Battle of Island Number Ten
The Battle of Island Number Ten, fought across five weeks in early 1862, ended with thousands of Confederate soldiers in Union hands. The Union Army of the Mississippi reported just 8 men killed during the entire campaign. That disparity demands an explanation.
The position looked nearly impregnable. The island sat in a tight double turn of the Mississippi River, at the border of Missouri and Tennessee. Its defenders had installed dozens of guns on the shore, on the island itself, and aboard a converted floating battery. What they could not change was what lay behind them. A single road threaded through swamps and lakes to the town of Tiptonville, Tennessee. That road was their only lifeline, and cutting it would be enough to doom the entire garrison.
How Union commanders identified that vulnerability is a question rooted not in tactics alone but in the peculiar shape of the land.
Island Number Ten owed its name to a simple count. It had once been the tenth island in the Mississippi south of its junction with the Ohio River. By the river's own standards, the island was modest. Roughly a mile long and 450 yards wide at its broadest point, it stood only about 10 feet above low water.
The Mississippi at this point executed a clockwise turn of roughly 180 degrees. This was immediately followed by a counterclockwise turn that sent the river nearly parallel to its original course, displaced about 8 miles to the west. The double bend was known as the New Madrid Bend. Between the outer limits of the two turns, the straight-line distance was just 9 miles, or 12 miles by the river channel. Any vessel coming downstream had to approach Island Number Ten bows-on and then slow to make the curves. For a warship moving past shore batteries, that was an exposed and dangerous position.
The terrain on the Tennessee side made the garrison's situation genuinely precarious. Reelfoot Lake stretched 40 miles and reached 10 miles across in some places. In the spring of 1862, with the river running at flood height, the lake's northern waters extended past the bend itself. Individual soldiers could wade or cross on makeshift rafts, but an army moving heavy equipment could not manage it and would lose cohesion trying. The nearest high ground was nearly 10 miles to the east.
Construction of defensive batteries near the island had begun in mid-August 1861, directed by Captain Asa B. Gray. He had not been given adequate resources. The question of who would seriously take charge of this position, and how much the Confederate high command cared about it, would take months to resolve.
On the 15th of September 1861, General Albert Sidney Johnston superseded Leonidas Polk as commander of Confederate Department No. 2. Johnston showed no more active interest in Island No. 10 than his predecessor had. The position had been brought to official attention by Polk's subordinate, Brigadier General Gideon J. Pillow. Neither man followed through with genuine resources.
The real shift came in early February 1862, when General P. G. T. Beauregard arrived in the West to command the Army of the Mississippi. He recognized the importance of the position immediately and ordered the garrison at Columbus, Kentucky, to abandon that post and move to Island No. 10. His health then failed, and he could not take personal charge. When he recovered, he and Johnston were fully occupied with preparations for the Battle of Shiloh.
Major General John P. McCown was the officer transferred from Columbus to serve as local commander. He arrived on February 26. With adequate resources at last, he transformed the position quickly. By the middle of March, five batteries holding 24 guns had been built on the Tennessee shore above the island. Another 19 guns filled five batteries on the island itself. The floating battery New Orleans, mounting nine guns, was moored at the island's western end. At New Madrid, Fort Thompson held 14 guns on the western side. Fort Bankhead held 7 guns to the east, where St. John's Bayou met the Mississippi.
Flag Officer George N. Hollins commanded six Confederate gunboats on the river between Fort Pillow and Island No. 10. All six were unarmored. The armored ram CSS Manassas was expected to join them, but she could not operate in the shallow water of the bend. She ran aground on the way north and was sent back to New Orleans.
The Confederate position was formidable in firepower. Its senior command had passed through several hands in less than a year. Just as the last of the Columbus garrison was settling in, the Union Army of the Mississippi was assembling for an attack. Its new commander was not planning to wait for spring.
On the 23rd of February 1862, Major General John Pope was placed in command of the Union Army of the Mississippi, assembled at Commerce, Missouri. It was winter, and convention called for waiting until spring. Pope did not wait. He put 10,000 men on the march through Missouri's winter countryside, corduroying roads where the ground was too soft for wagons. His force arrived outside New Madrid on March 3.
They were not yet equipped to storm the Confederate fortifications. Pope sent a brigade under Colonel Joseph B. Plummer to occupy Point Pleasant, Missouri. The town sat almost directly opposite Island No. 10 on the western bank of the river. Confederate gunboats contested the move, but Plummer's men learned quickly to fall back when the boats appeared and return once they left. The brigade settled into Point Pleasant on March 6, and Confederate shelling of their positions continued for the next three days.
