Civil war organizes by a group fighting against the other country or region that aims to take control and change the policies by the government. People who join fight like this sometimes want to hear what they wish to force the person on the throne to make what they want to happen. … Read more
ALEX SCOTT Built: 1842, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Type: Sidewheel, wooden hull packet. Size: 266′ x 34′ x 8′, 709 tons. Engines: 25’s x 10 ft. Boilers: Six boilers. Paddlewheels: 30′ diameter with 15′ buckets, 28″ dip. Named for Captain Alexander Scott, and built by a veteran of the river, Captain John C. Swan, her principle owner and master, this … Read more
When the Civil War broke out, neither side were prepared for naval battles on the western rivers. The inevitable result was an urgent and innovative period of warship experimentation. Before the war, James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887), an inventive self-taught engineer living in St. Louis and familiar with the Mississippi River, proposed that the U.S. government … Read more
The war between the States began on April 12, 1861, at Charleston, South Carolina. Within weeks, civilian river traffic on the Mississippi River had been suspended. The steamboat UNCLE SAM was the last steamboat to make the run up to St. Louis before the Union blockade took full effect. It was fired upon, stopped, … Read more
Grant resolved to move his soldiers south of Vicksburg down the Louisiana side of the river, cross the Mississippi, and attack Vicksburg from the south. Although this meant the Union fleet would risk passing downstream beneath Vicksburg’s Mississippi River batteries to get in position south of the city to ferry the army across … Read more