| Current Poll |
Who do you think should manage Ferriday water?
View Results
|
|
Story Archives: Natchez, Trinity anchor key Rebel supply line in 1863
- 2013 - 340 articles
- 2012 - 856 articles
- 2011 - 635 articles
- 2010 - 1276 articles
- 2009 - 1591 articles
- 2008 - 1763 articles
|
Natchez, Trinity anchor key Rebel supply line in 1863
 (11th in a series)
Finding and destroying the supplies of the enemy, especially ammunition and food, was crucial to both armies during the Civil War.
On July 12, 1863, just days after the Union victory at Vicksburg, Gen. U.S. Grant wrote a superior about a mission he had just authorized: "Finding that the enemy were crossing cattle for the rebel army at Natchez, and were said to have several thousand there, I have sent steamboats and troops to collect them and destroy all boats and means for making more."
One of the key shipping lanes for the Confederate army along the Mississippi in 1863 was between Natchez on the east across the river to Vidalia and 25 miles farther west to the northeastern Louisiana town of Trinity, located where four rivers meet at present day Jonesville.
The Confederate officer most responsible for defending Louisiana and keeping Texas cattle and food supplies moving east across the Mississippi was Gen. Richard Taylor, the 36-year-old son of former President Zachary Taylor and until 1861, a member of the Louisiana Senate.
Headquartered in Alexandria, Taylor commanded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River. He described the war in a book he wrote, "Destruction and Reconstruction." He wrote that northeastern Louisiana prior to the Civil War was a land where estates "of 5,000 acres and more abounded, and, with numerous slaves necessary to their cultivation, were largely under the charge of overseers, while the proprietors resided in distant and more healthy localities.
"Abundant facilities for navigation afforded by countless streams superseded the necessity for railways, and but one line of some eighty miles existed. This extended from Monroe on the Washita (Ouachita) to a point opposite Vicksburg on the Mississippi, but the great flood of 1862 had broken the eastern half of the line."
Those primary northeastern Louisiana streams included the Ouachita, Black, Tensas and Little rivers, which all converge in Catahoula Parish at Trinity. At the southern end of Catahoula, the Black pours into the Red River, which a few miles to the south flowed into the Mighty Mississippi. This ribbon of waterways converging at Trinity was like an interstate highway connecting the region to the world and providing a natural path for Union gunboats to make war.For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
|
| Frank Morris Murder Series |
|
|
E-mail Story
Print Story
