Torpedoes, weapons better known as mines today, form a little-known albeit important part of Civil War history. A longtime acquaintance of Matthew Fontaine Maury, former superintendent of the Naval Observatory and now head of Confederate coastal defense, Polk, who had taken off his robes as an Episcopal bishop to fight for the South, wrote, “I feel constrained to urge upon you the necessity of at once furnishing me an officer familiar with the subject of submarine batteries and capable of a practicable application of this species of defense to the Mississippi River.” Polk realized that he needed assistance to prevent Union forces from driving unimpeded into the South. He was poised either to move down the Mississippi toward Belmont, Missouri, to remove the heavy chain the Confederates were using to block the river, or he could fall upon Paducah, Kentucky, on the Ohio and threaten Nashville and interior Tennessee. Grant had moved more Union soldiers into Cairo at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. At the same time, Brigadier General Ulysses S. Less than a day’s cavalry ride from Polk’s headquarters at Columbus, Kentucky, the Union was building a fleet of attack gunboats up the Mississippi River above Cairo, Illinois. Polk, knew they were particularly exposed to the Union Army and Navy. Early in the Civil War, hard-pressed Confederate Army officers in the West, like Major General Leonidas K.
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