The Civil War in the Western Theater 1862: The U.S. Army Campaigns of The Civil War

The contest for the Western Theater in 1862 was monu-mental in scope and importance. Containing an area of about 230,000 square miles—roughly the size of France—the Western Theater extended from the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Mississippi River in the west, and from the Ohio River in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south. Seven states—Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, eastern Louisiana, and western Florida—lay within its boundaries. The region was vital to the Confederacy. Not only was it rich in human and agricultural resources, but it also contained the Confederacy’s largest city (New Orleans, Louisiana), important ports (New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama), and critical industrial and railroad centers (Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia).