In early March 1862, while the Union blockade of the Confederacy solidified, the struggle for control of the Mississippi River began in earnest. The contest between the Confederate river fortification strategy and the Union joint—or what was then called combined—army-navy offensive strategy had commenced in February with U.S. victories at Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. On the last day of February, well before the fields and woods around Shiloh Church and Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee became blood soaked, Federal troops set out from Commerce, Missouri, for a quiet curve in the Mississippi known as New Madrid Bend. It was the initial move in what would become the first major struggle along the Mississippi. The fighting at Madrid Bend would continue for five weeks, finally ending on 8 April, the day after the Battle of Shiloh concluded.
A Strategic River Bend
New Madrid Bend’s unusual geographic attributes made it ideal for defending against a force proceeding down the Mississippi River. The area is at the southeast corner of Missouri bordering both Kentucky and Tennessee. In this corner, the river makes a dramatic S-turn that covers 35 miles down to Tiptonville, Tennessee. Fifteen-acre Island Number Ten, so named because it was the tenth island in the Mississippi River south of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, was near the beginning of the S-turn. The small town of New Madrid, Missouri, lies 15 miles downriver.
Late in 1861, Confederate troops occupied and soon began building fortifications at New Madrid, on the Tennessee bank of the river just south and east of Island Number Ten, and on the island. New Madrid was the site of two small fortifications, later joined by nine separate gun emplacements on the island and Tennessee shore. Along with the shore and island guns was the CSS New Orleans, a floating battery with an additional 14 cannon, towed up from the Crescent City and moored off the western end of Island Number Ten. The New Orleans brought the total number of Confederate cannon to 62 by the end of February 1862. Major General John P. McCown commanded the 7,500 Southern troops at Madrid Bend, supported by Commodore George Hollins’ seven wooden gunboats. Hollins had served in the U.S. Navy for 47 years and was one of its six captains who resigned their commissions and took up arms for the Confederacy.
On 23 February, a week before Major General Ulysses S. Grant was ordered to advance his forces south along the Tennessee River toward Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, U.S. Department of the Mississippi commander Major General Henry Halleck created the Army of the Mississippi. Its mandate was to head south along the Mississippi and capture the northernmost fortified location on the river, Madrid Bend. Leading this green force, which eventually numbered more than 20,000 men and set out on 28 February, was Brigadier General John Pope. Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote and his Western Gunboat Flotilla would join Pope in the joint operation.
Union Success at New Madrid
The Army of the Mississippi arrived near New Madrid and its 3,000 defenders on 3 March and the next day launched an attack, which the Confederate gunboats played a key role in repulsing. One Union colonel recalled, “If it had not been for the gunboats we would have advanced on the town and fort but they, with their heavy guns, would have shelled us out in a short time.”1 With his forces facing withering fire from the joint Confederate force, and Foote’s gunboats not yet on the scene, Pope began a small-scale siege until he could move heavy-caliber guns downriver from Cairo, Illinois.
On the morning of 13 March, after the guns had arrived and been deployed quickly in fortified positions, Union forces opened a barrage. The next 12 hours saw a constant and punishing exchange of cannon fire between the two sides that lasted until daylight faded into night. Casualties were light, fewer than 20 between the two sides, but they concealed the heavy emotional toll the day had exacted on the Confederate leaders at Madrid Bend.
When Union forces awoke on 14 March expecting to resume the artillery duel, a silent scene greeted them. After only one day of serious bombardment, the Confederates had executed a hasty evacuation during a storm in the middle of the night, abandoning 33 cannon, 300 horses, and equipment and provisions for 10,000 men. Hollins’ gunboats and transports carrying the troops had steamed downriver to Tiptonville. One Union soldier remarked in the aftermath of the evacuation: “When I looked at the enemy’s works I thought they had acted cowardly in abandoning them after standing but one day’s cannonade. They would have been very difficult to take by assault.”2
This first tactical outcome of the Madrid Bend operations reflected the weakness of the Confederate leadership. General McCown’s men had suffered only eight casualties on 13 March, but the consensus he and Hollins had reached was to evacuate New Madrid. The capture of the town may have been inevitable, given Union forces’ numerical and material advantages, but the Confederates forfeited a decisive Madrid Bend position without a serious attempt to bloody the raw Army of the Mississippi. The next strategic move in the campaign was for the Union Navy to enable Pope’s army to cross the Mississippi and close in on the Confederates at Island Number Ten.
