Looking Beyond the Letters

A Blog Exploring the Backstories of the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project

Tag: technology

If You Build It, And They Come . . . Does The Site Work For Them?

January 19, 2023 / / 0 Comments

By Susannah J. Ural, Ph.D.

CWRGM had a wonderfully productive year in 2022. We made 3,980 additional documents freely available at our website (our total is now just over 7,000 of a projected 20,000 documents). Each of these digitized documents contains metadata, transcriptions, and subject tags that enhance discoverability. We also made incredible progress on annotation, led by Senior Associate Editor Lindsey Peterson, who oversaw the team’s annotations for 991 places, 103 events, 68 organizations and businesses, 195 occupations, 55 social identifiers, five vital statistics. That means, by December 2022, all but 20 documents at CWRGM.org had some annotation and they averaged five annotated subjects per document (see our Annotation Protocols if you have questions about this process).

We also retained most of our talented 2021-2022 team members and added more students representing multiple colleges, universities, and community colleges from across the state: the University of Southern Mississippi, Millsaps University, Mississippi State University, The Mississippi University for Women, and Pearl River Community College. We lost two team members to other positions, but at least one of them secured that work in part due to what they had learned with us, which is wonderful to see . We were also joined by a first-rate new Assistant Editor, Sarah West (you can see our current research team and our alums here). We hosted an annual educator workshop that generated three more CWRGM lesson plans and led our first National History Day (NHD) workshop for students from Council Bluffs, Iowa (Kirn Middle School and Abraham Lincoln High School) and from Akron-Westfield, Iowa (Akron-Westfield Middle School). If you are leading or part of an NHD project, I encourage you to check out our NHD resource page and video.

While we’re pleased with this progress, Lindsey and I couldn’t help but wonder how users were exploring our site and if there are ways to improve their experience. We offer tips on how to “Explore the Collection.” And analytics can reveal data like how many people access the site, which pages they visit the most, and how long they stay on the site. But what about issues with discoverability and accessibility? We can gather feedback about errors or if users want to share more information about something in a document, but that doesn’t answer the question of how they explore the site and how we can make that experience as successful as possible.

Visit our “Explore the Collection” page for tips on, well, exploring the CWRGM collection.

This spring, CWRGM is focusing on that very issue, especially as it relates to the records of marginalized groups whose voices have been underrepresented in archives. Ours is a nineteenth-century collection of governors’ papers, and if you know anything about nineteenth-century Americans, it seems that everybody wrote to their governors about absolutely anything. Even people who could not write would find others to write on their behalf. We are thrilled with the diversity of our collection that spans the era of one of the most revolutionary times in U.S. history and the “finds” our volunteers and research team are making freely available to all. But we don’t know that equally diverse contemporary groups are “hearing” these voices today. That is, after all, one of our goals. We want this archive’s users to be as diverse as our collection; this is an archive for everyone, not just scholars and others who are wealthy enough to have the time and training to explore it successfully. So, how do we measure if we are accomplishing that goal? Furthermore, are users with different types of interests finding records as easily as we think they can? Is there something we could do to improve discoverability?

Lindsey and I had already tried to get at this information with simple surveys. We sent these to educators, to fellow Civil War-era scholars, to our advisory board, and we even reached out to genealogical and historical associations to send them to their entire membership. But we’ve received little feedback.

So Lindsey and I did what we always do when we hit an editorial wall — we reached out to our friends in the documentary editing community. Ben and Sara Brumfield, in particular, had some great suggestions that led us to two specific ventures this spring. The first involves partnering with The Luster Company, a consulting firm that specializes in unearthing and highlighting marginalized Black voices. The Luster Company will help us assess the current discoverability and accessibility features at our site, reach more diverse user groups to discover how they use CWRGM.org, and see if there are ways we can improve the site. We’re also working with individual chapters of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) to share our project with their members and workshop the collection. Our goal is to introduce the chapter members to the collection and then see how they, as trained and experienced historical genealogists specializing in African-American historical research, access our rich collection to see if there are ways to improve our digital organization and search features.

We’ll report back on the results of this venture, but we’re sharing our ideas now in case other documentary editors are facing the same dilemma or if any of you have successfully resolved this issue through other means. By all means – please let us know.

Susannah J. Ural, Ph.D. directs the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project. She is Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi where she directs the Center for Digital Humanities and is a senior research fellow in the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the U.S. Civil War era.

