OPERATIONS AT NEW MADRID.
There are many islands in the Mississippi, so many that the river pilots
have numbered them from Cairo to New Orleans. The first is just below
Cairo. No. 10 is about sixty miles below, where the river makes a sharp
curve, sweeping round a tongue of land towards the west and northwest,
then turning again at New Madrid, making a great bend towards the
southeast, as you will see by the map. The island is less than a mile
long, and not more than a fourth of a mile wide. It is ten or fifteen
feet above high-water mark. The line between Kentucky and Tennessee
strikes the river here. The current runs swiftly past the island, and
steamboats descending the stream are carried within a stone's throw of
the Tennessee shore. The bank on that side of the stream is also about
fifteen or twenty feet above high water.
The Rebels, before commencing their works at Columbus, saw that Island
No. 10 was a very strong position, and commenced fortifications there.
When they evacuated Columbus, they retired to that place, and remounted
the guns which they had brought away on the island and on the Tennessee
shore. They thought it was a place which could not be taken. They held
New Madrid, eight miles below, on the Missouri side, which was defended
by two forts. They held the island and the Tennessee shore. East of
their position, on the Tennessee shore, was Reelfoot Lake, a large body
of water surrounded by hundreds of acres of impassable swamp, which
extended across to the lower bend, preventing an approach by the Union
troops from the interior of the State upon their flank. The garrison at
the island, and in the batteries along the shore, had to depend upon
steamboats for their supplies.
The distance across the lower promontory from the island to Tiptonville,
along the border of Reelfoot Lake, is about five miles, but the distance
from the island by the river to Tiptonville is over twenty miles.
On the 22d of February, General Pope, with several thousand men, left
the little town of Commerce, which is above Cairo, on the Mississippi,
for New Madrid, which is forty miles distant. It was a slow, toilsome
march. The mud was very deep, and he could move scarcely five miles a
day, but he reached New Madrid on the 3d of March, the day on which we
raised the flag on the heights at Columbus.
[Illustration: ISLAND NO. 10.
1 Commodore Foote's fleet.
2 Island No. 10 and Rebel floating-battery.
3 Shore batteries.
4 Rebel boats.
5 2 Forts at New Madrid.]
The Rebels had completed their forts. The one above the town mounted
fourteen heavy guns, and the one below it seven. Both were strong works,
with bastions and angles, and ditches that could be swept by an
enfilading fire. There was a line of intrenchments between the two
forts, enclosing the town.
There were five regiments of infantry and several batteries of
artillery, commanded by General McCown, at New Madrid. General Mackall
was sent up by Beauregard to direct the defence there and at Island No.
10. When he arrived, he issued an address to the soldiers. He said:--
"Soldiers: We are strangers, commander and commanded, each to the other.
Let me tell you who I am. I am a General made by Beauregard,--a General
selected by Beauregard and Bragg for this command, when they knew it was
in peril.
"They have known me for twenty years; together we stood on the fields of
Mexico. Give them your confidence now; give it to me when I have earned
it.
"Soldiers: The Mississippi Valley is intrusted to your courage, to your
discipline, to your patience; exhibit the coolness and vigilance you
have heretofore, and hold it."[23]
[Footnote 23: Rebellion Record.]
They thought they could hold the place. A Rebel officer wrote, on the
11th of March, to his friends thus: "General Mackall has put the rear in
effective defence. The forts are impregnable. All are hopeful and ready.
We will make this an American Thermopylæ, if necessary."[24]
[Footnote 24: Memphis Appeal.]
By this he intended to say that they would all die before they would
surrender the place, and would make New Madrid as famous in history as
that narrow mountain-pass in Greece, where the immortal three hundred
under Leonidas fought the Persian host.
The Rebels had several gunboats on the river, each carrying three or
four guns. The river was very high, and its banks overflowed. The
country is level for miles around, and it was an easy matter for the
gunboats to throw shells over the town into the woods upon General
Pope's army. The Rebels had over sixty pieces of heavy artillery, while
General Pope had only his light field artillery; but he sent to Cairo
for siege-guns, meanwhile driving in the enemy's pickets and investing
the place.
He detached Colonel Plummer, of the Eleventh Missouri, with three
regiments and a battery of rifled Parrott guns, to take possession of
Point Pleasant, ten miles farther down. The order was admirably
executed. Colonel Plummer planted his guns, threw up intrenchments, and
astonished the Rebels by sending his shells into a steamboat which was
passing up with supplies.
Commodore Hollins, commanding the Rebel gunboats, made all haste down to
find out what was going on. He rained shot and shell all day long upon
Colonel Plummer's batteries, but could not drive him from the position
he had selected. He had made holes in the ground for his artillery, and
the Rebel shot did him no injury. Hollins began at long range, then
steamed up nearer to the batteries, but Plummer's artillerymen, by their
excellent aim, compelled him to withdraw. The next day Hollins tried it
again, but with no better success. The river was effectually blockaded.
