Question of the Week: What’s your favorite Civil War waterway?
What is your favorite Civil War waterway? Mississippi River, Anrietam Creek, Bayou Teche, something else?
What is your favorite Civil War waterway? Mississippi River, Anrietam Creek, Bayou Teche, something else?
The Potomac River.
The Mississippi is so dynamic, ever changing, and so much naval action along its banks makes it my favorite waterway during the Civil War. All that on top of being so essential for commerce for both sides.
The Rio Grande!
The Tennessee River.
The Rapidan River or the Shenandoah River.
Plum Run
Antietam Creek, it’s quiet and calm.
Looking at the James River from atop Drewrys Bluff.
The Mississippi. Planning a cruise in December. Will visit all the sites.
The James River.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the beautiful Monocacy River winding through the underappreciated Monocacy Battlefield.
The Red River in Louisiana. ” One blunder from beginning to the end. “
West Chickamauga Creek, known somewhat apocryphally but certainly justifiably as the “river of death.”
The biggest and certainly most used from beginning to the end is the Mighty Mississippi. From New Orleans to the Sultana disaster.
Bissell’s Canal. When Union General Pope led his Army to New Madrid in March 1862 he found himself on the wrong side of the Mississippi River. The Confederates at Island No.10 were north of him, and due to prodigious swamps there was a single sliver of dry ground that Rebels fleeing Flag-Officer Foote’s attack on Island No.10 could follow south to Tiptonville Tennessee and safety. Pope had to cut off that escape route, get to Tiptonville first… but he had no means of crossing the broad river.
In response to the problem, Bissell’s Engineer Regiment was put to work cutting trees, creating a 4-foot deep channel through Missouri swamps, connecting those swamps by digging through dry ground… until a navigable channel existed from just below Island Number 8 to its connection with the Mississippi River at New Madrid. Empty transport steamers were moved through the 12-mile long canal, and at New Madrid those steamers were loaded with soldiers and ferried to Tiptonville. And by 8 April 1862 the joint operation of Foote and Pope forced the surrender of the 7000 Rebels defending Island Number Ten.
Why, the Chickahominy, of course – which Robert Lee called the Chickee. Just a river, it baffled and perplexed George McClellan into fumbling an entire military operation, the Peninsula Campaign, the largest military exercise in the history of North America, with hundreds of ships and steamboats – including the first aircraft carrier in American history – over 120,000 soldiers, 44 artillery batteries (more than 250 guns), 1,200+ wagons,15,000+ horses, 30,000+ mules, and millions of tons of equipment, food and other supplies; the expedition consumed 600 tons of supplies per day. And…it all came to ruin because McClellan failed to grasp the whimsical vagaries of a mere stream, where to position his troops in relation to it, and how to use it to his advantage. Instead, he allowed Lee to use the river to his advantage, which left his army dangerously exposed, and then Lee proceeded to beat his army senseless for a week, coming within 100 yards of severing it in two and completely destroying it, and then finally throwing it off the Peninsula.
The Rio Grande. Battles fought from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf Coast. I like all Civil War rivers though.