Island No. 10
Island No. 10 (German Insel Nr. 10; written out Island Number Ten ) was an inland island of the Mississippi in the border area of the American states Missouri , Kentucky and Tennessee .
The island was numbered 10 in the 19th century when the lower Mississippi islands were numbered. This means that Island No. 10 at the time of the count was the tenth island after the Ohio joins the Mississippi. It was in a river loop near the left bank of the river. At the time of the American Civil War , the forested island was three miles (4.5 km) long and several hundred meters wide.
During the Civil War, the island was occupied and fortified by the Confederate army on the orders of General Beauregard in early 1862 . This blocked the supply route for the Mississippi Army under General Pope , which had captured the city of New Madrid downstream . As of March 14, Island became No. 10 shelled by ships of the Mississippi flotilla, and in early April two ironclad ships managed to pass the island. This enabled Pope to cut off the route of retreat for the southerners, and the troops on Island No. 10 and the nearby river bank - a total of about 7,000 men - had to surrender.
After the events of the Civil War, Iceland No. 10 quite fast in the floods of the Mississippi. Already Mark Twain reported in his memoirs Life on the Mississippi in 1883 that the island was almost completely disappeared: "Nothing was left of it but at insignificant little tuft". Today the course of the river has been moved so far that where Iceland No. 10 lay, stretching a peninsula of Missouri.
literature
- Larry J. Daniel: Island No. 10: Struggle for the Mississippi Valley . Tuscaloosa, AL 1996.
Individual evidence
- ^ Official report in the Supplemental Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War: Supplemental to Senate Report No. 142, 38th Congress, 2d Session , 1866
- ^ Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi ; 1883; ISBN 1-582-18264-7 ; P. 238.
Coordinates: 36 ° 26 ′ 54 ″ N , 89 ° 28 ′ 6 ″ W.