Thunder Along the Mississippi: The River Battles That Split the Confederacy

A new kind of war

In 1861 the Confederacy was protected on its flank by the Mississippi River. And the Mississippi was protected by a devil's gauntlet of Rebel fortresses and shore batteries, preventing the Union from sending troops and supplies up and down the river. With Grant determined to strike a land blow through Vicksburg, the Mississippi had to be won. To achieve its goal, the Union forces unleashed a deadly new breed of fighting ships, and a desperate Confederacy answered back.

For a year and a half the Mississippi and its tributaries and bayous ran with blood, as ironclads and wooden-hulled vessels clashed in a maelstrom shot through with cannon, mortar, and gunfire from the shore. A meeting of raw human courage with advancing naval technology, the battles of the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to Vicksburg, were some of the fiercest--and least known--in American naval history, yet some of the most crucial of the Civil War. Now Jack D. Coombe tells the thrilling story of the men, the vessels, and the battles that would help decide the fate of a nation.