t the start of 1862, the Civil War had not been going well for the Federals in the East; success was needed elsewhere. In the department of Trans-Mississippi, the key to defeating, or at least hamstringing, the Confederacy was seen as controlling the Mississippi – or enough to prevent it being used as a transport to aid the rebel economy. At the junction of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri lay the city of New Madrid on the northern side of the river. The river itself went through a series of bends similar to an ‘S’ lying on its side, with the first bend considered to be particularly hazardous to negotiate due to a strong current and a series of sandbanks and low-lying islands. The islands were numbered starting with Island One at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and counting south from that point. Island number Ten lay at the southern apex of the first bend at New Madrid. The islands themselves were predominantly large sandbanks, meaning they had everchanging shapes, which added to the hazards. The Confederates
