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Before relating the incidents and general story of the siege of
Port Hudson, I will briefly allude to some of the events of the
Civil War preceding it.
At the end of the first year of the war, December 31, 1861, all of the seceding states were practically under full control of the Confederate government; and were cut off from, and outside of, the civil or military jurisdiction of the
Federal government.
One hundred and eighty-four battles and engagements were fought in 1861, eighty-two of which were in
Missouri, and thirty-four in
Virginia, twenty-six in
West Virginia, eighteen in
Kentucky, six in
Maryland, and only eighteen in all other parts of the
Union and Confederacy.
Thus in the first year it had been entirely a warfare in the border states.
Of these battles, only sixteen were fought in the first half of 1861, and one hundred and sixty-eight in its last half.
Virginia and
Missouri were the cyclone centres of the war in 1861.
Virginia, with difficulty, and by only a small majority of their convention (eighty-eight to fifty-five), had been drawn into the
Confederacy, and
Missouri, only with great effort, been prevented from seceding.
In
Virginia the great objects of the Confederate government were the defence of
Richmond, its capital, the capture of
Washington, and the invasion of the
North; which object made
Virginia a field of carnage for four years.
In
Missouri the secessionists hoped to bring the state, nearly equally divided in sentiment, into the
Southern fold, and with it
Kentucky, thus assuring the control of the
Mississippi River and its great tributaries, the
Missouri and the
Ohio; thereby menacing
Illinois and
Indiana, and forcing the war onto Union soil.
