Federalists Capture New Orleans—One of the South’s Chief Ports: April 25, 1862

This text comes from our book, The American Venture.

While General McClellan was figuring out what to do in the East, in the West, the Federal general, Ulysses S. Grant, supported by gunboats commanded by Commodore Andrew Foote, was moving into Kentucky by way of the Tennessee River.

We have seen that Lincoln had guaranteed Kentucky’s neutrality in the war, which meant that no Federal troops should have crossed into the state. So, what was Grant doing there?

Fort Henry, Tennessee

Like Lincoln, President Jefferson Davis had assured Kentucky’s neutrality. Davis knew that if Kentucky fell to the Union, all of central Tennessee along with Mississippi and Alabama would lay open to the Federal army. Yet, one of Davis’ generals, Leonidas Polk, was worried. Federal troops were amassing in southern Illinois, at Cairo, just across the Ohio River from Kentucky. Fearing a Federal invasion, Polk marched his own army into Kentucky in early September, taking and fortifying Springfield. In response, General Grant seized Paducah, on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. Though both the Union and the Confederates had thus violated Kentucky’s neutrality, the Confederates did it first. The state’s legislature asked for Federal military aid against the Confederates and so brought the state’s neutrality to an end.

Civil War battles in the western states

So it was that General Grant and Commodore Foote were piercing into the heart of Kentucky, along the path of the Tennessee River. On February 6, 1862, Grant and Foote conquered Fort Henry, a fortress on the river in Tennessee. Then they moved against Fort Donelson, some 15 miles from Fort Henry, on the Cumberland River. To reach Fort Henry, Foote’s gunboats had to steam up the Tennessee River to the Ohio, and then down the Cumberland. Grant and Foote captured Fort Donelson on the 16th of February.

The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson opened up central Tennessee to the Federals. On February 23, Federal General Don Carlos Buell led his troops into Tennessee’s capital, Nashville, while Grant moved his army of 42,000 men south along the Tennessee River, until he reached Pittsburg Landing, near the Tennessee-Mississippi border. There he waited the arrival of Buell with some 25,000 more men.

But, unbeknownst to Grant, by the night of April 5, 1862, the Confederate army lay only one mile away from Pittsburg Landing. The next morning, the Confederates descended on the Federal Camp, forcing the enemy to flee. Throughout the day, the battle raged around a small Methodist church called Shiloh (meaning, ironically enough, “place of peace”) against a Federal position along a sunken road, which the troops called the “Hornet’s Nest,” and in a peach orchard. By the end of the day, the Confederates had pushed the Federals all the way back to Pittsburg Landing. By the next morning, it seemed that they would be able to destroy Grant’s army.

But that night, General Buell arrived and reinforced Grant. The Confederates, knowing they could not defeat so large a force, withdrew. Thus, the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh, was considered a victory for Grant.

David Farragut

Grant, however, was not the only Federal commander to win victories in the West. General John Pope, with the support of Commodore Foote’s gunboats, seized nearly all the Confederate forts on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee. Then Pope captured Memphis as well. Farther south, 24 Federal ships under the command of Flag Officer David Farragut entered the mouth of the Mississippi River and pushed the hundred miles north to New Orleans. On April 25, 1862, Farragut captured New Orleans—one of the South’s chief ports—and then Baton Rouge and Port Hudson, Louisiana, as well as Natchez, Mississippi. The only Confederate stronghold left on the Mississippi was Vicksburg—and if that fell, the western states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas would be entirely cut off from the rest of the Confederacy.

Thus, by the beginning of June 1862, Lincoln’s strategy seemed to be working. If only McClellan could capture Richmond, the war, it seemed, would soon be over.