The heavy artillery Pope had requested arrived on March 12, surprising the Confederate commanders almost as much as the winter march itself had. These guns effectively closed the river to Confederate gunboats. They opened fire on the New Madrid defensive positions the following morning and kept firing throughout the day. McCown, watching his artillery companies struggle under the bombardment, concluded that a prolonged defense was impossible. On the night of March 13-14, he ordered an evacuation. A heavy rainstorm concealed the movements from enemy observers. The guns in the two forts had to be spiked and left behind, but most of the soldiers withdrew without incident.
On the morning of March 14, two deserters walked out to Union lines carrying a white flag. The town was empty. McCown was subsequently replaced at the bend by Brigadier General William W. Mackall. The arrangement was less punitive than it looked: McCown was simultaneously promoted to major general. The island's defenders, meanwhile, were about to face a siege conducted by two Union commanders who could not agree on how to fight it.
The gunboats and mortar rafts reached the bend on March 15, and the formal siege of Island No. 10 began. Major General Pope at New Madrid and Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote upstream were now close enough to cooperate. But the fortified position lay between them, and they could not agree on how to proceed. Pope wanted a gunboat to run past the Confederate batteries at once. Foote refused.
Foote's position was not simple timidity. He argued that a gunboat disabled in the passage could be captured and turned against Union river traffic for hundreds of miles. He had also been wounded at the Battle of Fort Donelson. That wound was not healing well; he remained on crutches throughout the siege, and some observers felt the pain affected his thinking.
The flotilla had brought 14 mortar rafts, each carrying a single 13-inch mortar, under Army Captain Henry E. Maynadier. For two weeks these weapons bombarded Island No. 10 at long range. They did very little damage. On March 17, a gun exploded on one of the Union gunboats. Three crewmen were killed and about a dozen wounded.
A member of Pope's staff then proposed an alternative: dig a canal across the neck of land east of New Madrid. The island and its batteries could be bypassed entirely. The canal was completed in two weeks. It was too shallow for gunboats, but transports and supply vessels could use it, freeing Pope from dependence on overland lines.
He still needed a gunboat on the far side. Foote called a first council of war on March 20, and the captains confirmed his decision not to risk the passage. When Halleck wrote to Foote, 'Give him all the assistance in your power,' Foote assembled a second council on March 29. Commander Henry Walke stepped forward. He believed the attempt was worth the risk, and he volunteered to take his gunboat through. Foote gave his approval.
On the night of April 1, a Union raiding party neutralized Battery No. 1. Sailors from the flotilla and soldiers of the 42nd Illinois Infantry, under Colonel George W. Roberts, overran the position and spiked its guns. The next day, April 2, the entire flotilla turned its fire on the floating battery New Orleans. She was struck several times, and her mooring lines were parted. She drifted downstream and out of the war.
The crew of the Carondelet then readied their gunboat for the run. Rope and chain were heaped on her sides and decks, along with any scrap material that could be found. A coal barge packed with coal and hay was lashed alongside as a shield. The steam exhaust pipes were rerouted away from the smokestacks so the sound of her engines would not carry across the water.
April 4 brought the right conditions: a moonless night, and after dark a thunderstorm moved through. The Carondelet crept downstream and went undetected until she came abreast of Confederate Battery No. 2. Without the escaping steam to dampen them, the smokestacks had accumulated soot that ignited and lit up her position. The Confederate batteries opened fire, but their shooting was poor, and the Carondelet completed the run without damage. Two nights later, a second gunboat under Lieutenant Egbert Thompson made a similar run and joined her below the island.
On April 7, Pope sent his gunboats to destroy the Confederate batteries at Watson's Landing, the crossing point he had selected for his army. With those batteries silenced, transports carried his troops across the river. The landings met no opposition.
Brigadier General Mackall, realizing his position on the Tennessee shore was untenable, put his men in motion toward Tiptonville. Pope's spies detected the retreat almost immediately, and Pope redirected his soldiers toward the same town. The chase was more a footrace than a battle. Mackall's column was delayed by Union gunboats long enough for Pope's infantry to reach Tiptonville first. With nowhere to go, Mackall surrendered. At almost the same hour, the garrison remaining on the island surrendered separately to Flag Officer Foote and his flotilla.
The Union victory at Island Number Ten marked the first time the Confederate Army had lost a position on the Mississippi in battle. The river now lay open to Union navigation as far south as Fort Pillow, a short distance above Memphis. Only three weeks later, New Orleans fell to a fleet under David G. Farragut. The Confederacy found itself in danger of being cut along the river's entire length.
