The Mississippi River campaigns, within the Western and
Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War, were a series of military actions by the Union Army during which Union troops, helped by Union Navy gunboats and river ironclads, took control of the Cumberland River, the Tennessee River, and the Mississippi River, a main north–south avenue of transport.
The campaign on and along the Mississippi River started in February 1862 with Union forces pushing down from Cairo, Illinois into disputed territory in Missouri and Kentucky and Confederate territory in Tennessee. It ended with the surrender of the last Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4, 1863, and of Port Hudson, Louisiana on July 9, 1863. Flag Officer Foote initially commanded the Union naval forces, which were later led by Farragut and Porter. Union ground forces were primarily under the command of General Grant.
In July 1863, the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate States of America was split from the Confederate States east of the river when the Union gained control of the entire Mississippi River. This cut the main east–west artery of transportation for the South, depriving the rest of the Confederacy of men, food and other supplies from the Confederate States west of the river. While not commonly lumped together under this designation, the river campaigns were undertaken mainly for reasons found in Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott's 1861 Anaconda Plan. Scott proposed to defeat the Confederacy largely through blockade of ports and control of rivers leading to the economic 'strangulation' of the Confederacy, which he hoped would prevent a large number of bloody land battles.
The original Union Army expedition to control the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers was under the overall command Major General Henry W. Halleck although Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant commanded the forces in the field. Flag officer Andrew H. Foote commanded the Navy's squadrons. The Vicksburg and Port Hudson campaigns were commanded by Major Generals Grant and Nathaniel P. Banks, respectively while the Mississippi River Squadron was commanded by then Rear Admiral David Farragut from the south and Flag Officer David Dixon Porter from the north.
== Practical elements of warfare on the Mississippi ==
Although an important role in the Mississippi River campaign was played by armored paddle steamers, the campaign was a Union Army undertaking, as the ships used were under Army command and were used as army transports and floating gun stations rather than independent warships. Most of their boats were either converted paddle steamers or purpose-built gunboats that had never seen the sea. Because of this, the Mississippi River Squadron quickly became known as the Brown-water navy. This was a reference to the brown, muddy water of the Mississippi, as compared to the deep blue commonly associated with the sea. The only exception was at the Siege of Vicksburg where the army, marching downstream met up with the Union Navy under Rear Admiral David Farragut sailing upstream and the two combined their forces for an all-out land-and-sea shelling of the town.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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