Mississippi River campaigns in the American Civil War

The Mississippi River campaigns were a series of military actions by the Union Army during the American Civil War in which Union troops, helped by Union Navy gunboats and river ironclads, took control of the Cumberland River, the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River, main north-south avenues of transport. 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. The Union then controlled a main 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 Brevet Lieutenant General 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.

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