Columbus, Kentucky, located near the
confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the terminus of Mobile
and Ohio Railroad, was an important trading center and a strategic location
for control of the Mississippi River. The Confederate seizure of Columbus
on the east bank of the Mississippi and the occupation of Hickman by
Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow on September 3, 1861, was interpreted
by the Union as an invasion of neutral Kentucky, one of the Border States.
After the seizure, however, Confederate Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk moved
his forces from Tennessee to occupy the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi
at Columbus and established a camp at Belmont on the Missouri side of
the river. Thus, Columbus became the western anchor of Confederate Gen.
Albert Sidney Johnston's defense of the upper Mississippi River Valley.
Throughout the autumn and winter, as
many as 19,000 Confederate troops labored to turn the Confederate bastion
at Columbus into an impregnable fortress which would become known as
the "Gibraltar of the West." A floating battery was positioned
on the Mississippi, including river steamers that were converted to
gunboats; more than 140 heavy guns were positioned on the bluffs; and
a huge chain of 20 pound links and supported by anchored barges - said
to have been more than a mile in length - was stretched across the river.
The chain was firmly anchored on the Columbus shore by a buried six-ton
sea anchor and attached to a capstan on the Belmont shore. River mines,
then called torpedoes, were placed infront of the chain. In addition,
a large earthwork named Fort DeRussy (named for Polk's chief engineer
Col. Lewis G. DeRussy, the oldest West Point graduate to serve in the
Confederate army) and two smaller detached forts on the bluff were surrounded
by miles of infantry trenches and protected by abatis. Two additional
small forts on the plain south of Columbus and more infantry trenches
guarded the town of 1,000 residents. Electrically fired land mines were
placed along the roads to Columbus.
Control of Columbus was critically important
to both sides during the Civil War because of its strategic position
overlooking the Mississippi River. On November 7, 1861, Union Brig.
Gen. Ulysses Grant attacked the Belmont camp. After a sharp battle,
the Confederates were forced to retreat, and Grant turned his guns on
the main stronghold at Columbus. However, he was overpowered, and, after
burning the Belmont camp, he withdrew upriver to Cairo, Illinois, and
prepared for an offensive against Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee
and Cumberland rivers.
During the Battle of Belmont, the guns
of Fort DeRussy, situated high on the Columbus bluffs, raked the Union
lines under Grant with merciless fire. Among the known large rifled
cannon mounted on land at Columbus were two 6.4-inch rifled columbiads
(the "Lady Polk" and the "Belmont"), three smaller
5.82-inch rifled columbiads, and 13 rifled 32-pounders (converted smoothbores).
The "Lady Polk," named in honor of the wife of the Confederate
commander, was the largest breechloading cannon in use at the time.
It was an 8-ton, rifled Dahlgren gun, capable of firing 128-pound, cone-shaped
projectiles. The heat from firing the gun expanded the barrel, and after
the battle it was left loaded with unfired projectiles. Four days later
when the Lady Polk was test fired, it exploded into three pieces, killing
11 men and wounding dozens more, and shook up and deafened Polk so badly
that he had to give up his command for a month.
The Battle of Belmont ended all Union
ideas of taking Columbus by direct assault. On March 1-2, 1862, Union
troops arrived outside Confederate positions in and around Columbus
after having taken weaker positions at Forts Heiman, Henry, and Donelson
and thus outflanking Columbus. Although Polk favored standing a siege
in the elaborate earthworks so laboriously constructed at Fort DeRussy,
he was overruled and Columbus was evacuated on March 2 as a detachment
of the U.S. Navy converged on Columbus from Cairo. Supplies, ammunition,
heavy cannon, and gun crews were sent down the river to the Confederate
enclave on Island No. 10 just below the Kentucky border, and Polk marched
his infantry and field cannon southward to join Johnston in the preparations
for the Battle of Shiloh. Thus, Grant's forces occupied the Columbus
area on March 3 and eventually reopened the Mississippi River to Union
shipping from Cairo to Island No. 10.
Columbus became an important Union railroad
and river fleet supply depot, a refuge for former slaves, and a recruiting
center for African-American soldiers. Fort DeRussy was renamed Fort
Halleck in honor of Grant's commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck.
At the end of the war most of its garrison were members of the 4th U.S.
Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment which had been raised at Columbus in
1863. By the summer of 1864 three out of four of the Union soldiers
in western Kentucky were African-American.
Remnant earthwork fortifications associated
with Fort DeRussy and two smaller forts, the largest Civil War cannon
in Kentucky (a 7,545-pound, 32-pounder mounted on a barbette carriage),
and the six-ton sea anchor (with several feet of chain still attached)
that held the great chain across the river are preserved and interpreted
at Columbus-Belmont State Park. The park commands a magnificent view
of the Mississippi River from the top of the Iron Banks Bluff.