No Rebel transport could get up, and those which were at Island No. 10
and New Madrid could not get down, without being subjected to a heavy
fire.
General Mackall determined to hold New Madrid, and reinforced the
place from Island No. 10, till he had about nine thousand troops. On
the 11th of March four siege-guns were sent to General Pope. He
received them at sunset. Colonel Morgan's brigade was furnished with
spades and intrenching tools. General Stanley's division was ordered
under arms, to support Morgan. The force advanced towards the town at
dark, drove in the Rebel pickets, secured a favorable position within
eight hundred yards of the fort. The men worked all night, and in
the morning had two breastworks thrown up, each eighteen feet thick,
and five feet high, with a smaller breastwork, called a curtain,
connecting the two. This curtain was nine hundred feet long, nine feet
thick, and three feet high. On each side of the breastworks, thrown
out like wings was a line of rifle-pits. Wooden platforms were placed
behind the breastworks, and the guns all mounted by daylight. Colonel
Bissell, of the engineers, managed it all. In thirty-four hours from
the time he received the guns at Cairo, he had shipped them across
the Mississippi River, loaded them on railroad cars, taken them to
Sykestown, twenty miles, mounted them on carriages, then dragged them
twenty miles farther, through almost impassable mud, and had them in
position within eight hundred yards of the river! The work was done
so quietly that the Rebel pickets did not mistrust what was going on.
At daybreak they opened fire upon what they supposed was a Union
rifle-pit, and were answered by a shell from a rifled thirty-two
pounder.
It was a foggy morning. The air was still, and the deep thunder rolled
far away along the wooded stream. It woke up the slumbering garrison.
Commodore Hollins heard it, and immediately there was commotion among
the Rebel gunboats. They came to New Madrid. Hollins placed them in
position above the town to open fire. The fog lifted, and all the guns
of the fleet and the forts began to play upon the breastworks. General
Pope brought up his heavy field guns, and replied. He paid but little
attention to the fort, but sent his shot and shell at the gunboats.
Captain Mower, of the First United States artillery, commanded the
batteries, and his fire was so accurate that the gunboats were obliged
to take new positions. Shortly after the cannonade began, a shot from
the fort struck one of Captain Mower's thirty-two pounders in the muzzle
and disabled it; but he kept up his fire through the day, dismounting
three guns in the lower fort and disabling two of the gunboats. Nearly
all of the shells from the Rebel batteries fell harmlessly into the soft
earth. There were very few of General Pope's men injured. They soon
became accustomed to the business, and paid but little attention to the
screaming of the shot and the explosions of the shells. They had many
hearty laughs, as the shells which burst in the ground frequently
spattered them with mud.
There was one soldier in one of the Ohio regiments who was usually
profane and wicked; but he was deeply impressed with the fact that so
few were injured by such a terrific fire, and at night said to his
comrades, seriously: "Boys, there is no use denying it; God has watched
over us to-day."
His comrades also noticed that he did not swear that night.
Just at night, General Paine's division made a demonstration towards the
lower fort, driving in the enemy's pickets. General Paine advanced
almost to the ditch in front of the fort. Preparations were made to hold
the ground, but during the night there came up a terrific thunder-storm
and hurricane, which stopped all operations.
The Twenty-seventh and Thirty-ninth Ohio, and the Tenth and Sixteenth
Illinois, were the grand guard for the night. They had been under fire
all day. They had endured the strain upon their nerves, but through the
long night-hours they stood in the drenching rain, beneath the sheets of
lurid flame, looking with sleepless eyes towards the front, prepared to
repel a sortie or challenge spies.
At daybreak there was no enemy in sight. The fort was deserted. A
citizen of the town came out with a flag of truce. The General who had
called upon his men in high-sounding words, the officer who was going to
make New Madrid a Thermopylæ, and himself a Leonidas in history,--the
nine thousand infantry had gone! Two or three soldiers were found
asleep. They rubbed their eyes and stared wildly when they were told
that they were prisoners, that their comrades and commander had fled.
During the thunder-storm, the Rebel gunboats and steamers had taken the
troops on board, and ferried them to the Tennessee shore near Island No.
10. They spiked their heavy guns, but Colonel Bissell's engineers were
quickly at work, and in a few hours had the guns ready for use again.
The Rebels left an immense amount of corn, in bags, and a great quantity
of ammunition. They tumbled their wagons into the river.
General Pope set his men to work, and before night the guns which had
been pointed inland were wheeled the other way. He sent a messenger to
Commodore Foote, with this despatch:--
"All right! River closed! No escape for the enemy by water."
All this was accomplished with the loss of seven killed and forty-three
wounded. By these operations against New Madrid, and by the battle at
Pea Ridge, in the southwestern part of the State, which was fought about
the same time, the Rebels were driven from Missouri!