Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/524

492 Halleck's movements on the Mississippi. [ISGI Wisconsin, Illinois, Arkansas, and that portion of Kentucky west of the Cumberland river ; the whole to be commanded by Henry W. Halleck, whom the President had appointed a Major-General in the regular army. Halleck, now forty-seven years old, had graduated as third in a class of thirty-one from West Point Military Academy, and had devoted himself from the first to the more serious studies of his profession. During the Mexican War he gained a brevet captaincy by valuable service on the Pacific coast, and, after the conquest of California, took prominent part in its political organisation and admission to the Union as a State. Resigning his commission in 1854, he was not only successful in civil pursuits relating to law, mining, and railroads, but also became distinguished as a writer on military art and science. General Scott originally called him to Washington to take command in the East, but, at the moment of his arrival, emergencies in the West imperatively required that he should be sent to succeed Fremont. The instructions sent him by General McClellan contained the intimation that he should concentrate the mass of his troops on or near the Mississippi. This direction taken in connexion with the fact that his Department had been extended across the river into Kentucky, plainly indicated that the " ulterior operations," at which the letter of instructions hinted, were to be a well-prepared movement in force to open the Mississippi river from Cairo to the Gulf. The military problem before him was not only novel and difficult, but on a gigantic scale; and it was hoped that an officer of such acquirements, experience and judgment, would be able to solve it. From the mouth of the Ohio to the sea, the Mississippi river runs through a great alluvial plain, 500 miles long, and from thirty to fifty miles wide, with serpentine windings giving it a total length of channel of nearly 1100 miles. In this long course the stream has a fall of only 322 feet, making its windings extremely eccentric, while almost its entire length is bordered with a network of side channels, bayous and swamps. The valley is enclosed on each side by ranges of bluffs or hills, also very tortuous and irregular in their course; and as these heights approach the banks of the river at comparatively few points, not many places are capable of being fortified effectively so as to control the navigation of the stream. During the summer of 1861 considerable attention had naturally been paid by the Confederates to fortifications of this character, for which the old Federal arsenal at Baton Rouge supplied the cannon ; and the necessity of speedily closing the upper end of the Mississippi was probably the main cause of the sudden Confederate advance into Kentucky, with a view to seizing and effectively fortifying the heights at Columbus, twenty miles below Cairo. At all events, great energy was expended in this work, and it was not long before Columbus became popularly known as the "Gibraltar of the West."