“Armchair Generals” and Concerned Citizens: Public Advice about Defending the Mississippi River, Part III

September 23, 2022 / / 0 Comments

By: Michael Singleton, former CWRGM Assistant Editor

            In the last two posts, we examined some of the more exceptional documents in the CWRGM collection that featured civilian suggestions to Governor John J. Pettus about defending Mississippi’s waterways, namely the Mississippi River. These proposals ranged from more conventional plans for fixed fortifications to—as we looked at last time—a unique plan for an ironclad warship with a rapid-fire battering ram. Today’s post continues the theme from that second article as it details perhaps the most unconventional of all the proposals: a plan for a manned, steam-powered submarine designed to attack Federal ships on the state’s rivers and in the ocean.

The advent of submarine warfare is near the top of the list of important technological innovations brought about by the American Civil War. The successful (albeit suicidal) attack by the submarine CSS Hunley on a Federal warship in Charleston Harbor in February 1864 heralded a new age of naval warfare that forced commanders to consider threats from below the waves, not just on the surface. When Thomas P. Hall of De Soto Parish, Louisiana, forwarded Governor Pettus a plan for a submarine in December 1862, however, that revolutionary change was by no means certain.[1] Hall’s letter contained a design by a local acquaintance, Charles J. Provost, that Hall felt deserved the Governor’s attention because of its potential to “prove a most efficient weapon for driving the enemy out of all our rivers and away from our harbors & seacoast.” According to Hall, Provost’s plan had been examined and approved by “some of our ablest engineers” in Louisiana and recommended that the Governor seek further confirmation of its potential from other experts.

Figure 1. Charles Post’s schematic drawing of his submarine design. Note the conning tower, rotating mechanism, and “arm holes.” Courtesy Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project. Click on image to view entire document.

Provost’s plan was complex. It called for a vessel built around a boiler taken from a steamboat with a screw attached to a propeller as the primary means of propulsion. A “driving wheel” with “long hands extending forward having knobs to them” would allow the crew to crank the wheel and move the boat forward and backward. Ropes extending from the rudder would allow a crewmember in the bow to steer the vessel as necessary. Ballast meant to keep the submarine horizontal and aid in depth changes would be “distributed uniformly” along its length. Air for the crew would be pumped in by a tube extending to the boiler from a buoy on the water’s surface. If needed, he proposed that the crew condense “a sufficient quantity of air and take it aboard to last the men several hours.”  Provost did not elaborate on the submarine’s total size, but it can be inferred that by necessity, it would have been large to accommodate room for a steam boiler, crew, and machinery. Likewise, he did not specify the total number of crew the vessel required. Still, at least three men would likely have been needed to, at a minimum, man the “driving wheel,” service the boiler, and control navigation and the vessel’s weaponry.

The design also featured a few curious characteristics of note. Provost planned that a crew member of the crew would navigate the vessel from a revolving, conning tower-like feature extending from the top of the submarine. Made out of “india rubber or water proof leather,” this two-and-a-half-foot extension would contain “a glass in front to look through and two arm holes for the man to run his arms and hands into.” This navigator would also be the individual that manipulated the harpoon and explosive torpedo that extended from the bottom of the boat. This spar would be eight or nine feet long and be capable of swiveling to the left or right as necessary to deliver the torpedo against a Federal ship. According to Provost’s plan, to activate the torpedo, “the force of the boat in motion in the right direction will drive the harpoon in [to the enemy ship], and drive the collar back on the rod so as to disengage the harpoon instantly.” Once attached, the navigator would detach the torpedo manually via a chain and have the submarine back out from the area. In the event of a misfire, Provost detailed a procedure in which the navigator would use his arm-holes to manually mount the torpedo to the side of the enemy ship.

Figure 2. Diagram of the H. L. Hunley. Note the eight crew members driving the propeller shaft, the pilot’s position, and the forward torpedo spar. Image by Matthew Twombly (Smithsonian Magazine).

Despite the apparent thought put into his design, Charles Provost’s plan went unsatisfied—and probably for good reason. Provost’s design was mechanically complicated and would have required a large, and likely unwieldy vessel, considering its use of an adapted steam boiler. Likewise, the navigator’s role in the conning tower with its curious “arm holes” appears out of proportion to the size of the rest of the submarine and likely not functionally possible. The manipulation and activation of the spar torpedo also were overly intricate and not likely to be successful given its location on the boat’s underside. Finally, little thought seems to have been given about how the boiler smoke would be expended during operation.

