the new
Confederacy. The northern Confederate battle-line was along the south
bank of the Ohio River, and there they had erected batteries that
controlled the passage of that river. South of the mouth of the Ohio,
every river was lined with Confederate batteries, and bore on its
placid bosom fleets of Confederate gunboats. At Columbus on the
Mississippi, not far south of the mouth of the Ohio, were strong
batteries over which floated the stars and bars of the Confederacy.
Farther down was Island Number 10, bearing one of the most powerful
fortifications the world has ever seen. Then came Fort Pillow,
guarding the city of Memphis; then at Vicksburg frowned earthworks,
bastions, and escarpments that rivalled Gibraltar for impregnability.
Lower down were fortifications at Grand Gulf, Port Hudson, and Baton
Rouge. Fort Henry guarded the Tennessee River, and Fort Donelson the
Cumberland, and both of these rivers were very important as waterways
for the transportation of supplies to the Union armies marching into
Tennessee. It was absolutely necessary that all these fortifications
should be swept away, and the rivers opened for navigation down to the
Gulf of Mexico. It was necessary that the work should be done from
above; for the forts below New Orleans were thought to be impassible,
and Farragut's passage of them late in the war made all the world ring
with his name.

It became evident, very early in the war, that no great progress could
be made in the task of crushing the powerful insurrection until
telling blows had been struck at the Confederate control of the inland
waterways. When the attention of the war department was turned in that
direction, they found but little to encourage them in the prospect.
Along the thousands of miles of the banks of the Mississippi and its
tributaries, there was not one gun mounted belonging to the United
States, not one earthwork over which floated the starry flag of the
Union. The Confederate positions on this great chain of waterways
were, as we have seen, of great strength. To attack them, the armies
of the North must first fight their way through whole States populated
by enemies. Obviously, the war department alone could not complete so
gigantic a task, and the services of the navy were called into
requisition. So energetically did the navy department prosecute its
task, that, by the end of the war, over one hundred Federal
war-vessels floated on those streams, on which, three year