river, designed
to hold that great waterway and forbid to the Federals its use as a
thoroughfare into the heart of the South.
The Federal army cut a canal across the peninsula formed by the great
bend in the river. All the naval force that the Federals could command
in those waters was brought to bear not only for the reduction of the
forts there but still more for the beating off of the Confederate
gunboats under Commodore Hollins. On the other hand Commodore Foote
ran the canal with his Federal gunboats and established himself in a
commanding position in reverse of the forts while Pope crossed the
stream and assailed the enemy in front with all his land forces.
The situation of the Confederates was a hopeless one and after an
effort to escape they surrendered nearly 7,000 men and more than 150
guns, most of them of large caliber and formidable destructive force.
This occurred on the second day of the Shiloh battle, April 7, 1862,
on which day, after a heroic effort to breast Grant's overwhelming
numbers, Beauregard withdrew from Shiloh to Corinth. This capture of
Island Number 10 opened the Mississippi to Memphis, except for the
single and, as it afterwards proved to be, the utterly ineffective
position at Fort Pillow.
General Halleck was fully informed of all that had happened. He knew
that Pope's way was open down the Mississippi to Memphis, and that
Memphis, scarcely at all defended, was within his easy grasp. He knew
of course that Memphis was the westerly end of the new defensive line
of the Confederates, and that its capture must compel them still
further to retire toward the south, even should he fail or neglect to
drive them from the Memphis and Charleston railroad line at Corinth, as
he easily might have done with his utterly overwhelming force, and as
Grant would undoubtedly have done if that vigorously aggressive general
had been left in control of that splendidly equipped army. But Halleck
sat still and pottered over "reports" that annoyingly paid no tribute
to his genius and suggested no credit to him for the victory that had
been won.
Meanwhile Grant was losing time. The Confederates, foreseeing the
inevitable loss of Memphis, which happened on the sixth of June,
nearly two months after energy would easily have compelled it, were
busily fortifying all defensible positions on the river below,
especially at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and thus making necessary
one of the most strenuous and one of the bloodiest campaigns of the
war, where scarcely any campaign at all would have been necessary but
for the fact that a martinet officer, much too "scientific" and too
"regular" for the practical purposes of war, was in authority over a
man who knew not only how to plan campaigns but how to conduct them
quickly to a successful conclusion.