Gunboats Arrive and Wait
Flag Officer Foote, as commander of the Western Gunboat Flotilla, commanded all the forces on the upper Western rivers in the spring of 1862. His flotilla had carried the day at Fort Henry, forcing its surrender before Grant’s army could arrive. Conversely, Foote’s vessels took a pounding from Fort Donelson’s guns, leaving the outcome of the battle to the troops. The flag officer also was wounded while witnessing his gunboats battle the shore batteries. Commander Henry Walke of the gunboat Carondelet, describing the scene on board his vessel during the Donelson gun battle, stated, “Our decks were so slippery with the blood of the brave men who had fallen, that we could hardly stand until we covered them with sand.”3
After resupplying and repairing his ships following the fighting at Forts Henry and Donelson, Foote departed Cairo, Illinois, on 14 March. Pope had taken New Madrid, but while the Confederate gunboats and island and shore batteries dominated the river he was unable to cross the Mississippi without transportation and naval gun support. The next day, Foote arrived just north of Island Number Ten with six ironclads, ten mortar boats, and several transports. But he carried with him the physical and emotional wounds of Fort Donelson.
Five of the six ironclads were City-class gunboats, the creation of St. Louis entrepreneur James Eads. Contemporaries thought them ugly, underpowered, and foul smelling. Regardless of their appearance, the steam-powered vessels had stout armor plating on the forward two-thirds of their casemates and mounted 13 heavy naval guns. This combination made them far superior to anything on the Western rivers that the Confederates could then muster.
Once Foote was on the scene, however, his apprehension began to overtake his courageous nature. Unwilling to run his vessels past Island Number Ten, the flotilla commander began a long-range bombardment using his mortar boats against the shore batteries at and around the island on 16 March. The heavy shelling that day accomplished little. The flotilla would continue similar low-risk bombardments on and off for two more weeks with no positive results to speak of.
While waiting impatiently to get his troops across the river, Pope took matters into his own hands. Colonel Josiah Bissell, commanding the Engineer Regiment of the West, identified a route through swamps and bayous above the Madrid Bend’s Missouri peninsula that could be fashioned into a canal bypassing the Confederates’ island and shore batteries. Once put in motion, the Herculean effort to create the canal took 600 men working every moment of daylight over the course of 13 days. Bissell later attributed the success of this endeavor to “the ingenuity of the Officers and soldiers that had been exercised.” The end product was a 50-foot wide, four-foot deep waterway.4 Using the canal, the transports safely reached New Madrid to transport Pope’s army across the Mississippi. The waterway, however, was not deep enough to allow passage of the ironclads, which were needed to support a river crossing.
The Carondelet’s Run
On completion of the canal, Foote called for volunteers from among his ship captains for a night run past the island and defenses. Only one of his captains, Henry Walke of the City-class Carondelet, volunteered. Walke later recalled, “Although fully aware of the hazardous nature of the enterprise, I knew that the aid of a gun-boat was absolutely necessary to enable General Pope to succeed in his operation against the enemy.”5 On 1 April, he began preparing his vessel and 253-man crew, but the captain would wait for a stormy night to aid in concealing his transit.
While Walke prepared, Colonel George Roberts, commanding the 42nd Illinois Infantry Regiment, devised a way to aid the Union efforts. On the night of 1–2 April, Roberts, 45 of his men, and 55 sailors from the Western Gunboat Flotilla set out in five boats to cross the river and attack the Confederates’ northernmost fortification, Rucker’s Battery. Roberts’ small force quietly rowed the three miles to the battery, took the sentries by surprise, and spiked the six guns there in a matter of minutes with no casualties. One participant summarized the operation: “In less than two minutes the battery was a useless wreck—what the cannonading of a fortnight failed to accomplish five men did.”6 The raid reduced the total number of Confederate guns and also allowed the mortar boats to push farther downriver the next day. Their bombardment forced the Rebels to move their floating battery several miles downriver.
Meanwhile, the stage was being set for the most dramatic episode of the Madrid Bend operation: the Carondelet running the gauntlet of fire past Island Number Ten on the night of 4–5 April. The ironclad’s vulnerable areas—sections that were lightly armored or not armored at all—were reinforced. Whatever materials that could be found were used: lumber, iron bars, hemp rope, cable, chain, cordwood, and bags of coal. The final defensive measure was the addition of a small barge loaded with coal and hay that was lashed to the ship’s port quarter. Walke later wrote, the “Carondelet looked like a farmer’s team, preparing for market.”7
With the preparations made, the ironclad finally got under way on an inky black night. She had good fortune, including a thunderstorm that materialized shortly after the transit began. The fortuitous conditions, along with Confederate complacency, allowed the Carondelet to go unnoticed until she drew even with the second Rebel battery. When the Confederates finally began to engage, the gunboat’s crew could hear the enemy’s cannon fire passing overhead and hitting the water close aboard, but the vessel was not hit. During the entire transit, the largest threat to the Carondelet was the river itself.