By contrast, the designers of the H. L. Hunley employed a more straightforward design that favored manpower over complex engines. In their experiments at Mobile, Alabama, in 1862 and 1863, the Hunley’s inventors tested electric motors and a steam engine but found them both unworkable as a means of propulsion. They instead determined to use a screw cranked by eight crew members to turn the propeller and push the boat. Like Provost’s plan, the Hunley featured a two-foot-tall conning tower, but it did not rotate nor have “arm holes.” Instead, the pilot steered the boat with a forward wheel and manipulated the spar torpedo with wires (mounted to the submarine’s bow rather than the underside). No mechanism was used to supply air as the crew breathed what was contained in the ship after its twin hatches were closed.[2] This simpler design—while undoubtedly taxing for its crew—allowed it to function in a realistic manner not likely possible with Provost’s plan.

All told, Charles Provost’s submarine plan can be added to the list of the other plans that, while sincerely submitted, were disregarded by Pettus and other Confederate authorities. Nevertheless, together they build a picture of several industrious Southern civilians who sought to employ tactical and technical ingenuity to aid the Confederate war effort. Like the higher-level discussions of strategy and military operations contained in the documents of the CWRGM collection, theirs is also a part of the larger story of the American Civil War that deserves to be told. I hope you have enjoyed learning about them as much as I have and would encourage you to dig further into the collection to find other unique stores and voices from the past. Enjoy! 

Michael Singleton was the CWRGM Assistant Editor from 2021-2022. He earned his M.A. in History from the University of Southern Mississippi in August 2022 and his B.A. in History from the Virginia Military Institute in 2013. While a student at USM, Michael served as a Public History Intern on the CWRGM project in the summer of 2021 and a graduate Teaching Assistant from 2020-2021. He also served as an active-duty Infantry officer in the U.S. Army from 2013 to 2020. 

[1] By December 1862, experiments with submarine prototypes were ongoing within the Confederacy but still not yet completed. The first tests occurred in New Orleans, LA, in the spring of 1862 when a group of inventors built the Pioneer, a 30 ft. long, cigar shaped, submarine. It suffered from navigational and steering issues, but demonstrated the feasibility of underwater movement. It was scuttled when Federal forces seized New Orleans that April. Trials resumed in Mobile, AL, some months later when the same inventors built a second prototype, The American Diver. This boat was 36 ft. long and used a propeller shaft cranked by its four-man crew.  The Diver sank during sea trials in Mobile Bay in January 1863. The lessons learned from these two ventures would serve as the basis for their third (and ultimately successful) attempt, the H. L. Hunley in 1863 and 1864. See, Mark K. Ragan, Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2015) 10-11, 25-27.

[2] Ragan, Confederate Saboteurs, 29-30.

“Armchair Generals” and Concerned Citizens: Public Advice about Defending the Mississippi River, Part II

August 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

By: Michael Singleton, Former CWRGM Assistant Editor

            In the last post, I relayed several of the unique documents from the CWRGM collection that featured proposals sent by civilians to Mississippi Governor John Pettus on how best to fortify and defend the Mississippi River. While notable for their detail and designs, those propositions primarily focused on conventional techniques like land-based fortifications and a network of river obstructions. Today’s post highlights a series of letters from 1862 that offered a plan for an unconventional naval weapon that the author believed would neutralize the power of the United States Navy. Like the previous documents, these proposals contain a fascinating drawing accompanying the written proposal. Similarly, it also appears to have gone unimplemented at the state and national levels for untold reasons. Regardless, these documents contain a range of innovative, technical, and scientific thinking that—even if disregarded by government authorities— further demonstrate the extent to which some enterprising civilians sought to support and influence the Confederate war effort with their own advice and insight.

                On July 29, 1862, William R. Scott of Wilmington, North Carolina, sent a letter to Governor Pettus detailing his plans for a “Steam Battering Ram” that he felt would allow the Confederate Navy to “Destroy the Federal Navy that is in the Miss River” and thus “win and Rule their own rights.” Scott’s proposal envisioned an ironclad ship adapted from the hull and boilers of an existing steamboat. The crux of his design was a steam-powered, multi-use battering ram that he asserted could deliver repeated blows below the waterline on an enemy ship. Scott suggested that the state of Mississippi complete the construction at the shipyard on the Yazoo River and likened its armored design to that of the famed CSS Arkansas that had only weeks before been completed.[1] In total, Scott’s first letter was long on rhetoric and short on technical details. He provided no specifics on how the ram would operate, nor details on its prospective dimensions, crew, armament, or necessary construction material. In this initial proposition, all Scott provided was his brief proposal, a rough sketch (that is missing), and an assessment conducted by officials from the Confederate Navy Department that endorsed his design. 