Pope claimed in his official reports to have taken 273 officers and 6,700 private soldiers captive. Confederate records, admittedly incomplete, indicate that no more than 5,350 men had been present in total. The number actually captured was probably less than 4,500. Beauregard sought early release for the prisoners. The Union declined.
A few hundred men managed to work their way across the flooded lowlands of the Tennessee side and eventually rejoin Confederate forces. Several soldiers' wives who had been employed at the island chose not to separate from their husbands. They went north into captivity alongside them.
About 1,400 captured soldiers, many from the 1st Regiment Alabama Infantry, were transported by railroad to Madison, Wisconsin. There they were held at a field that had previously served as a Union Army training ground. This was the beginning of Camp Randall's use as a prisoner-of-war camp. From the end of April to the end of May 1862, 140 of those prisoners died there in unsanitary conditions. They are buried at Confederate Rest.
April 7, the day Pope closed the trap at Tiptonville, was also the second day of the Battle of Shiloh. Against that slaughter, the capture of Island Number Ten vanished quickly from public notice. What the campaign left behind, more than any headline, was a tactical shift. The Carondelet's run demonstrated that a steam-powered warship could slip past a fixed battery rather than destroy it first. Farragut applied the lesson at New Orleans, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, and Mobile. David D. Porter used it at Vicksburg as well. The value of fixed river fortifications was much diminished, though not entirely gone. The Union's victory had also depended on timing. The high water of the spring floods blocked Confederate escape routes, enabled the canal, and left Confederate gunboats with no room to maneuver. If Pope's army had arrived in summer, after the river fell, those conditions would have been absent. The outcome might have looked very different.
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Common questions
What was the Battle of Island Number Ten and when did it take place?
The Battle of Island Number Ten was a Union siege of a fortified Confederate position at the New Madrid Bend on the Mississippi River, fought from the 28th of February to the 8th of April, 1862. The Union Army of the Mississippi under Major General John Pope forced the surrender of thousands of Confederate troops while suffering minimal casualties. The battle opened the Mississippi River to Union navigation as far south as Fort Pillow, a short distance above Memphis.
Why was Island Number Ten considered a strong defensive position during the Civil War?
Island Number Ten sat inside a double bend of the Mississippi called the New Madrid Bend, which forced any approaching vessel to slow and face its guns head-on. The Confederate garrison installed dozens of guns on shore batteries, on the island itself, and aboard a floating battery moored at the island's western end. On the Tennessee side, Reelfoot Lake, stretching 40 miles long and up to 10 miles wide, and miles of surrounding swampland made a land attack nearly impossible.
Who commanded the Confederate forces at Island Number Ten?
Command changed several times. General P. G. T. Beauregard ordered the Columbus, Kentucky, garrison to reinforce the island in early February 1862. Major General John P. McCown served as the local commander who oversaw the buildup of its defenses, and Brigadier General William W. Mackall replaced him on the 31st of March, 1862, and held command until the final surrender.
How did Union forces capture Island Number Ten?
Union forces dug a canal to move supply vessels past the island, then obtained Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote's approval to run gunboats past the Confederate batteries at night. The USS Carondelet made the first run on the 4th of April, 1862, followed by a second gunboat under Lieutenant Egbert Thompson two nights later. With gunboat support, Major General Pope crossed the river, cut off the Confederate retreat to Tiptonville, and forced the surrender of both the mainland and island garrisons.
How many Confederate soldiers were captured at the Battle of Island Number Ten?
General Pope claimed to have captured 273 officers and 6,700 private soldiers, but Confederate records indicate that no more than 5,350 men were present in total, making the actual number captured probably less than 4,500. Pope's figures were widely considered a significant exaggeration.
What happened to Confederate prisoners captured at Island Number Ten?
About 1,400 prisoners, many from the 1st Regiment Alabama Infantry, were transported by railroad to Madison, Wisconsin, marking the beginning of Camp Randall's use as a prisoner-of-war camp. From late April to the end of May 1862, 140 prisoners died there in unsanitary conditions and are buried at Confederate Rest. General Beauregard sought early release for the prisoners, but the Union declined.
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5 references cited across the entry
- 5NewsConfederate captives in Madison: Camp Randall's history as Civil War prisoner-of-war campHATHAWAY Aaron — 11 January 2016
- 6Confederate Prisoners at Camp Randall as Seen in Newspaper ArticlesOffice of School Services — Wisconsin Historical Society — October 3, 2012