Introduction
Before the American Civil War the Mississippi river had been the most important commercial artery in the United States, the main route for the trade of the mid-west (then known as the north-west), and for much of the cotton trade. The outbreak of the civil war blocked the Mississippi to northern trade. Opening the river and restoring that trade became one of the main Union objectives during the first half of the war (despite the fact that the new railroads had already replaced the Mississippi as the most important trade route from the north west). Union control of the Mississippi would also serve to cut the Confederacy in half, isolate Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, as well as cutting the land route to Mexico, an important route for bypassing the Union blockade of the south.
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