Figure 1. The CSS Arkansas under construction on the Yazoo River, 1862. Image courtesy of Wikicommons.

           It is clear that Pettus did not answer Scott’s initial letter because, in December 1862, he again petitioned the Governor and stated that “not having heard from you concerning it” he would “take the liberty to send you another sketch.” Scott’s second letter is of greater significance as he included a detailed sketch of the boat and an eight-page copy of the meeting minutes from a sub-commission of the South Carolina government that inspected and approved the plans. Scott’s design (Fig. 2) shows a double-acting steam engine mounted towards the boat’s bow that would operate a “battering ram” protruding below the waterline. He asserted that this weapon could be “driven with a force of from one hundred to six hundred tons depending on the size of the engine” and could do so against an enemy ship at a rapid pace of up to twenty blows per minute.

Figure 2. William Scott’s design for his ironclad with its steam-powered battering ram. At top is a endview of the ship while the middle and bottom views are a top and side view respectively. Courtesy Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project. Click on image to view entire document.

In essence, Scott envisioned a vessel that would, like a boxer, close with a Federal ship and deliver repeated body blows until its hull was breached or the craft fled. Such a design differed widely from the operation of conventional naval rams like the CSS Virginia and the CSS Tennessee, which both depended on the force of the ship’s momentum to deliver a blow and relied on mounted artillery for defense and offensive capabilities.[2] Contrarily, Scott’s ship would be purely offensive in nature as it evidently (according to the basic design) featured no other form of armament beyond the steam ram. This decision would mean that the ship would have relied solely on the reliability of its steam engines to generate sufficient speed and its ability to get close to enemy ships to be effective. The design further meant that the ship would have no other defensive capabilities than its ability to close with and batter enemy vessels. 

Nevertheless, more than any other innovative proposal in the CWRGM collection, Scott’s design appears to have come the closest to fulfillment. This fact is evident from the South Carolina commission report, which included copies of correspondence between Scott and numerous high-level Confederate officials who each expressed support for his design. For example, Confederate Lieutenant General P. G. T. Beauregard endorsed the plan in October 1862 by stating that he thought “favorably of the proposed battering Ram of Mr. W. R. Scott” because it could “continue the battering process without having to back for a new momentum.” Moreover, the South Carolina commission unanimously approved the plan and recommended its immediate implementation, while some Confederate Naval Department officials like its Chief Engineer William P. Williamson likewise endorsed the proposal and recommended it for action. Finally, Scott’s plan even reached the desk of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in September 1862, whose secretary (and son of Robert E. Lee) Colonel George Washington Custis Lee promised to refer the plan to the Secretary of the Navy, Stephen F. Mallory.

Figure 3. The CSS Manassas, the only Confederate ironclad to operate as a singular ram. It served briefly as it suffered damage and was abandoned in an engagement near New Orleans, LA, in September 1861. Image courtesy of Wikicommons.

Likely, Scott’s plan went no further than Mallory’s (or Pettus’) desk, for no such ironclad was ever constructed in total in Mississippi or elsewhere. This is possibly because of the failure of the singular ram CSS Manassas in combat in 1861 or that it violated Mallory’s policy to both offensive and defensively capable ironclads.[3]  However, it is possible that Scott’s plan did influence the construction of the CSS Charleston, which was constructed by the state of South Carolina in the fall of 1862 and that interestingly featured a unique iron ram protruding at length from its bow.[4] This is a feature not seen any other Confederate ironclads and, given the South Carolina commission’s enthusiasm and recommendation for his proposal, could mean that they incorporated the spirit of Scott’s design rather than it completely. In any event, despite his evident passion and persistence, William Scott’s idea went unfulfilled as it applied to the state of Mississippi as Pettus, and local Confederates forged ahead with more conventional plans on the Mississippi River. In a third and final post, we will move below the waves to detail another unconventional proposal broached to Governor Pettus about thwarting the Federal Navy along the Mississippi River. Stay tuned!

Michael Singleton was the CWRGM Assistant Editor from 2021-2022. He earned his M.A. in History from the University of Southern Mississippi in August 2022 and his B.A. in History from the Virginia Military Institute in 2013. While a student at USM, Michael served as a Public History intern on the CWRGM project in the summer of 2021 and a graduate teaching assistant from 2020-2021. He also served as an active duty Infantry officer in the U.S. Army from 2013 to 2020.