Less maneuverable than normal with the barge lashed to her side, the gunboat nearly ran hard aground while passing Island Number Ten. Acting First Master William Hoel of the ironclad Cincinnati was at the Carondelet’s bow, along with two sailors with a lead and line, giving steering directions to the pilothouse. Hoel, who had volunteered for the dangerous duty, gave a ship-saving “hard-a-port” at the most precarious point of the transit, likely saving the Carondelet. Describing the former Mississippi riverboat pilot’s service that night, Walke reported, “Hoel stood firm on deck in a perfect shower of cannon balls and musket balls which were launched upon us.”8 After the drama and anxiety of the passage, at 0100 the Carondelet, unscathed, arrived at New Madrid to soldiers’ cheers.
Final Moves
Pope now had all of the pieces in place to execute the final part of the operation against Madrid Bend. Confederate naval forces left the area on 5 April after word of the Carondelet’s transit. On that day and the next, the gunboat supported reconnaissance of the east bank of the Mississippi, scouting for troop landing locations and harassing Confederate gun emplacements. The Pittsburgh ran past the guns at Island Number Ten in the same fashion as the Carondelet on the night of 6–7 April. Both ironclads were on station the next morning, charged with destroying several small Confederate batteries in the vicinity of the intended Union landing areas. Once the batteries were silenced, the Army of the Mississippi’s three divisions poured across the river on board transports throughout the day.
Confederate Brigadier General William Mackall had assumed command of the troops in and around Madrid Bend only a week prior, as McCown had lost the confidence of General P. G. T. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi. After assessing his new command, Mackall reported: “One good regiment would be better than what I have. It never had any discipline. It is disheartened—apathetic.” He also estimated he could hold out for only ten hours against the Union Army of the Mississippi.9
What ensued after the Union forces hit Tennessee soil was as anticlimactic as the action at New Madrid several weeks earlier. Mackall had intended to assemble a force of 2,500 men to repulse any enemy landings. But early on 7 April—with another Union gunboat downstream, his force still disorganized, and Pope’s troops coming ashore—he decided his only option was to retreat to a more defensible position on the outskirts of Tiptonville. Later in the day, when he discovered the enemy in firm control of the town, Mackall surrendered his nearby troops.
By the evening of 8 April, Pope’s soldiers and Foote’s sailors had secured Madrid Bend and taken more than 5,000 prisoners, with only 300 casualties between the two sides. Within a week, the Western Gunboat Flotilla was nearly 60 miles downriver, where it faced the next Confederate river impediment: Fort Pillow. Without Pope’s troops, which Halleck transferred for his advance on Corinth, Mississippi, the gunboats would be held up for two months by the fortification.
In Shiloh’s Shadow
The Battle of Shiloh, fought as the Union Army and Navy were making their final moves at Madrid Bend, has consistently overshadowed the New Madrid/Island Number Ten campaign. The number of casualties often has been a determining factor in the perception of Civil War battles, and the relatively small Madrid Bend totals pale in comparison with bloodier battles such as Shiloh. In addition, preeminent Union and Confederacy commanders in the West—Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman; Albert Sidney Johnston, Beauregard, and Braxton Bragg—fought at Shiloh, not New Madrid Bend.
The Confederate leaders at Madrid Bend generally were lost to history, while the disgrace of Pope’s loss at the Second Battle of Bull Run tainted his early successes along the Mississippi. Foote’s legacy of success in the early river campaigns is not lost, but his death 14 months after the Madrid Bend campaign marginalized his contributions compared with those of Union Navy leaders such as David G. Farragut and David D. Porter. These factors have rendered the action at Madrid Bend an often-overlooked footnote in the history of the Civil War’s Western theater.
Strategically, New Madrid Bend was the most formidable Confederate position on the Mississippi north of the fortress city of Vicksburg. When Union forces reached that bastion, they would encounter many of the same type of obstacles they faced at Island Number Ten, obstacles that also would require innovative combined operations to overcome.
1. David Prentice Jackson, ed., The Colonel’s Diary; Journals kept before and during the Civil War by the late Colonel Oscar L. Jackson . . . Sometime Commander of the 63rd Regiment O.V. I. (Sharon, PA: Jackson, 1910), 45.
2. Ibid., 49.
3. Henry Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York: F. R. Reed and Company, 1877), 78.
4. Josiah W. Bissell, “Sawing out the Channel above Island Number Ten,” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 1 (Edison, NJ: Castle/Book Sales, 1990), 460–63.
5. Henry Walke, “The Western Flotilla at Fort Donelson, Island Number Ten, Fort Pillow, and Memphis,” in Underwood and Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 1, 442.
6. E. S. Church, “The Spiking Party at Island No. 10,” The National Tribune, 15 November 1883.
7. Walke, Naval Scenes, 124.
8. Ibid., 131–32.
9. War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, vol. 8 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1883), 133.