[1] The CSS Arkansas was a large ironclad completed at a shipyard located on the Yazoo River in Mississippi in the mid-summer of 1862. It featured railroad iron for armor and two large (but unreliable) steam engines for propulsion. It left the shipyard on July 14, 1862 to engage Federal ships on the Mississippi River. In a series of engagements, it ran the Federal fleet above Vicksburg and remained near that city until it travelled south to participate in a Confederate offensive to retake Baton Rouge, LA. In that action, it suffered debilitating engine trouble and was abandoned and scuttled under fire by its crew. See, Saxon Bisbee, Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2018), 68-81.

[2] Bisbee, Engines of Rebellion, 7, 230.

[3] Bisbee, Engines of Rebellion, 8, 33, 37, 84.

[4] Bisbee, Engines of Rebellion, 132-133.

“Armchair Generals” and Concerned Citizens: Public Advice about Defending the Mississippi River, Part I

July 18, 2022 / / 0 Comments

By: Michael Singleton, former CWRGM Assistant Editor

            As should be clear to anyone who has explored the documents in the CWRGM collection, nineteenth-century individuals wrote to their governors about virtually everything. Whether they were requests for criminal pardons, exemptions from military service, applications for employment, or appeals for mediation, white Mississippians had few qualms about penning a letter to their state executives. It shouldn’t be surprising then that this trend also carried over to the military sphere. Throughout the Civil War, a handful of Mississippi civilians took it on themselves to submit proposals to their Governors on how best to fight the Federal army and navy. In many of these cases, recommendations revolved around defending Mississippi’s many waterways, especially the Mississippi River. While small in number, these letters comprise some of the collection’s most interesting and visually entertaining documents because they often include detailed drawings and descriptions of the author’s plans. Military history buffs will especially enjoy the documents that relay designs for new military equipment meant to revolutionize the Confederate war effort.

             A series of letters from an Edward Rew in Sageville, Mississippi, are perhaps the two best examples of this phenomenon. Before the war, Rew was a moderately successful carpenter turned planter in Lauderdale County with no evident engineering or military experience.[1] Nevertheless, in August 1861, he wrote Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus a lengthy plan to “aid in the defences of the Mississippi River,” which he felt, if implemented, would make “an effectual barrier to the enemy should they attempt to send a fleet down said river at this or any future time during the present war.” Accompanying Rew’s letter is a detailed drawing depicting the various elements of his defensive plan.

Figure1. Edward Rew’s diagram depicts his plan to obstruct the Mississippi River. Note the chain, network of boats, and the artillery batteries flanking the obstacle on both riverbanks. Courtesy Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project. Click on image to view entire document.

Rew proposed that the state build a large iron chain to stretch across the Mississippi River. This obstacle would be secured at both ends by timer pilings driven into the riverbank, while a series of wooden boats with anchors would be scattered along the chain to hold it in place. He also proposed that Confederates place other obstructions upstream of the chain “so as to deaden the headway” of boat traffic and allow fortified artillery batteries on both riverbanks to bombard and sink any Federal ships. At his own admission, Rew submitted a similar—albeit less-detailed—plan to then Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Walker to possibly attract his attention.

It is unclear how (or even if) Governor Pettus responded to Rew’s first suggestion, but it is fair to think that the governor likely shelved the idea and moved on to more practical concerns. Nevertheless, six months later, in February 1862, Rew resubmitted his plan to Pettus—this time apparently at the governor’s request. In this letter, Rew referenced the need to save the Confederacy from “any more Ft. Henrys and Donnalsons,” so it is possible that those twin defeats only weeks before sparked a renewed desire to improve Confederate defenses along the Mississippi. Rew’s second proposal differed little from his first, though he did add the possibility of employing “submarine batteries” to supplement the chain obstacle. Although Rew admitted that such devices “would hardly be necessary,” his reference to underwater mines alluded to the tactics Confederates would employ in great numbers later in the war. His dismissal of these mines—while later proven to be misguided—nonetheless demonstrated a striking familiarity with up-and-coming military technology for an untrained civilian.

Figure2. Edward Rew’s second diagram from February 26, 1862 depicts his plan to save the Confederacy from “any more Ft. Henrys and Donnalsons.” Courtesy Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project. Click on image to view entire document.

In July 1862, just six months after Rew’s letters, R. P. Guyard of Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, wrote Governor Pettus to provide “some suggestions that can permanently secure for all time…as much of the Mississippi River as is indispensable to have crossings for travellers, and railroads wherever possible.” Much like Rew, Guyard proposed that state or Confederate authorities obstruct the river by placing obstacles directly in its flow, though he differed on how it should be done. “Chains or cables across the river as a barrier is worse than useless,” he claimed.

Figure 3. R. P. Guyard’s drawing depicting his plan to drive piles into the riverbed. The dash-marks indicate the sharpened piles, while the triangular symbols are the secondary field of wooden piers meant to further obstruct traffic. Courtesy Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project. Click on image to view entire document.

Instead, Guyard recommended that teams of workers (likely enslaved people) use a specially-fitted steam engine to drive sharpened poles into the river bottom to create a dense field of obstacles. A secondary group of triangular wooden piers would follow the main obstacle to further slow movement. Like Rew, Guyard envisioned that fortified artillery batteries with sharpshooters would overwatch the obstructions from the riverbank and attack Federal ships as they approached. This construction would occur in multiple locations on the river, with at least one obstacle belt placed north of Memphis, TN. At the same time, another would face southward “below the mouth of Red River” to prevent movement up from newly-occupied New Orleans, LA. No doubt reflecting the acknowledgment that war with the United States could drag on for some time, Guyard proposed that his proposed obstacles would “endure for ages” and permanently block traffic on the Mississippi.

In subsequent months, other civilian writers made similar pitches to Pettus about obstructing the river (such as one anonymous proposal from South Carolina or another from Hazlehurst, Mississippi). In any event, though, no such elaborate obstacles were ever constructed across the waterway in Mississippi. This choice was undoubtedly the result of the sheer impracticality of such an elaborate and challenging venture and because of the significant resources and labor it would have required.[2] Rather, Confederate defenses along the river relied on a combination of massed artillery at fortified points like Port Hudson, Louisiana, or Vicksburg, Mississippi, some minor obstructions, and a small force of naval vessels—including some ironclads. To the extent that Confederates employed techniques like those suggested above, they came at more remote locations along the smaller inland waterways like the Yazoo and Sunflower Rivers. There, Confederate troops sunk wooden obstructions and used artillery to overwatch for approaching Federal ships much like in Rew or Guyard’s proposals. They also employed “submarine batteries” or “torpedoes” to great effect—most notably in the sinking of the U.S.S. Cairo in December 1862.[3]

The efficacy of employing more unconventional devices like “torpedoes” was a point made to Governor Pettus in a December 1862 letter by one J. B. Poindexter, an officer in the Third Mississippi Infantry. Poindexter’s forward-looking vision would be matched by other proposals from citizens for more innovative solutions to the threat posed by the United States Navy.

The next blog post in this three-part series will detail these sometimes-radical suggestions. Stay tuned!     

Michael Singleton was the CWRGM Assistant Editor from 2021-2022. He earned his M.A. in History from the University of Southern Mississippi in August 2022 and his B.A. in History from the Virginia Military Institute in 2013. While a student at USM, Michael served as a Public History intern on the CWRGM project in the summer of 2021 and a graduate teaching assistant from 2020-2021. He also served as an active duty Infantry officer in the U.S. Army from 2013 to 2020.

[1] U.S. Census Bureau, 1860 United States Federal Census, “Census Place: Beat 4, Lauderdale, Mississippi, Page: 371,” NARA, Publication M653, Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/38747111:7667.

[2] It should be noted, however, that Rew and Guyard’s plans had some basis of precedent. When Confederate forces occupied Columbus, Kentucky, in September 1861 they strung a large iron chain across the Mississippi River one mile above town. This chain was suspended below the waterline by a series of boats posted along its length. Numerous artillery batteries overlooked the obstacle from the high bluffs along the river. Reportedly, numerous “torpedoes” were also deployed along the chain and around the area. In almost every sense, this network of obstacles matched Edward Rew’s proposal to Governor Pettus in August 1861. See O.R. ser. I, vol. 7, pp. 436, 534; “Columbus-Belmont State Park—Historic Pocket Brochure Text,” Kentucky Department of Parks, https://parks.ky.gov/sites/default/files/listing_documents/bd5d0c09888351da895977a12981568a_Col-Belmontpcktbrochure.pdf.

[3] Neil Chatelain, Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865 (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2020) 205-208, 246-250.

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